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HBCU professors adapt curriculum to guide aspiring Black journalists amid attacks on DEI

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July 23, 2026
“We have to move in a certain way, but we will always tell the truth,” said Serbino Sandifer-Walker, Texas Southern University School of Communication assistant dean and journalism professor.

The Objective is a nonprofit newsroom examining systems of power and inequity in journalism: how newsrooms treat their employees, how journalists interact with their community, and what new forms of journalism can look like.

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Objective co-directors win the 2026 AAJA Award for Leadership in Diversity & Solidarity
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The Objective
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July 9, 2026
Two photos. On left: A photo of Sarah J. Jackson, a light-skinned Black woman with shoulder-length natural hair and a button-up, looking at the camera with a slight smile. On right: A photo of the cover of A Second Sight: How the Wonder and Vision of Black Mediamakers Push America Toward Freedom, which features an eyeball vector on a black background and a star with red, white, and blue as the highlight in the pupil.
Q&A: ‘A Second Sight’ tells U.S. media history through Black journalists’ lens
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June 16, 2026

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A collage of several elements, including a screenshot from a Q&A with Christopher Blackwell, with the sentence "We have journalists on the ground in every place in the world, except prisons"; a screenshotted excerpt of the front page of The Prison News, a North Carolina prison paper; collected author photos for John J. Lennon, Phillip Vance Smith II, Blackwell, and Kwaneta Harris; the headline for the Bridging the Gap conference program, courtesy of Haymarket Books.
Incarcerated journalists lead first-ever conference on strengthening U.S. prison journalism
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May 28, 2026
An image of Joy Reid, a Black woman wearing a leather blazer, white T-shirt and jeans with a pixie cut, gesturing toward the audience overlaid with "Start your Substack" icons. The icon in the top left has a mouse cursor above it.
‘Pick your hard’: Black independent journalism isn’t as simple as Substack
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May 7, 2026
Black-and-white photo of six journalists in a newsroom working together. A speech bubble has been added to one journalist, who says, "How can we improve journalism's most influential ethics code?" Another journalist is edited with a speech bubble overhead that reads, Ask Claude.
Should journalism have an industry-wide ethics policy for covering artificial intelligence? 
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May 5, 2026
A sign reading "Taken by injustice. Remembered for resistance." seen at the Alex Pretti Memorial on February 3, 2026.
Reporting on ICE killings follows a long history of normalizing state violence
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News
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April 27, 2026
A set of three Self articles collaged together alongside a pink square, a dark blue square, and an orange circle. From top to bottom, the articles read: People Who Have Had COVID Face a Much Higher Risk of Chronic Fatigue, Study Says. Here's why the virus can lead to unrelenting exhaustion. By Korin Miller, Feb. 20, 2024. 'Pulse' Actor Jessy Yates on Connecting With Her Body and the Importance of Seeing Disabled People on Screen. "When we don't see disability in the media, how do we ever normalize an entire group of people?" By Amy Marturana Winderl, CPT. Apr. 29, 2025. 3 People with Chronic Illnesses Share How TikTok Has Changed Their Lives. "It wasn't until I started to see others posting about their experiences when it finally clicked that I'm not alone." By Katie Comero. Aug. 21, 2024.
Self Magazine shuttering means one less publication taking disability seriously
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April 24, 2026
People of varying ages and genders are drawn as icons connected by their information-sharing habits, from a teacher working with students to an elder sharing archives and people working on research presentations.
Journalists aren’t the only ones sharing the news, and that’s a good thing
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Commentary
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April 22, 2026

What is The Objective?

Despite holding themselves up as “objective” and “impartial” for generations, mainstream American newsrooms have almost always been defined by homogenous teams that fail to account for race, gender, class, disability, and sexuality.

We founded The Objective in June of 2020 as a volunteer collective of journalists concerned with systems of inequity in newsrooms. Our small non-profit newsroom relies on donations to hold journalism institutions accountable and advocate for journalism that’s understanding of power dynamics and the intersections of identity.

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Objective co-directors win the 2026 AAJA Award for Leadership in Diversity & Solidarity
July 9, 2026
Graphic recording of The Objective’s Trans Media Convening panel, Narrative Change in Journalism. Top left section, below heading that says Narrative Change in Journalism: A swiss army knife that says “narrative change.” Many stories combine to form narratives that shape meaning and our realities. Multiple infrastructures work to shift narratives: Organizing, art, documentary. Journalism shapes reality by: telling us what’s happening, starting and expanding conversations (thought bubble that says “What even is gender?”), showing us what’s possible, presenting evidence in context, offering institutional guidance, and showing our power. Top right section: Journalism’s histories: A set of practices & traditions that upholds the status quo & ignores the margins. Omit: Stories about Black folks and everyone on the margins. A news station has a flag that says “myth of objectivity.” Another tradition shines a spotlight on the margins & refuses to look away! A la Ida B. Wells. A portrait of Ida B. Wells is shown. Bottom left section: Where has this brought us? 3 main approaches to coverage: 3D glasses with one pink lens and one blue lens. Cis lens is default and dominant: Nature documentary (behold the wild trans person), clinical (puzzle, not people), and scandalized (e.g. Jerry Springer, Ace Ventura, JK Rowling) & newsrooms (like CBS) are firing trans reporters. Below right section: What is our assignment? Pressure newsrooms, equip individual reporters to fight ‘em, humanize the story, multi-tactical, non-binary — work all the precious points & follow the data. Scoop the newsroom, tell a better story, work with & for each other, be our best resource. Build our own places. “Throw sand in the gears of genocide.” -Rasha Abdulhadi. Keep fighting!
Strategizing about a safer media ecosystem for trans people: The Objective’s first Trans Media Convening
April 13, 2026