Transcripts For CSPAN National Press Club Discussion On Cove

Journalism institute hosted the event. It is an hour and 10 minutes. Welcome on behalf of of the National Press club and press journalism institute. So happy you are joining us in this room and on the span. I am the executive director of the National Press Club Journalism institute, where we are working to close the gap between journalism and civic engagement. This is a really Important Program and service to that mission. I want to tell you a little bit how it came about. April, ava duvernay was given an honor at the Free Expression awards. As she accepted her honor, she talked about Nipsey Hussle and she dedicated it to him and she talked about how about the l. A. Times and their coverage. I want to show you what she said. Tonight i want to dedicate this award to someone who was and is important and who used his art in dynamic ways. He is a rap artist, an entrepreneurial activist from the part of the country i am from. Very close to compton, where i grew up. His name is Nipsey Hussle. He told the truth through his art. [applause] the truth of his family and his feeling and his community , his city, his world, his dreams, demands, his actions, his ideas, his love for his people. His loss is echoed throughout the world. His life viewed as triumph that it is and was and will long be. This week, i have been motivated and deeply moved by the press coverage of this brother from South Central los angeles, specifically an area in south tral l. A. That we call his life has galvanized a press response that has become a powerful moment for me and so many people who so rarely see that kind of attention given to people like him. The l. A. Times, our city newspaper, had a front page spread with a beautiful headline. They wrote, a legend in his city. They published a tribute article written by a black reporter profiling the totality of his talent and intention with great insight, understanding, and sensitivity. I gasped when i saw it, the layout, the words, the way they had honored him on the page. It was another black journalist of the New York Times who tweeted that the layout and the love shown by the l. A. Times was such a profound example of why it is so critical to hire journalists who are of the cultures they are writing about as often as possible and the depth of knowledge and intuitive gravitas is so important, eric did nipsey justice. That was her tweet. That is really powerful. [applause] soon after that i was talking to a colleague and a friend about our mission. She had also been at the news that night. Ewseum i was telling her how Central Trust and representation was to what we were trying to accomplish. And she said, find out how the l. A. Times did it. Enter dell wilbur who is a member of the National Press club board of governors. He connected us to the right people at the l. A. Times. They were eager to talk about how this coverage came about and what led up moment and what has followed it. We enlisted kimberly adams, who is also a member of the National Press club board of members and dashboard of governors and a correspondent board of governors and a correspondent. She will introduce our l. A. Times team and we will go from there. Thank you, kimberly. Kimberly thank you for coming out tonight. To this incredibly important topic. If any of you have the chance to go back and look at the Amazing Stories the l. A. Times did, i think that would be of great and great benefit to you. It is really astounding coverage. I will introduce our wonderful panel. To my left is Angel Jennings. Thank you for having me. She is a reporter for the metro section of the Los Angeles Times. She covers issues that affect residents in south los angeles. Since joining the times in 2011, angel has written the business section and covered education. She is a native of washington, d. C. Pause for applause. [applause] and graduated from the university of nebraska. Haveto her over here we erica smith, an assistant metro editor for the Los Angeles Times. Hello. [applause] kimberly she previously worked at the Sacramento Bee where she was a columnist and Editorial Board member covering housing, homelessness, and social justice issues. Before that she wrote for the Indianapolis Star and the akron beacon journal. She is a graduate of Ohio University and a native of cleveland. [applause] but that is not all, because on the phone we have garrick kennedy, can we hear you . Hello. Kimberly he is a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times where he has covered music and pop culture since 2009. He is on the front lines at music awards and has covered the industrys biggest players, including mariah carey, drake, jennifer lopez, diana ross, kendrick lamar, and the weeknd. He was named journalist of the year by the association of black journalists. In 2014, the advocate featured him in its annual 40 under 40 list. He is the author of parental discretion is advised, the dawn of gangster rap. Thanks. [applause] kimberly many of you already know who Nipsey Hussle was, but some of you may not have the full picture of the person he was and why his death struck so hard. The best way to give you a snapshot of that is to read some of garricks coverage from the l. A. Times. This is a condensed version of a piece he wrote. Here is the thing to understand why his deathand is devastating not only to those of us who live and breathe hiphop, but also to those who reside in his birth place of south l. A. He was driven by a rapacious desire to reinvest in the streets that raised him. He became an entrepreneur, community organizer, activist, and mentor as he transformed into a rap star. His death in front of the stripmall he was redeveloping seems particularly cruel. He never shied away from the licks and stumbles that came with growing up in the 90s and south l. A. Streetmade music for the hustlers and those struggling to make ends meet and he became a local hero for using the same fortune he got from wrapping rapping and put it back into the community. He sold copies of his mixtape out of the parking lot of the stripmall and turned right around and open a shop in the same mall the second he could afford it. He had big dreams for his hood and it is not just tragic, but down inhat he was cut the community that raised him. I am going to start with garrick and ask you to tell us more about who Nipsey Hussle was to the community. You know, is importance to the community is something that we are still fully understanding because there are so many stories that have yet to be told about his influence. He is somebody his rap dreams have been in fruition over the last decade. The album he broke out with was nominated for a grammy a couple months before he was killed. That is what put him into the mainstream consciousness. People who were aware, who follow hiphop especially, he had been putting out mixtapes for a decade now. He made the decision to do a limited pressing, to put a sticker on, 100, which seems steep, but what he was doing was saying i know the value of this work, and if you want this, you will pay for this. People did. One of them was jayz, who bought 100 copies of it. People started to understand and that she was really serious about how he was approaching his record career from a business perspective. Rappers beforeer him have known how to translate their career into a smart, savvy Business Plan, he was somebody who that Business Plan was redeveloped in the streets he came from and he never left. That is what made him different from everyone else. Kimberly can you tell us how you ended up on the story and what prepared you to cover the story . Yes, because music is not mine. I cover the people and all of the problems they face in the and the plight and the problems of south l. A. , and people know it as South Central , and that is how nipsey described it. I got to live in the community and cover it. You can see his influence throughout the streets. He had shirts that were sold out crenshaw, he that took a name of a street that might have had a negative connotation outside the neighborhood, but he harnessed that. To restore pride back to the community. You saw those shirt all over. He had a stripmall. I saw his influence. I would drive past his store every day go to work, and then his death happened. I got a call on a sunday and i was with my family and i was told that he passed away and can you put in a few calls . That is what i did. I called my Law Enforcement sources. I realize, this is a story that needs to be told from the ground. Talking to the people that cared for him the most. I got to work the next day and said let me tell the story of his life and legacy. We talked about, what are you doing with that stripmall . We talked about housing crisis in south l. A. And allowed to come and around the country. He was trying to reclaim that area and do some thing better with it, bring back a community and keep black people in the neighborhood. I was late, let me tell that story, and i got to work. Kimberly can you tell me about the genesis of the coverage and how it came in and how people initially wanted to cover it and how that changed over time . I have only been at the l. A. Times since december. I moved from sacramento. I kind of got into the story because i happened to be in the night editor shift. He was literally shot 20 minutes before i got to work. So i spent the evening, other than talking to angel, kind of bringing in the repeaters the reporters we had on the field talking to people and monitoring social media. It was clear from looking at some of the data that we had, most news organizations have these days, is looking at social traffic. It was moving from a crime story to a community story. That night, looking at the data, that story had more traffic between 4 00 p. M. And midnight than the entire website had all day. The story be kept updating. That was an early indication of how big the story was going to be. Being new to l. A. , i dont presume to know everything about it but i remember not sleeping that night and reading garricks column and talking to angel the next day. We usually have the morning metro editor meeting and we talk about stories we are going to do and how we are going to cover it. After talking and looking at twitter traffic, it was clear that it was going to be a community story. The timeline from the editors is we wanted to cover it like crime story. Which, normally, we would do. We had to do that story, but angel wanted to do a different story. I thought it was a good idea based on my gut and what i had. What i read. She did this great story that ended up doing really well online. The interesting thing is that now we have data to back up the gut feelings about things. We can see in real time how much better herstory did, not just locally, but nationally and internationally, i would say, versus the crime story reason. That was a clue for us on how we were going to continue to cover this story. With garricks input, we did really good coverage. My role was just trying to convince everybody else it was a good idea. The first story i was writing about the community and revitalizing the stripmall, it i thought it was going to be a sidebar on a frontpage story. It wasnt until the next day that it was buried inside the story and did not make homepage all day, which kind of baffled me. Homepage, but it was not centerstage. It was all about the crime and then small letters about him trying to redevelop the area. Then another story. I kept questioning, why . The data is there. That was a concern to me because i wanted to tell the community stories. His story is the community story. , the people, the promise, i wanted to make sure we highlighted that versus the death, his brazen murder, was salacious, but it was also a man here and a father and someone who valued his community. I thought that was important. Let us pause and talk about what is overriding all of this. Times, like many newsrooms across the country, is majority white and does not have that many people of color in the newsrooms. Can you talk about how those conversations started given that context and how they changed over time, especially with the data you had . The funny thing about being new to a paper is you dont have ground rules. Those who know me know that tact is not my strong suit. [laughter] generally, what i think, i say. For me, i know that diversity is one of those things that most newsrooms want to be better about it. We want to hire more people of color and people who are lgbtq, but it is not always as easy as it sounds. I know that going into this story, the management, a lot of folks have been there for a long time. The concept of even knowing who Nipsey Hussle was, i dont think editors even knew. Covering it differently and convincing people we should do that is tougher. Being a person of color and being a little bit younger, i could make the argument a little bit better. The data definitely helps. But i think it is a culture shift. Newsrooms, a lot of we want to broaden our audience and have subscribers who are not the typical wealthy, white subscribers. The l. A. Times is l. A. Is an extremely diverse city and we need to get more of those folks around the county and the city and region to subscribe and they are not going to do that unless they feel like what they are reading reflects their community or uses the language they would use. By having diversity in the newsroom, you start to get at that a little bit. Not just diversity in terms of race or ethnicity, but where people live. Is of the big advantages they live in south l. A. It was not just a story about this place and these people. It was their neighborhood. I think when you start to have people like that in your newsroom, its a combination of data. People start to actually listen and the culture starts to change , at least i hope that is how it goes. You have been the l. A. Times a little bit longer than erica. Can you tell me about not only how those conversations went for this story, but how they have gone in the past and how you have seen that change, or not. Had been at the paper for 10 years now. Been thee time, i have only black reporter on the news team and the only queer person on the news team. Writers of three black in the entertainment section. I have had to reside in this space, not necessarily because i would want to but because i have to, which a lot of my job is explaining these things and why they are important. It is something that early in my career i was resistant to because i think there were moments where my voice was being suppressed until it was time for time to come explain this thing to people. It has been a shift in the last five or six years when the paper has started to hire more people of color. They are not always black or latino, but we are getting more diversity. It has allowed me to take that and be a voice before i have to be the voice, if that makes sense. I had not written the first story, i dont think there would be the interest that there was. They did need someone to tell them that this is important. Angel and i had been there the same amount of time but we still both have to convince editors this is something that matters. Tohave to do more convincing editors that the something that matters. We know that celebrity death is always going to move the needle, but i think this was an opportunity to show this is not just a celebrity death. This is something is going to hit harder. I moved to south l. A. Last , but this is someone i spent a lot of time with. We had dinners together. I had just seen him grammy weekend. The excitement in the room that he was finally nominated after all of these years. This was also very personal to me. I wanted to i did not care about being first because what mattered to me most was really mattering in this conversation. I wanted to illustrate what this actually means. That does mean taking a step back to say i have to explain a little bit of rap culture, and what he meant in the context of where he was and also what he meant to the city. A lot of folks are not going to know who he was. That is just the reality of it. A lot of people got really turned off to him not just because of the music, but because of the things they were learning when they read angels story. That come out of south l. A. , a place they are not paying attention to if it is not a story about crime. We are still in this space where thats where we are. We have been this way in how we look at south l. A. For 25, 30 years now. It does not change, but what does change is having reporters in newsrooms who understand it. That is what put us apart. I looked at all the coverage. No one was close to what we were doing. That was the fact that you had angel writing about l. A. And about the pockets of the city where black lives are being affected by gentrification. All these things that coalesced in nipseys death. And then you had me, who i live and breathe hiphop. I have been in this world for a decade. I have been at everything you can think of. They understand that if i am writing something, it is coming from a place of, wow, he does not cover every rap artist, every pop artist. Maybe this is something we should be considering. Kimberly he made so many amazing points right there and i want to get to the followup on a couple of them. In particular, this idea of what it means to be minority in the newsroom, whether a person of color or lgbtq person the idea that youre often being asked to explain your people , but then when it comes to shaping the coverage in a meaningful way about issues that affect your people, sometimes you can feel blocked out of those conversations. I have been fortunate enough i am in metro which is the largest section of the paper for years i was the only black reporter. It is only recently we hired another black reporter and i was really appreciative of that. I keep pushing for more. I have erica as my editor now, and she helps me with the coverage. She allows me to sit back and do the work instead of fighting to tell the story. I was able to get things out while attention was still on this, which helped carry the story longer. That point is really crucial. You mentioned that earlier, this idea that because you did not have to have the fight to prove that it was a worthwhile story, you could actually foc