Investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones recently visited Salt Lake City to discuss the racial segregation that occurs in housing and education.
Hannah-Jones has a bachelor’s degree in history and African-American studies from the University of Notre Dame and a master’s degree in journalism and mass communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She started her professional writing career with the Raleigh News & Observer in 2003, covering the education beat for the predominately African-American public schools in Durham, North Carolina.
Hannah-Jones has won several national awards for her reporting, and was named Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists in 2015. She is currently working on a new book about school segregation, titled “The Problem We All Live With.”
Hannah-Jones was the featured speaker at the Aug. 29 “It Starts With You” event hosted by KUER and United Way of Salt Lake. She agreed to an interview with the Globe while she was in town.
How did you get into concentrating on civil right journalism?
I started working on my high school newspaper because I wanted to report on Black events and issues.
Where was that?
West High School, Waterloo, Iowa.
Which publications have you done primary investigative journalism for?
ProPublica from 2011 to 2015 and The New York Times from 2016 to the present.
Why hasn’t the mainstream media reported very well on the institutionally supported segregation in housing and public education?
They added reporters covering civil rights after the 1964 Civil Rights Act and did a pretty good job for a while. But white journalists weren’t particularly invested in Black issues. And most journalists thought that once the laws had been passed, the problem was solved and moved on to more news-of-the-day stories.
What can be done to solve this problem?
White people need to become more informed about the widespread failure of government agencies to enforce the non-discrimination 1968 Fair Housing Act. Segregation in housing and education drive each other and all other civil rights issues.
What is your advice for a new journalist just coming out of college? And in particular, what would be your advice to new Black journalists?
Get on the police beat. Get on the education beat. Become very knowledgeable about the history, people, and issues of the field you are covering. My advice to new Black journalists is that you need to be twice as good and you need to tell the stories only you can tell.
