MANSFIELD — Andrew Ramsammy wants us to look beyond the headlines — for our sake and for the future of media’s sake.
Ramsammy, a college administrator with experience in media leadership, was featured in the final installment of the Kaleidoscope Speaker Series on Tuesday.
Kaleidoscope launched in January with a presentation from Majora Carter. The speaker series featured four acclaimed authors and speakers throughout 2024 who offered fresh perspectives and ideas on complex issues.
Ramsammy challenged the audience of roughly 50 people at the Mansfield Senior High auditorium to remember an important tenant of journalism: there’s always another perspective.
“When you see a story, when you see a headline, when you see all the things that happen in our world — always think about there’s a different perspective to the story. There’s a different angle to that story,” Ramsammy said.
The Black Press: Does it have the answer?
Offering different perspectives on stories in media — national and local — can be the answer to long term sustainability, he said. More specifically, the media should look to the Black Press, Ramsammy offered.
“The Black community, and Black community media, reflects the realities of all residents addressing underrepresented perspectives,” he said.
The Black Press, he said, at one point consisted of around 500 newspapers across the country. They arose out of a sense that their culture was not being represented in traditional media, Ramsammy said.
Over the years, the Black Press has been considered by mainstream media to be “advocacy journalism,” Ramsammy said.
“When people don’t see themselves, they yearn for someone who does see them,” he said. “To speak on behalf of a folk who need to say something that’s not being said. That’s what the Black Press did.
“It began to advocate for itself because it didn’t see itself.”
Is advocacy the answer?
Jay Allred, CEO of Richland Source, said anyone can feel marginalized and misrepresented in media.
“I think that the pushback that I’m going to give you is that there’s room to not advocate. There’s room to include rather than push out,” he said.
Allred added that there is a yearning for stories that only include the facts of a particular matter.
He said journalists should be careful to not come off as arrogant in their reporting that could be construed as a reporter telling the reader what to believe or what to think by only representing a limited perspective.
“The thing that we have to learn is that we can tell the story from a certain perspective but if we lose sight of … the curiosity to get beyond our viewpoint, we’re doomed,” he said.
At Richland Source, that looks like inviting younger, more diverse segments of the population to events like “Newsroom After Hours” and “Reporting Reimagined,” Allred said.
One audience member, Yolanda Allen, had her own perspective. She said she’s lived in Mansfield for six decades, and has rarely seen Black reporters and representation of the community in local media.
“So when are we going to take it from head knowledge to actually implementing it?” she asked.
Ramsammy took it a step further. “Jay, within this woman’s lifetime … can your newspaper hire an African American reporter?”
Allred said he would love to and vowed to do so, but the promise comes with challenges. The CEO said the newsroom faces hiring competition from those in larger markets who can offer stronger compensation and better social opportunities.
It’s an issue local schools have raised for decades in their struggle to hire a diverse pool of teachers, citing the same obstacles.
“Those pathways to our newsroom haven’t happened. But they will in your lifetime,” he said, addressing Allen.
