These turbulent times remind me of how I first felt when I took on the challenge of helping transform a bold vision into a modern abolitionist newsroom.

I knew from the start that I wanted to create a platform to inform, engage, and agitate; to braid history and social context with evocative storytelling. This was my chance to disrupt and renounce legacy mainstream newsrooms’ perpetuation of racist narratives, problematic framing, and formulaic approaches to covering communities of color. 

I’ve spent much of my career pushing for storytelling that amplifies the experiences of marginalized communities. But in order to actually accomplish this in a way that goes beyond the superficial, a trusted space and platform must exist for journalists to “say the thing.” 

Our profession is under attack more than ever. Histories are being erased in real time. Promises and progress have been made, both in the fight for racial equity and in the fight for inclusive journalism.

I’ve heard these refrains and I’m now playing it all back. My journey from the so-called racial reckoning of 2020 to the inevitable Whitelash of 2025 has been a broken record that historically has skipped for decades. 

Liberation is often cast with a celebratory glow — but it is only the beginning. The hard work and struggle doesn’t end. As journalists and as citizens, we must constantly revisit what we know to be true. We mobilize to pick up the weighty needle and move it because despite what may feel like a setback, we are reminded that our work has once again become more needed than ever. 

This will be my final newsletter and my last day leading The Emancipator. I am filled with gratitude and pride. These four years have been about building something bold and necessary — and now, I leave knowing the work will continue.

After June 30, The Emancipator will transition from Boston University to Howard University as part of our co-founder Ibram X. Kendi’s Institute for Advanced Study, which will be dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of racism in the global African Diaspora. The Emancipator will be part of the institute’s larger mission to enhance the general public’s understanding of racism and evidence-based antiracist solutions through academic and publicly accessible research, public lectures, events, workshops, and outreach programs.

We first published The Emancipator in June 2021 as a newsletter and it quickly evolved into a digital magazine. Over the past four years we’ve worked with more than 170 contributors, published 450 stories, and held more than 40 in-person and online community events. We’ve also been recognized with 20 nominations and awards, including being two-time winners of the Edward R. Murrow Award for our essay series on “The Talk” and for amplifying essays from incarcerated writers fighting book bans behind bars. 

We’ve worked with intrepid graduate journalism students who’ve investigated a range of issues, including the ways climate change exacerbates racial inequities and the chilling repercussions of the end of affirmative action. 

We’ve developed a roster of tremendous freelance writers during the past few years — from scholars to community members — covering topics ranging from facing down racism in the workplace, to solutions on breastfeeding racial disparities.   

I’m proud to have produced the first-ever Racial Reporting Convening in 2023, which included nearly 80 impassioned reporters, editors, producers, and journalism professors from across the country — gathering to confront the many ways the news industry perpetuates racial inequity in America through its reporting, newsroom practices, and culture.

It can get heavy out there. The Emancipator has been intentional about centering community joy — from our first Juneteenth party at Slade’s Bar & Grill in Roxbury, celebrating local poets and performers; to partnering with creatives in Texas to elevate the stories of Black Austinites; to sponsoring “Historically Black Phrases,” a Black culture game show.

I want to sincerely thank my incredible team for their passion, creativity, and commitment to this work, and to me personally: Boston staffers Cristal Balis, Melissa Clavijo, Alex LaSalvia, Tami Nguyen, Jamil Smith and contributors Halimah Abdullah, Chandelis Duster, Rhon Flatts, Frankie Huang, Ashley Trawick, and Sherman Turntine.

I also want to thank the contributing editors, copy editors, illustrators, producers, and writers whose efforts have helped The Emancipator find its groove. 

Thanks to the Boston University and Boston Globe and staff for helping nurture us in our infancy, and to my brilliant founding co-editor Deborah Douglas, who was an amazing partner and often the yin to my yang and the other side of my editorial brain. 

Thank you to our advisory board of veteran journalists, scholars, and industry leaders who offered wise counsel. And, of course, I thank our co-founders Ibram X. Kendi and Bina Venkataraman, who came up with this revolutionary idea to reimagine the first abolitionist newspaper for a new day. 

Finally, I want to thank you, our newsletter, website, and social media audience, for following and supporting our journey. Your feedback, encouragement, and participation has been critical to our accomplishments.  

None of this would be possible without your support and belief in our mission. Thank you for helping us build something that matters — something that is not only responding to the moment, but shaping what comes next.

I recently caught up with Douglas, who now teaches journalism at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. We talked about the danger of hypernormalization in service of White comfort. 

“You have to calibrate and couch things in a way to almost like, apologize or frame and soften the message before you deliver it to people,” she said. “I think journalism writ large in this country is not really telling the real story of what’s happening in this country right now. It’s ‘the great normalization.’”

White comfort is back to being centered and weaponized against communities indiscriminately, in part because of the racism that sent Donald Trump back to the White House. 

In this moment of crisis, old norms of objectivity are a disservice to an audience trying to make sense of dysfunctional and broken systems. We often carry on, desensitized to the latest hairpin turn of events.   

However, the poignant and prophetic words of Audre Lorde ring true more than 50 years later: 

“To refuse to participate in the shaping of our future is to give it up. Do not be misled into passivity either by false security (they don’t mean me) or by despair (there’s nothing we can do). Each of us must find our work and do it. Militancy no longer means guns at high noon, if it ever did. It means actively working for change, sometimes in the absence of any surety that change is coming.”

As I wrap up my tenure at The Emancipator, I think a lot about how our job as journalists is to do more than provide the public with information; the facts are nothing without the framing. We must give people the tools to interpret reality critically and have difficult conversations. 

It is clear now more than ever that democracy is not something we have, it’s something we do.

With deep appreciation, 

Amber Payne
Publisher and GM
The Emancipator

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