What's up, South End?
I come to y'all with a lot on my mind and a lot on my heart.
The community is grieving right now. We recently lost two youth to gun violence in Rainier Beach.
This tragedy hits close to home for so many reasons.
Politicians, nonprofits, parents, students — everyone is talking about safety and how to prevent violence like this from happening. But it happened. Two kids are gone. Two families are forever impacted. And it happened in the middle of our neighborhood.
I'm a proud graduate of Alan T. Sugiyama High School, or South Lake as we called it. It's an alternative school. I credit that institution, and its staff, for saving my life. My little brother graduated from Rainier Beach High School. It's hard for me not to see myself, or my brother, in these kids, who were killed on the same block we used to walk every day.
Stories like these are always a little more sensitive at the Emerald. Here, we don't report on them, in their neighborhood. We report on us and our community.
And while we have a responsibility to bring you all the factual news, we also walk a tightrope of also being accountable to our own community and ensuring we maintain respect for impacted families.
I don't have all the answers on how to keep our streets safe. But I do know that I am living proof that with the right combination of love, care, and accountability — we can keep youth on the right path and encourage them to do better. I'm the product of community members believing in me when I didn't believe in myself.
We lost two kids who should still be here. My heart is heavy for those families. As lawmakers and politicians scramble for TV time and preach change and accountability, I'm here to simply ask that we, all of us as community members, put a little effort into being there for our youth.
Whether it's time or dollars, give a little to one of the organizations who are doing the real work every day of trying to care for youth and keep our community safer.
For this week's interview, I spoke with a Rainier Beach resident: Emerald Executive Director Florangela Davila, who has been on the scene in Rainier Beach. We talked about community journalism and how the Emerald approaches these close-to-home tragedies with care.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
MD: When we're covering things that happen in our community that we know are sensitive, how do we balance being a news organization with the responsibility to deliver the factual news, and with the fact that we are also people who are a part of this community who will also be compelled to protect it?
FD: I think one of the key words is this notion of "extractive" journalism. I feel like for so long, there was such a rush to just go get information fast and then throw it out to audiences. We are certainly much more mindful of making sure we're being not just responsible but respectful, and making sure that with that, we're being helpful. There's so many stories that are so sensitive, and this one being a prime example, when there's a killing, I can't think of anything that's more sensitive than that — I think the approach is always to want to bear witness to what is happening. So that's the thing that was in my head when I heard the news, is that it's important for me to just go look, and see, and take in information and be present. But not necessarily to take out my notebook and start asking questions of people who were there, and in this case, it's parents and people who knew the kids.
MD: That's a perfect segue into my second question. When you're on the ground, as you were, after something like this happens, you see the reactions, you see the emotion. But you also see the people, and in this case the parents, day one, before any outlets have the full story. How do you approach being "first" with being a community member and respecting privacy and respecting the grieving community, even if it means getting "beat" to the story in a way? Especially for you, as the executive director of this newsroom.
FD: I don't think we need to beat everybody, because no one else is serving our community the way we are. Our audience is our community. And, both mothers were at the vigil on Saturday, both mothers spoke to the crowd that had assembled there. It would have been easy and also highly insensitive and wrong to approach the mothers afterward to ask them for their names and to verify the names of the students. So many of the people who were there were young. It's also not our place. I did not want to intrude, and I don't think any Emerald reporter would ever see it as their business to intrude.
MD: I understand and appreciate your approach. There was, however, another news outlet that did hustle to be the first to release the names of the victims. Can you speak on community journalism and the importance of community journalism? And the differences in our approach that you might see compared with legacy media?
FD: It's that we care. We're not afraid to be emotional and own up to the fact that we live in this community. We care about the community that we live in. We want the same things that the community wants. It takes so much effort to build trust, and it's so easy to lose, and building a relationship means being as honest as you can be in what your mission is. You enter a scene like that, a tragic, heartbreaking scene, and you see people weeping and just barely being able to stand, and your assumption is that it is both love and grief, and that person knew who was killed. You have a press badge. It's a public street. You could go and ask respectfully as much as you can. You could give them a business card to say, we're writing a profile and here you can get a hold of me, or you could just let people just grieve and not bother them, not intrude. What is the point of intruding on somebody at that moment, versus a few days or a week later to try to do the reporting that you think the community at large wants? And in this case, I think there is reporting to be done, not just about what happened, but who these kids were.
And to your point on community media, if the community is going to trust us, they're going to be mindful and watch what our actions are. And if we say we're going to do something and we don't act in that way, we will lose their trust. So if we say we're of the community, by the community, for the community, and we go around and report negligently or report in a cruel way or an extractive way, they're gonna say, "You're not who you say you are. And why would we trust you and value you?" We would never do that.
Bush Garden is back! This is big news to the South End and obviously the Chinatown-International District (in my mind, our neighborhoods are connected).
Emerald contributor Jas Keimig has all the info you need, but the beloved neighborhood hub and one of the best karaoke spots in the city (IYKYK) is back in business.
It's Super Bowl week, and there was no way I could write this newsletter without shouting out the home team. The news has been hard, but we are rooting for the Seahawks to once again become champions — and avenge our last Super Bowl showdown with the New England Patriots.
But it was important to look at this weekend's festivities from a different lens than what will happen on the gridiron.
Bad Bunny will be performing at the Super Bowl halftime, and this choice has become controversial for many reasons.
I have my thoughts, but I don't want to step on Agueda Pacheco Flores, the Emerald's amazing social media editor and advertisement coordinator.
Agueda wrote about how Bad Bunny's performance made the Super Bowl matter to her, and what it means having a Latino artist on the biggest stage in the country while immigrants are being rounded up in our streets.
This is a story y’all need to keep a close eye on.
The Washington State Senate passed a bill this week to regulate the use of data collected by automated license plate readers (ALPR). This includes the readers made by Flock Safety, and many people, rightfully, have voiced security concerns.
Contributor Jacquelyn Jimenez Romero does an excellent job breaking this down in her latest article. The bill is now headed to the House for approval.
Black Lives Matter at School is turning 10 this year.
Most Seattleites are likely to be familiar with the program, but what many don’t know is that it actually started in the South End.
Jesse Hagopian, a local author and educator who serves on the national steering committee of Black Lives Matter at School, penned this guest op-ed about the roots of the program and where it stands in the current political climate.
This is an abbreviated version of The Roundup newsletter. To get the entire newsletter, including a weekly list of events to check out and my shout-out to South End Gems, subscribe here. See you next week!
Mike Davis is the newsletter editor and Voices editor at the South Seattle Emerald. Born and raised in Seattle's South End, Mike is a longtime journalist who's covered everything from arts and culture to sports to politics.
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