NYMI SOJO Collaborative partners with Race and Justice Reporting Initiative

The New York & Michigan Solutions Journalism Collaborative is thrilled to team up with the Race and Justice Reporting Initiative from the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne State University Law School on strengthening the pipeline of reporters covering caregivers, a critical community long overlooked by mainstream media. 

The pandemic illuminated the vulnerability of unpaid family caregivers and the paid care workforce, the majority of whom are Black, Indigenous and other women of color.

The goal of the Race and Justice Reporting Initiative is to support the work of BIPOC independent journalists and not see their work as an outlier but as critical components of the news media’s ecosystem.  The partnership, which will support four reporters and photojournalists, will bring the realities of caregiving to light, increasing public awareness about the challenges, sacrifices, and rewards caregivers experience. The goal of the program is to strengthen the pipeline of news professionals committed to covering issues surrounding caregiving.

Besides working with collaborative editors and other media professionals, the aspiring writers and photographers will be mentored by Martina Guzmán, an award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker. Guzmán was a 2023 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University and founder and director of the Race & Justice Reporting Initiative. As an independent journalist and filmmaker, Guzmán covers race, justice, and systemic inequality. Her work has appeared on NPR, The Guardian, Slate and PBS, among many others. Guzmán was the Detroit correspondent for The Takeaway, a radio news program co-created and co-produced by Public Radio International and WNYC.

Guzmán has helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for media organizations committed to centering community and immigrant voices. Her community reporting with Detroit’s NPR affiliate, WDET, led to her being named Best Statewide Individual Reporter by the Associated Press. The proud daughter of Mexican immigrants, Guzmán is a graduate of the Journalism School at Columbia University in New York City.

The Race and Justice Reporting Initiative/ NYMI SOJO partnership is committed to telling caregiving stories within a race and justice framework. This commitment is a direct response to the community’s information needs and is aimed at strengthening trust and representative democracy. 

The initiative is supported by the Solutions Journalism Network through a generous grant from the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation.