Letrell Deshan Crittenden is API’s Director of Inclusion and Audience Growth. In this role, he builds upon API’s work in the area of organizational and cultural change and deepens the organization’s focus on diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.
Dr. Crittenden is the creator of the Assessing Diversity and Inclusion in News Ecosystems rubric, which allows for a systemic look at the challenges news organizations face and offers opportunities to look at the goals of DEI/B from many different facets.
Dr. Crittenden joined API from Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, where he was program director and assistant professor of communication. He specializes in issues related to diversity and inclusion in news and community-engaged journalism. At Jefferson, he helped revamp the program’s curriculum and served as the inaugural Diversity Advocate for the College of Humanities and Sciences. For his efforts inside and outside the classroom, he received the university’s 2021 Provost’s Award for Service to the Profession. He has also been a fellow with the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University and the Media and Inequality Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Crittenden earned his Ph.D. in communication from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His doctoral dissertation focused on the history of the National Association of Black Journalists, of which he is a member.
Prior to his academic career, Dr. Crittenden was a police and government reporter and is a veteran practitioner of community journalism. He is editor and co-researcher for the Germantown Info Hub, a collaboration with Temple University designed to provide better news coverage of the city’s Germantown neighborhood. He has also consulted for API on diversity-related issues as part of our community listening work.
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Journalism research is no silver bullet. But it does offer crucial insights based on evidence and rigorous peer review, which may support news organizations more effectively than their long-standing practice of following tradition or informed hunches.
We imagine a future where evidence, data and peer assessment support decision-making in journalism — whether by reporters, editors or news executives — and where journalism better informs the questions researchers ask.
A white paper based on the research of more than a dozen journalists and scholars will provide details on why the gap exists, as well as solutions for solving the problem.
If newsrooms are going to deliver on promises to become more diverse, engage better, improve coverage of communities of color or build trust within marginalized communities, they need to be held accountable for when they fail to deliver on promises. That is why we are adding accountability to the Index.
You cannot improve journalism — much less engagement, trust and inclusion — without building structures that hold news workers and outlets accountable for their actions.
A community advisory committee can help a newsroom in various ways, from informing a newsroom on specific topics to helping guide news coverage.
Asset mapping — identifying a community’s official and unofficial existing resources — can be an important groundwork for engagement.
True or untrue, fair or unfair, what is being shared is the perception you are dealing with in the community. Learning about this is why you are there.
Andrea Wenzel is an associate professor in Temple University’s Department of Journalism. In 2020, she wrote Community-Centered Journalism: Engaging People, Exploring Solutions, and Building Trust. [...]
Sustainability cannot simply focus on finances. If we want to do better journalism, sustainability must also focus on building community, inside and outside of the newsroom.
Learn about our Inclusion Index approach to serving communities of color and implementing concrete, sustainable DEIB changes within and outside of the newsroom. API Director of Inclusion and Audience Growth Letrell Crittenden shares insights from his recent work with the Pittsburgh Inclusion Index cohort and solutions to try out in your own newsroom.
A summary of API's Inclusion Index work in Pittsburgh, starting with the cohort’s inclusion scores and ending with recommendations for effective ways they can work as a whole to improve the Pittsburgh media ecosystem.
