Cracks is where the journalism industry thinks out loud about what it needs to become.
The business models that actually work for independent newsrooms. What AI means for journalists outside the major Western outlets. How solutions journalism gets implemented in practice. What digital strategy looks like beyond Silicon Valley assumptions. And why the profession’s foundational habits — about objectivity, whose voices count, and what a story even is — need rethinking.
Think Nieman Lab, but built from a Global Majority perspective. Critical and practical.
Cracks is the praxis space of Inclusive Journalism: not just theorizing better journalism, but practicing it. It is a lab where ideas are tested, methods are made visible, and better practices are highlighted. We publish our own experiments and collaborate with journalists and newsrooms doing the work. We develop journalism in the open — learning by doing and learning from others.
The premises of inclusive journalism are:
- A decolonial lens
- A constructive approach
- Well-being as the foundation/core
1. A decolonial lens
The journalism profession as we know it developed alongside modern nation-states. Anglo-American and Eurocentric narratives still dominate global media, although journalism itself is not a Western invention. The modern press was shaped by Enlightenment values and grew in close interaction with colonial empires.
Colonial information systems positioned Europe as the seeing subject and colonized peoples as the seen: the “others.” Observation, categorization, and distance became journalistic habits. Over time, this hierarchy of knowledge became normalized.
The modern press also developed alongside advertising, mass literacy, and the formation of nation-states. From the beginning, it was tied to markets and power.
Decolonial thinkers such as Aníbal Quijano, Walter Mignolo, and Rolando Vázquez argue that modernity and coloniality cannot be separated. The same system that produced what we call “progress” also created lasting hierarchies of race, geography, gender, and knowledge, what Quijano described as the colonial matrix of power.
We still see this today in journalism: Eurocentric standards of expertise, state and institutional sources treated as primary authorities instead of local voices and lived experience, event-driven reporting instead of systemic analysis, both-sideism in unequal conflicts, and story extraction.
A decolonial lens creates cracks in that foundation. It asks questions about positionality: who speaks? From where? With what at stake? It puts justice at the core: accountability, rights, and reparation. It uses care as a method: trauma-informed reporting, source safety, harm reduction. It reports with communities instead of about them. It shifts from owning stories to owing them: journalism accountable to people.
2. A constructive approach
Neoliberal media systems intensified journalism’s market logic: ownership concentration, performance metrics, and the attention economy. Negativity became structural. As Solutions Journalism co-founder Tina Rosenberg notes, journalism has long defined itself as “bad news.”
Within this model, clickbait wins over depth. Isolated events are preferred over systemic reporting. Official statements outweigh local voices. Outrage is amplified. The result is helplessness instead of agency.
Constructive journalism practices, such as solutions journalism and complicating the narrative, shift this frame.
By focusing on HOW things are done, not only WHAT is wrong, journalism can open pathways to different realities. The methods focus on root causes, evidence-based responses, what works and what doesn’t, follow-up reporting, systemic context, and historical and geographical grounding. It’s not activism. It applies journalistic standards. It simply widens the lens of what journalism has become.
3. Well-being as a foundation
Legacy newsroom habits — speed, incident-focus, neutrality, short timelines — are still treated as professionalism, while journalists burn out.
The myth of neutrality often mutes violent histories and power imbalances. Black Lives Matter, Gaza, and many other conflicts have exposed the limits of objectivity.
Centering well-being means rethinking journalism ethics. Credibility should come from transparency: transparency about methods, funding, and source selection; transparency about what is unknown or left out. Well-being also means aftercare for reporters and communities, and pacing publication (“slow journalism”).
Well-being also means connecting topics more holistically. Environmental devastation belongs inside the evidence record of conflict. Indigenous and locally rooted knowledge are forms of expertise that can be integrated into rigorous reporting. Lived experience matters alongside data.
Restructuring journalism around well-being requires alternative business models, different leadership models, more time for reporting, and real community participation. Publication is not the end point; it is the start of engagement.
Cracks also works with organizations that want to apply these practices. We offer workshops, research, and editorial consulting. If you want to work with us, reach out to sanne [at] inclusivejournalism [dot] com.
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