Nikole Hannah-Jones is the Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of the 1619 Project and a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine. She has spent her career investigating racial inequality and injustice, and her reporting has earned her the MacArthur Fellowship, known as the Genius grant, a Peabody Award, two George Polk Awards and the National Magazine Award three times. Hannah-Jones also earned the John Chancellor Award for Distinguished Journalism and was named Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists and the Newswomen's Club of New York. In 2020 she was inducted into the Society of American Historians and in 2021 she was named a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She also serves as the Knight Chair of Race and Journalism at Howard University, where she is founding the Center for Journalism & Democracy.
In 2016, Hannah-Jones co-founded the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, which seeks to increase the number of reporters and editors of color. She holds a Master of Arts in Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina and earned her BA in History and African-American studies from the University of Notre Dame.
Recommended Reading & Watching:
NPR’s Code Switch Podcast: Nikole Hannah-Jones on the power of collective memory
The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones
The 1619 Project: Born on the Water by Nikole Hannah-Jones (for young readers)
August 22 Nonprofit Partner: Richmond Pulse
Richmond Pulse is a community news and media outlet, committed to amplifying the voices of the city’s under-served residents. Our reporting is led by young people, with the intent of serving the entire community.
The city of Richmond has a bad reputation in the Bay Area. Oftentimes, when people speak about Richmond, or when we hear about Richmond on the 5 o’clock news, what we hear is overwhelmingly negative: killings, rapes, lack of jobs, bad schools, and unhealthy pollution levels are just some of the stories we hear. All of these things paint a picture of a community in crisis.
Yet the media coverage in Richmond only tells part of the story. Often missing are the voices of Richmond residents themselves, the people most impacted by the conditions that exist. Why do these things happen in Richmond, and how are each of these issues connected? Who is responsible for the many problems that impact the health of a community, and how can those problems be addressed? We believe that these questions are not currently being asked often enough by the mainstream media in their news coverage, which is why we started the Richard Pulse, a new community media outlet for Richmond, California, that will strive to ask and answer some of these important questions.