Okayplayer Aims to Fix Journalism’s Diversity Crisis

Okayplayer, which bills itself as the artistic and progressive voice of Black culture for its parent company OkayMedia, announced today it has teamed up with the Google News Initiative to build an open-source software platform called the Byline Project. The collaboration aims to increase access to freelance work for historically underrepresented voices and reporters covering news in the 1,300 local news deserts across the U.S. The publisher built the software in-house using funding from a Google grant, though it declined to name the size of the award. Okayplayer reaches 1.4 million unique visitors and generates 11.8 million social media impressions per month. The platform, which launched today with two stories about LGBTQ+ activism in Baltimore and a return to farming in Boston’s Black community, hopes to reduce the barrier to entry freelance writers often face by allowing them to create and submit pitches through a centralized website. Publishers who adopt the technology—free of charge—can then comb through pitches specific to their site and find journalists to work with based on the quality and relevancy of their ideas. In creating a universally accessible platform, the Byline Project hopes to eliminate the chummy, network-based system that most freelancers rely on and that can privilege journalists who live in certain cities, attended specific schools or have the right contacts. Preventing parachute journalism The collaborative project, which Okayplayer began working on in October 2019, will also give publishers access to boots-on-the-ground reporters who are better equipped to cover sensitive, community-oriented issues, said editor in chief Rachel Hislop. “Networks are often insular and metropolitan-based,” Hislop said, “so we wanted to flatten that playing field and pick up the type of local reporting that we were already doing on the music and culture side.’” For example, Hislop cited the news coverage following the murder of George Floyd, when publishers flew journalists into Minneapolis to cover the protests—a practice known as parachute journalism. In doing so, they overlooked local reporters who could have offered a clearer perspective on the events. A possible reason for doing this is that finding and assigning stories to grassroots writers can present logistical challenges. By creating a platform where local writers can pitch stories alongside regular contributors, the Byline Project hopes to eliminate the pipeline problem, in which businesses (and publishers in this case) blame their lack of diversity on a supposed absence of qualified candidates. Studies have shown that the presence of an independent news-gathering operation is critical to the healthy functioning of the civic process, providing citizens with the information they need to make informed decisions, hold power accountable and ensure social equity. The Google News Initiative, which has disbursed a total of $5.8 million to its 34 GNI Innovation Challenge recipients, supported the project because it offered a vehicle for bringing reporting to under-served communities, said LaToya Drake, GNI's head of media representation. "Many communities in North America aren’t effectively represented in their local news publications," Drake said. "It matters which communities are being covered and how." The Byline Project will also include a tipping feature that allows readers to pay writers while reading their articles as well as a tool for writers to crowdfund certain projects. Okayplayer will introduce the platform to journalism schools and publishers in the coming weeks. OkayMedia Taps CNN Alumna Isha Sesay as CEO

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Okayplayer's Collaborative New Platform Aims to Fix Journalism’s Diversity Crisis

With funding from Google, the Byline Project hopes to eliminate the pipeline problem

Mark Stenberg

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Mark Stenberg