Dallas TRHT’s ReNOW cohort transforms Dallas Free Press’ racial equity approach
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See all those beautiful people in the photo?
That’s the team at Dallas Truth Racial Healing and Transformation, and the nonprofit organizations who participated in their 2022 Racial Equity Now cohort. We spent a good chunk of time with them this past year, and it changed us.
Today is the National Day of Racial Healing, and we encourage you to watch Dallas TRHT’s Jerry Hawkins explain its significance.
The cohort gave us the tools and the coaching to come up with a racial equity theory of change that is transforming our organization from the inside out.
Before the cohort, Dallas Free Press hadn’t created any official racial equity policy or practices — not because it wasn’t important to us, but because we wanted to be thoughtful and intentional rather than just checking boxes.
The neighborhoods where we focus our community journalism efforts, South Dallas and West Dallas, are comprised mostly of Black and Latino residents. Here are our acknowledgements and commitments both to our neighbors and to our supporters:
- Dallas Free Press owns up to journalism’s racist history of devaluing BIPOC residents and minimizing their stories, while envisioning an anti-racist future that prioritizes Black and Latino voices from neighborhoods such as South Dallas and West Dallas, and utilizes community-powered journalism to guide reporting and storytelling.
- We will prioritize the words and perspectives of Black and Latino residents in neighborhoods like South Dallas and West Dallas by positioning them as the first voices in Dallas Free Press stories.
- We will add more BIPOC board members and staff to Dallas Free Press‘ team as we grow.
- We will recruit BIPOC residents into Dallas news and media processes by equipping 50 Black and Latino residents to become community reporters and storytellers over the next three years.
That final commitment is a direct reference to our new Documenters program, which Dallas TRHT supported with $10,000 in funding!
We’ve said before that we believe Dallas Documenters will be a game changer. The program’s mission to send out dozens of citizens to public meetings and turn their notes into a robust public record will be part of that significant transformation, and so will Documenters’ focus on communities of color and neighborhoods that historically have been left out of public processes.
We hope you will find a way to get involved in Dallas Documenters! And if you are a neighbor, a supporter or a fellow nonprofit who wants to know more about the Dallas TRHT RENOW! cohort, reach out to us. (Spoiler alert: We HIGHLY recommend it.)
A special thank you to Dallas Free Press team members Haley Chavez and Raul Reyes Jr., along with board member Carol Toler. We spent February through November on this racial equity journey together! And immense thanks to our racial equity coach, Jarie Bradley, and to the entire Dallas TRHT team, for your wisdom, patience and support as we fumbled through.
Dallas Free Press founder + executive director
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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
