Dallas Free Press launches initiative to cover food apartheid in South Dallas
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To earn trust, we need to be present. We need to listen deeply to people whom we have historically neglected.
We spent Saturday in the Wheatley Place neighborhood of South Dallas, celebrating a new community garden launched by the Skip Shockley Foundation. Neyssa Shockley is carrying on her late father’s legacy by turning land her family has owned for generations into a neighborhood amenity.
The photo below shows journalist Nazarene Harris photographing the Shockley family at the event. The Dallas Free Press and the Dallas Morning News recently hired Harris to spend the next few months exploring the challenges of food apartheid in our city, along with potential solutions.
Quite a bit of strong research around “food deserts” exists in Dallas, as well as several committed organizations attempting to chip away at these problems. But unless these attempts center community voices, they struggle to succeed.
That’s why it’s imperative for us to spend time with and listen to our neighbors who live daily with these inequities.
Research just released by UT Austin’s Center for Media Engagement showed that most Black Americans “had never met a journalist in their communities” and “didn’t know how to connect with journalists.” Not surprisingly, then, they also “felt coverage of their communities lacked context and was one-sided and incomplete.”
Dallas Free Press wants to repair relationships and restore trust by hiring journalists dedicated to historically disinvested neighborhoods.
The journalism we produce also is shared with our media partner in South Dallas, the Dallas Weekly — one of the few trusted news sources for Black Dallas.
Any donations made between now and Dec. 31 — which will be TRIPLED because of our participation in NewsMatch — will help fund the salaries of future full-time journalists whose reporting will focus on South Dallas and West Dallas.
If you have the means to give, please consider giving to nonprofit, nonpartisan journalism.
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Keri Mitchell has spent 20+ years as a community journalist, including 15 years dedicated to community and civic journalism at Dallas’ Advocate magazines. She launched Dallas Free Press in early 2020 with the belief that all neighborhoods deserve reporting and storytelling that values their community and holds leaders accountable.
Mitchell says she is energized by “knowing our work is making an impact — listening to people, telling their stories with strong narratives paired with compelling data that leads to change. I also love spending time in our neighborhoods and with our neighbors, learning from them and working to determine how journalism can be part of the solution to their challenges.”
Mitchell is proud to be the winner of multiple awards during her journalism career including: Finalist in Magazine Feature Reporting (2018) and Finalist in Magazine Investigative Reporting (2017) from Hugh Aynesworth Excellence in Journalism, Best Feature Story (2011) from Texas Community Newspaper Association and Best Magazine Feature (2011) from Dallas Bar Association Philbin Awards.
Areas of Expertise:
local government, education, civic issues, investigative and enterprise reporting
Location Expertise:
Dallas, Texas
Official Title:
Founder + executive director
Email Address:
keri@dallasfreepress.com
