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What does The Objective do?

After the summer of 2020, a slew of journalism organizations committed to change in terms of how they cover historically underrepresented communities, as well as how they treated and hired staff from those same communities.

But their failures were not new. We’ve heard it time and time again: journalism organizations making public statements denouncing the treatment of historically underrepresented communities. Those same organizations committing to change how they cover and treat staff from those communities. And then… nothing.

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 newsroom relies on donations to hold journalism institutions accountable and advocate for journalism that’s understanding of power dynamics and intersections of identity.

Your donation goes to paying our contributors equitably and ensuring we can continue to publish independent reporting and media criticism.

We publish reporting, media criticism, and Q&As with the goal of building collective and narrative power for communities (and journalists) that have been misrepresented or dismissed in order to change the way journalism is practiced in the U.S.

To us this means two things:

1. An expanding number of media reporters and critics, primarily from demographics historically marginalized by the journalism field, are visible to the journalism field. Beyond that, we want all journalists to feel more comfortable offering public, fair, and well intentioned feedback to the newsrooms they work for and read.
2. People historically marginalized, distorted, and misquoted have a forum to read about and express their own concerns about journalism’s production in the U.S.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

The Knight Foundation scrubs DEI section from its ‘About’ page

By Nicole Froio

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News

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December 19, 2025

One of the biggest funders of nonprofit journalism in the U.S. no longer publicly lists an explicit section about “diversity, equity, and inclusion” on its mission page.

The Objective’s favorite media reporting and criticism of 2025

By James Salanga

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Commentary

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December 19, 2025

A non-comprehensive list of The Objective’s co-directors and readers’ picks for media coverage and commentary this year.

The local news contract is broken. Civic media can fix it

By Darryl Holliday

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Civic Media Series

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December 19, 2025

Darryl Holliday on how City Bureau’s Documenters’ program models the new social contract needed for local news and the civic media system emerging today.