Carla Murphy
I spent 15 years as a social justice or local community reporter. I do journalism for or with low wealth or communities of color–not about them for other news audiences. The former approach means that journalists value, seek out and prioritize the questions asked by marginalized communities about their own lives in relation to local, regional and national events and issues.
I belong to a coalition of news and information partners in New Jersey and the U.S. that practices journalism for, with or by marginalized or neglected communities. Together we are reimagining journalism for our 21st century society. My journalism ethics and practice: rigor, verification, transparency, the method is objective, solutions, self-reflexive, making power visible, pursuit of truth, public service. I aim to strengthen relationships between Rutgers-Newark’s journalism program and local newsrooms, community residents, and any stakeholder invested in community and civic health, democratic processes, and high-quality local news and information in every language.
Separate from my journalism practice, I conduct journalism and media research for the industry, and that work is foundation-supported. My surveys document the work-life, mission and values of journalists of color. These include “Leavers: a survey of 101 former journalists of color,” and “The JOC Worker Project: a survey of 117 working journalists” (unpublished). My current research and praxis focus on participatory civic media and culture work(ers); participatory journalism; nonprofit newsrooms; and journalism and Afrofuturist thought.
I am a member of the Future of Local News (FLN) coalition, the Online News Association (ONA), Study Hall, the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), OpenNews (SRCCON) and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). I regularly advise journalism support organizations on research approaches to race and equity.
As a journalist, I edited Lewis Raven Wallace’s The View from Somewhere podcast based on his book about the myth of journalistic objectivity. I was a senior staff reporter covering criminal justice and media at Colorlines.com, one of the first online racial justice news sites, and a contributing editor and fellow at The Nation Institute’s Investigative Fund. In 2010, I spent six weeks covering the diaspora and development in post-quake Haiti. I was formerly an ILA Visiting Fellow at Boston College, vice president and board member of the Journalism & Women Symposium (JAWS) and editor of Echoing Ida, a reproductive justice community of Black women and nonbinary writers.
An immigrant from Barbados, I am a graduate of New York University’s night school, the London School of Economics, and CUNY’s Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.
Fall 2023 Courses: Journalism, Ethics and the Law; Imagery and Culture: The American Narrative.
