Akintunde Ahmad
Columbia Journalism Review
Oakland, CA, United States
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Past articles by Akintunde:
The long road to diversifying PBS
In fall 2020, Grace Lee, a Peabody award-winning filmmaker, wrote an essay criticizing PBS for its overreliance on filmmaker Ken Burns and its marketing of him as “America’s storyteller,” while reminding readers that PBS and CPB were originally created to develop and distribute “a diversity of programming dependent on freedom, imagination and initiative on both […] → Read More
Michael Tubbs—the former mayor of Stockton, California—on racism and disinformation
Last year, Michael Tubbs was the focus of an HBO documentary, Stockton on My Mind, that followed his experience trying to reinvent the Central Valley, California, city as its first Black mayor. Within a few months, however—and with his campaign for reelection coming up—Tubbs found himself subjected to a targeted disinformation effort from a fake-news […] → Read More
Michael Tubbs on disinformation, racism, and news deserts
In 2017, Michael Tubbs made history as the youngest and first Black mayor of Stockton, California, home to some three hundred thousand people and considered the most diverse city in America. A graduate of Stanford University, Tubbs began his political career on the city council of Stockton, his hometown; during his mayoral campaign, he received […] → Read More
Stories Worth Sharing
Driving across the Bay Bridge from the San Francisco airport to my childhood home, in East Oakland, I can see cranes moving cargo containers. I get on the 580 freeway, which divides the city. To the west are the Oakland Hills, where the wealthy live; to the east are the flats, home to the working […] → Read More
Saheed Vassell and the forgotten victims of police brutality
On April 4th, 2019, around 4pm, a crowd gathered on the corner of Utica Avenue and Montgomery Street in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. The weather was sunny and warm. The group had come for a memorial event: a year earlier, Saheed Vassell, a thirty-four-year-old Black man, had been shot and killed by a […] → Read More
The sports press without the sports
For sports fans like myself, the absence of March Madness, combined with the loss of professional basketball and baseball seasons, has left a void. Who will be crowned the winner of our fantasy leagues? Will I get a refund on my NBA tickets? What conflicts will I have left to follow within the relatively safe […] → Read More
The Fox News Spin Zone
In the aftermath of August’s mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, right-wing politicians placed the blame not on guns, but on mental illness and video games. Yet research by the American Psychiatric Association refutes such claims, and video games have never been tied to violent crime in any scientific study. A CJR review found […] → Read More
Why journalists need to think twice about reporting on arrests
Last month, Out of Omaha, a documentary that follows twin brothers Darcell and Darrell Trotter through eight years of their lives, made its broadcast debut. The film shows how the two mature into young adults as they face economic hardships, emotional turmoil, and the criminal justice system. In 2012, the filmmakers show, the brothers were […] → Read More
Photojournalists’ last shots
Over the weekend, at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn Bridge Park, Maria Salazar Ferro, director of the emergencies department at the Committee to Protect Journalists, walked through a series of final memories. CPJ, in collaboration with United Photo Industries, had put on a “Journalists Under Fire” exhibit as part of the park’s annual Photoville festival. […] → Read More
When I Learned Growing Up With Violence Wasn't Normal
Everybody in Oakland had been exposed to violence. Everybody thought that the way we lived was normal. → Read More