Analysis
Wendi Thomas and Amethyst Davis on the patriarchy of philanthropy
June 3, 2023
The year Wendi C. Thomas founded MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, she cried “not infrequently.”
She had multiple moments of doubt mounting in her head. She’d wake up in a panic in the middle of the night, her stomach in knots, remembering how much credit card debt she had to take on to keep herself afloat.
“I had a therapist that I’ve been seeing for years. She really has kept me alive. I’m going to be completely transparent about that,” Wendi shared. “She allowed me to pay on a sliding scale when I made no money. So I was paying $30 a session, which was probably all I could afford.”
It was therapy, having a community of people who believed in her mission, daily affirmations, and the occasional revitalizing conversation with a fellow journalist or an unexpected donation that kept her emotionally afloat.
“I’m listening to you speak, and I’m doubly comforted and alarmed,” responded Amethyst Davis, publisher of The Harvey World-Herald in Harvey, Illinois.
The two women publishers spoke candidly with one another during a recent webinar hosted by The Pivot Fund and sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Having drained her savings and retirement accounts, it was affirming for Amethyst to know Wendi—now a celebrated founder—went through the same personal sacrifice to launch a news business.
“But I’m alarmed. Because why do we have to do that?” Amethyst asked.
“This is not okay. I think about the cats, like the white dudes, who go into venture capital meetings, and they just got a pitch and get $10 million,” added Amethyst. “We got to starve and pimp out our struggle just to get $50,000. I never thought I would say something like this, but that’s not much money in the grand scheme of what we need to do.”
The frustration of funding inequities
“Frankly, white people get funded for ideas. And black people and people of color are funded by what we’ve already done. So that means struggling,” Wendi responded.
Thomas recalls a funder telling her that maybe they would support MLK50 in a year or two when the organization “might be ready for some support.”
“We won’t be here in a year or two,” Wendi told the funder. “So the time to support is now….”
Wendi said that the same funders who rejected her initial pitches only returned to her after producing an award-winning investigation on hospital debt collection.
The Pivot Fund’s recent study confirmed much of Wendi’s and Amethyst’s experiences. We found that not only do journalism funders often ignore or dismiss founders of color, even when they want to support Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color, but that money is also often channeled through white-led associations and trickled down to journalists of color. We also found that reporting requirements for funding were often described as burdensome. Only 21% of respondents said funding is enough for their basic operations. Some experienced journalists and publishers called it “paternalistic” for funders to make participation in boot camps, training, and accelerators a requirement.
The emotional labor of [re]building community trust
When Amethyst returned home to found The Harvey World-Herald, she was caught off guard by the community’s icy reception.
The majority Black and Latino city had a long, fraught relationship with Chicago and its primarily white media. Despite The Harvey World-Herald being a community-centered newsroom owned and led by a local, Amethyst was questioned about her intentions.
People thought she was hiding something, that she wanted something from them, or that she was waiting to catch them slipping.
“I didn’t see any of that coming. I saw none of the emotional work and the mental work of trying to validate the community and the harm that media, broadly speaking, has done,” Amethyst said. “Validate the trauma that comes from living and growing up in a community with political corruption.”
“You’re single-handedly trying to undo generations of mistreatment by legacy media,” Wendi added.
Amethyst shared that she had to do this emotional work at just 25 years old in full view of more than 20,000 people and herself. The experience made her rethink to what extent the idea of objectivity in journalism robs journalists of the humanity necessary to do the work and build trust.
“I think that was the biggest challenge actually trying to see, you know, my humanity and validate my feelings just as much as of those in the community,” Amethyst said. “And I wish people had warned me about that.”
“It’s never like something you’re going be able to check off a to-do list, you know, ‘Earn the trust of the community,’” Wendi said. “It’s something you have to grow, but I think you can demonstrate it. Over time, people will trust you, even when they still don’t trust the Tribune, SunTimes, or broadcast outlets.”