Thread by @IwriteOK

I have been working with a small group of Portland press to put together an audio documentary about the uprising this year. You can listen to episode 1 now!

open.spotify.com/episode/4h2WDv…

I wanted to make a note of something here. Folks haven't really asked me about it, but I want to be clear.

It has been important to me, from the beginning, not to directly profit from what has happened this year. I still have not.

I'm a salaried employee at iHeart, which means my income would have been the same whether or not we did this particular show. I did not owe them an extra series this year. IF this does well enough that I am due a cut of ad revenue, I'll direct it elsewhere.

The rest of the team working on this project with me are being paid. And to be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a journalist making a living wage to report on this story or any other story. I have made a lot of money reporting on conflict over the years.

Journalists who do dangerous work deserve to be compensated for that work. I am currently in a position of sufficient economic privilege that I have been able to afford NOT to profit directly off of my work covering the uprising this year. That is a privilege.

I've been consistent about this throughout the year- my streams did well enough that I probably could have made tens of thousands of dollars off of them, especially if I had continued longer than I did. I chose to instead divert donations to the bail fund / Black Resilience Fund

This is again, a privilege. Some of it is due to my experiences reporting on 8chan. That really made my career, and I profited as a result. I'm not really sure how else things could work for a reporter in a capitalist society, and I don't feel guilty. The work was necessary.

But it does leave a bad taste in my mouth, especially when I think about the video of all those people being gunned down inside their Mosque.

It's the reality of being a journalist who reports on conflict. If you do it well, you make money from witnessing violence.