Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and host of Sirius XM’s Urban View Karen Hunter and the founder of learning tool Pressto, Daniel Stedmend, recently joined Simma Lieberman on her podcast, “Everyday Conversations on Race for Everyday People.”
During the podcast, Hunter and Stedmend spoke with Lieberman about their mission to bring journalism to Black students in the U.S. and countries of African Diaspora using Pressto.
With Pressto, Hunter and Stedman are working on introducing journalism to schools to give the students the tools and inspiration to improve their writing skills. While the students are writing, the website gives instant feedback to them on things like the subjectivity level of their writing and how many sources they need in their journalism piece.
Through the use of Pressto, they’re looking to inspire the next generation of journalists, specifically from disadvantaged schools and media-censored countries such as Brazil.
“These stories [referring to stories like the stealing of African art] that aren’t told will now be told because we’re targeting and specifically looking at communities like Jamaica,” said Hunter. “These kids are going to be armed with the device and with the technology to tell their stories.”
In the podcast, race was also discussed as Hunter detailed her mission to erase it as a construct, specifically whiteness. After providing her own definition of whiteness as the power structure that allows people to use their lack of melanin to profit and justify their mistreatment of Black people, she encouraged people to let go of “whiteness” by deconstructing it.
“If you can explain to me what it means to me to be white, then I’m here for the answer, but I think most people cannot,” said Hunter. “And so then what is it? Because it drives everything. That’s the thing we should be looking at.”
The journalists also discussed the changing landscape of their craft. As Hunter explains in the podcast, journalism in recent years has changed from being fact-based news to being a way for large corporations to make money through views, paving the way for the spread of misinformation and disinformation as well as gaslighting.
Recounting her own experience at the Daily News when she confronted her editor’s glorification of the police after the killing of Amadou Diallo by having him realize his white privilege, Hunter spoke in detail about how racial biases have to be erased by bringing back humanity in addition to truth in journalism stories.
Through their new scholarship program, Hunter and Stedman are helping address these issues with Pressto.
In 2021, Stedman created the site after he looked into volunteering at local Brooklyn high school journalism programs. What he found was that high school student journalism programs aren’t being invested in and are shutting down. Encouraged by this and his work helping his son’s school build an elementary school newspaper, Stedman decided to help millions of other kids discover journalism through Pressto.
“The goal was to teach kids through opinion and fact through project based learning,” said Stedman. “What we learned is that we were helping teachers solve a much more critical and deeper problem in school which is getting kids excited and motivated about writing.”
To hear more about Hunter and Stedman’s plans and ideas about race and journalism, the podcast is available on Spotify, Google Play Music and Lieberman’s website.
