‘Breaking The News’ Shows How An Upstart Women-Run News Organization Is Disrupting American Journalism – For The Love Of Docs

Most Americans have heard of Breonna Taylor, the young African American woman killed in her home in Louisville, Kentucky in 2020 in a botched police raid. News of her tragic shooting helped spur the Black Lives Matter movement and a societal reckoning with institutionalized racism. But were it not for a news organization known as The 19^th*, Taylor and her case might never have been known outside of Louisville.

The 19^th*, which describes itself as an “independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy,” made Taylor a national news story when other big players in the space weren’t paying attention. The emergence of the journalism nonprofit is told in the documentary Breaking the News, which played as part of Deadline’s virtual event series For the Love of Docs.

Its nonprofit status isn’t the only thing unusual about The 19^th*. It was founded by women and the staff is predominantly made up of women and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

“I think what intrigued me about following The 19^th* was there was this diverse group of women and LGBTQ+ folk who were in the throes of really changing mainstream news,” co-director Chelsea Hernandez said during a panel discussion after the screening. “For me, that was really exciting.”

Hernandez and her fellow directors Heather Courtney and Princess A. Hairston all have journalism backgrounds. Their film explores the way The 19^th* has upended who controls decisions in newsrooms.

“I do think [The 19^th* co-founder] Emily [Ramshaw] says it best in the film: When you have white, mostly male editors, they’re the ones deciding what stories are being covered and how they’re being covered, if they’re going to be on the front page, or any page at all,” Courtney noted. “And that does affect the news coverage because we have blind spots, privileged white people have blind spots. And that’s what’s so incredible about what The 19^th* is doing is not only building a diverse team, but then encouraging that team to bring their own lived experience to their reporting. And you can see it in their stories. They’re much different and from much different angles than mainstream news coverage.”

Nine in 10 startups fail, according to Forbes magazine, which wrote, “This is a hard and bleak truth.” Breaking the News documents the growing pains of The 19^th* and how the Covid pandemic complicated what under even the best of circumstances would have been a challenging launch.

“Those first few months when I was recording [The 19^th*] Zoom meetings, it was looking very bleak. Yes, it was looking very, very bleak, and I didn’t know what was going to happen, and they didn’t know. And Emily [Ramshaw] was very honest with the staff that she didn’t know what was going to happen,” Courtney recalled. “I would say maybe three months or so into the pandemic, they did manage to start getting some big dollar donations and grants and things, and it was enough to start hiring reporters. But the first few months, yes, it was very tenuous.”

The 19thnews.org website notes what you won’t find on the site: “Cheap shots or cheerleading. Opinion or false equivalency. Partisanship. Horse-race politics.” In a statement of its values, the organization says, “Our reporting will be rooted in facts, data, evidence and excellence.”

As the 2024 presidential election approaches, The 19^th*’s mission – to provide smart, in-depth reporting that avoids “both sides-ism” and horse-race reporting — is especially needed, the filmmakers note.

“Right now, it’s even more critical to see the stories about issues that affect just voters in general,” Hernandez said. “The 19th*, they’re reporting to make sure to give people the tools so that they can be part of democracy, to know where they can vote or where voter suppression is happening and what to do. And so I think their reporting is even more needed at this time.”

Watch the full conversation in the video above.

For the Love of Docs is a virtual Deadline event series sponsored by National Geographic in partnership with the International Documentary Association (IDA). The series continues with a new film screening each Tuesday through December 12. Next up, on November 28, is Beyond Utopia, directed by Madeleine Gavin.