A new iteration of the Black Press is changing the media landscape in Kansas City
Like so often happens to him these days, Ryan Sorrell's phone was lighting up. People were sharing a local news story about an unnamed teenager getting shot. One report called it "a case of mistaken identity."
At first Sorrell remembers thinking, "oh, that's crazy," but the details were thin, and he had other stories to cover.
He saw a clip that aired on the local Fox news station that said the unidentified teenager had been "shot in error." He watched the reporter try to talk to reluctant people in the neighborhood where the shooting happened.
"We take care of one another," a white neighbor said as he drove away, refusing to answer questions.
Something was off. There was no mention of the race of the child who had been shot, but Sorrell heard the subtext. He knew the neighborhood. As a young Black man he avoids the Northland, the suburban and rural area above the river in Kansas City, Missouri.
"There's definitely a culture." Sorrell says. "Some people even describe that area as like a sundown town." It isn't clear if it was historically a place where Black people weren't allowed after dark, but there are rumors.
Sorrell felt that tingle many journalists get, a sort of second sense that tells you to keep digging. Not to mention his phone kept buzzing, with people asking him to look into it.
So he went where he usually goes — online. He searched TikTok and found the aunt of 16-year-old Ralph Yarl, Faith Spoonmore, telling the story of what happened to her nephew. He reached
