Aallyah Wright Transcript — Sept. 8, 2025
Rachel Jones/NPF (00:00):
Welcome back to the 2025 Widening the Pipeline Fellowship Virtual Training series. My name is Rachel Jones and I’m the Director of Journalism Initiatives with NPF. The theme for our September session is authentically connecting with the communities we cover. Rapid shifts in socioeconomic and political impacts in America require journalists to think a bit more deeply about the issues that they cover. The old school objective observer approach to reporting is being replaced by a more organic, proactive approach to analyzing and communicating stories. The goal is to fuel engagement and trust with audiences who have all but abandoned legacy media. During today’s sessions, we’ll hear from journalists and an academic who’ve crafted strategies that amplify this growing movement. We hope these sessions will help widening fellows consider opportunities to more authentically serve the communities they cover. For session one, we’ll hear from Aallyah Wright. She’s the Rural Issues Reporter with Capital B News. Aallyah’s coverage on the digital divide in rural black communities was a 2024 finalist for Iron N’s Breaking Barriers Award, and her story on a rural black mayor’s fight to serve in Alabama won a 2024 Community Voice and Anthem Award. Aallyah is also the editorial director for Storyworks Theater and a playwright whose credits include Wade Through the Waters for which he received a 2020 Mississippi Humanities Council, preserver of Mississippi Culture Award. Aallyah, thank you so much for joining us today.
Aallyah Wright/Capital B News (01:56):
Thank you for having me. It’s an honor.
Rachel Jones/NPF (02:00):
I know you’ve prepared a few slides for us to walk through the Whole Center’s journey, but before you get to that, I wanted to personally ask you a question about where you grew up has affected you and your outlook as a journalist. And I say that because I was born in Cairo, Illinois, a town with a infamous history for racial struggle, et cetera, and I can fully admit that that has affected my journalism career. So I want you to tell us about how growing up in Clarksdale has infused or fueled your journey.
Aallyah Wright/Capital B News (02:38):
Yeah. I actually have a slide on that, but I can share it later. I was born and raised in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and it is a small majority black town that’s about 77 or so miles south of Memphis, Tennessee. It is also known as the birthplace of the blues, which as the story goes, I’m not sure if y’all are familiar with it, but Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads in Clarksdale, and he became the best musician that ever was. So that’s one of the stories that Clarkdale is known for being this birthplace of the blues, but it’s also known as this hub for the Civil Rights movement during that time. And so as a child, I have so many fond memories of Clarksdale. It’s been described as a place with limited employment opportunities, a place filled with poverty, a place with poor health outcomes.
(03:48):
And of course, as a child, I didn’t envision Clarksdale as this way. I am one of four children. My mom worked multiple jobs. My dad also worked multiple jobs to provide for us. And I just recall being one of those children who loved to enjoy outside, whether it was learning how to roller skate, learning how to skateboard, falling and scraping my knee, playing hopscotch, participating in many extracurricular activities, from cheerleading to volleyball, to being an honor, all of these different things. And so as a child, I just enjoyed being a in that and playing a role in these different communities, which actually, as I think about it now, has shaped the way that I see my work as a journalist. But I remember even growing up, I would start to question the world around me. And I was always curious about the makeup of Clarksdale.
(04:50):
I would always wonder why, oh, why were there this railroad track that separated the white side of town versus the black side of town? Why every year I barely had a teacher in the classroom? It would be a consistent turnover of educators. Why were we housed in dilapidated buildings? What happened to the bowling alley? I used to go to what happened to the movie theater. I used to visit as a middle school student. I just started to see jobs disappear. And I started to see or recognize this Clarksdale that had been described in this news coverage. And I would recall listening to my mother and my grandmother and people around me talking about how there’s always bad news about Clarksdale. Who are they talking to get these narratives? Why are these always the narratives that we see about our town and our community? And I just knew there was something wrong with that.
(05:53):
And of course, at that time, I had no clue I would be a journalist or even wanting to be in this field. But I knew that I wanted to stay rooted in community and really listen to people about their lived experiences and their stories and all of these different things that I was seeing and hearing, but I had no forum at the time to where would I discuss these things or where would I put the energy into crafting these discussions? And so I see all of those ways in which I grew up in Clarksdale, started to realize the place that I lived as really the root of the type of storytelling that I wanted to do, just listen to people observe and allow that to help frame the stories that I would then start cover. So that’s a little bit of how I envisioned growing up in Clarksdale, serving as the focus for my work today. And I guess I can start sharing the slideshow. I kind of
Rachel Jones/NPF (07:08):
Why don’t you? That’s a good way to make that shift.
Aallyah Wright/Capital B News (07:11):
Okay. One second. And I can skip the slide where I just talked about. Okay. I use Zoom all the time. Okay. I think this is it here, but yeah, don’t judge me. I try my best to make this a pretty slide show. But yeah, I’m again, Aallyah Wright, the rural Issues reporter for capital B, and I cover rural black communities across the country. I often like to think of my work as covering the millions of black people, particularly in the South, who often live, work, and endure political and economic conditions that aren’t always in their favor. And this slide here shows you some of the people that I’ve had the pleasure of telling their stories as a young reporter over here when I first started out in my career a little bit later. And then these are just some of the folks across the south who have been photographed for stories.
(08:19):
And so this has shown up in many ways, whether it’s me covering black farmers, fighting for equitable resources from the United States Department of Agriculture, or its landowners who are suing developers for trying to take their land or communities who are working together to bring a grocery store to their small town. I’m always looking for ways that, one, I can expose or investigate systemic injustices, but also be able to highlight the resilience of these communities and trying to create change. And so I’ve often heard that I’m a reporter who reports with empathy and nuance and care, but I’ve recently been known as the reporter who brought sin to her hometown. Have many of you seen the film Heard? Okay, cool. Cool. So yes, it was set in my hometown and through my reporting and some grassroots organizing, we were able to bring several screenings of centers over a three day weekend.
(09:33):
And I’ll talk a little bit more about that. This was the slide about Clarksdale that I wanted to show over here. It shows me, this is me here doing work in middle school. I found this picture on Facebook. Oh my goodness, this is me in elementary school. I had no recollection of this, but apparently I was in the local newspaper for being a good citizen. Not sure what the criteria was for that, but I thought that was pretty cool, especially as I think about my role as a journalist now and the fact that I showed up in the newspaper and then I saw another article in the newspaper that I was actually interviewed for. So that was pretty cool to see. And then here I was homecoming queen. So that’s a picture of me there. And then this is the landmark, the crossroads with the guitars of where they say Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil. And so that’s a landmark that tourists are always coming to take pictures by.
(10:40):
I didn’t know I wanted to be a journalist. My mom was an avid news consumer before she took us well to school in the morning. She would have it on cable news when she gets off work, she would have it on there, and we would always be watching the news, and she would always pick up the local paper as well. And I didn’t necessarily think that that was something I could do. I liked writing, but I was too shy to be in front of the camera. And I felt like I was also too shy to share any ideas about what a story could even be. And so in high school, probably around my sophomore or junior year, all of my classmates, they were like, you should be a journalist. You should be a reporter. And I’m like, huh me? And it was also because I didn’t necessarily see that representation on the local level in my hometown, the only black person that worked at the local newspaper was a journalist at that time.
(11:38):
I would take pictures on those portable cameras, but I didn’t think I could be a professional photographer. And so I had continued to think about this idea of a journalist still not really knowing what I would get myself into, but being encouraged by my classmates. I was like, why not? Why not? Give it a shot and see what happens? So I decided to apply to colleges, and I ended up enrolling in a journalism program at Delta State University, which is about 45 minutes from my hometown. And I enrolled, but I didn’t enjoy it. And I had learned the basics, the inverted pyramid, the nut graft, interviewing, research, all of the things. But I didn’t connect with any of the coverage until one year I did. So this is a photo of Cleveland Hall, which was the oldest women’s dorm on campus and at the time, and one of my good friends had lived in this dorm, and I was on the student newspaper and we were just having a normal conversation.
(12:57):
It was spring break, and she and others decided that, Hey, we’re going to stay on campus. We’re not going to go home. And it was very unfortunate timing because it was raining. It was a really horrible storm that came through that week. And she was basically like, Aaliyah, it’s raining in our dorm, literally raining. Our clothes are damaged. There’s even mold growing in our closets, and we can’t get any assistance from the administration. And I was like, what? Are you serious? And I reached out to the facilities management people. They ignored me. They’re probably like, oh, this student journalist, we’re going to dismiss her. And I was like, you know what? I need to go there. I need to interview these young women and I need to see what’s going on. So I got my phone at the time, an Android. I am a proud Apple iPhone user now, but I had an Android at the time, and I remember just taking a video.
(13:59):
There were huge garbage cans in the middle of the hallways collecting the rainwater. I saw their clothes on the floor damaged. Some had put their clothes in garbage bags. I also saw where one of the young women had her closet repainted, so they didn’t do anything to the mold. They basically just repainted her closet to make it seem like it was new. And I was like, this is horrible. And they were like, no one’s listening to us. So I went to their dorm supervisor and she’s like, yeah, I put in a request. We haven’t really heard back. And I continued to reach out to the facilities management people. They wouldn’t get back to me. And I was just so frustrated. And I talked to my journalism advisor at the time. I was like, what do I do in this situation? I don’t know. And she was like, just tell them you’re going to publish this on Monday.
(14:52):
It’s going to go in print and they refuse to talk to you. I was like, Hmm. I never thought to do that. Literally the moment that I told them like, Hey, these are what these young women are saying, do you have a response? If not, we’re just going to run this article. And that’s that. They immediately got back to me. It was like, Hey, we can’t do an interview, but we can respond to your questions X, Y, and Z. And so I appreciated going that route and saying that because I was able to learn more about the actual history of this building and how difficult it had been for them to actually upgrade the facility because of limited funding, they would patch it up. All of these different things I had no clue about before, after my reporting, those young women were then relocated from the dorm to another dorm so that they can actually make renovations to the building.
(15:50):
And years later, I learned that the dorm officially closed. And so those women were able to pick and choose other dormitories that they wanted to live in. But what I took away from that, and after talking to them, and it just kept circling back in my mind how they said, Aallyah, we finally felt heard. If it was not for your reporting, this probably wouldn’t have happened. At that moment, I truly realized my power and how I could use journalism as a way to help people and create some change. And if I hadn’t heard from those students first, I wouldn’t have gotten the videos. I wouldn’t have even had the insight I needed to form the right questions to go to the maintenance department. And so since then, I was just like, I want to keep doing this. This feels really good to be able to create some change for folks.
(16:45):
And so over the course of my career, I’ve continued to use this approach really listening to the lived experiences of folks as I report out their stories. And so it doesn’t always translate to some sort of tangible change, but in some ways it has. And so I’ll bring up this story in particular that has really stuck with me throughout the years. And there’s other examples. If we have time, I can bring those up as well. But this story I reported when I was in Mississippi as a reporter for Mississippi today, and there was this small community of elders who were living in trailers in a super remote area in the Mississippi Delta. You literally had to drive down a gravel road to get to this community. It was super remote. And I remember seeing the cable news channel, the local news station doing this really short piece about this.
(17:51):
These families are without running water. And that was pretty much it. And I was like, wait a minute, what? In 2019, at that time, they don’t have running water. What’s going on? And so I decided to do a little bit more digging and really find out what was the case with these families. And so they were operating on this well, water pumps and the pump had broke and it cost thousands of dollars to fix it. They didn’t have the funds because these are retired community of elders. And so what they would do is drive 20 to 30 minutes to the nearest convenience store or dollar store, and they would have these super large jugs where they would fill up with water. And these are literally frail people having to try to carry these gallons of water. And in other cases, they would just buy bottled water.
(18:47):
So they would use this to cook, to clean, to bathe. And they were doing this at this time for six months, and they had reached out to their county officials. The county officials said that they didn’t have money to move around or any additional funds to actually built them a modern system. And so they donated water. And I was like, there has to be something more that the government or somebody could do. And so I published this first story literally immediately after this story published, the Mississippi Public Service Commission reached out directly to me, and this is basically the authority that oversees water, gas utilities. And they’re like, this is horrendous. We read your story. How can we get in contact with the families? And so I talked to the families first because I didn’t want to just give out their information. They said it was okay, and I basically connected them.
(19:45):
And so the Public Service Commission gathered a group, a local nonprofit, some other state and local officials to create a plan for what to do. And so I continued to check in on that. Family folks were donating water to help them. And a year later, the Mississippi Department of Human Services found a grant that was, I think like $63,000 and granted that to that local nonprofit to help build this community a new water system. And they credit it to the reporting that I did. And I bring this up because you don’t always have to be the first, right? I know there’s this culture of wanting to be the first to get the news out or the first to report on something. But I wasn’t the first to report on this. I just saw that this local news station didn’t have the capacity to build on this reporting and saw an opportunity to go deeper. And that fortunately helped this community to get the attention of state officials to actually do something. And so yeah, sometimes it takes a little bit more diving deeper to be that thing that the community needs. And so that was a really cool example. It took a year, but they still were able to see some change.
(21:16):
I’ve written stories where organizations have received funding to continue their work. I’ve written stories that have sparked state lawmakers to introduce legislation to try to help alleviate the teacher shortage crisis in Mississippi. I’ve written stories that allow attorneys to want to work pro bono with community members. And I think it speaks to the power of building trust and deep listening and just using the voices of these folks I talk to and allow that to shape not only the framing of the story, but the way that I write the story. And as I think about all of this sort of impact that I’ve been able to see, I think it’s a direct result of all of the things that people don’t see, right? I’ve sat in all these city hall meetings that are sometimes boring, and I’m like, why am I here? It’s not going to result in a story or school board meetings or reading hundreds of documents of legislation or litigation sitting in classrooms creating non-traditional journalism settings, like creating a play based on real stories, hosting public newsrooms where we bring community members together to share ideas and resources and solutions.
(22:56):
I’ve always found a way to show up, but also finding ways to provide public services and helping to connect people that wouldn’t be in the room otherwise. And I think it’s this type of work that this type of community engagement that has really been critical to the type of work that I’ve been able to do and what has manifested in a thing like sins. But the work hasn’t always been received well. I’ve had pushback from editors about can we document or measure this impact? And I’m like, well, if five people show up to this community gathering that we’re having, that’s still really important because the conversations are still rich. We’re still building trust and community with just five people. You don’t need 500 people to show up to say, this thing really matters. And so I’ve had to always kind of push and advocate for these different ideas that I’ve had and ways for us to show up.
(24:07):
I’ve had some editors tell me, Hey, the stories you’re talking about, why do people really care? They don’t really matter. And that I should keep my identity away from the journalism that I want to do. And I’ve learned that that is actually my superpower, knowing who I am and where I come from and my lived experiences and my family and friends’ lived experiences. I always put those things at the forefront because I know there are other communities who are going through similar challenges, and it may look different, but it’s still the realities that folks are facing. And so that’s one thing I’ve really had to learn and embrace, that ensuring your identity is a part or it’s a guide to help you figure out what needs to be covered and how whose voices need to be heard. Is mainstream or local media covering this? And if not, what is missing?
(25:05):
What can I add to this conversation? I think you can always be fair and accurate and truthful in your reporting while also allowing your identity to be your North Star. And so yeah, these are just a few different photos of where I’ve shown up and how as I try to continue this approach of community engagement journalism, and it’s this truth that led me to sinners. So what you see on the screen now is the first story I reported, the second story, and then a newsletter. So for years, what I should have mentioned earlier about Clarksdale that I didn’t is that there is a super lucrative blues tourism industry in Clarksdale. And every year there’s multiple blues festivals that happen in Clarksdale. And those festivals are usually put on by either people who are white or people who are not from there. They may be residents there, but they’re not originally from Clarksdale.
(26:23):
And these festivals are usually geared toward tourist. And so as a result of that, the black community in Clarksdale often feel like these festivals don’t benefit them, and they think that it primarily benefits tourists, white business owners in the downtown area where a lot of the majority white businesses are. And in addition to that, black businesses are struggling to survive as well as a couple of juke joints that are still around. And so I’ve been wrestling with this idea for years. It wasn’t until the movie centers came out where I started to think more about it, but I didn’t want to write a story about the film centers because we don’t really do that. And so it just so happened, one of my colleagues said, Aaliyah Centers, it’s based on Clarksdale. You have to see this. And I’m like, wait, why don’t I know this?
(27:24):
And I talked to my editor and she was like, yeah, are you thinking about going to see it? I’m like, yeah. She’s like, do you have any ideas about the story? I’m like, I don’t really know. And she was like, let’s just talk this out. And the same thing that I told y’all about this thinking guy had been doing about this blues industry and how ju joints are literally dying, she was like, that’s interesting. We should explore that. She was like, but go see the movie first and then we can continue talking about it. So I went to see the movie and I saw, heard these references of places in Clarksdale that I knew and names that I found familiar. And I went back to her and I was like, that’s the story. This film seems to be honoring the blues and the juke joint and black ownership.
(28:10):
But then you have these folks who are trying to take this art form from the folks who created it. And she’s like, let’s just go there. And so I did this first story about how there’s this culture in Clarksdale, and there’s juke joint owners who are struggling to survive, but the black community in Clarksdale are trying to overcome that, and they’re trying to host their own festivals and do these other interesting efforts to preserve this art form and this identity. Then I did a second story, okay, if you watch centers, here’s some stuff that you can read. But I kept thinking about this idea. I live in Maryland now. I can go to any movie theater and watch this film, but back at home you have to drive an hour plus like an hour and 30 minutes to get to the nearest movie theater. And I thought that wasn’t right.
(29:04):
So I aired that out, that frustration out in the newsletter, and I’m like, there’s just something about this film being about a place, but the people in the place, they cannot see it. And next thing, as I’m thinking about this, and I share the newsletter in my story, one of my Clarksdale friends on Facebook wrote this under my post Aallyah, there’s a petition happening and we’re trying to get Ryan Coogler and Warner Brothers to come to Clarksdale and bring the film here. And I was like, wait, the community is actually screaming out. We want you to bring this here, not just to say, Hey, we want to see the film, but to really engage in conversation about this, to show you our history, to show you the sites that you mentioned in the film to really see the Clarksdale today and not the Clarksdale of the 1930s.
(30:04):
And so I was like, you know what? I’m going to share this. So I shared this petition or open letter on Twitter. It started to go viral. I shared it on Facebook. It started to go viral. And I was like, wait a minute. I need to talk to my editor about this. So I talked to her, I talked to the audience team, and I’m like, what do we need to do? Should we write a story? What should we do? They were like, you know what? Let’s write a story. So I wrote this story about how this organizer, Tyler Yarbro, decided to write this open letter to bring sinners home. And the thing about Tyler is that I had interviewed him years ago when he was in high school and in college. So I had followed his journey of activism for a while. And while I don’t talk to him the phone every day, I check in gradually.
(30:57):
And I do that a lot with my sources, just check in gradually to see how they’ve been, what’s going on, just to keep that line of communication open. And so he was like, yeah, I’ll talk to you for the story. And that came out to be the story. And so the story went viral, and the Guardian talked about it. USA today even came up on Victor Blackwell show on CNN. And you can see my article in the background there. And they interviewed Tyler about this and what we came to know as this news cycle was happening, and everybody was picking the story up that Ryan Coogler saw the petition and he reached out to Warner Brothers and was like, we need to do something. What can we do? And literally, I don’t even know how many days it took, but Warner Brothers reached out to Tyler, and Tyler called me.
(31:47):
He was like, I think something is going to happen. And he was like, if you want to join the calls, you can join the calls. We really respect your work. We trust you. You were the person to break the story. We want you involved. So we continued those conversations, and we didn’t know that Ryan Coogler, some of the cast and the crew would be there, but they were thinking about, okay, what could this weekend of events be? And they were like, well, if they do come Aallyah, we want you to interview them. You deserve that as a daughter of Clarksdale, as a respected journalist and someone who truly cares about this community. And so it happened.
(32:29):
This here is a photo of me, Tyler and Ryan Coogler, me and Ryan Coler laughing at something he said, some of the capital B and Ryan and his wife photo here of me interviewing some of the cast and crew. And then this is a short or a cropped photo of a reception that capital B hosted at a local blues club where Ryan and others attended. But again, I keep talking about this trust and relationship building because if it wasn’t for all of the years that I put in to really get to know people beyond Aaliyah, the journalist, I don’t think this moment would’ve happened. And I say it here, I was like, oh, this happened by luck. This was a lucky thing to happen to me. And it’s actually like, no, this moment isn’t by luck. And because it doesn’t happen overnight, it’s because of, again, this point that I keep making about these years of showing up even when I’m tired, being on hour long conversations to multiple conversations, to go into community events that might not manifest in anything but a connection with someone.
(33:55):
And the intention to not just cover the quote negatives of a community, but the joy, the resilience, the culture, all of these other things that make a community special and make a community what it is. I’ve been committed to balancing that coverage, making sure there’s nuance, there’s background, there’s context, all of these things that make for great journalism. And so while sinners was this highlight for me, this highlight for the world to see, again, it’s the things that they don’t see is what led to this happening. And I think what I want to say too is that I’ve talked a lot about some of this impact that you can visibly see this dorm room closure, residents being able to get clean, running water sparking legislation or this screening coming to my hometown. But I don’t think that’s the impact that we should always strive for.
(35:04):
Simply elevating voices, honoring their stories, spreading awareness about the challenges and the realities that they face on the day to day, holding the powerful to account, just listening. I think sometimes that can be the true impact that some of these communities really need or even want. And I just want to make sure as we’re listening to what I’m saying about sinners, which is a really profound moment that happened for me and for Clarksdale, that I don’t want to lose sight of the importance of all those other that matter when we talk about covering community. And so yeah, these are some different ways that you can, of course reach out to me and I can share this live in any links that y’all would like me to share. But let me stop sharing my screen. So if you have any questions, I talked a lot. So
Rachel Jones/NPF (36:01):
Aallyah, this has been such a powerful conversation for me to have, because I think I mentioned I’m from this small town in southern Illinois that was known for racism and whatever, and the economic deterioration of OT is heartbreaking for me. And so one of the things I wanted before I open it up to any question, please start raising your zoom hands or drop your questions into the chat. But before I open it up, I wanted to ask you about some of the things that I have heard throughout my journey. And that is sort of the pushback against the quote activist journalist, somebody who is too involved. And again, 40 years ago when I was coming up, lived experience was sometimes held against us. We were told that anybody can cover that topic and a competent journalist can go into a community and get the story. You might be a little too close to the issue. So what do you think about that? You mentioned some of it, but when some might perceive your work as activism?
Aallyah Wright/Capital B News (37:19):
Yeah, I was taught, I talked a little bit about the journalism program that I was in, but I was taught to be objective. And you should make sure that you have balance in terms of you have this particular voice and you have that particular voice in the story. And I’ve learned that the truth is the truth, and my job is to make sure I’m going after that. And I also understand that there’s been a history of not prioritizing the voices of those who are often oppressed or marginalized. And a lot of times those folks aren’t given space to even share what the challenges are that they face. There’s heavy weight given to those with official voices like, oh, we’re going to give more space in this article to the police chief because they have this official statement on this incident that happened, or, oh, we’re going to give this amount of space because they’re a state lawmaker and they have this official title.
(38:48):
And I’ve always been of the belief once I really start to embrace it is that we have to make sure that we’re not continuing that type of coverage. If this is a community where, again, there’s always, we know these different factors that contribute to this oppression and why a community is what it is, this racism, all of these things that affect these people from thriving economically, socially, educationally, whatever those things are, I just feel like it is our responsibility to make sure that those people are at the forefront of the coverage period. If I did not take time to truly listen to the people of Clarksdale, the black community of Clarksdale, I would think that there’s this awesome blues economy that is happening, all of these festivals that are happening to give people something to do. And I would just think like, oh, this is just this thriving town that people just love and enjoy. Until you really talk to the people and they’re like, oh, we don’t go to that. That’s not for us. We are still in poverty. We can’t get jobs. We are enrolling our children into these failing schools where they can’t even get a teacher and we don’t see how these things are benefiting us. We don’t see how these things are raising us up out of this poverty. And so I don’t even think about it as activism work. I just think it’s a part. It’s just a of the work
Rachel Jones/NPF (40:45):
Beautifully put to me. Introduce yourself to Aallyah and ask your question.
Tamia Fowlkes | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (40:52):
Hi, Aallyah, it’s so nice to meet you. I followed your work for a really long time and really respect all the reporting you do. So I appreciate you sharing so much with us today. I was wondering if you could walk us through your regular kind of pitch process or how you look for stories on a regular basis. I’m sure with rural reporting it’s a little bit different than if you were doing national news every day. So I was wondering if you could walk us through that process.
Aallyah Wright/Capital B News (41:17):
So it’s a little bit different now than when I first started because one, it wasn’t a pandemic thing, and I would just go, go and show up to everywhere. I was more local versus now I am national and covering a broader issues, but also just more communities across the country. So I’m usually doing a few different things. I’m either responding to what’s happening in the news and I’m thinking about what communities I may not have covered. So let’s say I want to focus on Texas, and I may go to this, this federal list of rural counties and urban counties. And so I’ll pull up that list of rural counties and like, oh, I haven’t heard anything about this particular rural county. Let me see if I can find somebody there. So it may be responding to the news or maybe a source of mine has emailed me or called me or there’s something happening or I’m reading.
(42:26):
I know there’s not as many local papers anymore, but I’m reading the local papers. I’m on social media. The only reason I got that center’s coverage was literally being on social media and someone tagging me in that open letter. I’m also just always kind of in deep reflection too. So I am thinking about my hometown, the challenges that still exist there, talking to family members and seeing how that is common in other places. So it’s a mix of conversations, news, coverage, social media, maybe research or reports, those sorts of things. Or even just talking to my editor, my editor will see different things that happen. Yeah, and I’m just in reflection about, because I travel a lot too. So if it’s something I noticed in a place and I haven’t had a chance to just really tap into that, I’ll just have a list of things that I write down. And when I have time, I just go back to that thing or I have a question about something. So it’s kind of a mix of all of those things. I
Rachel Jones/NPF (43:38):
Really like that advice about being in deep reflection and really taking advantage of that moment of thinking deeply about it. Then write something down. Let’s go to Briah Briah, introduce yourself.
Briah Lumpkins | The Charlotte Observer (43:55):
Hi, I’m Briah. I’m a reporter at the Charlotte Observer. I followed your work for a while, so I’m so glad we had an opportunity to hear from you. So thank you for speaking with us. I wanted to ask you a question based on what you were talking about a little bit earlier. I think in my experience in our industry, there’s a lot of focus on being first or being quick, and also understanding that building relationships and having a deep understanding of communities, especially those that have been unserved or underserved by the media for a long time, it takes a lot of time. So I wanted to get your perspective on how you’ve gone about navigating with editors and convincing them why spending time in certain communities is worth it, to have that deep understanding and to be able to produce stories that are deeply reported and have nuance.
Aallyah Wright/Capital B News (44:43):
Yeah, for sure. Thank you for that question, because now a lot of my work is more of the enterprise reporting. Even if I respond to something that happened in the news, it won’t be a quick turn or a daily. My editor will actually give me time to dive deeper into that thing. And I think part of that is because of the fact that I’ve built trust with my editor and I’ve shown the type of work that I produce when she gives me time to do that. So I’ve had to advocate for, because there’s communities that I like, I just need to go there. If I literally go there, I will get what I need. They’re not going to talk over the phone. They don’t know me when I show up in person. I just know that I’m going to get what I need. But I think that comes from a lot of one pre reporting and that I’ve had to do to ensure I have kind of a solid pitch, or at least I know where I’m going with the story. I’ve at least identified some people in the community or an organization to say they’re interested in talking to me. And I think that I’ve done that enough that, again, when I come back with the actual story, my editor is more than impressed with what I’ve brought back. So the more that I’ve done that, they’re like, oh, we’ll give you all the time that you need. So I think it’s a lot of just showing what you can do to prove why you need to do more of that work.
Rachel Jones/NPF (46:24):
Elisha, introduce yourself.
Elisha Brown | States Newsroom (46:28):
Hi, Aallyah. I’m Elisha Brown, a reporter at States Newsroom. I’m also your fan and friend, if I can say that. Hi, girl. I’m just so happy to hear from you and see you just want to say, but do you have a question? So let’s say five years from now you’re at a legacy newsroom, which if hiring editors have any sense, you will be. Do you think the clips and work you’ve done at capital B, Mississippi today and all your other work will help you push back against editors who subscribe to the notion of objectivity?
Aallyah Wright/Capital B News (47:04):
Absolutely. And I say that because of the impact that I can show comes from this work. And again, it’s not just Allah has been changed or sinner comes to Clarksdale. I document the messages of gratitude. We’re so happy someone is finally listening to us and getting the story, the accuracy, or I just had someone recently tell me, brought them to tears and almost brought me to tears that they said that I’ve been covered by news organizations before, but this was the first time I truly felt like my story was represented the right way. And your storytelling felt like writing of the ancestors, and I will never forget that. And in other ways, being able to provide resources, I did this story about how to track your genealogy. I had spoken to some historians, some genealogists because I had continued to hear from people about finding information about their ancestors and distant relatives because they’re battling these different heirs property issues and land loss issues.
(48:33):
And I’m like, how can I create this one-stop shop for how to do this work to research your heritage, but also resources to help you protect your land? And there are so many people who were just responding to that, thank you so much. I didn’t even know where to go for this. So it’s like there’s all of these type of outcomes that come from effectively inspiring folks, sparking them to create some sort of action, or even just helping them in their daily lives with something as simple as what resources do I need to protect my land so I can keep it in my family? So I think there’s a number of things that I can point to about why this coverage matters. And then of course, there’s plenty of times where my story has been the top story in the news organization’s history. So I can point to like, oh, this story got millions of views. It was picked up by the New York Times or Apple News, or whatever. There’s all of these different ways to say why that coverage matters.
Rachel Jones/NPF (49:45):
I think we can take a couple of more questions. Monique, introduce yourself.
Monique Welch | Houston Landing (49:51):
Yes. Hi, Aallyah. Also like everyone else, going to sing your praises and kudos big fan. I’ve been following your work as well and freelancing for capital B. So of course I stay on y’all’s home page, but just wanted to kind of piggyback a little bit on your answer about pre reporting and whatnot. I think it was to Bri’s question. I don’t have this issue right now, of course, but in the past I have with editors when it comes to, they say they quality over quantity, but in the end, they still want quantity, right? So how did you get to that point of, I guess, trust with your editor to even have the time to, A lot of times I found that I was doing the pre reporting on the side. They didn’t know that I was pre reporting for a story because I hadn’t pitched it fully yet.
(50:40):
It was more so because, okay, I’m like, if I’m going to come and pitch the story, I know it’s a story, but I got to come hard with this is why I know it’s a story almost like your full presentation. How did you get to that point where you were comfortable enough to pitch it kind of early and be granted the time to preport, then come back to your editor and say, Hey, I found X, Y, and Z, and they’re like, okay, yes. Go do that story, and this is the story. So how did you kind of navigate getting to that point?
Aallyah Wright/Capital B News (51:09):
Yeah, with my editor now, I over communicate and I learned that that’s the best way for us to work together. Even if it’s a little nugget, I’m like, it’s not fully baked right now, but I just want to keep you updated on my progress of this thing so that I’m working towards this larger story that I plan to pursue. I mean, yeah, I completely over-communicate and I do that too because now I’m at a point where I’m working on multiple things where it’s like, oh, I might be working on a story that’s due in a week while I’m working on this enterprise story that might be due in three weeks while I’m also navigating this year long investigative reporting project that I set a goal for myself to finish by X date. So a lot of it has been us having sometimes 30 minutes, sometimes hour long conversations about the progress of things or how I’m feeling about things, or even just figuring out what’s the best way for us to work together. So I’ve always found that over communication has been the best way for that for me. So I think just really being honest with yourself and your editor about the ways in which y’all can work together on that. So I hope that’s helpful.
Rachel Jones/NPF (52:42):
Let’s take one more question from Chloe. Chloe, introduce yourself.
Chloe K. Li | Al Jazeera English (52:47):
Hey, thank you so much for speaking with us. Everyone else has said had been following your reporting, so it’s really exciting to talk to you. My question is similar to Monique’s in the point that it relates to editors and higher ups, because a lot of the times when I am covering a story that is going deeper into a community that is either mine or not, what happens is because the story goes out, I maintain a relationship with them, they’ll ask me to further cover a related story in that community. And the struggle for me always comes from trying to convince my higher ups that this community is important to return to in our reporting. I guess I wanted to see if you have any advice for those conversations of how to convince and then when that convincing fails, how to also maintain that trust with those community members because I don’t want to ever just drop them, even if I’m still communicating with them, not having a result for them always feels disheartening, I think. So any advice on that?
Aallyah Wright/Capital B News (54:00):
Yeah, I still deal with that. So just to be clear, all of my ideas don’t get green lit, but I never throw ’em away. I always keep, I’m like, okay, it might not be right now. Like this story I did recently about the In Clarksdale, there’s this old timers blues festival that was started in 2018 because this juke joint owner wanted to honor his 60-year-old friends because they were more musicians were dying out. There wasn’t a platform really for them, and he wanted to pay homage to them at this blues festival. And I had pitched that at a different newsroom I was in at 2018, and the editor was like, I don’t really know if we want to cover old people playing the blues. And he just shut down that idea completely, which is fine because now I got a chance to cover it given all of this stuff with sinners and the importance of preserving blues as an art form in this place called the Birthplace of the Blues.
(55:07):
So it just happened to work out where I got to cover it now. So if I would’ve continued to listen to hymn, I would’ve just completely shut down that idea, never visited again. But fortunately, again, like I said, I was able to cover it, but in terms of relationships with my sources, I just keep it real with them. And I’m just like, I appreciate our relationship. I want to continue to build with you and I want to continue to cover your community. But oftentimes it’s, I don’t say it’s not a priority, but there’s other communities that I have to cover and I’m spread thin or stretched thin, and there’s only so much I can do, or my editor wants me to shift focus right now. There’s something I’m saying that’s like, it’s not that it doesn’t matter, but right now isn’t necessarily the time because other stories that I might have to cover, and I just also think through what makes an interesting story for my editor.
(56:25):
So maybe I kind of fine tune my pitch a little bit, or maybe I’m talking to more people or doing more research, but I try to find a way to compromise with my editor so that I can still do that story. So it’s just always finding what, because I’ve pitched stories before, my editor is like, nah. But then once I went back and just did more research to refine the pitch, then she was like, actually, I like that angle better. Let’s pursue that. So sometimes it’s just a mix of different things that you have to try to still get that story done. And then maybe it’s not at your news publication, but I’ve also pitched a piece to freelance for another news organization that saw a story that fit another publication better than my own. And I talked to my editor about that too, like, Hey, is it okay if I pitched this somewhere else? So I think it’s just a matter of what the story is and how you can finesse your way into still getting that story published.
Rachel Jones/NPF (57:29):
I like the way you ended on a note of the often Jedi Mind tricks we have to play as reporters to get our editors on board, but we come to the end of our hour. But I have to first say that I’m naming myself the president of the Aallyah Wright Fan Club because it appears that most of the members of the Widening the Pipeline class are already members. And I want to thank you for a powerful discussion about engaging with communities. I think one thing I wrote down is that when you said The truth is the truth, and it’s my job to go after it, and your commitment to elevating marginalized voices is just incredible. So Aaliyah Wright of capital B News, thank you so much for joining us.
Aallyah Wright/Capital B News (58:20):
Thank y’all for having me. Feel free to reach out anytime.
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