The following Q&A appeared in this week’s URL Career Newsletter.
Hello, this week from URL Senior Recruiter Sonali Kohli. As promised a little while ago, I’m coming to you today with some advice on how to weather the uncertainty and danger of this election. I spoke to Macollvie J. Neel, special projects editor at The Haitian Times. A founding URL Media network partner, the outlet has faced attacks since its coverage of the vitriol against Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, including doxxing (finding and sharing personal information of journalists) and swatting (when police are dispatched to someone’s residence due to a false reports).
Macollvie shared how she is both continuing the vital journalism of ensuring the Haitian community is well-informed, and taking care of herself. Here is our conversation, edited for length and clarity:
Sonali: How are you maintaining a sense of normalcy, if at all, this close to the election, especially with all that’s happened in the last few months to and around the Haitian American community?
Macollvie: I think it’s been very heartening for both me and the entire The Haitian Times team to continue with our day-to-day tasks of publishing stories daily and, as the election approaches, to engage with our audience on civic matters. What that has meant at times is pulling in more freelancers and revising the editorial calendar as we’ve been occupied with making sure our security apparatus is strengthened.
I’m just coming off our weekly team meeting on Mondays. That’s a constant we haven’t changed at all. That space is an avenue to go over how we’re doing with stories, and also how we’re doing as a team, right? So even the day I was swatted, for example, that was where I shared the experience with the entire team. We gave folks a heads up then that we were entering new territory with that type of backlash.
I’m still making time to be with my family, to go to kids activities, hang out with friends — and that’s just been really important to keep a sense of normalcy. Knowing and learning that we’re not alone in this has been tremendously helpful too – to meet other people who’ve either been doxxed or swatted. Having the attorneys available from Columbia’s First Amendment Clinic, digital and physical security assistance from various groups concerned with press freedoms like IWMF, and media partners checking in helped in processing the attacks and aftermath.
Sonali: How do you manage the difficult conversations with your staff about continuing this work of covering the election, when your communities are so viscerally impacted by what’s been happening?
Macollvie: We’ve been dealing with some of this discriminatory, racist, nativist type of backlash for some time. It can be mentally tiring. But after following this anti-immigrant story for so long, it’s not as much of a shock as it may be for some people seeing it for the first time, versus a new escalation that requires yet more exposure. Having the history and context has been helpful for us to keep each other informed of the latest attacks on our community. Unfortunately, it feels like it’s just a part of what we have to expect now given the work we do.
As for digital security, a few of us have DeleteMe subscriptions now and Signal numbers. We’ve strengthened our CMS in different ways. And with IWMF and PEN America primarily, we’ve had training on how to protect ourselves or mitigate attacks.
I think keeping those lines of communication open is really valuable in helping folks feel like we’re still delivering on our mission of keeping the community informed and balancing that with needing time to take care of ourselves too. To say, ‘I’m done, I need time.’ The same way that we’re covering how the community is processing the trauma and the fear, similarly, we’re trying to apply self-care lessons so staff feels like they’re able to just take a day.
Sonali: Does the question of this “traditional” journalistic idea of objectivity come into the conversations at all?
Macollvie: It comes up a lot when we look at the variety of opinions in the community, because even though the Haitian community overwhelmingly votes Democratic, there is a small contingent of people who feel more aligned with the Republican Party. So we’ve had conversations around well, how much ‘air time’ do we give these people when there’s such a small number? What’s ‘fair’ versus amplifying a non-story that then becomes validated?
We have those conversations, in the context of: whom will it serve? How will this serve the community? Are we just adding to the bluster, or is it information that the community will find enlightening or representative of an evolving diaspora?
I think that’s why we’ve been so pleased with an actual scientific survey of 28,000 people conducted for us last month on US public sentiment regarding Haitians in Haiti, you know. We have that data to either back up the things we’ve taken as truths in the Haitian community and prompt another look at certain things seen as anathema. That’s one way I think we are following the path. Getting someone who’s not involved in Haiti or Haitians at all to take an objective look — at how us Haitians feel about themselves, how other people feel about Haitians, and how Haitians feel about other people — is pretty significant.
But when it comes to things like, oh, we need to report on the latest thing that Trump and Vance are saying to be ‘fair,’ not so much. We’ve gone through the basics of reaching out and saying, What are your policies on Haiti and Haitian immigrants? They haven’t responded. That’s their prerogative. We’re not going to chase them or hold back our stories out of a distorted sense of balance.
Sonali: Is there anything I haven’t asked about, that you’d want people to know leading up to next week?
Macollvie: Whatever happens is going to impact our society for a long time to come, obviously, but also in the immediate weeks. We need to be prepared for that mentally and physically too. Folks should look at services like DeleteMe for themselves and their families to reduce the potential of being doxxed or swatted.
Lastly, we must continue to participate diligently in the civics and electoral process, both as journalists and citizens. We must do so, with that extra layer to be smart about digital and physical protection.
