Friend,

Free Press turns 20 this week — marking two decades of our fight to transform our media system. Let’s celebrate!

As the co-CEO of Free Press — and someone who has been here for 19 of those years — I’ve been thinking a lot about the importance of sharing our history and telling our own story.

We know that when the history books are written, all too often the story ends up being what a public official said or how The Wall Street Journal framed an issue. The edges are dulled. The context is lost. The activists are erased. We lose the story of how change actually happened and who sparked it.

Over the next six months, my colleagues and I are going to use the Free Press blog to reclaim that history, revisit some of our biggest accomplishments, and tell the story of how Free Press has grown and changed over the past 20 years.

I kicked things off with a personal reflection on the past two decades filled with appreciation for the incredible work of my colleagues, past and present. Please read and share.

I was proud and nostalgic looking back on the major fights and our biggest wins, from giant media-ownership hearings and six National Conferences for Media Reform, to the Net Neutrality battles and billions for broadband, all the way to passing New Jersey’s Civic Info Bill and creating the Black Future Newsstand.

None of this would have happened without the generous support of people like you. Thank you.

The Free Press story

When I tell the story of Free Press, it’s easy to make a long list of victories. Or if you’re me, a long list of favorite protest chants. (“Whose street? Sesame Street!” … maybe you had to be there.)

The full Free Press story — the more interesting if longer and nuanced one — is one of transformation. It’s a story of an organization willing to experiment, move and change.

So many incredible people — far too many to list — have come through here and helped shape and reshape this organization. They have gone on to become leaders in government, political campaigns, and the labor and environmental movements (one of our interns even became a rock star). Plenty have stayed to keep building: It’s no small accomplishment to have a significant portion of our staff make this place their life’s work.

The past 10 years of our journey have been, in large part, about becoming a racial-justice organization. The majority of Free Press staff are now people of color, and racial justice is now intertwined with everything we do. That’s a transformation. And it’s part of what gets me so excited — even in the face of so many real-world challenges — about what the next 10 or 20 years will bring.

The journey ahead

At Free Press, we are committed to transforming the media to realize a just society, to building an enduring multiracial democracy in this country and to being an organization that lives up to those values.

In the years ahead, we’ll be working to create new indelible moments, those sparks and flashpoints that awaken people — more people each and every day — to new possibilities.

Media and technology aren’t just something that happen to us. We can reclaim, reform, reimagine and recreate them to improve our lives, represent all of us, help instead of harm.

More than ever, I believe in the ideas that animated Free Press from the start: If you change the media, you can change the world.

I can’t wait to see what happens next.

You can read more about Free Press’ amazing history. Thank you so much for being part of it.

Onward,

Craig
freepress.net

P.S. We’re not just looking back — we’re already making moves toward the future we’re dreaming of. Help Free Press keep fighting for the next 20 years: Donate today. Thanks!