Carla Murphy

Carla Murphy is an assistant professor in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media at Rutgers University-Newark. She is a former social justice journalist with nearly 20 years of experience as a features writer and long-form investigative reporter and editor. Her reportage, essays and opinion writing have appeared in Colorlines, The Nation, Dissent, Christian Science Monitor, The Daily Beast, The American Prospect, Talking Points Memo, Women’s eNews, and local news outlets. As a media researcher, Murphy designed and produced Leavers: a survey of 101 former journalists of color. As a member of News Futures, a national coalition of proof-of-concept newsrooms, she advocates for journalism by, for, and with low wealth and/or communities of color—not about them for other audiences. She holds an MSc in Gender and International Development from the London School of Economics and an MA in Journalism from the CUNY-Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. She is working on a book about migration, storytelling and becoming an American, now.

Publications:

• Author, “NABJ and the Black Press”, Sep 2024 (forthcoming)

• Author, “Multiple mainstreams,” Dissent, Summer 2021

• Project manager, survey design + author, public microsite, Leavers: a survey of 101 former journalists of color, OpenNews.org, NII Newmark, Aug 2020

Media Appearances/Speaking Engagements:

• Plenary speaker, “Podcasts and Pages: Telling Diverse Working Class Stories for the People,” Working Class Studies Association (WCSA) 2024 conference Jun 2024

• Panelist, “Reimagining Journalism Education” preconference, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) conference, Washington, DC, Aug 2023

• Panelist, “Documentary screening: Black in the Newsroom,” Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University, Feb 2023

Accomplishments:

• Senior reporter at Colorlines.com, the pioneering racial justice news site

• Producer, researcher and designer of Leavers: a survey of 101 former journalists of color and correlating public microsite

• Co-convener and architect of first-ever Reimagine Journalism for Our Communities conference, 2021

Upcoming Projects:

• Writing a book/memoir about migration, storytelling and becoming an American, now.

• Bringing 'Digital Media Literacy' core course to RU-N undergraduate students

• Helping to build out a publishing wing to support the growth of civic media/community-responsive journalism in the U.S.

Race and class inequity are features, not a bug, of both the journalism industry and journalism education, which has become the standard pipeline for entering the field. These realities worsened with the collapse of commercial journalism in the U.S. The nation is ill-prepared for a multiracial pluralist society if quality, verified journalism is produced for or only accessible to majority white mainstream audiences because they pay. Therefore, my work and roles support journalism that is produced for, with or by low wealth and/or communities of color—not about them for other audiences. To that end, I support expanding the public funding of local journalism. The enjoyment of equal citizenship looks like low wealth and/or communities having consistent, affordable access to quality, verified information that centers their place-based information needs and questions.