It's time for local journalists to reckon with the racism we overlooked

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Margaret Sullivan
@Sulliview
Not just in Buffalo but everywhere, Its high time for local journalists to reckon with the racism we overlooked. My column. Read here; no paywall

washingtonpost.com
Perspective | It’s time for local journalists to reckon with the racism we overlooked
The massacre in Buffalo exposed not just violent racial hatred but the legacy of inequitable policies from years ago.
3:42 AM · May 20, 2022

https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/05/20/buffalo-journalism-legacy-racism/

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https://archive.ph/QSr9k

BUFFALO — When a gunman opened fire at a Buffalo supermarket last weekend, I tried to help The Washington Post find a local freelance journalist to start covering the story while editors scrambled to get our own reporters to the terrible scene. As a Western New York native who worked at the Buffalo News for decades, I was pretty well positioned to be a scout.

I texted one former colleague who told me he would check to see if he could take an outside assignment. The response came back quickly:

“Denise said no.”

Buffalo News deputy managing editor Denise Jewell Gee made the right call, of course. This was an all-hands-on-deck moment for the paper, which has acquitted itself well. It has broken news about the massacre while providing a stream of vivid reporting and heartfelt commentary. The News even delivered thousands of free papers to the city’s East Side where 10 Black people were murdered and three other people were injured in what’s been aptly described as a racially motivated domestic terrorist attack.

Watching this astonishing coverage over the past week, I couldn’t help thinking how much the Buffalo area would lose if its daily newspaper were to fall into the hands of the rapacious hedge fund that wants to buy the company that owns it. The newsroom staff, already significantly smaller than it once was 15 years ago, would no doubt be cut to the bone, as has happened at virtually every paper across the country that this hedge fund has devoured.

*snip*