This Atlanta-based community journalist joins our team to build a strong, dynamic, and engaged Documenters Network across the country.
By Yasmin Zacaria Mikhaiel and Caroline Olsen
Portrait taken by Caroline Olsen
We are excited to welcome Sonam Vashi to the team as City Bureau’s first Director of Network Success for the Documenters Network.
Sonam is an Atlanta-based journalist and self-proclaimed local history nerd who is bringing her wide range of talents to our team to support the Documenters Network! Sonam is one of six co-founders of Canopy Atlanta, a community journalism nonprofit with a mission to equip metro Atlanta residents to tell stories about the issues their communities care about most. Disappointed with the state of the city’s media landscape, Sonam founded Canopy Atlanta in 2020 with a group of journalists who wanted to report in a way that was much more participatory and collaborative. Canopy Atlanta joined the Documenters Network in 2022, and we’re so excited to have someone so deeply invested in and familiar with the process of launching a Documenters program joining our team in this role.
We asked Sonam to share a little bit about her experiences, background and what she’s bringing to the role. Here are some of the highlights, edited for length and clarity.
You have an eclectic background in journalism work, from fact-checking to founding your own journalism organization. Can you tell us more about that journey and what ultimately led you to City Bureau?
I started reporting in 2012 or 2013, a time where the whole journalism industry was fully in a recession. Like many people in this field, my time in this industry has never been stable. It’s been this experience of rock climbing. You’re holding onto one rock, and then that one starts to get a little slippery, so you have to jump to another and you really don't know what's next. And while that has been really challenging, it's also been energizing to be able to collect so many different skill sets.
My journey through journalism has been a process of following where my values are driving me. I worked at CNN, doing fact checking for the 2016 election, and that was an experience that led me to question the industry, especially watching how little of a difference it made to fact-check Donald Trump’s statements, given the amount of airtime that CNN, among many other news organizations, still gave to him out of entertainment and business incentives. I left CNN very soon after that, and began down the path of community reporting.
I cofounded Canopy Atlanta in 2020 to imagine new possibilities for how journalism could truly serve and reflect communities. We were thrilled to join the Documenters Network as part of our work to equip more metro Atlanta residents to be part of the journalism production process and find the information they need about their own communities. I’m really proud to have been part of building Canopy Atlanta and that Canopy and Atlanta Documenters are thriving. I’m excited that I now get to be at an organization that’s in many ways like a sibling to Canopy Atlanta, and that I get to support more communities like Atlanta Documenters across the country!
With the Documenters Network expanding across the country, how do you approach this growth?
When I cofounded Canopy Atlanta I realized how much I enjoyed the operations side of journalism; that the internal work is just as important as the reporting you see externally. When I think about how I want to contribute to City Bureau, I’m looking forward to helping answer this question of: How can we grow and scale in a way that still holds fast to our values? These are not easy answers, but that’s the beauty of a network; no one entity has to have the answers. Instead, we're going to find them together. I’m also excited to have not only staff like myself, but also Documenters who are part of the network, help lead its future growth.
Tell us about your connection to Atlanta, the city you call home.
I grew up in an area known as Buford Highway. Within the most diverse county in the southeast United States, it’s this really beautiful, layered area, home to many different immigrant communities, challenging a lot of narratives about what the South is and who lives there. It’s the place that ignited my interest in storytelling, as well as my awareness of whose stories got to be told and whose were more often brushed aside. I've lived in Atlanta ever since. I've never lived anywhere else, and there’s a lot of pros and cons to that. I can't imagine living anywhere else, although Chicago has been creeping up on me.
What’s something that keeps you grounded in your own work?
After I started getting interested in journalism, I actually learned that my great-grandfather was a journalist during the Indian independence movement. He was writing about British colonialism and imperialism, and eventually died in jail where he was detained for his work. It was very inspiring to realize that I am a part of this legacy, as well as a legacy of movement journalists in the South who played a key role in the civil rights movement. As a child of South Asian immigrants, I became aware at an early age that my family was able to live where they lived, and that I was able to thrive, because of the civil rights leaders, movement workers, and the brilliant strategists on the ground, some of whom died for this cause. These legacies really ground my work because these movement journalists and folks like my great-grandfather were doing what journalism was meant to do: highlighting critical narratives, building community agency, and supporting people making real change.
To connect with Sonam, feel free to reach out at sonam@citybureau.org.
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