The conversation was brief, almost deceptively so.
In less than an hour, we opened a vein — probing what it means to be a Black journalist practicing our craft far from the Continent, navigating newsrooms where we are often both visible and unseen. That exchange took place last week at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy, a gathering that annually convenes the industry’s leading journalists, philanthropists and technologists amid the city’s medieval stonework and Renaissance architecture.
But beneath the grandeur, something quieter and more troubling had unfolded. At least five proposed panels focused on Black journalists or issues central to our experience were rejected.
We learned of this not through formal channels, but through a WhatsApp group we formed last year (“Black Perugia Dinner”) after a long, searching meal. The fact that the group endured became its own quiet act of resistance. It also became infrastructure.
A survival strategy
Out of that frustration came clarity. Sara Lomax, co-founder of URL Media, proposed that we create our own space — no gatekeepers, no permission slips. We called it Black Beyond Borders.
What began as a workaround became a signal. Soon enough, the organizers folded it into the official program, and word traveled quickly through Perugia’s narrow streets and vaulted halls.
Sara, unable to attend, sent a message that landed with force. This was not just about one panel. It was about erasure, about Black journalists being pushed out of newsrooms, about independent voices being targeted, about a broader attempt to diminish the role of Black media at a moment when it is most needed. “We are stronger together,” she reminded us. It was less a slogan than a survival strategy.
The conversation itself unfolded in layers. Seada Nourhussen spoke of being the only Black editor-in-chief in the Netherlands, a singular presence in a national newsroom, carrying both the weight of representation and the isolation that comes with it. I shared our experience at The Haitian Times, being doxed and swatted after pushing back on J. D. Vance’s false claims about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. Journalism, in that moment, felt less like a profession and more like standing in open water during a storm (no shelter, just endurance).
A spark of resistance
Then came a moment that reframed everything. A journalist from the Middle East stood up and said their panels had also been rejected. They were upset, but had done nothing. “You Americans acted,” he said. “That’s leadership.”
It was a simple observation, but it lingered. Sometimes resistance is not a grand strategy; it’s a spark. And in places where journalism itself is criminalized, that spark can feel like striking a match in a room full of dry timber — small, but capable of setting something far larger in motion.
After brief remarks from the panelists, we turned to the audience. What followed was less a Q&A than a collective exhale. The room was not exclusively Black; many white colleagues showed up, not to speak but to listen. There was empathy, curiosity, even discomfort, all necessary ingredients for something real. It was, in many ways, a rare alignment: people meeting not as avatars of institutions, but as practitioners grappling with the same fractures in the craft.
We worked alongside The Maynard Institute to convene this gathering, drawing on conversations that began years ago and have quietly built momentum. The packed room made one thing clear: journalism institutions may believe they’ve addressed race in their newsrooms and coverage.
They haven’t.
This was not a side event. It was a correction.
And if Perugia taught us anything, it’s this: when the door doesn’t open, sometimes the most consequential thing you can do is build a room.
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