(Image by William Lager for OpenNews and the DEI Coalition)

DEI Coalition For Anti-Racist, Equitable, And Just Newsrooms

Together, OpenNews and over 100 members of the journalism community have co-created a digital community space dedicated to sharing knowledge and taking concrete action in service of a more anti-racist, equitable and just journalism industry. Together, members can use this shared community space, hosted on Slack, to tackle challenging conversations, create new resources, equip themselves to be better allies and advocates, and together, change newsroom policies, systems, and culture for the better.

Join the DEI Coalition Slack

Membership for the DEI Coalition Slack community space is free, and if you identify as a journalist, work in the journalism industry, and/or work in a space that directly supports journalism, you’re eligible to join.

Private Channels

The DEI Coalition Slack includes channels for everyone — dedicated to conversations around anything from power to compensation equity to allyship— as well as private channels just for coalition members in staff and management roles. We acknowledge that different roles in organizations come with different challenges and different ways to create change. These private staff-only or manager-only channels serve as a way for people in similar positions of power to learn from each other’s actions and strategies. Our page on joining the coalition explains how to decide which private channels to apply for, and what the main conversations in each set of private channels will be about.

Join the DEI Coalition Slack

Find out more

👉 Read our membership criteria
👉 Read our original DEI Coalition announcement

Creating the DEI Coalition Slack

In July 2020, OpenNews first announced the DEI Coalition at SRCCON, our annual journalism conference. The core of the DEI Coalition project was to co-create with the community a digital space focused on creating anti-racist, equitable, and just newsrooms. Within a week, over 100 people had signed up to volunteer their time, perspective, and expertise, in service of creating this space.

Every part of the DEI Coalition Slack space — from the application process to the community agreements to the member guide — were all created collaboratively by volunteers who worked together for six months.

Volunteers served on four main committees, each tackling different questions to help us ensure both spaces are as safe as possible, and serve the community’s goals.

Our committees:

• Safety and Moderation — led by Sophie Ho
• Membership — led by Ashley Alvarado
• Slack Setup — led by Hannah Birch
• Welcome and Onboarding — led by Lish Wang Savson

On March 22, 2021, the DEI Coalition Slack formally launched and began accepting members.