Program

‘A space for imagination:’  In conversation with co-founders of The Lorde Society

The Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund shares lessons from its support of the community for Black and indigenous women and femme leaders in journalism.

By Megan Lucero

November 21, 2023

As The Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund, a joint venture between the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, enters its fifth and final year, we’re sharing insights, lessons, and best practices from our grantee-partners to better understand their impact and help shape the broader field. Sign up for The Lenfest Institute’s Solution Set newsletter to receive all the latest updates and posts sharing lessons from the Fund. 

A group of Black women and femme leaders working in media have come together to form an exciting and emergent leadership community, The Lorde Society. They are setting out to build “a space for imagination, accountability, mutual aid, collective learning and practice, and power building through communing.”

Named for Audre Lorde, the Black feminist scholar and poet, The Lorde Society is made up of 13 people from organizations ranging from Scalawag Magazine to Outlier Media to MLK50 The group first gathered in December 2021 with the goal of creating opportunities to grow individually, collectively, and in ways that strengthen their organizational leadership.

This model is returning to intuitive and collective ways of operating. It is shedding the individualistic focus that often drives us to compete instead of collaborate and is instead, exploring new ways of supporting interdependence in the industry.

The Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund supported the Lorde Society with a $50,000 grant as part of the Fund’s strategy to support capacity building for journalists of color, invest in journalistic approaches to civic engagement, and hold convenings that support collaboration across the local news industry.

Through online and in-person spaces and sessions, including an annual convening, the Lorde Society supports connection, collective learning and tangible support for Black and indigenous women and femme leaders in journalism. They are experimenting and laying new foundations that the entire sector can learn from.

What follows is a lightly edited and condensed transcript of an exchange conducted over email with Cierra Hinton, Scalawag’s executive director-publisher and co-creator of The Lorde Society. We also invited into the conversation Wendi C. Thomas, founder, editor, and publisher of MLK50 in Memphis and Candice Fortman, executive director of Outlier Media in Detroit. 

Hinton, Thomas and Fortman are all co-creators of the Lorde Society, alongside Jiquanda Johnson, Flint Beat’s founder and publisher.

If you are a Black woman or femme person interested in learning more about the group, you can email [email protected] or join its mailing list here.  

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Megan Lucero: Cierra, it’s incredibly exciting to see the formation of the Lorde Society. Where did the origins come from?

Cierra Hinton: In 2020, Jiquanda Johnson, Candice Fortman, Wendi Thomas, and I got together to imagine what we could build with Black women in this industry. When the “what” didn’t emerge naturally, we didn’t force it. All of us have seen folks create programs and projects that take up space and lack intentionality, just to say they did a thing. That is not what we wanted to do. So we put it down, but not before Candice had the foresight (in all of her infinite genius) to put us all in a Slack group and name it The Lorde Society. The name is an ode to Black feminist scholar and poet, Audre Lorde. 

“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,” is perhaps Lorde’s most well-known quote. But like many popularized quotes, it is often used in ways far removed from its original context. Lorde’s speech at New York University’s Institute for the Humanities Conference in 1979 was a rebuke of racist feminism and the degradation of mutuality and interdependence of women. 

For us, The Lorde Society is a space for Black women leaders to build relationships and learn from one another. Like Lorde, we rebuke the current tools of those in power, like individualism, which are often tools of white dominant culture. Instead, we center the unique leadership experiences and journeys we have and create a space where we can lean into mutuality and interdependence. 

“We center the unique leadership experiences and journeys we have and create a space where we can lean into mutuality and interdependence.” 

– Cierra Hinton

Lucero: Your relational approach speaks to movement and community organizing principles. What inspiration have you taken from and centered in this work?

Hinton: In addition to Audre Lorde, we are inspired by the principles of Sankofa and Afrofuturism. We define Afrofuturism as placing Black people in the future by correcting the past. Afrofuturism has three component parts, reclamation, Black liberation, and revisioning of the past and predictions of the future. Radical imagination is also core to Afrofuturism. Through deep understanding of “from whence we have come,” we have the ability to game out and therefore predict the future. In particular, Black women and femme folks have the power and ability to hold this deep understanding because of the inequitable existence in intersecting systems. We see where things do not work and do not serve and work to gain the power to change them. 

Sankofa is a Twi word from the Akan Tribe of Ghana that means “go back and get it.” The spirit of Sankofa encourages us to take from the past that which is good and bring it into the present to make progress in the future. Sankofa requires critical examination and intelligent and patient investigation. 

Both Afrofuturism and Sankofa call for us to be seers of the true past, to bear witness in the present, and imagine the future. As Black women leading in media and journalism, we understand that this is what makes our work spiritual. We are the storytellers and makers of the narratives that shape our peoples’ and the world’s understanding of past, present, and possible futures. Together, we get to ask what we need individually and collectively to hold that work and space as we drive toward a more liberated and just world.

We invited Wendi C. Thomas, founder, editor and publisher of MLK50, into the conversation to share her view as a participant and co-creator of the Lorde Society.

Lucero: Wendi, what has being a participant in the Lorde Society meant to — and done for — you? In practice, what has it looked and felt like over the course of the year?

Thomas: Being a part of the Lorde Society is like being a part of a professional sisterhood. It is a resource, a backstop, and a place to pour into and to be refreshed. Trying to create the kind of journalism ecosystem our communities deserve calls for a unique sort of perseverance and fortitude. We are trailblazers in our own ways, yet there are no professional associations for us. The Lorde Society is becoming that nurturing space, but just as our individual organizations need substantial support to grow and blossom, so does the space that will enable us to continue the work.

“We are trailblazers in our own ways, yet there are no professional associations for us. The Lorde Society is becoming that nurturing space, but just as our individual organizations need substantial support to grow and blossom, so does the space that will enable us to continue the work”

– Wendi C. Thomas

We then invited Candice Fortman, executive director of Outlier Media, into the conversation to also contribute insight as a participant and co-creator of the Lorde Society.

Lucero: Candice, what have you learned and gained, specifically from being in a non-hierarchical, peer learning space? What do you think the wider journalism industry could learn from this approach?

Fortman: When everyone walks into space as peers — who are equally aware of what they don’t know, but joyfully and respectfully ready to share what they have mastered through their work — it opens up a space for trust and vulnerability. You don’t have to have it all figured out with this group. In fact, everyone is ready to help you find resources to face your challenges head-on without the fear of unnecessary competition or one-upmanship. Many of us are serving communities with unique challenges, but also incredible opportunities. The innovations used by those in the Lorde Society to connect to their communities and resource their work should be watched closely as we continue as an industry, to work toward building better relationships with the people we serve and resilient organizations.

Lucero: Cierra, what has emerged from being in community together over the past year? What have you seen is needed for newsroom leaders at different stages of their organizational development?

Hinton: This community has reinforced so much of what we as Black women and femmes in leadership know, including what it means to show up wholly and authentically with one another, the importance of believing in the abundance of the Universe, and how to pour, expecting nothing in return and yet remaining open to receiving everything. 

More tangibly, we’ve learned that peer relationships and community, financial support, and executive coaching are the things that are most needed for newsroom leaders in The Lorde Society regardless of the stages of their organizational development.

Additionally, we see that organizations in start-up mode need support developing a strategy, sharing their public narrative, and securing a level of funding support that allows them to securely execute and spur growth.

Organizations in growth mode need support with developing team culture and coaching others, building sustainable organizational infrastructure, and securing a level of funding support that allows them to securely scale. 

Mature organizations need support with succession planning in addition to continuing to manage the same challenges that leaders whose organizations are in growth mode are managing. 

There is also a lot of learning in our differences. Even though we share the identity of Black women, the community is intergenerational. Folks in our space have been in leadership for varying amounts of time, we come from different parts of the country and are engaging different communities, and we run different types of news organizations. Together, we help each other navigate the more mundane challenges of leadership like questions around policies, operations, and team culture, but also the more spectacular opportunities of leadership like how we develop career pipelines for people like us and what it looks like to invest in our individual development and growth in support of us showing up for others. From “How do I get healthcare for my team as we grow?” to “How did we navigate COVID-19 as Black news providers serving Black communities?”we grappled with it all. 

“The innovations used by those in the Lorde Society to connect to their communities and resource their work should be watched closely as we continue as an industry, to work toward building better relationships with the people we serve and resilient organizations.”

– Candice Fortman

Lucero: What’s the ultimate dream? In five or 10 years time, what could look different for Black women and femme leaders in journalism?

Hinton: I hope we have tapped into our collective genius and power in a meaningful, transformative way that yields real outcomes for us as individuals, for our organizations, for the media ecosystem, and most importantly for the communities we serve. Being in leadership can be such an isolating experience, but it doesn’t have to be and that becomes even more true when you’re in relationship with folks that share your values and vision for a more just future. 

If we can make that happen there will be more Black women and femme leaders in journalism, and they will feel seen, supported, and valued. Most importantly, they will be able to do something many of us have yet to be able to do: show up fully and unapologetically in our leadership.