American media’s coverage of gun violence is fundamentally flawed. It’s a routine cycle that perpetuates racist stereotypes and copycat killers and sensationalizes mass shootings at the expense of everyday gun violence victims.

The Columbia Journalism Review, the most respected voice in journalism criticism, sought to put an end to this cycle through the help of The Inevitable News. This newspaper brought together influential members of the media to influence them and change the way their industry covers gun violence.

This resulted in the Gun Violence Coverage Commitment: an industry-wide agreement that will forever change American news stories on gun violence.

Journalism’s approach to gun violence has continued to fall short, with mindlessly written routine stories that see shootings as a “one-size-fits-all” issue. This failure to apply a nuanced hand dehumanizes victims, as if their death by bullet is inevitable rather than a symptom of an ever-growing national crisis.

Amidst the largest spike in gun violence ever in the United States, it’s increasingly important that we address journalism’s failures and set a new path forward to put an end to the rote gun violence coverage that perpetuates our numbness to this violence.

To address this issue, we set out with one ambitious goal: unite American media to create a commitment that outlines new practices for gun violence journalism.

If we can bring together journalists to create a new standard for gun violence journalism, we can impact the American gun violence epidemic – and inspire long overdue change.

Newspapers report on over 100 gun deaths every day in the United States. And it’s always the same story. By writing about shootings as if they were filling out a template, journalists are desensitizing us to these events when they could be using their platform to enact change.

To illuminate journalists to the flaws in their gun violence coverage, we created The Inevitable News, a newspaper that covers every mass shooting over the last 3 years—with one single article. The Inevitable News served as an invitation for journalists to the Gun Violence News Summit, a landmark event that brought together influential leaders representing the likes of The New York Times and The Washington Post to forever change the way their industry covers gun violence.

Working together, they crafted the Gun Violence Coverage Commitment, an unprecedented agreement outlining the new standard for gun violence reporting.

To create The Inevitable News, we examined over 2000 of the most highly circulated articles on mass shootings from the last 3 years. We analyzed them to find commonalities in reporting, including patterns in story flow, sentence structure, and verbiage. This information was used to shape the single article that serves as a template capable of covering any mass shooting.

The Inevitable News targeted the American media at large. We specifically targeted thought leaders in the journalism industry by creating personalized versions of The Inevitable News that mirrored their respective publications.

Studies have shown that the choices a journalist makes while covering a mass shooting can make a direct impact on preventing or further encouraging future shooting events. The Inevitable News was created to shock journalists into using this influence for good, writing thoughtfully to prevent future shootings instead of using a potentially harmful “one-size-fits-all” approach.

To launch the campaign, physical copies of The Inevitable News were distributed to branded news dispensers placed at the entrances of major media companies across NYC.

Further, we painstakingly handcrafted 10 personalized editions of The Inevitable News for some of the biggest papers in the U.S., including The New York Times and The Washington Post. These papers mirrored their brand guidelines and served as an invitation for their editorial staff to join us at the summit.

The virtual summit occurred on April 6, 2021, with 200 attendees representing 100+ of the most respected publication in the U.S. Panelists debated the future of gun violence coverage while participants asked questions and interacted with stimuli.

The conversations at the summit led to the creation of the Gun Violence Coverage Commitment. The Commitment was published online on April 27 and put in the hands of hundreds of media outlets across the US.

The Inevitable News exceeded all expectations. Over 200 journalists from 100+ publications targeted by our street dispensers and personalized editions participated in the virtual Gun Violence News Summit.

25K copies of The Inevitable News were circulated within two weeks, emptying all of our news dispensers. But we weren’t just seeking readership of the Inevitable News, we were looking to forever change how news organizations cover gun violence. Through The Inevitable News and subsequent summit, the changemaking Gun Violence Coverage Commitment was put in the hands of hundreds of newspapers. The Columbia Journalism Review’s publication of the Commitment was seen by more than 100K people and is estimated to have impacted 30k journalists.

The Inevitable News is sparking a major change—helping to usher in a new era for gun violence reporting, forever altering the way Americans discuss gun violence and opening the potential for future gun policy reform.