Dear Feet in 2 Worlds Community,
On a blustery Saturday in November, I welcomed a group of friends over to my apartment for a kimjang, or kimchi-making gathering. In one afternoon, we tore, soaked, salted, and washed the leaves from nine napa cabbage heads. By the end of the day, our hands were coated with layers of shrimp paste, gochujang, and green onions. The process was fun, messy, and inexact. Producing 17 jars of kimchi required some advance preparation on my part, but the bulk of the work was shared by everyone.
Kimjangs are, by definition, collaborative. Traditionally, community members will often prepare over 100 heads of cabbage for the season. Now, as temperatures drop in New York City, I enter into a winter with several jars of kimchi nestled in my refrigerator.
As my kimchi ferments, I can’t help but think about the parallels to my work. Like a kimjang, good journalism must be highly collaborative. Publishing a story requires teamwork, resourcefulness, and constant communication. In an ideal world, a story provides fact-based information for impacted communities — and sustains those behind the scenes: the journalists who write, report, fact-check, edit, and publish. I’d like to hold onto this metaphor as we navigate the current moment: in journalism and in our broader lives. As many crises unfold in the U.S. and around the globe, what would it mean to organize our world like we organize kimchi: not from a place of scarcity, but from shared abundance? How can we produce journalism that not only documents, but works to change our conditions — by illuminating truths, preserving history, and sharing solutions for a more just society?
I know it’s not easy to think this way when we are surrounded by chaos every day. Around the country, men in masks snatch our neighbors, friends, and family members off the streets. We’ve seen it in person and on screen, in small towns and on our own city blocks. Street vendors, daycare teachers, and college students have been targeted and disappeared. The biggest detention and deportation campaign in U.S. history is underway, and we are witness to it. As journalists, we bear a historic responsibility during these times.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government does its best to erode press freedom, and those who live at the intersection of two vulnerable identities — immigrant journalists — are under attack. In October, Atlanta-based journalist Mario Guevara was deported to El Salavador. Later that month, on a speaking tour about Israel’s war on Gaza, journalist Sami Hamdi was detained by ICE for weeks. Safety remains conditional for those who seek truth and justice, especially for non-citizens.
Amid the instability of our industry, some media executives are uncritically pushing generative AI as a miraculous do-it-all tool in the workplace, seemingly unbothered by the economic, environmental, and labor consequences of automating our critical thinking skills. For me, this troubling turn indicates an unwillingness to recognize what is most valuable: the human mind. As humans, we possess the ability to reason. To challenge, to question. To hold onto multiple truths simultaneously. That ability is precious, and we must use it to focus on how we can come together in this moment of profound need.
What does this all mean for the team I manage at Feet in 2 Worlds, an organization that has materially supported immigrant journalists for 20 years and counting?
In an era where AI is being framed as an “inevitable” trend, it strikes me how much our work in these perilous times is fundamentally human-centered. We support immigrant journalists. We support human journalists. That will not change; both in principle, but also as a matter of survival. Human connection, human organizers, and human communities — and their abundance — are what sustain me in my personal and professional life, and this lens is something I strive to bring to Fi2W every day. So alongside our editorial output, we’ve created new opportunities to train journalists through workshops on interviewing techniques and writing for audio.
Thanks to foundations and individual donors who believe in our mission, we have continued to center immigrant voices in our journalism this year. Our earliest story from 2025 tracked the inner workings of NYC’s immigrant dollar vans — a portrait of an informal economy in flux. Our latest story chronicled the fight to preserve Black history in the Caribbean neighborhood of Flatbush, Brooklyn. In pitching and reporting these stories, both journalists highlighted immigrant history and immigrant voices committed to changing conditions on their streets and in their neighborhoods.
As a training organization, we will continue to encourage immigrant journalists and journalists of color to chase leads; gather tape in the field; and shape stories according to their instincts, expertise, and lived experience.
This October, we welcomed our newest reporting fellow, Narimes Parakul, an award-winning researcher who is spearheading a deep investigation into how data sharing and surveillance technology are impacting immigrant communities in new and concerning ways. We plan to publish her reporting in 2026.
As a small newsroom, we don’t publish breaking news. We publish longform journalism that positions immigrants as protagonists who have agency in each story. That editorial lens goes hand-in-hand with deep mentorship and a commitment to help our fellows and interns reach the next stage of their careers. Our work is rooted in the idea that time, attention, and collective care will yield thoughtful and nuanced reporting — and will empower our journalists to succeed. I’m reminded of the power and potency of mugeunji, or old kimchi, which ferments in a jar for several years. When one makes mugeunji, the intention is not a quick pickle. I like to think of it as a long-term investment in a future of collective prosperity. When you open that jar, you’re hit with a spicy and rich scent that could only be possible because of time that has passed — and kimchi that only exists because of the human hands that mixed and molded it.
Mia Warren
Managing Director, Feet in 2 Worlds
Feet in 2 Worlds is supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Ford Foundation, the Fernandez Pave the Way Foundation, an anonymous donor, and contributors to our annual NewsMatch campaign.