Exploring the Infinite Perspectives Shaping and Transforming the Field of Journalism
“Sustainability is more than just dollars and cents. Though that is critical, it means sustaining our audience and community with the essential information that they need and to ensure that they continue to see us as an essential part of their information landscape.”
Sustainability, a buzzword to most, is the labyrinthian puzzle that keeps newsroom staffers up at night. Well, that and the copious amounts of caffeine.
Concerns of financial stability and independence, community engagement, awareness, and representation, website design and development, staffing, capacity-building, and operations, networking and collaboration, and ever-changing local and national landscapes and demographics conspire to snuff out the emerging media entrepreneur and bite at the heels of established legacy outlets.
Infinite Patterns, a Kaleidoscope podcast, aims to demystify the building of a sustainable, thriving newsroom. Like with most puzzles, when everyone takes a corner, the picture comes into focus a lot faster. So, the Racial Equity in Journalism (REJ) Fund at Borealis Philanthropy collaborated with partners at ZEAL, a worker-owned creative arts studio alliance, and dozens of our grantee partners, a diverse group of media makers, to share their newsroom’s questions, expertise, learnings, and dreams. “Young folks who are aspiring or inspiring storytellers deserve to know that there are futures that are available to them where they can be the carriers of story for their communities,” Alicia Bell, Director of the REJ Fund, added.
Designed to authentically portray the stories of our grantee partners, Infinite Patterns will highlight their humanity, vulnerability, and power in their journey towards achieving racial equity in journalism. You may know their work, but Infinite Patterns offers a window into our grantee partners’ unfiltered truths in their own unique voices.
“ZEAL is excited to support building community amongst the REJ grantee cohort. In our peer learning sessions and 1:1 work, we have been so inspired by the dedication and insights by the grantees. The podcast is our strategy to develop a platform to share the thought leadership and work of the REJ grantees with audiences in journalism, and of course, philanthropy and other supporters. Each episode showcas[es] 2-3 grantee partners engaging in live discussions on various topics ranging from ethics in transitioning news outlets to a digital space to the intersections of media organizations and movement organizations,” the ZEAL team shared.
At the risk of wearing out the puzzle metaphor, we’re taking this challenge piece-by-piece. Up first, we discuss Reparative Journalism: Healing Narratives for Social Justice.
Shared learning platforms continue to transform the world, and Infinite Patterns aspires to be a generative addition to that legacy. “I think when it comes to taking care and sustaining ourselves, we are each other’s refuge,” says Alicia Bell. “There is no structural care and no sustainable care without relationships. This space of shared conversations, shared learning, and relationship building is really necessary because it builds the fabric that builds that refuge.”
Infinite Patterns is the ultimate ‘I see you’ link up for Black, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, and Latine media innovators, and a treasure trove of bold and experimental insight on what a thriving media ecosystem where we are abundant and cared for looks like.
Join us bi-weekly on Borealis Philanthropy’s YouTube channel and on your favorite podcatcher for Infinite Patterns: a kaleidoscope podcast
Check out the trailer below and subscribe now to be the first to listen to the first episode in September!
