The Real News Network (TRNN) is honored to be one of the 2025 recipients of the Izzy Award, recognizing “outstanding achievement[s] in independent journalism/independent media,” for our on-the-ground documentary report, “Trainwreck in ‘Trump Country’: Partisan politics hasn’t helped East Palestine, OH,” directed by Mike Balonek. On behalf of TRNN and our entire team of grassroots journalists and movement media makers, I am beyond grateful and humbled to accept this prestigious award. I am equally honored to share this award with journalist Steve Mellon of Pittsburgh Union Progress, who co-hosted the report with me, and who has done more in-depth, consistent, and humane coverage of the East Palestine train derailment and chemical disaster than anyone else in the country—all while he and his colleagues have been on strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette since October 2022. TRNN continues to stand in full solidarity with our striking colleagues, we condemn the illegal strike-breaking and union-busting actions of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s owners, and we call on our fellow media organizations to do the same. 

I am admittedly apprehensive about accepting an award for our coverage on this catastrophic and preventable tragedy when people living in and around East Palestine have had their lives upended and are still going through hell. Chris Albright, the resident who spoke to me and Steve Mellon in this documentary report while we sat in his dining room, was just hospitalized again and spent the past weekend in critical care due to heart-related issues caused by the derailment. Some people we spoke to while filming in East Palestine last year have since had to move and leave everything behind to save their and their family’s health, becoming refugees from their own hometowns. 

“Nothing has changed,” Ashley McCollom, a displaced East Palestine resident, told me in February. “It feels like the town is basically the same, the reactions, the uncomfortable feeling, the stress… you can clearly smell something’s not right.” I would like to take the opportunity of this award announcement to reiterate the same plea I’ve been making for two years: Please don’t forget about East Palestine. Don’t look away, don’t give up on these people, as so many politicians, pundits, and unaffected members of the public have. They are working people just like you and me, they are our neighbors, and they desperately need help. Please, I beg you, help them. And one way you can help right now is by watching, listening to, and sharing their stories with everyone you can. You can also listen to what residents have already explicitly demanded, which neither the Biden nor Trump administration has given. 

None of these residents did anything to deserve this nightmare, they did not cause it, yet they are the ones paying the unimaginable price for the corporate greed and government negligence that did. And it’s not just the chemically poisoned residents living in and around East Palestine. As we have shown in our extensive, ongoing coverage of and interviews with working-class residents living, working, and fighting for justice in America’s “sacrifice zones”—from communities throughout South Baltimore that have been poisoned for generations by rail giant CSX Transportation and dozens of other toxic polluters concentrated in their part of the city, to residents in Western North Carolina, whose lives and towns were devastated by Hurricane Helene, to residents living near Conyers, GA, who have been affected by the nightmare-inducing chemical fire at the BioLab facility in September, to so many other communities—this life-destroying scourge is coming for all of us. And it’s going to need to be us, the ones in the path of all this reckless and preventable destruction—working people, fighting as one—who are going to stop them.

We at TRNN accept this award proudly as recognition of our dedication to the people of East Palestine, to our neighbors and fellow workers at the center of these all-too-frequent national tragedies, and to the work of lifting up their voices and reporting on their stories truthfully, transparently, and fearlessly. But these stories are not over, and the work is not done until people get justice, until the corporate monsters, corporate politicians, and Wall Street vampires poisoning our communities are stopped and held accountable for their crimes. And you have a role to play in shaping that outcome—we all do. What happens next depends on what you and others do about it, how you turn the information and perspectives we provide through our journalism, and the connections we facilitate on our platforms, into action. 

That is our team’s stubbornly held belief and the shared mission we embody in all the work we do, from our on-the-ground documentary reporting around the world to the investigative, grassroots journalism and human-centered storytelling we produce regularly on Police Accountability Report, The Marc Steiner Show, Rattling the Bars, Inequality Watch, Working People, Edge of Sports TV, Solidarity Without Exception, Stories of Resistance, and more. We don’t give up on people when the news cycle has moved on, we don’t abandon critical stories just to chase clicks; we keep coming back, we keep listening, we keep reporting, we keep connecting people we meet through that reporting, and we keep doing everything we can to make media that empowers others to be and make the change they’re waiting for. Moreover, rather than see one another as competitors, we commit to collaborating with similarly mission-driven outlets—from Pittsburgh Union Progress to our partners in the Movement Media Alliance, of which TRNN is a founding member—to carry out our mission in the most impactful ways and to better serve and empower the public.  

At TRNN, we don’t just tell you about what’s happening in the world and expect you to simply react to it; we take you to the heart of the action where people are making change happen, and we encourage you to do something with it. No one can do everything, but everyone can do something. TRNN is journalism and human-centered storytelling for people who are doing something and for people who want to do something but don’t know where to start. It starts here, now, with you, with us. We are working to change the world, and that work is gruelling, expensive, and time-consuming, and we cannot do it without you.

 If you appreciate our award-winning journalism, then please become a supporter today. 

Thank you to the Park Center for Independent Media and to the award committee for honoring us with this Izzy Award. Thank you to all of our supporters who make our work possible, and thank you to everyone fighting wherever you are to make change and justice inevitable. Lastly, thank you to the people of East Palestine for opening your hearts and homes to us, and for trusting us to share your stories with the world—we won’t stop, and we won’t forget about you. 

For more information about how you can help the residents of East Palestine, OH, email us at contact@therealnews.com.

Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever, 
Maximillian Alvarez
Editor-in-Chief & Co-Executive Director, TRNN

As Editor-in-Chief of TRNN, this difficult decision was mine alone, and it was a decision I made after exhausting all options to avoid it. Chris Hedges needs to be free to be Chris Hedges, and he’s got to be free to say what’s in his heart without being restricted by working within a nonprofit newsroom. And I, ultimately, am the Editor-in-Chief of a nonprofit newsroom. I resolutely affirm that this decision had nothing to do with Chris’s excellent and important coverage on vital issues from Israel and the war on Gaza to the trial of Julian Assange—issues that matter deeply to our audience, our entire team, and our network of freelance contributors. We will continue our longstanding commitment to reporting on these and other stories, and we have no ill will whatsoever towards Chris Hedges, and we are so grateful for the time we got to work together. I am heartbroken to lose Chris as a colleague, but we remain comrades in the struggle for truth, justice, and life. I will forever cherish our conversations, our chess games between recordings, our camaraderie, and our friendship, and I can’t wait to see what this titan of journalism does next. 

With love and solidarity, 
Maximillian Alvarez
Editor-in-Chief, TRNN

The Real News Network and Just Media are partnering to launch a new fellowship program that empowers Baltimore writers that are passionate about reporting on criminal justice issues from their communities’ lived experiences. 

Baltimore, Maryland — June 28, 2022. The Baltimore Pipeline of Working and Emerging Reporters (P.O.W.E.R.) Fellowship, catalyzed by The Real News Network and Just Media, is a pilot program aimed at supporting emerging talent from communities most affected by mass incarceration and over-policing in Baltimore. The six-month fellowship provides up-and-coming journalists with media training and sustained mentorship to build critical investigative reporting skills that amplify stories grounded in their communities, expose broken systems, and challenge existing narratives about race and mass incarceration.

Baltimore spends more per capita on policing than every large city in the country. Despite ballooning police budgets, public safety has not improved. Worse still, the journalists reporting on these issues are often community outsiders that don’t reflect the diversity, values, or perspectives of Baltimoreans. Despite community advocates sounding the alarm about issues related to police violence and mass incarceration, and demanding decarceration, just reentry, harm reduction, and abolition, persistent structural barriers in media have prevented young writers, especially writers of color, from accessing the platforms and opportunities that allow them to tell stories from the frontlines of these fights and offer alternative solutions to unjust systems. 

Together, The Real News and Just Media Project will train and mentor the cohort. The Real News has deep experience providing critical reporting on policing and mass incarceration in Baltimore, as well as a digital broadcast studio that amplifies this reporting. Just Media has supported more than 40 writing fellows, over 90 percent Black and brown folks ages 18-24, from 27 cities across the country. 

Through this partnership, The Real News and Just Media will also give these aspiring journalists a chance to rethink journalistic objectivity without the assumption that their identities need to be buried to adequately cover the policing and prison landscape in this country. 

With planning currently underway, The Real News and Just Media are reaching out to both community and funding partners for their guidance and support in shaping this pilot program. Targeted recruitment of emerging journalists (18-24 years old) will begin later this summer and fellows will begin their work in Fall 2022.

According to The Real News Executive Director John Duda, “The kind of journalists covering policing and mass incarceration that Baltimore needs are exactly the kind of journalists the status quo is designed to exclude, because they come from the communities this carceral system harms the most. With P.O.W.E.R., we are flipping this script.”

Just Media’s past fellowship programs have had a meaningful impact on a growing network of young movement journalists. “I enjoyed being able to talk about something that is barely addressed,” a former Just Media fellow said. “I also loved interviewing people who are actually making a change within my community.”

“Young journalists of color need a space that encourages them to grow, learn, and expose the truth — and that’s exactly what we’re trying to build here,” said Clarissa Brooks, program director at Just Media. 

The program is actively seeking funds and supporters. A $250 donation hosts a fellow for one week of the program. A $1,000 donation hosts a fellow for one month. And a $5,000 donation secures a fellow’s complete six-month participation in the program. 

Learn more about Baltimore P.O.W.E.R. here.

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About Just Media

Just Media is a national hub telling a new story about justice—and supporting the next generation of storytellers. Our work revolves around two core strategies: Community-centered, impact-driven media: With our core fellowship program, we support young, emerging journalists to cover grassroots and electoral politics on these issues at local and national outlets. Grassroots communications: Just Media communications support and training to youth and community-based justice groups following a national needs assessment. We convene community-based dialogues to engage local organizers and decision-makers in our work. 

About The Real News Network

The Real News Network (TRNN) is a non-profit media organization that makes media connecting you to the movements, people, and perspectives that are advancing the cause of a more just, equal, and livable planet. TRNN highlights the voices and ideas not just of academics and pundits, but of the people on the frontlines of fights against injustice.

As a grassroots left media organization, The Real News Network has, up until now, been comparatively well-resourced financially, thanks to generous foundation support, as well as the support of our viewers and readers. Unfortunately, the financial realities of COVID-19 have changed our situation, making some very hard decisions necessary.

The leadership of The Real News was recently notified that due to the impact of the pandemic on investments behind our organization’s major foundation support, we were going to be facing a major and completely unexpected shortfall in our 2021 funding. Specifically, we were informed that we were to expect a drop from an annual amount of funding that was projected to be $3.3 million in 2020 to one that is just $1.5 million for 2021.

While The Real News also has meaningful and deeply appreciated financial support from many generous and committed viewers and readers, this cut to core funding meant that we had to act immediately in order to save as many jobs as we could. Our budget is overwhelmingly composed of expenses for staff salaries and benefits, so we had no choice but to make deep reductions in both union and non-union staff levels, and to do so fast enough to prevent even further cuts from becoming necessary.

We want to make it clear that we regret every single layoff we had to announce yesterday. None of the talented, creative, and dedicated workers at The Real News—journalists, hosts, studio technicians, producers, and others—who lost their jobs were laid off for any reason other than the massive and unexpected funding shortfall we were forced to address. We are committed to doing anything in our power to help the staff members affected by these layoffs find new employment, and to working with the staff union as we navigate this crisis.

We are also committed to supporting the staff whose jobs we have been able to save at The Real News, and to building back a more resilient base of financial support for our work together.

John Duda
Executive Director
The Real News Network

For Immediate Release
September 29, 2020
Media contact: Charles Lenchner, charles@therealnews.com  

Baltimore, MD The Real News Network (TRNN), an international nonprofit news project headquartered in Baltimore, today announced that Maximillian Alvarez, formerly an associate editor at The Chronicle Review, will serve as the new editor-in-chief for the organization. Additionally, TRNN announced the promotion of Lisa Snowden-McCray to managing editor and Baltimore editor.

TRNN’s mission is to center the stories and voices mainstream, for-profit media too often ignores or marginalizes, a mission that both Alvarez and Snowden-McCray have demonstrated an exceptional commitment to advancing. 

Alvarez’s work at The Chronicle Review has focused on giving a platform to the people—like service workers and contingent faculty—left out of most conversations around higher education. His work as the founder and host of the Working People Podcast, produced in cooperation with In These Times, also focuses on amplifying excluded voices, bringing the ideas, analysis, and aspirations of members of the working class into a conversation around the economy that rarely makes space for them. As editor-in-chief, Alvarez will lead and direct the editorial activities of TRNN. 

For Alvarez:

Traditionally, the lives, voices, struggles, dreams, and concerns of working people have been ignored, not only by the politicians we elect to serve us but by an elite media class that contributes daily to our collective disempowerment. They report on ‘politics’ like it’s a thing that only happens behind closed doors in D.C. or state capitals; they talk about stock prices and the bottom lines of corporations and their shareholders as if that’s the only part of ‘the economy’ that matters; they regularly regurgitate the talking points of warhawks and Wall Street, police departments and paid lobbyists. The rest of us, all the while, are treated as little more than idle spectators or mindless consumers, as if working people don’t have a stake in this world and what happens to it, as if working people don’t make the world itself run. But we have a chance to change that, to provide the media we all deserve; we have a chance to include and engage with the very people we’re trying to reach; we have a chance to provide a platform for those whose voices often go unheard among elite news media, and to report on the issues that matter to people, without being beholden to any corporate advertisers or political parties. I couldn’t be more excited to be taking this post at The Real News Network—and I couldn’t be more determined to face these fraught and fearful times head on—because they are doing that work, we are doing that work. We believe in this, and it shows in the work everyone at TRNN does and the commitment we all have. We need this kind of media now more than ever, and I’m fired the hell up to be making it with everyone at TRNN. Check us out—and join us!

Snowden-McCray, who will serve as managing editor and Baltimore editor, brings years of experience as a journalist and editor with Baltimore City Paper, the Baltimore Sun, as well as The Baltimore Beat, an alt-weekly she co-founded. TRNN’s physical footprint in Baltimore gives the organization both a unique perspective on national and international news and a unique set of responsibilities for critical, engaged, place-based local journalism, and Snowden-McCray’s deep experience covering the city will continue to be vital for TRNN’s local journalism as she moves into this expanded leadership role. For Snowden-McCray, “Baltimore is ground zero for so many of the battles we are fighting, including struggles over civil rights, housing, climate justice, and more. I’m honored and excited to be able to continue my work telling these stories.”

TRNN Executive Director John Duda said: “I am thrilled about the new leadership team here—in these dangerous times, independent, critical media committed to telling stories that advance racial and economic justice is more important than ever. Having Maximillian and Lisa on board to drive our coverage will be a crucial part of how we are delivering on that mission.” 

TRNN is viewer and reader supported, funded entirely by donations from its audience and through other philanthropic support.

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We are thrilled to announce that Knight Foundation has selected the Real News as a recipient of funding for a new publishing platform. We’re excited to see how our new platform helps amplify our work telling the stories that matter. You can see the official Press Release by clicking the link below.

Knight Foundation Grant Press Release

The Real News Network announces the appointment of John Duda as Executive Director– The Board of Directors of The Real News Network (TRNN) announced today that, after a national search, John Duda has agreed to serve as the Executive Director of this progressive, non-profit online news organization. ­

The appointment was announced by TRNN Co-chairs Robert Lang and Baruti Kopano: “On behalf of the board, we are delighted to welcome John to lead our talented and dedicated team through the next crucial phase in the evolution of The Real News. He will work closely with a new Editor in Chief, to be named over the coming months, to ensure The Real News continues to develop as a trusted source for progressive online news and analysis.”

Duda joins TRNN after nine years at The Democracy Collaborative, an international research institute working to develop practical models for a post-capitalist economy, where he served as Director of Communications. “I am excited and honored to be taking the helm at The Real News, especially at a time when independent media is more important than ever,” Duda said. “Even before COVID-19 struck, we had right-wing authoritarianism on the rise, communities of color under attack, climate catastrophe at our doorstep, and an economic system programmed to continue concentrating wealth and deepening inequality. We need strong platforms for journalism and analysis like The Real News, designed from the ground up to amplify the voices and perspectives you won’t hear in the corporate media.”

Duda holds a PhD in Intellectual History from Johns Hopkins University for his work on the intersections of radical social movements, digital media makers, and the sciences of complexity and self-organization, is a founding worker-owner at Red Emma’s, Baltimore’s largest worker cooperative, and has written extensively on left organizing and economic alternatives.

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The Real News Network is a non-profit, viewer-supported news and analysis service. TRNN is sustained by viewer donations and foundation support.

The mission of The Real News Network is to engage viewers in solving the critical problems of our times. We speak truth about power and identify common struggles and historical trends, acknowledging the role of racism and class struggle in the issues we cover. We believe that only a non-profit, viewer-supported model can produce the uncompromising and relevant journalism that we need.

The Real News Network announces the appointment of John Duda as Executive Director (PDF)

Executive Director- liv.jobs/TRNNED
Editor in Chief- liv.jobs/TRNNEC

Co-founders, Paul Jay and Sharmini Peries are in conversations with the TRNN Board about finalizing the terms of their departure.

Dear TRNN Family,

Since the launch of the new website we have received some very thoughtful feedback from our supporters, the most notable of which relates to missing membership features such as a personal login portal, saved videos and download links.

In preparation for the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which went into effect on May 25th of 2018, we decided to rebuild our membership features from the ground up to assure even more effectively the protection of our members’ personal information.  To accomplish this task, we needed to launch our new website without a member’s portal.

To view our data and privacy policy please click here

However, we are already hard at work on an overhaul of the member features you have come to know and love.  If you would like to be a part of shaping these features, please use the form below to sign up for participation in a future beta-test.

We would be nothing without our members and we greatly appreciate your support.

The Real News Tech Team

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