Thread by @TulikaBose_

As a BIPOC journalist, one thing I’m constantly asked is “how do you find your stories?” I want to take some time to answer that in this 🧵

According to Pew, journalists still rank news organizations the lowest in terms of racial and ethnic diversity. That means that sourcing in those communities often falls to reporters of color:

pewresearch.org/journalism/202…

That also means that those of us who are BIPOC reporters have been cultivating networks of sources for years. Not because we care about finding the best story — but because we know that we’re often the only way communities have a way in to tell an important story.

I want to draw a distinction between this and parachute 🪂 journalism — aka the era of the (often white) gentleman foreign correspondent — a type of journalism with colonialist roots. thenewhumanitarian.org/column/2023/08…

What I would call “community sourcing” is a better approach that a lot of fellow BIPOC reporters use. Culturally, it means staying for dinner. Accepting everyone’s aunties and uncles and cousins on Facebook. Learning, constantly.

You tend to build trust with communities over time if you’re getting to know them as real people: not with a reporting agenda in mind. The stories come later.

So yes, I did come back from what looks like an absolutely mind-blowing trip to Papua New Guinea. But here’s the thing. I had known I had wanted to tell a story here for 10 years — and it took 10 years of building relationships for this film to happen.

I will never run out of people in the world to talk to, and I’m also waiting to tell people’s stories in Beirut, the Gambia, Nepal, India, Kenya and Senegal. And there are so many more.

And always, always, stay for dinner.

@megataros This is one reason I’m also personally protective of young BIPOC reporters I’ve mentored who are often asked to give sources to white reporters. As the older “aunties” in the newsroom — we have to look out for them