Yvonne Latty: To Be Told

The fire escape on 108th Street was a comforting, hiding space for Yvonne Latty. Her immigrant parents didn’t let her and her sister leave the house often, so Latty would sit on her family’s fire escape between Manhattan Avenue and Central Park West. 
She observed everything in her neighborhood, filled with “a neglected community of color,” Latty said. Her neighborhood saw a continued cycle of violence and drugs prior to its gentrification. As police sirens filled her street, she saw a swarm of white journalists parachute into her neighborhood and fearfully interact with civilians. 
From that moment, she wanted to follow her neighborhood’s stories, free of fear. 

She dreamt of being a director telling stories with a level of care and empathy that her neighborhood never received. What she didn’t dream of was her future as an award-winning journalist and director of two academic journalism programs. 
Her efforts to make those dreams a reality began when she enrolled at New York University as a film and television major. Latty recalled walking through Washington Square Park as a teen and admiring students in NYU hoodies. 
“I thought to myself, ‘Wow, wouldn't it be cool to be able to go to a school like this and be able to study down here?’ Little would I know that that school would have been such a huge part of my life,” Latty said. 
Very few people can say they taught at the same university that granted their bachelor’s degree and master’s degree. Even fewer people can say that at NYU. Latty can say all three. 
After earning her bachelor’s degree, Latty pursued a master’s degree in journalism, where she led as the director of NYU’s Reporting the Nation-New York graduate program 15 years later. 
Before entering academia, she was a reporter at the Philadelphia Daily News. She soon found that the newsroom environment was difficult to navigate, especially as a Black woman in a field dominated by white men. 
“I usually was one of a few [Black people] and because I was one of a few, there were only certain types of stories that I could tell, that they would let me tell,” Latty said. “So I found newsrooms themselves really stifling, but I found reporting on the communities really empowering.”
Community-based stories were the most important to Latty. It remains at the forefront of the work she does today as director of the Logan Center for Urban Investigative Reporting at Temple University and independently through podcasts and documentaries. 
At the Philadelphia Daily News, she focused on the community through her crime coverage, the same beat that ignited her passion for storytelling. 
While covering crime, she found herself relating to her sources’ pain as she simultaneously grieved her sister’s untimely death a few years prior. 
Her older sister, Margie, died in a car accident, which left her depressed during graduate school. Latty said surrounding herself in crime-related stories helped her grieving process and shaped the rest of her career. 
“I was around people who were in many cases grieving too. That's pretty much how my career and the whole trajectory of my career kind of went…doing stories about communities of color, and all the problems that we face as people of color,” Latty said. 
Covering tragedies requires a level of empathy and care that some journalists lack. Latty’s empathy is what separated her from others, Jim MacMillan, longtime colleague and assistant director of the Logan Center, said. 
“I think what separates her as a journalist is her exceptional prioritization, almost preoccupation with empathy, being empathetic to the people we cover,” MacMillan said. 
The same rang true while she was at NYU and it showed through her students. Her former student, Opheli Garcia Lawler, said “She really prioritized and prided her program on having a wide array of students from different backgrounds, with different identities.” 
After the huge impact NYU had on Latty’s life, leaving for a new role was hard. She hesitated in applying after grieving the loss of her mother who died from Alzheimer's, but ultimately decided to take a chance. 
Under Latty’s leadership, the Logan Center won the public radio Edward R. Murrow award for its ‘Stop and Frisk: Revisit or Resist’ podcast in 2023. As Philadelphia’s gun violence continues, the journalism center connected with WHYY News to produce a five-episode podcast exploring solutions to the city’s ongoing gun crisis. 
“I'm just really proud of the work that Logan Center has done and the impact we've had in Philadelphia in such a short period of time,” Latty said.
The ‘Stop and Frisk’ podcast is one of many works Latty produced that uncovers the realities communities of color face, including racism, crime, incarceration, and healthcare disparities. 
After her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, she produced the ‘Alzheimer’s in Color’ podcast that documented her mother’s journey with the disease while also capturing the challenges communities of color encounter through the healthcare system. 
The collaboration between Latino USA and Black Public Media won the 2021 Clarion award and Gracies award; but the awards do not define Latty. It’s the work that goes into the award-winning projects that fulfill her purpose. After all, her main intention when becoming a storyteller was to document stories with the grace and empathy she wished her neighborhood received as a little girl.

To Be Told is a monthly series highlights Black professionals across journalism, arts, business, and more, celebrating their achievements amidst growing challenges to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Each profile will showcase their impact, resilience, and contributions, offering inspiration and amplifying voices in spaces where representation matters now more than ever.