I’ve been noting the fantastic and outspoken tweets of Baltimore Beat founder Lisa Snowden-McCray before she got into a Twitter/X fight with David Simon of “The Wire” fame. Put simply, she had gently chided the cussy, outspoken Baltimorean for only lifting up the much-richer and, let’s be honest, much-whiter nonprofit Baltimore Banner and not her popular and unapologetically Black newsroom for donations. Let’s just say he didn’t appreciate her challenging him, and she stood her ground—not slamming the Banner, which does some good journalism, but reminding followers that it’s not the only journalistic game in a town that needs many.
We hadn’t met then, but Lisa had already caught my eye because she had started a local newspaper, in print, in one of America’s greatest majority-Black cities, and one with a horrifying race and slavery history and the inevitable systemic inequity that followed. Plus, I love that she calls it an “alternative” paper, especially considering that old-school alt-media was overwhelmingly white. She distributes it for free in boxes across Baltimore’s Black communities. She did it with minimum resources and a small staff in a city where other media (still) dramatically under-serve all its communities. And she fully understands that “inclusive” journalism in a majority-Black city (we’ve fortunately moved past “diverse” in our language now) doesn’t mean mostly covering certain crimes, sports or music, and then heading to happy hour.
Lisa Snowden-McCray originally started the Baltimore Beat, which she proudly calls a Black alternative newspaper, in 2017. It is distributed in boxes as well as online. Photo courtesy Lisa Snowden-McCray
In other words: She and I and Mississippi Free Press co-founder Kimberly Griffin have a lot in common. And not just that our original Jackson Free Press was printed and distributed free in boxes. In fact, co-founder Todd Stauffer, and then Kimberly after she joined and I all drove around the city and helped put those free papers in boxes where white and corporate newspapers barely showed up for two decades. Plus, I think everyday about my friend Reena Evers Everett both giving her blessing to name our new nonprofit newsroom
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