A musician, writer and communicator with over a decade of experience, Collette builds partnerships and imaginaries grounded in realizing justice, healing and liberation. As a member of the Free Press executive team, she helps guide narrative change, community partnerships and strategic communications, working with artists, media-makers, creatives and advocates to shift power toward a just future media system. Before joining Free Press, Collette worked at Black Alliance for Just Immigration and in the New York Office of J. Walter Thompson advertising company. Her podcast Venus Clapback has been featured on Oprah Winfrey Network, and her writings have been published by Colorlines, Human Parts, Blavity and more. A proud native of Gullah country, South Carolina, Collette is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, a graduate of Howard University's Cathy Hughes School of Communications and a co-creator of the Media 2070: Media Reparations consortium.
Expert Analysis
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This October marks two years since the founding of Media 2070: The Media Reparations Project. Here’s what the journey has looked like so far this year.
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The Media 2070 project is exploring how narrative justice could take us to a future where Black folks control the creation and distribution of our own stories.
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Donald Trump is once again using Twitter to incite anti-Black hate. If Twitter really cares about Black lives, it must turn off his microphone.
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How do journalists tell the story of this time? By speaking truth to power. And the story of COVID-19 is dangerously incomplete without an analysis of racial justice.
News
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“Media 2070 has been working to highlight examples of the media system’s long history of anti-Black harm as well as ideas for repair,” said Media 2070 Project Director Collette Watson.
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Broadcast jobs “want you to sound like Walter Cronkite, but in a Black female body,” says one news anchor.
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Free Press’ Collette Watson discusses how Black journalists are devalued and underpaid.
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Media 2070, an advocacy project committed to building equitable newsrooms, is releasing its award-winning documentary, Black in the Newsroom, to the public on Mon., April 3.
Stories
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The film centers on a talented journalist who grappled with systemic racism and low pay at a major U.S. newsroom.
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Malkia-Devich Cyril and Joseph Torres gathered to unpack how the dominant media system harms Black lives — and considered the repair that might be possible.
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A Change the Terms webinar explored the abuses that activists, people of color and other vulnerable communities have endured as the result of trolling campaigns.
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A group of Free Press staffers attended the Facing Race conference “to listen, to be in community, to strengthen relationships with our allies who are doing racial-justice work.”
