I started off the year in New York City as a fellow in the Sulzberger Executive Leadership program at Columbia University. It was an intensive two-week sprint working alongside brilliant news leaders from around the world charged with shaping "the future of journalism and, therefore, the future of democracy." Let's just say that's still a work in progress.

In March, we published the first installment in a series by Reckon and Next City examining how Black communities across the U.S. are working to hold corporations accountable for environmental injustices. From Chris Harress, Reckon's environmental reporter and writer of The Meltdown newsletter, the piece examined a community in South Alabama known as Africatown, established by formerly enslaved people, and new industrial pollution threats.

As the semester drew to a close, college students protested Israel's war in Gaza and the United State's involvement, Reckon explored the dimensions of these protests, including at Columbia. The war and killing of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians would become a defining issue of the presidential election, and will likely be a defining issue of our time.

A couple of years ago, a friend connected me to a journalist working on a book and looking for potential subjects in Mississippi. That book would be published in May and titled The White Bonus. In it, the author, Tracie McMillan, gets us out of the woo-woo territory of white privilege and gets down to brass tacks, arguing that there is a minimum cash value of just being white in America. I was excited to interview her about the book in this Q & A published in May.

This summer, Reckon's Black Joy team published the first installment in a series about Maryland's Catoctin Iron Furnace and a once-forgotten burial place of enslaved Black folks. "Almost fifty years after rediscovering these remains, a growing coalition of historians, biological anthropologists, archeologists, and geneticists are using today’s DNA analysis technology to study the legacy of enslavement and connect with their possible descendants," wrote Black Joy's MacKenzie Foy. You'll also want to read this Catoctin story from Danielle Buckingham, where she stresses the "tradition of oral storytelling has played a crucial role in the preservation of Black history, especially regarding the experiences of our enslaved ancestors."

Also this summer, it was a joy to launch Reckon True Stories, a new podcast hosted by acclaimed authors and play cousins Deesha Philyaw (The Secret Lives of Church Ladies) and Kiese Laymon (Heavy, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, Long Division), in collaboration with Ursa Story Co. The show focused on essays and journalism — the stories we tell and how they impact our culture and guests included my colleague Minda Honey, editor of Black Joy by Reckon and author of The Heartbreak Years, Roxane Gay, Samantha Irby, Imani Perry and Alexander Chee. Kiese and Deesha are also cooking up some projects that I can't wait to drop.

I have fond memories of attending exercise classes with my mother on the campus of Washington University. At the time, Richard Simmons was the King of Cardio, his influence seen everywhere in the 1980s. Writing for Reckon, Denny probed Simmons' origins growing up gay in the South and the heartache that always lingered beneath the surface of the fitness icon's buoyant and sparkly exterior.

Of course we love Beyoncé, but Black Joy's founder and reporter used the success of Bey's Cowboy Carter to highlight Black cowboy and cowgirl culture to which the album represents homage. "The publicity is beautiful, she said. But she wants to make sure the appreciation is authentic," said Margey Givings, a cowgirl Starr interviewed.

When Vice President Kamala Harris electrified the base of the Democratic Party by becoming its nominee for president, all eyes turned to Chicago, which hosted the party's convention. Annabel Rocha, who covers reproductive justice and family issues and is based in the Windy City, covered the convention, producing daily reports about generational shifts among the delegates, the growing presence of the Uncommitted movement and issues of concern to Gen Z voters.
Annabel, working with creative strategist Abbey Crain, also wrote a great piece about the future of IVF treatments for Alabama families. Separately, Abbey also wrote a powerful essay published in Reckon and on AL.com about her IVF journey and frustrations with politicians in her home state of Alabama.

There was perhaps no uglier a time in the election than when the standard bearers for the Republican Party spread vile rumors and lies about hardworking immigrants from Haiti. It touched off an anti-immigrant firestorm in Ohio and here in Alabama. I was happy to do some myth busting about Haitian-Americans in this newsletter and for Reckon.