Cynthia Benjamin

Cynthia Benjamin is Director of Audience Engagement and Trust for Gannett and the USA TODAY Network. The company distinguished her as a Best of Gannett MVP Standout Performer in 2020 for inspiring changes that transformed the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. Cynthia, a member of the 2021 Poynter Diversity Leadership Academy, led a four-person strategic Table Stakes team that connected journalists with communities of color in different ways, such as staffing journalists in the paper’s first “mobile newsroom,” leading a diverse content sprint and creating a digital advisory group with city neighborhoods. In a collective effort, Rochester’s diverse content evolved from 1 in 33 stories per month for communities of color to 1 in 5. The digital audience grew in at least seven of nine key majority-minority zip codes where the newsroom focused on improvements. In a single month, 24 percent of the D&C’s local news stories targeted communities of color. The work emerged as a case study for Table Stakes, Maynard Institute for Journalism Education and the Media Transformation Challenge (where she is a 2021 fellow). Cynthia co-authored an American Press Institute Better News case study titled, “How the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle forged relationships with communities of color.” Cynthia (she goes by CJ) is a founding member of two local associations for Black journalists and a former Salute to Excellence Winner for the Rochester Chapter. She is a past chairperson of Gannett’s Accountability Task Force and helped to establish the company’s African American Forward Employee Resource Group and served as its first co-chair.