Clay Morris and Sonia Rao are The Daily Tar Heel’s 2022-2023 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion team.
In January, we announced that we’d be surveying our readership to determine the direction our Elevate section should take.
After reviewing the survey responses and discussing our own understanding of the section’s impact and purpose: we’ve decided to remove the section from the print paper while maintaining its presence online.
The intention with Elevate was never to silo or segregate content related to underrepresented communities. But as the quality of the paper has improved to include marginalized voices and the leadership of The Daily Tar Heel has become more cognizant about the ways that underrepresented communities are vital to all stories, not just Elevate stories — the section seems to have created a dichotomy.
In the past, this has not been true when it comes to the DTH’s content and leadership. And while the paper is not fully done reckoning with its past harms toward minorities part of the Chapel Hill community, it has progressed to a point where having an Elevate section seems to be more tokenism than allyship.
All stories are supposed to elevate these groups, not just the ones tagged Elevate or placed within that section of the print paper.
Diversity — whether it be related to race, sexuality, gender, ability, etc. — is an unavoidable part of life regardless of if everyone sees it that way. No stories can be told if the stories belonging to those who exist outside of majority categories are not told.
Removing the print version of Elevate is not an attempt to silence these voices or to remove them from the paper’s content. Instead, it is a recognition that we can only create the best journalism possible if we are always considering matters of diversity — not just when editing one section and not just when it seems the most obvious.
