Upon getting the job at the Amsterdam News, Report for America corps member Shannon Chaffers found a family connection to the storied newspaper.
“My grandmother and my grandfather are both from New York and my grandmother’s from Harlem,” Chaffers says. “Apparently, they used to get the Amsterdam News delivered to their apartment, according to my mom.”
“So that was a cool connection that I think gives me a little bit of a connection to the paper.”
Chaffers is deepening that connection as she joins the Amsterdam News’ Blacklight investigative team as its first gun violence reporter. A Massachusetts native, Princeton graduate, and Fulbright scholar, Shannon brings a passion for racial justice reporting to the burgeoning team.
“We are thrilled to have Shannon join The Blacklight and Amsterdam News family,” said The Blacklight’s founding editor Damaso Reyes. “She will add important reporting capacity to our Beyond the Barrel of the Gun reporting initiative and help us better serve our community by highlighting solutions to gun violence.”
Born and raised in the Wellsley suburb of Boston, she graduated from Princeton University in 2022 with a degree in sociology and certificates in journalism, African American studies and German. Her passion for journalism began in high school when she joined her school’s paper.
“When I was little, I would be writing stories with my twin sister and we just love[d] exploring the world, and writing about it in various ways,” Chaffers said. Joining her high school newspaper set her on the path to becoming a journalist. “Journalism is a cool way to combine my love of writing, and my general curiosity about the world,” she added.
She later sought out journalism classes at Princeton and joined the university paper, writing for and eventually editing the opinion section, an experience that she said helped her develop her voice and learn how to make a convincing argument. Her first journalism course was an investigative journalism class.
“That was my first introduction to… a different kind of journalism than I was used to,” she said. “It was inspiring to see that this was a type of journalism that I wanted to do.”
She recalls when then-Washington Post investigative reporter Kimbriell Kelly visited her class and talked about her project “Murder with Impunity.” With that project, Kelly was trying to expose how homicides, especially in Black communities, were going unsolved in Washington, D.C. Kelly’s work and the class propelled Chaffers to dive into local issues impacting people of color in New Jersey.
The combination of Amsterdam News’ legacy of unabashed and intrepid reporting, the mission driving The Blacklight, the paper’s new investigative unit, and Beyond the Barrel of the Gun, a three-year endeavor by the Amsterdam News to report deeply on the root causes, impacts and solutions for gun violence, caught Chaffers’ attention and got her really excited about the role.
“I think that’s a really important approach,” she said. “Coming from more of an opinion background, I had some issues with the objectivity framework, which I think became nationally apparent, like during the Black Lives Matter protests.”
“But I think if you start from an approach of, we know this is an issue that deserves attention, then I think, as long as you’re doing fact-based and data-backed articles… it’s stillworthy journalism. And I think the paper understands that,” she added.
Shannon will join an all-Black, multi-generational investigative team, an environment she said she’s looking forward to growing in. Coming fresh from her Fulbright research residency in Berlin, Germany, she said that she got “a global perspective” on the issue of gun violence and the importance of linking the history and root causes of the issue in the U.S. into her work.
As the first gun violence reporter for the team, Chaffers said she’s passionate about the contributing factors that impact gun violence, from criminal justice and gun control to housing inequality.
“I’m definitely interested in all aspects of the beat, from looking at the root causes to the impacts,” she explained. “And then also solutions, I think [are] really important too.”
When she’s not reporting,Chaffers hopes to find a soccer league to join in the city. Aside from being a huge Arsenal fan (“That should be in the piece,” she said), Shannon enjoys visiting museums and perusing through bookstores, hitting up the science fiction and narrative nonfiction sections to see what catches her eye.
If you would like to support Shannon’s work, please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting bit.ly/amnews1.
—
Follow The Blacklight and Amsterdam News on Twitter and subscribe to our newsletter, Editorially Black, to keep up with our reporting.