MTC Coach Amanda Barrett’s Path to NABJ’s Ida B. Wells Award
“I’m constantly moving toward the good,” she says
Amanda Barrett, Vice President of News, Standards and Inclusion at The Associated Press, is the only two-time fellow of the Media Transformation Challenge Executive Fellowship—and now serves as an MTC coach. On the eve of receiving the National Association of Black Journalists’ Ida B. Wells Award for her “distinguished leadership in increasing access and opportunities for Black journalists and improving the coverage of communities of color in American media,” Amanda sat down with MTC’s Director of Community Engagement, Benjamin Wagner, to reflect on her journey.
BW: What or who inspired you to get into journalism?
AB: When I was in high school, I had an English teacher named Mr. Knight. He looked like Alfred Hitchcock. He had a sign above his door that said, “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.” He said I was a good writer and suggested that I go to his minority journalism workshop in the summer. I was of the generation that when your teacher said, you do something, you do it. So, I applied. I was accepted and spent two glorious weeks at the The Roanoke Times & World News and fell in love with journalism. I promptly told this to my father, who was angry and said that I was going to be poor my whole life, because journalists don’t make any money. [Laughs]
BW: Your Ida B Wells Award is for the scope of your career and specifically points to your advocacy for inclusive storytelling. What are the core values or practices for which you’ve advocated and helped AP’s newsroom adopt to better represent diverse communities?
AB: In 2020 I was thinking a lot about our inclusive journalism practices, because we had had some issues. There were people that felt left out of the report, people who felt like their story sometimes got rejected because they didn’t represent a certain viewpoint. I was thinking about it when the pandemic happened, and I got a chance to go through MTC again. I decided I would focus on inclusive journalism with the thinking that there were far too many communities that were left out of journalism’s scope, and therefore we were shooting ourselves in the foot when it comes to building new audiences.
First, you cannot accurately cover communities if you leave out all the people that are of a different color or different ethnic background or different ability; your journalism won’t be accurate. So that’s a major issue with the lack of inclusion.
And then we came up with some real things that we should think about. One is, don’t treat communities like monoliths; they’re not all the same. Not everyone thinks the same; they all had ideas of their own. Really think about who’s affected when we’re doing coverage. So many times, as journalists, we’re thinking about the governmental entity or a politician or whoever is making a ruling, without thinking about how people affected in their daily lives by decisions. So that’s something we really want to focus on.
And lastly, thinking about getting a reaction. Reaction should come from a wide range of people you should be talking with people ahead of time, so that we can get some real reaction from people, and not just the people we commonly always talk to.
BW: This was how many years into your tenure at AP?
AB: About 13 years, you know, when I was thinking about inclusive storytelling. But I’ll be honest with you; it’s been a battle my whole career. When I was young, the only time I saw people in the newspaper who looked like me was [Roanoke’s] black mayor, people that played sports and people who were in entertainment. It wasn’t like I saw myself represented. And I didn’t see a lot of other journalists of color, and I felt like we couldn’t tell as many stories if there weren’t as many of us.
BW: How did your performance challenge unfold in terms of MTC Tools?
AB: In my first challenge, I was a little afraid of going to public. I thought about it as my challenge, rather than the companies which, which bit me in the behind later on; I had to learn some painful lessons. On my second go around, I made it very clear to my colleagues on the senior leadership team that this was not Amanda’s challenge. This was AP’s challenge. They were eagerly involved. But the best surprise was [when] I started hearing from staff! They were excited to tell these different kinds of stories. A lot of times, they had come to the editors and wanted to tell these stories, and been told there wasn’t a story, or that we didn’t have time for those kinds of stories, and so they enthusiastically took it on and really tried to tell as many different kinds of stories as they could – and they still to this day,
BW: What metrics or signals do you use, both personally and professionally, to gauge the efficacy of these inclusion efforts taking root?
AB: I have a person that focuses on inclusion who does a fair amount of tracking stories and listens to the language. What questions people are asking in our global meetings? In smaller meetings? And we have a couple of Slack channels, one of which [we call] Inclusion Response, where people come to ask for help. People pretty regularly ask either for back reads, resources, or how to say something without being offensive.
BW: That moment in 2020 was also a moment for MTC. How did that experience as a two-time fellow? And how did that inform your transition to MTC Coach?
AB: I was in the last class at the Sulzberger Program in 2018. It was a very different program. There wasn’t a lot of talk of diversity and inclusion. There were some instructors who struck a little wrong. And there were some people who felt like their experience wasn’t felt or heard. And so, [MTC Executive Director] Charlie [Baum] and LaShara Bunting and I had a conversation at dinner about diversity and inclusion. To Charlie’s credit, he kept coming back to me and LaShara to talk about it over the next two years. How could we open the gates of the program? How we could embrace diversity and inclusion in a way that was suitable for MTC? What would that look like?
By 2020 I felt like MTC was ripe, and we were moving that way in that class. Evelyn Hsu and Martin Reynolds from Maynard and various other people in that class also brought a different sensibility. We were already having the conversation. And then, with the death of George Floyd, it just felt like it was even more time to have the conversation. That really laid the groundwork for some significant change in the program, while I was also making significant change at the AP with the help of MTC, Charlie, [MTC Founder] Doug [Smith] and the other coaches.
Charlie and I never stopped talking. And eventually he and Doug asked if I’d be interested in coaching. I had a lot of trepidation, because I just thought I got so much out of this. I am not sure I’m a good coach, but it felt in some ways natural because I’ve been mentoring and coaching throughout my career minority journalists, but also many other journalists adopt people as I go along, because that’s who I am. In 2022, I decided to take a plunge. It’s one of the best parts of my life, working with my fellows, who are all such special and smart people, and the partnership and the friendship with the coaches I prize.
BW: How did your experience working with a coach and the cohort help you clarify your goals, especially around standards and inclusion. And what aspects of the process continue to inform your day-to-day work?
AB: Well, my first coach, Quentin Hope, was amazing. He helped me think about journalism from more of a business perspective. I had always been a journalist, always doing the work of journalism, but he helped me have a different mindset that really opened my ideas around strategy and how I understand success and make sure I achieve it. And that really was so helpful to me, not only then, but my second time around.
As was working with Doug and thinking about how I structure our challenges, and therefore, how do I structure my work? Because the challenge is ultimately about your work. And so, for me now, when it comes to inclusion, I approach it in the same way. I have a North Star for my standards work. I have a three-part statement. I have strategies, and I’m tracking my success. Those tools are still with me, and I’ve used them through each of my challenges, but I also use them in my daily work to make sure that I’m on track.
So when I say to my fellows, “What do you want to achieve by December 31?” I’m also saying to myself, “What do I need to achieve by December 31?” And I feel like that framework, that way of working has been life changing for me.
BW: What’s been your favorite tool?
AB: My favorite tool is From/To. Because when you’re starting your challenge, many times, you may have a lot of frustration, and you can list all the Froms, all the terrible things that are happening. But the To side is the hope! The two side is nirvana! And if you are thinking about it, you can track your progress from the From side to the To –- and you can document it. I find it so fulfilling to think, ‘Okay, I had all these frustrations, but I’m constantly moving toward the good, the happy nirvana.’