18 months on from the closure of gal-dem, the publication’s former Head of Editorial reflects on the changing media landscape in the UK. This article is part of the People-Powered Storytelling collaborative series.
My first introduction to gal-dem was in September 2016 via a university friend, who mentioned she’d seen this exciting, charismatic collective of students from Bristol on Facebook looking to disrupt tired media stereotypes.
Without that introduction, my career and life would likely have taken an entirely different shape. I might not even have gotten a start in journalism at all. I didn’t have any connections to the media industry, and had little concept of what an internship was or how it all worked. Being the first in my family to go to university and coming from a dual heritage, working-class background, everything felt new and intimidating – until I found gal-dem, and felt like I had found a space to tell the stories I wanted to with like-minded friends and collaborators; a space of belonging; a space that presented a reimagination of the media's future.
I am sure that this experience will resonate with many journalists, storytellers and creatives of my generation, all coming from underrepresented backgrounds and first cutting their teeth at gal-dem. It was a platform born out of frustration with the current state of British media, coupled with the ambition to do better. It was a publication that took a chance on newcomers, with a generosity of spirit that is now all too rare. And it was part of an ecosystem of fellow projects seeking to amplify the stories of those so often spoken for and over, including Black Ballad, Amaliah, Polyester and more.
Fundamental changes are here
The same year that gal-dem was founded, a survey by City University London found that the British journalism industry was 94% white, 86% university-educated and 55% male. The NCTJ’s 2023 Diversity in Journalism Report’s latest figures note that 88% of journalists are from white ethnic groups, 72% are from the highest social classes, and 59% are male. Although both surveys examined slightly different metrics, their overall results show that diversity in British journalism has not really fundamentally shifted over a seven year period.
But so much else about the industry has changed during this time. One example that interests me from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism’s 2024 Digital News Report is that alongside traditional news brands and journalists, people are increasingly turning to commentators, influencers and young news creators, particularly on YouTube and TikTok, to find their news.
This shift not only speaks to the ways that news consumption is changing, but the ways that news production is changing in an industry that is often not only inaccessible, but inhospitable for journalists from underrepresented backgrounds. The barriers to entering the newsroom are becoming too insurmountable for people to break in. It’s entirely logical then, that individuals and groups are rejecting traditional newsrooms and instead are turning to their own creative platforms and ways of storytelling, empowered by the technology to do so in ever-more innovative ways.
Take Diet Paratha and Black Lives Matter UK, who were covering the racist riots across Britain earlier in the summer with speed and accuracy via their Instagram accounts. These collectives are community-led, and in constant conversation with that community, understanding their needs, interests and passions with depth and nuance.
I see a similar energy with the media platforms represented in this project who are deeply embedded within their communities, be it in Bristol or Glasgow, led by young people, those with lived experiences of homelessness, or Gypsy Roma and Traveller communities. It is these publications and platforms who are doing the hard work to earn the attention and trust that has been lost. Genuine and authentic collaboration and skill-sharing across the sector could help amplify these initiatives; such as co-production workshops, platform takeovers and joint community engagement projects.
Creating routes upwards
gal-dem’s work to nurture new talent was crucial, with specific junior roles supported by funding and non-profit partnerships, including Lankelly Chase who have supported this project. Initiatives, schemes and roles designed to support Black journalists and journalists of colour entering the industry through ‘conventional’ routes have increased and gained more attention in recent years, and rightly so. But fostering talent at the entry-level is just one piece of the puzzle.
A 2022 report found that “women of colour are severely underrepresented or altogether missing from editorial roles in the UK” and “are experiencing extraordinary levels of exclusion and remain invisible within news organisations and the news industry, as leaders and as protagonists in news stories”. This is reflected in the experiences of Black journalists and journalists of colour leaving the industry due to burnout, layoffs, racism and generally feeling unsupported in workplaces that often do not value their perspectives at the senior level.
To truly address these issues of retention and upwards progression, newsrooms – and their funders – must invest in the care of their staff throughout the growth of their careers, rather than abdicating from this responsibility or thinking the work is only done at the junior level.
Supporting storytelling sustainably
The last few years have seen a deluge of closures in the independent media space, particularly affecting publications often described as ‘feminist media’ (I write that in quotation marks as although I understand its usage, I always feel this phrase is a bit pigeon-hole-y). This of course includes gal-dem in 2023, alongside Wear Your Voice in 2021, Bitch Media in 2022, and recently Aurelia earlier in 2024. As Ananya Ray recently wrote for Feminism in India, “independent feminist media organisations have a hard time surviving on their own.”
It was simultaneously upsetting and comforting in the final weeks of gal-dem to be connected with other former newsroom managers from different parts of the world who had also experienced the closure of their publications. I was grateful for their support and guidance, as well as angry that we had all been through the same painful experience of saying goodbye to our beloved projects.
Over the last year, there have been several success stories when it comes to membership-driven models of community and local news-oriented media in Britain – take The Bristol Cable’s fantastic recent achievements, or the growth and expansion of Mill Media around the UK, as two positive examples. It can be tempting to transpose this model of growth onto gal-dem, as I have sometimes thought about in hindsight. But to do so is to ignore the realities of economic racial inequalities, where the cost of living crisis has impacted Black, Asian and other minority ethnic communities at higher levels than their white counterparts, according to the New Economics Foundation.
I am not sure what the answer to the funding conundrum is. The demand for gal-dem’s work clearly was, and in many ways still is, there. But the struggle to identify sources of funding that were both unrestricted and required minimal resource for a small organisation to apply for and manage became too great. I hope the experience can be a lesson for funders about the fragility and uncertainty that many such community-driven projects are facing.
As I saw in one comment shared upon gal-dem’s closure that has stayed with me, it was a place that nurtured people to become writers, and writers to become editors. And while the publication’s journey was by no means perfect, its impact as a springboard for talent that would fundamentally alter British journalism, storytelling and culture at large is immeasurable.
Despite the challenges, I remain an optimist. There are publications, projects and platforms that are still continuing the work, in the same spirit gal-dem did. This series has been a tangible demonstration of that. But this work must be collective, and must not happen in a vacuum, reliant on the small but mighty shoulders of independent outfits alone. There is no time to waste.
Suyin Haynes is a freelance journalist, editor and media consultant interested in storytelling at the intersections of identity, culture and underrepresented communities. She is Lecturer in Journalism at City, University of London, and is the creator of two newsletters, Ginkgo Leaves, and the partnership project fragments.
This article is part of People-Powered Storytelling, a new collaborative series showcasing the transformative impact of community-centred media initiatives in the UK. Read more about the series, and the other contributions that are part of it, here.