20th Anniversary — The Future of Journalism and Community Storytelling

Moderator: 
Deonna Anderson, Editorial Director, Next City
Deonna Anderson is Next City’s editorial director. An award-winning journalist, she has served as a senior editor GreenBiz and worked with YES! Magazine, KLCC (an NPR affiliate station in Eugene, Oregon), The Lily, Atmos and other media outlets. Anderson is an alumna of the University of California, Davis and the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. She lives in the Bay Area. She was also Next City’s 2017-2018 Equitable Cities Reporting Fellow.

Speakers:
Akoto Ofori-Atta, Cofounder and Chief Audience Officer of Capital B
Akoto Ofori-Atta is Cofounder and Chief Audience Officer of Capital B, a nonprofit local and national news organization serving Black Americans, set to launch this fall. Most recently, she was Managing Editor at The Trace, where she was responsible for partnerships, special projects, and editorial operations. As a founding editor, Akoto helped secure more than 170 local and national editorial partners for The Trace’s features and investigations. Previously, she held the position of Associate Editor and Social Media Manager at The Root and as a Senior Editor at Essence Magazine. In 2015, she completed a John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University, where she focused on issues surrounding diversity and the Black press. She was selected as a 2019-2020 Emerging Leader for the Institute of Nonprofit News.

Venneikia Williams, Media 2070 Campaign Manager
Raised in Winston Salem, North Carolina, Venneikia now resides in Charlotte, North Carolina and is an active community member. She supports the Free Press team in the development, design and successful implementation of the Media 2070 campaign for media reparations. This includes liaising with coalition partners, fostering external relationships, supporting newsroom training and developing a curriculum and necessary collateral materials. Before joining Free Press, she was engaged in faith and community-organizing work in St. Louis. As a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she uses her talents to amplify Black stories and liberate Black lives.

Wendi C. Thomas, Editor & Publisher, Founder MLK50

Wendi C. Thomas is the founding editor and publisher of MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, an award-winning nonprofit newsroom focused on poverty, power and policy. Launched in 2017 with freelancers and $3,000, MLK50 has grown to an 10-person organization that has made a measurable, tangible impact in the lives of working class Memphians.  

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. She was a 2019-2020 member of ProPublica’s  Local Reporting Network.

Thomas is the 2023 winner of the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence. In 2022, Thomas received the Freedom of the Press Local Champion Award from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Other awards include the 2020 Selden Ring Award winner for investigative reporting, the 2019 National Association of Black Journalists’ Best Practices award and the 2018 Journalist of the Year by Journalism and Women Symposium.

Cierra Hinton, Scalawag
Cierra Brown Hinton is a creative strategist who centers imagination, play, and community in her work. She loves building with teams and individuals as they drive toward outcomes that matter in a way that is inclusive and authentic.

Cierra is the Executive Director-Publisher at Scalawag, a Southern, Black-led, Abolitionist media organization reporting with communities on the intersections of culture, race, and systems of power and privilege. Cierra is also a member at Blue Engine, a  collaborative that works with media companies, startups, foundations, and others on revenue and audience growth, product development, consumer user experience and digital strategy.