April Joyner

As I approach my third month at The Baltimore Banner, I have been thinking a lot about defining success. A mentor offered the following thoughts: For reporters, it is much easier to define success. Editors often need help seeing that their goals should be quite different than their reporters'. They need to see each of their reporters as individuals with different strengths and weaknesses. So editors need to meet each reporter at a different place and help them improve, and hopefully, thrive. Sometimes that means focusing on reporting or writing skills, sometimes it is helping a reporter figure out how to cover a beat, or how to distinguish their work from the competition. Editors of course are key to guiding coverage, whether it's breaking news or a more conceptual beat, when the goal has to be finding the front edge of the topic (for an education reporter, that might be new trends in teaching and for the city hall reporter it might be who are the emerging power brokers.) When it comes to editing copy, editors have to avoid rewriting stories, which can completely demoralize reporters, but they also can't send along stories that are confusing or take too long to get to the point. It takes awhile for editors to figure out that sweet spot between improving copy but not just rewriting it the way they would have written it. The hardest part of editing is probably dealing with difficult reporters and there is no easy answer for that. The only part of running a newsroom that I could advise on is running the coverage and for me, that was always driven by focusing on the big news of the day. You have to make sure that editors have put enough staffers on the big stories and are looking across the news cycle, e.g. what will we have to publish first thing tomorrow, and make sure some people are trained on the bigger, deeper questions that take a few days to report. If you are clear on your top priorities each day and the newsroom aligns behind those, then the smaller stories will take care of themselves. You will be judged by how the Banner did on the big things, not the small things.

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Two weeks ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled against the Fearless Fund’s Fearless Strivers Grant Contest. Their ruling found that this contest is “substantially likely to violate” the provisions of Title 42 of the US Code, which prohibits race from being a factor when awarding and enforcing contracts. According to CNN: "The appellate court ordered a federal court in Georgia to enter a preliminary injunction blocking the fund from closing its grant application process while the case continues to be litigated . . . The court’s decision marks a victory for anti-affirmative action legal strategist Edward Blum, who filed a lawsuit last August against the fund on behalf of his group American Alliance for Equal Rights." Shortly after the ruling, Fearless Fund CEO Arian Simone called the court's actions devastating: "I am shattered for every girl of color who has a dream but will grow up in a nation determined not to give her a shot to live it," said Simone. "On their behalf, we will turn the pain into purpose and fight with all our might. America is supposed to be a nation where one has the freedom to achieve, the freedom to earn, and the freedom to prosper. Yet, when we have attempted to level the playing field for underrepresented groups, our freedoms were stifled." While we don't yet know what Simone's next move will be to create a more equitable funding landscape for founders from marginalized communities, we do know that she doesn't quickly back down from a fight. Understand more about the passion, energy and long-term vision that she brings to her mission by listening to the audio recording of her presentation from SXSW 2024 via the link below; https://lnkd.in/gkgBPncg What does the ruling against the Fearless Fund mean for the future for startups led by women and people of color? How can non-traditional founders get a larger slice of the venture capital dollars if not for these kinds of programs? If you have forward-thinking ideas creating a better ecosystem for entrepreneurs of all backgrounds, then you should enter a speaking proposal for SXSW 2025. The speaking proposal process opens on Tuesday, June 25 via the PanelPicker interface. Speaking proposals are accepted through the end of the day on Sunday, July 21. https://lnkd.in/eSXnqtA #funding, #venturecapital, Arian Simone, Fearless Fund, #sxsw, #sxsw2024, #sxsw2025, #DEI, #founders, #founderstories, #entrepreneur, #VC, #panelpicker, #inclusion, #leveltheplayingfield, #diversity, #equity

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