In rich countries, local media is struggling to survive. The people who produce and consume the news are increasingly elites living in big cities. Why is this happening, what does it mean for democrac...
Wendi Thomas
Wendi C. Thomas founded MLK50: Justice Through Journalism in 2017 as a one-year project that grew into a nonprofit newsroom that focuses on poverty, power and public policy in Memphis. She is a member of ProPublica’s 2020 Local Reporting Network and was in its 2019 LRN cohort.
Previously, Thomas was metro columnist and assistant managing editor at The (Memphis) Commercial Appeal. She has also worked for The Charlotte Observer, The (Nashville) Tennessean and The Indianapolis Star. Thomas was a 2016 fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Thomas is the 2020 Selden Ring Award winner for investigative reporting and won first place in the Association of Health Care Journalists’ 2019 awards for business reporting. Her Profiting from the Poor investigation tied for first place in the Investigative Reporters & Editors 2019 awards in the print/online division 1.
In 2019, Thomas received the National Association of Black Journalists’ Best Practices award. In 2018, she was named Journalist of the Year by Journalism and Women Symposium. She was inducted into the Scripps Hall of Fame for commentary in 2008. She’s a graduate of Butler University and a proud product of public schools.
Diverse representation in the newsroom is one thing, but how can the framing of stories more accurately represent the world? Starting from shifts in the way news is covered, the speaker explore how un...
Conversations from the ecosystem: how to reenergize and protect free expression and local journalists
The events of the last two pandemic years have spurred old and new conversations about the role of journalism to uphold the truth and report on the news in a hyper-politicized media ecosystem. Orthodo...
