S8E11: Allissa Richardson

Allissa V. Richardson is a journalist and an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Southern California.

In her book Bearing Witness While Black, Richardson looks at advances in technology in relationship to incidents of police violence against African Americans, from the 1991 beating of Rodney King, which George Holliday filmed on a Handycam, to the killing of George Floyd this summer, captured by 17-year-old Darnella Frazier on her iPhone 11:

As the tool became better and produced a better picture, and as the witnesses became savvier — to know, I should probably be recording this — we have this confluence of things. And so if we think about what Darnella must have been going through in terms of her own personal turmoil, it’s quite miraculous. And you could probably call her the filmmaker of the century for keeping her phone so steady, not talking over it, not narrating it. It didn’t need any narration.

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By Jessica Helfand & Ellen McGirt

Jessica Helfand, a founding editor of Design Observer, is an award-winning graphic designer and writer and a former contributing editor and columnist for Print, Communications Arts and Eye magazines. A member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale and a recent laureate of the Art Director’s Hall of Fame, Helfand received her B.A. and her M.F.A. from Yale University where she has taught since 1994.

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Ellen McGirt is an author, podcaster, speaker, community builder, and award-winning business journalist. She is the editor-in-chief of Design Observer, a media company that has maintained the same clear vision for more than two decades: to expand the definition of design in service of a better world. Ellen established the inclusive leadership beat at Fortune in 2016 with raceAhead, an award-winning newsletter on race, culture, and business. The Fortune, Time, Money, and Fast Company alumna has published over twenty magazine cover stories throughout her twenty-year career, exploring the people and ideas changing business for good. Ask her about fly fishing if you get the chance.