Journalism institute hosted the event. It is an hour and 10 minutes. Welcome on behalf of of the National Press club and press journalism institute. So happy you are joining us in this room and on the span. I am the executive director of the National Press Club Journalism institute, where we are working to close the gap between journalism and civic engagement. This is a really Important Program and service to that mission. I want to tell you a little bit how it came about. April, ava duvernay was given an honor at the Free Expression awards. As she accepted her honor, she talked about Nipsey Hussle and she dedicated it to him and she talked about how about the l. A. Times and their coverage. I want to show you what she said. Tonight i want to dedicate this award to someone who was and is important and who used his art in dynamic ways. He is a rap artist, an entrepreneurial activist from the part of the country i am from. Very close to compton, where i grew up. His name is Nipsey Hussle. He told the truth through his art. [applause] the truth of his family and his feeling and his community , his city, his world, his dreams, demands, his actions, his ideas, his love for his people. His loss is echoed throughout the world. His life viewed as triumph that it is and was and will long be. This week, i have been motivated and deeply moved by the press coverage of this brother from South Central los angeles, specifically an area in south tral l. A. That we call his life has galvanized a press response that has become a powerful moment for me and so many people who so rarely see that kind of attention given to people like him. The l. A. Times, our city newspaper, had a front page spread with a beautiful headline. They wrote, a legend in his city. They published a tribute article written by a black reporter profiling the totality of his talent and intention with great insight, understanding, and sensitivity. I gasped when i saw it, the layout, the words, the way they had honored him on the page. It was another black journalist of the New York Times who tweeted that the layout and the love shown by the l. A. Times was such a profound example of why it is so critical to hire journalists who are of the cultures they are writing about as often as possible and the depth of knowledge and intuitive gravitas is so important, eric did nipsey justice. That was her tweet. That is really powerful. [applause] soon after that i was talking to a colleague and a friend about our mission. She had also been at the news that night. Ewseum i was telling her how Central Trust and representation was to what we were trying to accomplish. And she said, find out how the l. A. Times did it. Enter dell wilbur who is a member of the National Press club board of governors. He connected us to the right people at the l. A. Times. They were eager to talk about how this coverage came about and what led up moment and what has followed it. We enlisted kimberly adams, who is also a member of the National Press club board of members and dashboard of governors and a correspondent board of governors and a correspondent. She will introduce our l. A. Times team and we will go from there. Thank you, kimberly. Kimberly thank you for coming out tonight. To this incredibly important topic. If any of you have the chance to go back and look at the Amazing Stories the l. A. Times did, i think that would be of great and great benefit to you. It is really astounding coverage. I will introduce our wonderful panel. To my left is Angel Jennings. Thank you for having me. She is a reporter for the metro section of the Los Angeles Times. She covers issues that affect residents in south los angeles. Since joining the times in 2011, angel has written the business section and covered education. She is a native of washington, d. C. Pause for applause. [applause] and graduated from the university of nebraska. Haveto her over here we erica smith, an assistant metro editor for the Los Angeles Times. Hello. [applause] kimberly she previously worked at the Sacramento Bee where she was a columnist and Editorial Board member covering housing, homelessness, and social justice issues. Before that she wrote for the Indianapolis Star and the akron beacon journal. She is a graduate of Ohio University and a native of cleveland. [applause] but that is not all, because on the phone we have garrick kennedy, can we hear you . Hello. Kimberly he is a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times where he has covered music and pop culture since 2009. He is on the front lines at music awards and has covered the industrys biggest players, including mariah carey, drake, jennifer lopez, diana ross, kendrick lamar, and the weeknd. He was named journalist of the year by the association of black journalists. In 2014, the advocate featured him in its annual 40 under 40 list. He is the author of parental discretion is advised, the dawn of gangster rap. Thanks. [applause] kimberly many of you already know who Nipsey Hussle was, but some of you may not have the full picture of the person he was and why his death struck so hard. The best way to give you a snapshot of that is to read some of garricks coverage from the l. A. Times. This is a condensed version of a piece he wrote. Here is the thing to understand why his deathand is devastating not only to those of us who live and breathe hiphop, but also to those who reside in his birth place of south l. A. He was driven by a rapacious desire to reinvest in the streets that raised him. He became an entrepreneur, community organizer, activist, and mentor as he transformed into a rap star. His death in front of the stripmall he was redeveloping seems particularly cruel. He never shied away from the licks and stumbles that came with growing up in the 90s and south l. A. Streetmade music for the hustlers and those struggling to make ends meet and he became a local hero for using the same fortune he got from wrapping rapping and put it back into the community. He sold copies of his mixtape out of the parking lot of the stripmall and turned right around and open a shop in the same mall the second he could afford it. He had big dreams for his hood and it is not just tragic, but down inhat he was cut the community that raised him. I am going to start with garrick and ask you to tell us more about who Nipsey Hussle was to the community. You know, is importance to the community is something that we are still fully understanding because there are so many stories that have yet to be told about his influence. He is somebody his rap dreams have been in fruition over the last decade. The album he broke out with was nominated for a grammy a couple months before he was killed. That is what put him into the mainstream consciousness. People who were aware, who follow hiphop especially, he had been putting out mixtapes for a decade now. He made the decision to do a limited pressing, to put a sticker on, 100, which seems steep, but what he was doing was saying i know the value of this work, and if you want this, you will pay for this. People did. One of them was jayz, who bought 100 copies of it. People started to understand and that she was really serious about how he was approaching his record career from a business perspective. Rappers beforeer him have known how to translate their career into a smart, savvy Business Plan, he was somebody who that Business Plan was redeveloped in the streets he came from and he never left. That is what made him different from everyone else. Kimberly can you tell us how you ended up on the story and what prepared you to cover the story . Yes, because music is not mine. I cover the people and all of the problems they face in the and the plight and the problems of south l. A. , and people know it as South Central , and that is how nipsey described it. I got to live in the community and cover it. You can see his influence throughout the streets. He had shirts that were sold out crenshaw, he that took a name of a street that might have had a negative connotation outside the neighborhood, but he harnessed that. To restore pride back to the community. You saw those shirt all over. He had a stripmall. I saw his influence. I would drive past his store every day go to work, and then his death happened. I got a call on a sunday and i was with my family and i was told that he passed away and can you put in a few calls . That is what i did. I called my Law Enforcement sources. I realize, this is a story that needs to be told from the ground. Talking to the people that cared for him the most. I got to work the next day and said let me tell the story of his life and legacy. We talked about, what are you doing with that stripmall . We talked about housing crisis in south l. A. And allowed to come and around the country. He was trying to reclaim that area and do some thing better with it, bring back a community and keep black people in the neighborhood. I was late, let me tell that story, and i got to work. Kimberly can you tell me about the genesis of the coverage and how it came in and how people initially wanted to cover it and how that changed over time . I have only been at the l. A. Times since december. I moved from sacramento. I kind of got into the story because i happened to be in the night editor shift. He was literally shot 20 minutes before i got to work. So i spent the evening, other than talking to angel, kind of bringing in the repeaters the reporters we had on the field talking to people and monitoring social media. It was clear from looking at some of the data that we had, most news organizations have these days, is looking at social traffic. It was moving from a crime story to a community story. That night, looking at the data, that story had more traffic between 4 00 p. M. And midnight than the entire website had all day. The story be kept updating. That was an early indication of how big the story was going to be. Being new to l. A. , i dont presume to know everything about it but i remember not sleeping that night and reading garricks column and talking to angel the next day. We usually have the morning metro editor meeting and we talk about stories we are going to do and how we are going to cover it. After talking and looking at twitter traffic, it was clear that it was going to be a community story. The timeline from the editors is we wanted to cover it like crime story. Which, normally, we would do. We had to do that story, but angel wanted to do a different story. I thought it was a good idea based on my gut and what i had. What i read. She did this great story that ended up doing really well online. The interesting thing is that now we have data to back up the gut feelings about things. We can see in real time how much better herstory did, not just locally, but nationally and internationally, i would say, versus the crime story reason. That was a clue for us on how we were going to continue to cover this story. With garricks input, we did really good coverage. My role was just trying to convince everybody else it was a good idea. The first story i was writing about the community and revitalizing the stripmall, it i thought it was going to be a sidebar on a frontpage story. It wasnt until the next day that it was buried inside the story and did not make homepage all day, which kind of baffled me. Homepage, but it was not centerstage. It was all about the crime and then small letters about him trying to redevelop the area. Then another story. I kept questioning, why . The data is there. That was a concern to me because i wanted to tell the community stories. His story is the community story. , the people, the promise, i wanted to make sure we highlighted that versus the death, his brazen murder, was salacious, but it was also a man here and a father and someone who valued his community. I thought that was important. Let us pause and talk about what is overriding all of this. Times, like many newsrooms across the country, is majority white and does not have that many people of color in the newsrooms. Can you talk about how those conversations started given that context and how they changed over time, especially with the data you had . The funny thing about being new to a paper is you dont have ground rules. Those who know me know that tact is not my strong suit. [laughter] generally, what i think, i say. For me, i know that diversity is one of those things that most newsrooms want to be better about it. We want to hire more people of color and people who are lgbtq, but it is not always as easy as it sounds. I know that going into this story, the management, a lot of folks have been there for a long time. The concept of even knowing who Nipsey Hussle was, i dont think editors even knew. Covering it differently and convincing people we should do that is tougher. Being a person of color and being a little bit younger, i could make the argument a little bit better. The data definitely helps. But i think it is a culture shift. Newsrooms, a lot of we want to broaden our audience and have subscribers who are not the typical wealthy, white subscribers. The l. A. Times is l. A. Is an extremely diverse city and we need to get more of those folks around the county and the city and region to subscribe and they are not going to do that unless they feel like what they are reading reflects their community or uses the language they would use. By having diversity in the newsroom, you start to get at that a little bit. Not just diversity in terms of race or ethnicity, but where people live. Is of the big advantages they live in south l. A. It was not just a story about this place and these people. It was their neighborhood. I think when you start to have people like that in your newsroom, its a combination of data. People start to actually listen and the culture starts to change , at least i hope that is how it goes. You have been the l. A. Times a little bit longer than erica. Can you tell me about not only how those conversations went for this story, but how they have gone in the past and how you have seen that change, or not. Had been at the paper for 10 years now. Been thee time, i have only black reporter on the news team and the only queer person on the news team. Writers of three black in the entertainment section. I have had to reside in this space, not necessarily because i would want to but because i have to, which a lot of my job is explaining these things and why they are important. It is something that early in my career i was resistant to because i think there were moments where my voice was being suppressed until it was time for time to come explain this thing to people. It has been a shift in the last five or six years when the paper has started to hire more people of color. They are not always black or latino, but we are getting more diversity. It has allowed me to take that and be a voice before i have to be the voice, if that makes sense. I had not written the first story, i dont think there would be the interest that there was. They did need someone to tell them that this is important. Angel and i had been there the same amount of time but we still both have to convince editors this is something that matters. Tohave to do more convincing editors that the something that matters. We know that celebrity death is always going to move the needle, but i think this was an opportunity to show this is not just a celebrity death. This is something is going to hit harder. I moved to south l. A. Last , but this is someone i spent a lot of time with. We had dinners together. I had just seen him grammy weekend. The excitement in the room that he was finally nominated after all of these years. This was also very personal to me. I wanted to i did not care about being first because what mattered to me most was really mattering in this conversation. I wanted to illustrate what this actually means. That does mean taking a step back to say i have to explain a little bit of rap culture, and what he meant in the context of where he was and also what he meant to the city. A lot of folks are not going to know who he was. That is just the reality of it. A lot of people got really turned off to him not just because of the music, but because of the things they were learning when they read angels story. That come out of south l. A. , a place they are not paying attention to if it is not a story about crime. We are still in this space where thats where we are. We have been this way in how we look at south l. A. For 25, 30 years now. It does not change, but what does change is having reporters in newsrooms who understand it. That is what put us apart. I looked at all the coverage. No one was close to what we were doing. That was the fact that you had angel writing about l. A. And about the pockets of the city where black lives are being affected by gentrification. All these things that coalesced in nipseys death. And then you had me, who i live and breathe hiphop. I have been in this world for a decade. I have been at everything you can think of. They understand that if i am writing something, it is coming from a place of, wow, he does not cover every rap artist, every pop artist. Maybe this is something we should be considering. Kimberly he made so many amazing points right there and i want to get to the followup on a couple of them. In particular, this idea of what it means to be minority in the newsroom, whether a person of color or lgbtq person the idea that youre often being asked to explain your people , but then when it comes to shaping the coverage in a meaningful way about issues that affect your people, sometimes you can feel blocked out of those conversations. I have been fortunate enough i am in metro which is the largest section of the paper for years i was the only black reporter. It is only recently we hired another black reporter and i was really appreciative of that. I keep pushing for more. I have erica as my editor now, and she helps me with the coverage. She allows me to sit back and do the work instead of fighting to tell the story. I was able to get things out while attention was still on this, which helped carry the story longer. That point is really crucial. You mentioned that earlier, this idea that because you did not have to have the fight to prove that it was a worthwhile story, you could actually focus on telling the story. I wrote three stories in five days. Deeply reported enterprise stories that could take weeks. Thats because i was able to just do the work and not have to be making calls and emails saying this is important because. I think that made all the difference. I have always had supportive editors in metro who have given me the green light to tell everyone story. I do nothing i had to fight. Sometimes it requires getting gettinges because it right mina taken longer, but things can go faster. We were on the same page. Now i am able to shoot a copy to her much quicker because we had the conversation. She can do a quick edit and the story gets shipped off instead of us explaining things to each other. That made a ton of difference. Kimberly erica, can you talk about the lessons that newsrooms elsewhere around the country can take from the l. A. Times experience covering the story to how we can cover communities of color, communities that we live communities that we live in, dont live in, or even cover big events where we have that sense, like, you know what, there is more to this but maybe i do not know what . Erica yeah, i think there is a big deal made out of diversity, and we want to hire journalists of color or queer journalists. What often happens, and i say this as someone who was on the reporting or columnist side until recently, what ends up happening is you hire people and when something happens, you do not listen to them. So something major happens, and it is clear that it affects the particular community, and when the editors say this is what we should do, there is pushback. It defeats the purpose of having diversity. If you dont take advantage of the diversity, it doesnt show up in your coverage. What was interesting about this particular case was, for once, i was the middle manager, so i was the one hearing pushback and seeing the reporters struggle in being in the position where i finally understood what the purpose of being an editor was, which is basically to make sure the coverage is reflective of the reality. But i think the lesson that can be learned is if we are going to hire people, we should actually listen to them and guide them and do not tell them they are wrong. One of the things i have heard recently is more about the trans community, for example. There is this idea of using the persons trans name but not the ir deadname, the name they were assigned at birth and why that is important and not important. If somebody is in the Lgbtq Community tells you you should not do this for a reason, you should not push back and say, well, i think that i am right. I think that happens at the higher level and also at the copy desk level, and i say this as a former copy editor. And another challenge is making sure everybody else is on the same page. We have a lot of people involved in every story, and increasingly so now because everybody is publishing to the web, so you have your print copy and sometimes online stuff on you have your middle level editors and web producers, reporters, editors. If everyone is not on the same page, if everybody does not get it, the things fall apart and a story gets changed at 10 30 at night when nobody is paying attention and it ends up in print. Things become less relevant to people and become problematic. And then people dont find out about it for hours. I think there is something that newsrooms can do, try to get everybody on the same page and understand our goal is to reach a more diverse audience. To do that, you have to be actually relevant to them, be sensitive, and you have to understand. Until that really happens, we are going to have a lot of, you know, kind of herkyjerky kind of stuff. I dont know if that makes much sense. But that is my general thought. Kimberly i want to piggyback off something erica said, that it is one thing to hire people of color but using what they say and explaining in a way that is important to the community. It also deflates reporters of color when you have an editor give you an assignment or you come to them with an assignment and they do not value what you bring to the table, where they go in and tell you that is not the story or that is not the angle or spend more time on it , a nicer way of saying things you might hear in the newsroom. Meanwhile, you know what you have in front of you is good. You know you have done your best and this is a story. There are other stories that need to be told, but let me get this one out first. I think erica has helped me be able to push past that, but there are times when that happens too often where there is pushback from editors on with what the story actually is. That feats the reporter and they are less likely to speak up and advocate for themselves if they realize that is not what the editor wants. I think we need to take advantage of the talent that is there, as well, and respect what they bring to the table. Kimberly gerrick, can you talk a little bit about what you learned from this story and your work in general about bringing new audiences to the l. A. Times that maybe others might be able to learn from . Gerrick sure, whatever learned was about my voice, and with this situation, it was because of the speed of which i had to turn it around. There was not really a conversation about what the piece was going to be. There was not even the things of we need this by this time. It was, we need it asap. There was a bunch of calls, but at that point i am dealing with people who are at the hospital and no one was in their right mind to have a conversation. So from one end, i am not coming at it from a natural perspective, so i decided, you know what, i am going to do something that will be more of an appreciation. Once i made that decision and just jammed it out, i made one quick edit. That was one of the few times where there was no full conversation with an editor about what it should be or where to go with it. I was on my own, and that was really strange in a way. I was not used to that at the time, to be honest with everybody, especially not in situations where it is something that our critic was supposed to do. We have this hierarchy. The critic is supposed to do the appreciation, no one else. So the fact that i know this person and this music i am , better fit for it, you know, you are having those conversations on the fly. It was one time when i truly trust in my voice and what i knew about the expertise that i bring, and i think that is probably the biggest lesson, to always do that. Kimberly erica, do you have any numbers or information about what the actual aftermath was from a business perspective for the l. A. Times from the coverage . Erica my understanding from doing research and looking at it, i think her story, particularly the one she wrote about, the story about how he actually died, like his brother finding him. Those stories i think were the bestperforming stories from our website all year and maybe even the year before that, as far as traffic and subscriptions, which most of us know is kind of our new Business Model. On top of that, who actually subscribed were people we would not normally get as subscribers and readers. Our typical Subscriber Base is mostly on the west side of l. A. , santa monica, venice, some of those areas. Increasingly we got south l. A. And some more diverse areas and inland a little bit, as well, part of east l. A. We reached people we do not normally reach. We got a lot of those people to click and subscribe, which i think in every Business Model is a win for us. And if we can continue to do that, not just with Nipsey Hussle, but with other stories that reach different audiences, i think we will continue to be hopefully sustainable as a paper. Kimberly we are going to move to audience q a pretty quick, so if youre thinking about questions you might want to ask, we will have some mics we will pass around. But i wanted to end with you, angel, talking about pipelines. Because you talk about being the only writer of color for a long time. Angel only black reporter. We had a lot of asian and latino reporters, but i was the only black reporter at metro. That was until recently. Kimberly i understand the l. A. Times has a program. Angel it is a traintohire program. When i started, it was spending six weeks bouncing around at different desks. I was in business and i was at metro doing breaking news and covering education, and then you can get hired on. It is now two years. They spend a little more time bouncing around and do a little more training, but you learn the newsroom and learn the community. From there, that is how they hire people of color typically. The l. A. Times for a long time, it was more like a destination paper where you needed 10 years of experience. They would get people of color, younger voices, that could tell stories in different ways. Who can find a stories in different ways. That is how i was brought in, and gerrick, as well. A lot of our reporters who write some of the hardhitting front page stories came in that way. It is a great program. But like many of these programs, they are few and far between now. It is important to bring in journalists of color from the traditional route, hiring at the middle level, but also keeping the programs and actually training them. Into the losi come angeles times, but i have been with journalism organizations throughout the year, starting from a teenager. In the audience is one of my mentors, and she brought me on into journalism when i was like 14 or 15, a program at the Washington Post, and it became a program with dorothy gilliam. And that is why i am here today. So when you pour into underrepresented communities, you create the next generation. I know we are at this crossroads in journalism or we are trying to figure out how to monetize, but we also have to think about the communities we serve it is should not just be the traditional ones that already subscribe. At the l. A. Times our , subscription base is white and wealthy. But what my stories did, and we crunched the numbers recently, it said my stories did not so well without subscribers, again white and wealthy, but it brought in a new Subscriber Base, brought in younger people, black people, and skewed more female. These are people who need the news as well. This is a void that has not been filled for a while. So we can harness this at the l. A. Times, but other papers should also be doing this. To your point about finding a way to monetize our business, i think reaching those readers is key to monetizing our business. Our country is becoming younger and more diverse. And if we do not figure out how to reach these people and get them to subscribe, were not going to survive. It is very much a nexus of those two things. Unfortunately it took somebody like Nipsey Hussle having to die, but ultimately it proved to the l. A. Times that this was the direction we had to go. I hope other papers are starting to understand this and do the same thing. Kimberly all right, we have some mics. Does anybody have questions. Remember that gerrick is on the phone with a wealth of information, as well. Dont everybody jump right up at once now. [laughter] all right. Right there in the back. Hey, i am with the Washington Post. A twopart question. You mentioned that you got pushback from upper management. But what specifically were people pushing back against that you wanted to do . Second part, have they learned lessons from how well the coverage did online, and for other crime stories, are you applying those lessons Going Forward . Is that for me or for whoever wants to answer. Lets have angel talk about the pushback, gerrick, as well, and then if you want to talk about the different conversations you are hearing as a result. Angel as i mentioned kimberly and i think he means in general, pushback you have had in the past. Angel other stories, it would take a long time to go through what exactly the story was. With enterprise stories, you get a nugget of news and you are digging deep yourself. Maybe there is a preconceived notion of what the story is. And if you sometimes when you , give a story that does not fit that mold, it is sent back in hopes that you can do the reporting, but the reporting shows what it shows any have to continue telling the story as is. I kind of break those notions. So that is some of the pushback i have received. Kimberly gerrick, what kind of pushback have you received in the past that fit into this mold . Gerrick i think i have been a little more fortunate. I did not get that much pushback, usually because there is no one else there like me. [laughter] so they cannot go, oh, we will take this other persons work. I dont really run into that. I think the opposite is, covering primarily like music, primarily black music, it is difficult when youre trying to explain nuances of things, and one example of that is last year i spent four or five months working on a package under r b, which i was not able to do that until i had to do a whole series on hip hop. Because editors are finding out about hip hop now after 40 years of it being around. It is not necessarily pushback, but it is more of a giveandtake thing, like, we want this because we heard about this. That is probably the closest example i have. Kimberly erica, what changes have you seen in the conversation, if any . Erica i think what they are both saying, reporters have a gut instinct about the story. Where the pushback seems to come in is more about what the editor thinks versus the reporter thinks and where the middle ground is. One thing i have seen is, at least when it comes to editors, on some topics, particularly Nipsey Hussles, you look at what angel said about the story or what gerrick said, and there is pushback, like, i think the story is this. And the data has shown in results have shown that maybe they had a point. But i think there are other areas or maybe the editors are not as quick to say this type of story or that type of story. I cannot say that is true for every story we do, but in some ways it was a check to said that maybe in some areas of our coverage, maybe some reporters might actually have a point. If anything, this particular story proved that that actually was true. So maybe in some cases people are thinking twice. Hi, i am also with the Washington Post. First, i wanted to congratulate the l. A. Times for having such a strong package of stories. You really had to read it and had to subscribe if you wanted to read it all. And i also want to think the thank the press club for having this event and for the coverage. My question is for angel. You had that really compelling interview with the brother, a perspective that no other place had. Can you talk about how you gained the trust of the family and how you were able to navigate that in your storytelling . Angel i have been covering south l. A. For seven or eight years now. In that coverage, i am out in the community constantly. I am not writing the stories from my desk. I am in the coffee shops, everyplace that people are i am , there. I am introducing myself, but sometimes just sitting back and being a resident. So he passed away on a sunday. Monday night i wrote a story. Then there was a memorial service, but i was still filing the story. So i filed it, and there were helicopters going over our home, and me and gerrick were emailing back and forth like, did you hear that . So i let my editor know, and she was like, can you go out there and report what was happening . I was like of course. You put the story down, put the baby down, yes, i want to go out. There actually was a tragedy. In the memorial service, someone thought they heard gunfire, and there was a stampede. So i was out there late at night talking to people, and some people were very upset that they were not able to go and pay their respects. And i just kind of sit and talk to people still. I connect with a woman who was eritrean, and she talked about what nipsey meant to her and the community. I thought, i want to tell the story. So the next day i was reporting the story about Nipsey Hussle roots and howan that shaped his life as a rapper as well as a community activist. From then i was put into contact. It is a small, tightknit community, but it is spread out all over Southern California but everyone knows everyone. So talking about nipseys death, they talked about how he was a pillar in the community. I asked, could you connect me . I know he is grieving and i dont want to in any way be disrespectful, but i would say that i would love to talk to that person, so can you pass that on . And they did. They said they had read my work and they knew my coverage, and i got a call from nipseys brother. He called me while i was reporting the eritrean story, and we talked for several hours. In that time, he just kind of, you know, we had a very intimate conversation. I am more friendly with my sources. Because i am dealing with everyday people. I am not dealing with politicians. In that, i understand that they do not understand the boundaries of journalism in the same way, so i do not want to treat them in that way. So we had the conversation, and he was very open and candid about his brothers final moments and all the things that had transpired that day. And he was frank with me. He said, i am talking to you like a family member. I said, i respect that, so lets have this conversation. From there, i wrote the story and i called him and i said that you told me some intimate details, and are you ok sharing that with a journalist . I think this is important for people to hear. And he said yes. We went through the details even more. In the moment i was allowing him to talk, as opposed to peppering him with questions. We talked several times after that. He gave me more detailed information. I asked more pointed questions. They were planning nipseys funeral, and they passed along the phone to other people in the family. I spoke with his mother and his grieving girlfriend, talked to his dad, as well, and i have been in contact with them since. I think just from my years of coverage this story, i had , sources i do not even realize i had until i had to make those important calls. Journalism. Kimberly other questions . Can you tell us who you are . Hi, i am actually angels sister. [laughter] so, you guys talk a lot about diversity. I know that is a growing issue within the corporate world of journalism and things like that. My background was traditionally in public relations. But what it sounds like is it is the inclusion part that is missing, especially at the l. A. Times and other newsrooms. You hire the people but you are not listening to them. You have the diversity part but you dont have the inclusion part. Can you touch on how the news would be generally better . Do you think it would be Employee Networks . Do you think it would be more of them letting you take the lead on stories more, covering different beats, things like that . You have been in a couple newsrooms. Want to talk about that . Erica i have been in multiple different roles in multiple newsrooms, more than i can count where i have been the only black person. Particularly the only on the staff or that staff, whatever. To me, i think a lot of it has to do with management, frankly. Statistics years ago showed how, as an industry, we had no problem hiring journalists of color out of college. We had a problem keeping them. I think that is probably true in more than one industry. One of the reasons they leave is not only because they get pushback on the ideas, but they look up at the ranks of management and there is no one that looks like them. They do not feel they can move forward. They do not feel there is a pass path for them. For me the key is getting diversity into the Management Level ranks. That is something where we have struggled as an industry. And i think we have struggled even more with the layoffs we have had in the last 4, 5, six years. So i think that having that Management Level rank helps with the inclusion, because then the reporter feels like they can see somebody who looks like them and there is more of a conversation, and i think those stories get told a little bit more. But until you get that on the Management Level, i think it be tough to get from diversity to actual inclusion. One of the things i like about working at the l. A. Times is it is not as diverse as it could be, but with the current crop of management, there is some level of commitment to trying. I recognize, i have been in this industry long enough to know it is not as easy as it seems to just hire a bunch of people of color. You have to convince them that it is a good place to work, convince them to move across the country, these various things. But there is an attempt and good effort to do so and hopefully continue to do so. And that is nice because i have been in a lot of newsrooms where that has not been the case. Peoplenot just seeing and a path forward, but also having advocates there. Lets be honest, people tend to fool up people like themselves, whether that is having initiative or drive or if they see something in someone who reminds them of themselves. If we can have more people that can help others with coverage in and in their careers, it brings in the inclusion part. Then you think, my voice is valued and it matters, and i will speak up more. And that has the effect of speaking up more and getting different assignments and rising in the ranks. I think it is all tied together. Kimberly gerrick . Gerrick i think it is covered pretty well. Kimberly ok. Questions . Hi, i am a retired educator. Nothing in journalism. [laughter] 73 years old, never heard of Nipsey Hussle until i saw the article. And like she said, i had to subscribe because i wanted to read it. Thank you. And i would like to think that i am not an anomaly. There are other baby boomers who are looking at different aspects, because you have people who look like me, who are younger but who are giving me a whole new look at the world. So as you begin to deal with your demographics, look at that. I would be interested to know everybody coming on board, they are not just babies like you all. Some old folks like me. I would be interested to see if that is coming through in your demographics. This is such an important aspect. Thank you for sharing that. It is so important when we talk about covering these underrepresented communities, that these communities are not monolithic. My mother, i struggle to get her to listen to marketplace. [laughter] and there are generational differences, cultural differences, different parts of the country. We are talking about covering the black community, the latino community, the queer community. Your one black person or one queer person might not be able to cover that. So when you talk about this, how do you have that conversation in the newsroom and make sure that, even within trying to cover your own community, youre covering parts of it that maybe you do not know about very well. Gerrick yeah, i run into this idea, you know, when you become the explainer, you actually have to fill in the blanks for every single thing, no matter how big or small. I cant tell you how many times it has been like oh, this person , is a rapper and got killed, should we jump on this . I dont even know who this is, they dont even have music on soundcloud or spotify . I get that you are excited that someone got killed and it is a sexy story here but i do not know actually who this person is. You run into that so much, so you are having to spend so much time convincing them as much as you have to that something is a story, that something is not a story. It is sort of a battle. But you want them to take you seriously. You come to them and say i think this and this is where the, but the last thing worthy, but the last thing they remember is you turning down this or that story. It is always like i am on a tight rope, especially when it hiphop, and the only reason i have that is because it is the genre of music that is the most popular and influential right now. I dont have these conversations with pop music and r b because frankly the editors do not care. But two years after the fact they hear about cardi b, do you know who this person is . Oh, she was on the cover during the grammys and i wrote that, guess you do not see it then. So a lot of what you are doing is convincing them something is important, but also convincing something is not important. That is a challenge i sometimes do not know how to navigate. Most times you will just hear me say, i dont think that is a story today. That doesnt always go over in our newsroom, but thats ultimately whatever comes. I said earlier about the give and take, constantly having a backandforth. And if you have an editor that is ok doing that, then i think it is great. But when you have an editor that says, i still think this is a story because my 16 year old is into it and i think it is great, i dont know how to argue with someone who tells me i should write a story because their 16 year old is in it. The solution is to hire more gen xers. [laughter] i think one of the things interesting right now is the age range of managers is a lot younger than other places i have been. Granted, i came from sacramento that was a little older, but there is a number, and i was shot out to my generation, but there are a number of gen xers at the Management Level. I find that we can talk a little bit more to millennials than baby boomers, but we do both. There is a level of i get it, even if i do not understand it completely as much as this millennials or this boomer, but there is a point of reference where we can step to one or the other. And i think that is one of the solutions, and by the way you do not look 73, i just had to mention that. [laughter] but i think that helps in some cases, where you have people who can understand different generations and can translate, basically. I want to say, to her comment, that as i have been writing these stories and interviewing people, so many people have been telling me, thank you for telling this story, for interviewing me, it has been an honor. I am floored by that. Oftentimes it is hard to get people on the phone and get them to open up personally. In this case, this is one time where everyone has been so open and available to share their ys as well. Nd nipse and i think that is reflected in the coverage. You have a question, sir. . Justin from the undefeated. First of all, i want to congratulate all of you for the coverage you had during nipseys death and after, very powerful stuff. [applause] living in the same city he was from, i imagine you took it as a deep responsibility to honor him at that moment. My question is about you all. Press when black malcolm x and Martin Luther king were assassinated, when marvin gaye died or even in the hiphop world with tupac shakur, biggie smalls. The editors responsible, that took a lot out of them because they were very attached to those artists because they told the stories they tell, both artists in a sense. My question is, especially living in l. A. , what have you done or how do you manage to take care of yourself when reporting that as well . When you see nipsey, especially now, everywhere, you are always reminded of him. How did you take care of yourself in the process doing that . Can we have gerrick take that one first . I know you were very close. That is a really great question. Think of a colleague of ours. He checked in. I know you take these things kind of hard. A couple days into it, i had been doing a ton in the days after and i was tired. Youote back, i dont think understand what it is to be on this side of it. In lot of my friends who are politics or metro or other places, folks where we might talk often but there is no relationship, its so much different when there actually is. And so much of my job is maintaining these relationships, dropping by studios, hearing music, going to the tours, going back stage to talk to someone, because they want that presence there. So much of my daily existence as a music reporter is being imewhere, and that, when first started i had no idea that was so much of the job. I think some people are like, it must be cool to go to all these free shows. 250300go to probably shows. How often im sitting for those shows is about 5 . Im mostly backstage talking, maintaining relationships, because that is how we do our business and where my ideas come from. You get so close to these folks in a way, it becomes almost, the line is so blurred that frankly, this is one of probably five or six artists i have been somewhat close to who have passed away. Nothing was as hard as whitney who i was with two days before she passed, and then having to write about it. This was different in a way, someone doing so much for a part of the world i care about, where i want to spend my life, and i am constantly reminded of him driving up and down crenshaw and seeing the billboards, even before he passed away. So much of being surrounded by it and being around those people all the time. And we had just been doing grammy stuff and trying to come off of the downturn of that so i was sort of catching my breath. And then this happened and it shakes you in a way, really affects you. I such a powerful way that had not really prepared myself for it. So i am at Staples Center at this mans service, and folks are texting me, a a lot of of my friends still doing this, detac hed from it in a way. Is on the floor, and this the level of closeness i have, it is different. Something where it was the first time i fully realized he was gone, if that actually makes any sense, and it takes being in a space where hes in a casket there. Before that, you have to write these stories, and you dont think about him. But me and angel are really close, and the night of the memorial we were on slack, texting with each other. We could hear helicopters, the people, the firing. So we never got to escape any of it. So there was a way whereby the second or third week after he passed away, feeling so drained by all of it. So the editors and, keep the story going, for me there is no story right now. I know, the same way angel has to know, when youre dealing with family members and people grieving, the next story for me is a little further down the road than it might be for someone else who had a little more distance from it all. So drying those boundaries was, it sounds like, a really important part of yourselfcare, and knowing when to say stop. What was it for you, angel . I was not sleeping at all after his death. I could not figure out why. I was like, energy, thinking about it in my sleep, waking up and texting and emailing her at 6 00 in the morning, a source at 5 00 in the morning, i was like, are you available to talk . I was not sleeping either, so lots of times i was available. [laughter] is affecting you. That is empathy, dont realize that. I was like, maybe it is. On another level, he did not know him the way gerrick did, but my husband listened to him all the time and he was the soundtrack on any road trips we took. And my husband is a black man, so it hits in a way, knowing my husband goes out into this world, not knowing what condition he will come back. This is nipsey, who went to work, at a block that was his second home. While his death happened under different circumstances, you just dont know what kind of shape your partner will come back home to when faced with so many threats. So in that way, i wanted him to be home and stay home, so in that time, i was calling ahead to work, but i took a full two weeks off afterwards to get myself together, and then i was ready to go again. Off of something that angel said, the idea of walking out ire as a black man, something mention, whats to it was like for us, when we were only a couple blocks away, being almost retraumatized by this happening on a almost daily basis. You were seeing it in the neighborhoods. This was the First Time Since then i saw people openly crying in the street. Fairly regularly, you would go to the copy shop and that is all people were talking about, anywhere you went. You or surrounded you were surrounded by it, in a way that it was hard to find as moments of selfcare, and that didnt happen for a full month, getting outside of south l. A. For a bit, spending a weekend in palm not looking at my phone. One of the pieces that you did that struck me after his death was chronicling all the other People Killed by gun violence in south l. A. In the and taking the coverage and insight in your coverage, and amplifying it to tell that larger story. Do you have any closing thoughts before we wrap up . For me, i am not of l. A. The same way gerrick or angel is, i hope to stay there for some time but dont have the connections they have yet. For me, Nipsey Hussle represented somebody who in my previous writings, i really care a lot about black community, our community, the way that gentrification and housing prices and displacement is happening. T this story asa a way to use the message, the things he talked about so much the l. A. Timese to hopefully talk about these things Going Forward, and of course gain subscribers in the process, but to talk about the very important issues affecting not just africanamericans but people all around the country and particularly in l. A. It is a pertinent, urgent thing, and part of why our coverage connected with so many people, it didnt just talk about nipsey, but talked about the issues and to the core of why people cared about him, because he was that person who stayed in his community, who wanted to invest in his community, who did a different thing that a lot of people dont do when they get wealthy and famous. I would hope that other people will take if not necessarily are coverage, but we should be connecting with people about these issues, issues important to them that they care about. That was kind of my whole take away from this. As an editor, i want to continue to tell the story not only of is, but also of what happening in our community and in l. A. Closing thoughts . Nipseys death kind of highlighted the dividing divide in l. A. This part of l. A. That knew his work, knew the issues he talked about very intimately, and the other side, mostly our subscribers, who never heard of him, had never experienced some of these problems, who had never been to this part of compton, to l. A. , that is sometimes only eight miles from their home. This hopefully makes the paper reevaluate how we cover these communities, as well as coverage outside of just the l. A. Times, but other news organizations, holding themselves accountable to be ingrained in the community, telling stories not just to our readers, but in a way that our readers and our community are included and are learning something as well. Gerrick . Sorry, the last part cut out. Any quick closing thoughts . Oh. I think everything has been hit on so well. But one that i have that is pretty unrelated, just the importance of having this space to have this conversation. Even Something Like this. A a lot of the conversations i have had with angel, erica who have gotten to know i have gotten to know a little bit more, its hard for us to have a conversation, how it made us look in our newsroom. Nobody on my team ever said, this is really great we have this. Some of it gets so lost, and some of it comes from the fact they might get it is important, but might not care it is important, so its great to have this space and this discussion. It reminds me of frustrations i have gone through lately, with just how we have been trying to think about the coverage, what it means, are we going to change how we do things moving forward . I am not convinced of any of those things yet, because im still having the same types of conversations around writing about cultural things in our newsroom. So really great to have discussions. I appreciate that. Gerrick kennedy is a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, Angel Jennings is reported for the metro section, and erica smith is assistant the metro section. Thank. [applause] thank you very much. [applause] i want to add my thanks. Gerrick gave me sort of the perfect transition, by talking about the conversation, sort of in this meta mode now. I was in chicago last week with a group of journalists, as part of an emerging leaders institute, largely journalists of color but not entirely. We were talking about some related issues, and somebody said, it is so important we are having these conversations, i am so glad we are having these conversations. And please also know that your learning is my labor. So i want to thank you guys for the learning and the labor, and i erica, gerrick, want to thank kimberly is well, our wonderful moderator. I want to thank the institute team. Andy, who helped develop this program, jim, who actually just started today and jumped in, so welcome. Thank you. And the press club team, who has done such a great job making sure everybody here has a good experience and feels welcome and comfortable. If you havent been to the press club before, please after this find me or bill, who is here. He can help you learn more about the press club. Hes the executive director of the press club. We thank the club very much. Moment will invite everybody to a reception upstairs in honor of this program, supported by the l. A. Times, who we also thank for making this program what it is. But before, i want to talk about somebody who is not in the room. You may have noticed some of us wearing buttons that say free austin tice. U. S. N is the only journalist being held abroad. 2,419een detained for days in syria, almost seven years. He was taken while reporting for the Washington Post and mcclatchy. The u. S. Government believes austin is alive and is working hard to bring him home. Austins family has been fighting for his freedom and we stand with them. We hope you will, too. If you would like a pin on your way out, there is a bowl. You can also see his syria photography in the lobby, and stay tuned for more that you can do to help show your support. So thank you guys again. Please join us upstairs. You should have two free drink tickets, so you can start that way and then keep going, if you would like. [laughter] thank you guys again for supporting the program. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] cspans washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that affect you. Coming up tuesday morning, the Washington Institute for near east policys fellow will be with us to talk about recent tensions between the u. S. And iran. And u. S. Term
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