New York Amsterdam News

The New York Amsterdam News is looking for a full time Data and Investigations Reporter to join our Blacklight Investigative Unit. This is a position based in New York City that requires considerable attention to detail, personal initiative, and a startup attitude. This role offers the successful candidate a unique opportunity: to work with a legacy Black-owned news organization to support the essential work of supporting our democracy and informing our citizens. Compensation and Benefits for this position includes: Annual Salary of $80,000 100% Employer Paid Health Care  Union membership Paid Vacation + 13 named holidays Generous Sick Leave/Personal Time Paid Maternity/Paternity Leave  Transit Check Program Flexible Spending Plan 401K and pension https://lnkd.in/e7chcb3j

The two-story cottage in which he chose to live and eventually die was rented to him by a caustic, xenophobic Frenchwoman named Jeanne Faure. Not surprisingly, his wit and charm won her over in time. Over the years, he hosted an incessant stream of guests ranging from far-flung friends, ex-lovers, éminence grise from French society, as well as celebrities like Miles Davis, Josephine Baker, Maya Angelou, and Bobby Short at his “Welcome Table,” in the backyard. At local establishments in Vence such as Café de la Place or Colombe d’Or, he rubbed elbows with local denizens as well as national icons such as Simone Signoret and Yves Montand. In the years following his death, as well as that of Madame Faure, the house and the larger property on which it sat were razed for the development of high-end condominiums. In the St. Paul de Vence years he completed nearly 10 works of fiction and nonfiction, including his only children’s book, 1976’s “Little Man, Little Man,” and his output in the written and spoken word vacillated between anguished, reflective, and fiery, despite critics’ near dismissal of his literary oeuvre. Throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s, with Provence and his home base, Baldwin traveled between the U.S. and Europe craving interaction with the youth as well as his peers. Read about his life and legacy: https://bit.ly/3WymMkG

Following the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. as well as that of Medgar Evers, the NAACP’s field secretary in Mississippi, in 1963, James Baldwin was essentially adrift—creatively and personally. Grappling with health issues and fatigue at the turn of the 60s, his relationship to the emerging Black Power movement and mainline Civil Rights establishment was not as proximate as is his idolization today within the Movement for Black Lives and other social justice efforts. Read about his life and legacy: https://bit.ly/3WymMkG

Even in the years leading up to and following his mid-80s cancer diagnosis, Baldwin was compelled to chart new territory. Two critical writings published in Playboy magazine remain especially relevant with the rise of the MAGA movement and its embrace of a fossilized masculinity, then, separately, racism and violence that was both internal and external to the Black community. In 1985’s “Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood” he dissembled cultural representations of manhood and masculinity against the sexual norms of the 80s in the era of AIDS. At the time of his death in December 1987, he left behind two sadly unfinished works, including a novel, “No Papers for Muhammad,” which delves into the expatriate experience with racism, as well as “The Welcome Table,” a play in which he sought to directly address the specter of HIV/AIDS for gay people and the community at large. Read about his life and legacy: https://bit.ly/3WymMkG

It was during his final chapter living in the south of France that he produced some of the most resonant, prophetic work on race, sexuality, and manhood, as well as the possibilities of dismantling the corrosive whiteness that has suffocated people of color since this country’s founding. Through his speeches, appearances in film and television, lectures on college campuses, as well as the brave directions he took his writing in defiance of critics, he laid the foundation for contemporary movements including Black Lives Matter. Read about his life and legacy: https://bit.ly/3WymMkG

August 2 marks the centennial of James Baldwin’s birth, and in the 35 years since his death in Saint Paul de Vence, France—where he made his home during the last third of his life—Baldwin’s shadow still falls over any meaningful conversation about injustice. In a multi-decade career that began during the post-World War II era and lasted through the late 80s, James Baldwin cast an incisive, gimlet-eyed view on everything and everyone whom he encountered, from his birthplace of Harlem to the roiling American South and the rooted white supremacy upon which the U.S. was founded and to which it still desperately clings. The relationship between the U.S. and the global community and James Baldwin and his singular body of work, which includes more than 20 novels, collected essays, plays, and poetry was like his own relationship with those same entities—complicated, but enduring. Read about his life and legacy: https://bit.ly/3WymMkG

ProPublica Selects Three Newsroom Partners for the Local Reporting Network ProPublica has selected three partner newsrooms to work with its Local Reporting Network over the next three years. Each of the participating local media partners — Arizona Luminaria, Invisible Institute and the New York Amsterdam News — will dedicate a reporter for a three-year term to focus solely on investigative reporting, in collaboration with ProPublica’s editors and specialized teams. This project is made possible by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. “Over the last six years, the Local Reporting Network has delivered critical reporting to communities across the country and prompted real-life changes,” ProPublica Assistant Managing Editor Sarah Blustain said. “With the support from the Knight Foundation, we’re excited to be able to support more sustained partnerships with these three newsrooms, all of which have a demonstrated track record of investigative reporting. We’re thrilled to get started.” New York Amsterdam News For more than a century, the New York Amsterdam News has been committed to racial justice journalism and has reported on the fight for equality during the Jim Crow era, the events of the Civil Rights Movement, the Montgomery bus boycott and the Freedom Riders, among other stories.  In 2022, the Amsterdam News, headed by Publisher Elinor R. Tatum and under the leadership of Executive and Investigative Editor Damaso Reyes, founded Blacklight, the first investigative unit at a Black newspaper, to provide opportunities for journalists of color to pursue investigative projects. Among their projects is the groundbreaking “Beyond the Barrel of the Gun” initiative, which focuses on the root causes of,  impact of and solutions to gun violence in Black and Brown communities. Blacklight’s reporting has won numerous awards including the New York Association of Black Journalists 2023 Ed Bradley Award for investigative journalism for its story on the impact of COVID-19 on families of color, a 2023 Solutions Journalism Award for its reporting on the impact of climate-change-fueled heat on gun violence, and a 2024 Deadline Club Award for digital video reporting for its first documentary film, “Be-Loved,” which highlights the story of a Harlem-based credible messenger working to reduce gun violence. About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation The foundation supports democracy by funding free expression and journalism, arts and culture in community; research in areas of media and democracy; and in the success of American cities and towns where the Knight brothers once had newspapers. Learn more at kf.org and follow @knightfdn on social media.

Kamala Harris is our vice president. We have seen that, in a moment, she has brought back hope to the party. Although she had been right in front of us all along, it was not until this moment that we were ready for her—but now we are. We need Kamala Harris now more than ever. We need her strength, her energy, her ideas, and her intellect. We need her as the next president of the United States of America. That is why we are endorsing Kamala Harris for president. https://lnkd.in/gwCrykG6

Visionary journalism philanthropy leader Jim Brady of Knight Foundation joined our acclaimed Publisher Elinor Tatum, Investigative Reporter Helina Selemon, Digital Editor Cyril Josh Barker and I at our historic New York Amsterdam News building in Harlem New York - around the corner from the equally historic Apollo Theater. Having completed Phase 1 of our building cleanout - we’ve uncovered a treasure trove of newspaper and Black cultural history! Jim Brady and Publisher Elinor Tatum have a hard time tearing themselves away from the treasure trove to get to their next meetings.

“There’s more than enough people in this country that don’t want you to vote,” Rao says. “All we can do is make sure you have the tools to vote if you want to.” Check out our founder talking all things New Voters, and how we engage non-English speaking students, in this fantastic article by Enoch Naklen in New York Amsterdam News earlier this month!