"I spend a lot of time in Haitian and immigrant communities across the United States. In Brooklyn, Miami, Chicago, and the Midwest, I keep seeing the same thing: the people keeping their communities informed aren't reporters. They're the pastor who delivers immigration updates before the sermon. The barber who streams local politics on Facebook Live. The neighbor who translates every school notice and distributes it through five different group chats. The teacher who explains American bureaucracy to families who arrived last week."
"For years, local newsrooms have debated how to "engage audiences." Meanwhile, immigrant communities have treated information as a survival system. I've watched families gather after long shifts to collectively decipher government letters. I've seen multilingual WhatsApp threads get crucial facts out hours before official channels. I've watched regular people become translators, navigators, and explainers - not out of civic theory, but because someone needed help and"
By 2026, community members outside formal newsrooms will increasingly shape local information flows and perform essential journalistic functions without using the label "journalism." Pastors, barbers, neighbors, teachers, and WhatsApp moderators act as translators, explainers, rumor-control operators, and news distributors, often reaching audiences faster and more accessibly than official channels. Immigrant communities treat information as a survival system, organizing to decode government notices and share multilingual, time-sensitive updates. Traditional local newsrooms have focused on audience engagement while overlooking these organic systems. Recognition and support of these grassroots information networks will reshape how communities stay informed.
Read at Nieman Lab
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