Erika Owens

Loosening the strings: Journalism organizations recognizing their own power

Tue, 16 Jun 2026 06:47:11 -0400

Erika Owens https://erikaowens.com/blog/loosening-the-strings-journalism-organizations-recognizing-their-own-power/ -

Pondering who gets to control what happens on stage, and in our work. (Image credit: At Sewards: a puppet show by John Nixon, CC BY-SA 2.0, via ArtUK)

For a few years now, there’s been discussion about mergers of nonprofit news organizations. The volume of that recently increased coming off of a study that many interpreted as suggesting philanthropic foundations should move (even more) into a mode of picking “winners and losers” and missed opportunities to do direct support in aid of sustainability instead.

It appears the pressure is growing for nonprofits to opt for a merger if they want to keep funders happy.

As anyone who has done fundraising knows, though, “keeping funders happy” is a Sisyphean task. To start, it always bears repeating that fundraising is never about “funders” and instead is a constellation of relationships between people and organizations. “Funders’ needs” can disguise all manner of sins and projections. That said, sometimes trends do crop up across a range of funders. For example, for several years multiple funders encouraged OpenNews to become its own 501c3 instead of remaining a fiscally sponsored entity. (Not all funders did this though! Democracy Fund was a notable outlier in this regard and was extremely pragmatic with helping us understand the real and perceived limitations of how being fiscally sponsored affected their grants to us.) But generally, it was accepted that to appeal to certain funders you had to take on the time, expense, and ongoing overhead necessary to be your own nonprofit.

And now, just a few years later, some of those same funders want those same organizations they pressured to become independent to now merge. Huh.

So if it’s clear that, even if it is well meaning and “research backed,” foundations are going to continue to attempt to pull some strings and push organizations to make certain decisions, how can these organizations respond?

For funders and organizations alike, it might be helpful to remember that organizations do still have agency here (even when the purse strings are being tightened). As with any other organizational decision, it is critical to act in a way that first centers the needs of the community you serve and (as much as possible) resists the fear about consequences of making “funders” unhappy.

Some questions it might be useful for organizations to reflect on:

Have you served your purpose?

This might seem like a strange place to start! But intentionally sunsetting projects is important to regard as an option. One way of framing it can be, what would success look like if your organization were no longer needed? We had these conversations several times when I was at OpenNews, sometimes because of scary budgetary outlooks, yes, but also sometimes because of transition points or once we had achieved a part of our work. To me, it felt powerful to be able to actively engage with this question and not treat it as off limits or too scary to consider. It meant that when we did decide to continue, it was an active decision and not just passive inertia. It meant that we looked to community feedback for the answer to this question and the encouragement to continue.

It also sometimes meant shifting purpose. For example, a lot of the early work of OpenNews revolved around encouraging organizations to “show their work” and open source projects. This ecosystem flourished for many years. Now the pendulum has sort of swung back, so now community members are renewing this push. Actively asking even these type of exisitential questions can be part of building the openness and resilience to being able to respond as things change.

How do you already collaborate?

One of the weirdest things for me with filling out grant applications was the inevitable “tell us about how you collaborate with other groups” question. (This actually was universal across any funders we worked with. Happily!) It was weird because … collaboration was at the heart of everything we did? Even just starting with the fellowship program, it placed fellows into newsrooms. Source documented work happening in newsrooms. We supported events around the world. Everything was always about sharing insights, learning, and resources. It was just fundamental.

I think this one of the biggest things this push for mergers misses: lots of organizations already work this way. Lots of organizations already seek out ways to connect and support the work of others, not duplicate it. It’s true, not all organizations act this way. But treating all orgs the same here very much reminds me of say, reminding everyone at the fast food joint how important it is to be on time for work when really it’s just two people who are late every day. Why treat organizations this way? It’s ineffective and infantilizing.

For (most) organizations, this question is a way to begin rebalancing the power here. Even without a merger, I bet there are a ton of ways you are contributing to the health and flourishing and the efficiency and lack of duplication of the journalism ecosystem. Celebrate those! Own them. Recognize them. Even if it’s as weirdly obvious to you as it was to me, it is not obvious to everyone else.

Are there ways you could serve your purpose through collaboration, documentation, or other similar means?

If everyone is going to be in this “ahhhh what comes next??” headspace, it can be a chance to embrace it. Are there ideas you’ve had on the back burner about how to band together with another organization? Or ways you’ve seen someone else work that you’d like to pull into your own processes? Or do you know there’s similar questions you’re wrestling with that you’d like to work on together? (Way way back in the Knight-Mozilla Fellowship days I reallllly wanted to convene a fellowship manager meetup. Oh my gosh all the ways we could have learned from each other!)

I bet there are a million and one proposals you can come up with that would result in meaningful outcomes for your communities, and that do not require a full merger. (Side note for the funders, just gonna guess they are dramatically cheaper ideas also! Plus, and this is maybe not as much of a pipe dream as it seems, but these are the kind of ideas that may also be longterm sustainable and bring in their own money.)

Organizations are powerful players in this ecosystem

Bottom line: I really hope organizations can remember they do have some power here, even when it seems like foundations hold it all. Reflecting on the purpose and impact of community service can help to calibrate reactions to funders’ requests and find other potential options. And while these questions are directed at how individual organizations can strategize about their own responses, those reactions take place in a rich ecosystem of support, as documented by Commoner Company.

If you are thinking about these questions and would like someone to talk to about them, please reach out or find a time to chat.

- https://erikaowens.com/blog/loosening-the-strings-journalism-organizations-recognizing-their-own-power/ - This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license

What are our obligations to one another?

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 06:47:11 -0400

Erika Owens https://erikaowens.com/blog/what-are-our-obligations-to-one-another/ -

I often think of the adage from Pirkei Avot that “You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it (2:21).” Some translations say you are not free to “neglect” the work. What “the work” may be can change. In the context this quote is most frequently referenced in, it refers to tikkun olam or “repairing the world,” which I interpret to be trying to bring some increasing measure of justice into the world.

As I slowly explore these concepts in my master’s dissertation research, I encountered a paper by Anushri Rastogi that explores care and responsibility from a philosophical perspective. Rastogi draws on Stephanie Collins’ “care ethics” framework. One aspect of care that Collins highlights is that “morality demands not just one-off acts, but also certain ongoing patterns of interactions with others and certain general attitudes and dispositions” (Collins, p. 12, 2025).

The “ongoing patterns of interactions” immediately made me think of the Pirkei Avot passage. Our obligations to one another are not momentary, but continual. They are relational, and one hopes, are present in relationships that can endure and evolve. Showing up for each other, no matter the form it takes, does require some measure of ongoing work. These ideas really chimed with my understanding of how pushing for equity and change actually happens in journalism. It made me think about say, goals around having a more inclusive and diverse organization (or industry!). And the difference between:

a job ad that lists members of underrepresented groups “are encouraged to apply”
and a process that ensures there is a diverse applicant pool
and a process that results in actually having a diverse staff, slate of speakers*, fellowship participants, or similar
and … the part that would require truly ongoing work, once people are in roles, that they are supported and celebrated and set up for success, not because “diverse” people need extra help, but because the systemic factors that led to the underrepresentation aren’t solved by a single action in isolation

Thinking about “ongoing patterns” reminds me a lot of what Emma Carew Grovum and Kim Bui were exploring with the Sincerely, Leaders of Color series, sharing reflections of the maaaany challenges and strategies of institutionalizing even a modicum of repair for journalists of color into this industry. It resonates with Kim’s recent reflections on how experienced folks are feeling edged out of leadership or how plenty of NGOs say they value lived experience, till that experience calls for change.

The tension between what people or institutions say that they want and what they’re actually able and willing to do comes right back to Rastogi: “A personal relationship of care being a model for political relationships means that listening to one another and responding authentically and engaging in this ever-shifting dialogue becomes the model for care.” (p. 36). How we treat one another is always personal, and political, and we have obligations to one another—whether they be through relationships, through caretaking, through our political or moral values—to listen and act and keep acting to support one another.

I’m really curious about the ways that these big theoretical ideas actually show up in the practice of our work. The distinctions of intent versus actual impact in hiring processes immediately came to mind to me, and I would love to hear what examples (at all scales and sizes!) come to mind to you too.

* This fantastic paper from Ruona Meyer just came out. Still gathering my thoughts on it, but this line, damn: “When women and minoritised groups are less visible at a global conference, they are denied the power of defining the same field they labour in.” Also, there’s a brief summary on LinkedIn, and you can request a PDF. Even in that brief summary includes quite an indictment: “❗️For example, in the study period, only ONE Black woman spoke in the Data Journalism track of the world’s largest investigative journalism conference. That’s 1 out of 218 appearances.”

- https://erikaowens.com/blog/what-are-our-obligations-to-one-another/ - This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license

A case study in how networks underpin fundraising

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 06:47:11 -0400

Erika Owens https://erikaowens.com/blog/a-case-study-in-how-networks-underpin-fundraising/ -

In an attempt to openly share some of the experience I’ve accrued, I’m going to recount how I fundraised from the Craig Newmark Foundation for a few years for OpenNews. I start here because of attention on Newmark’s funding as he turns away from journalism due to the issues of lack of return on investment and impact. Important beginning caveat: the old fundraising advice of “if you’ve met one funder, you’ve met one funder” applies here—the specifics of communicating with the Newmark Foundation are unique to that relationship, but some of the network pieces that made that relationship possible are more broadly transferrable.

What set Newark Foundation funding apart

Craig Newmark walks the talk better than most other funders I’ve encountered. There were not onerous application nor reporting requirements for grants from his foundation. If he gave you the green light to apply, in my experience, it meant you were getting funding. And not only that, the turnaround was incredibly fast. He replied to emails nearly instantly, made decisions quickly, and, basically unknown when it comes to transferring money of any type—the money would arrive within days. It was an incredibly clear, incredibly quick process. Many thanks to Craig for minimizing the uncertainty and unknowns in what can be a stressful process.

Getting to the application: Perugia

After becoming Executive Director of OpenNews, I needed to expand our fundraising. I pitched sessions to the International Journalism Festival a few times, but they never got picked. I knew it was the kind of place that a lot of funders went to and that I should try to go. I asked around about how to get there and was told that they pay for the housing + food for speakers (you pay your own travel there) so it’s good to try to be a speaker. After asking several people for help with that Emily Goligoski suggested me for a panel and I was accepted! So with half the costs paid for, I booked a basic economy flight with “sometimes you have to spend money to make money” on my mind and determination to make the most of this opportunity.

When I got on the bus from the airport to Perugia who was I sitting next to none other than Jenny 8. Lee. In her reporterly way, she asked me about our programs and fundraising and immediately identified that we should be talking to Craig. She told me what events he had funded for her, the rough amount, and how she approached him. Her coaching is why and how I was able to approach Craig. (And while Perugia is an incredible networking opportunity, it was really that single chat on the bus that made the whole trip worth it for me and our organization.)

Approaching Craig and securing funding

Based on Jenny’s advice, I emailed Craig. I followed her advice, bolstered by additional insights and advice from Aron Pilhofer, a member of OpenNews’ board and another person with connections in Craig’s network. I emailed Craig a bit about SRCCON, he asked a few questions, and invited us to submit a full application. The application was pretty simple 1-2 pages, and he was also interested in our communications plan and timeline. I requested support specifically for our conference SRCCON, and focused on how the relationships built at the event supported trustworthy journalism (one of his core funding areas at that time). Looking back, I requested $60k, received $40k. The next year, requested $50k, got $50k. The year after that, based on advice from Paul Cheung, we tried for a multi-year commitment and requested $125k. That did not work, but he let us down easy with $20k. Thereafter, our requests were not successful.

One of the things Craig always wanted to know more about was our “earned media” coverage of our work. This fits with what he raised in the Nieman Lab piece about concern about reach and engagement with audiences. It was a little tricky for us cause SRCCON is a journalist-serving space, and people found out about it mostly through word of mouth, not media coverage. This is just a guess but, I think the relationships we had with people Craig already knew and trusted is what got us in the door for the initial grants, but ultimately, our project was a pretty awkward fit for us focus areas longer term.

Even so, his willingness to fund SRCCON helped secure our budget as I was getting my footing in the role, and crucially, during all the early pandemic uncertainty.

Relationships power all of our work

We would not have received $110,000 of funding without the advice and advocacy of our people in our network who were willing to share information and relationships. Similarly, one of the features of receiving funding from Craig is he liked to connect all of his grantees, which continued to empower these network effects! I learned a lot from what other grantees shared and we even found opportunities to collaborate via the network he set up. Thank you especially goes to to Emily and Jenny. Without their direct, concrete interventions none of this would have happened.

This is a super quick overview, but I hope contributes to a discussion about how money changes hands, where it goes, and what we can learn from it. (If you have a story to share, let me know, I’d love to link up more, or share any further detail that would be useful. I feel like crowdsourcing experiences like this could help us build a picture of any lessons we can learn, from each other!)

- https://erikaowens.com/blog/a-case-study-in-how-networks-underpin-fundraising/ - This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license

A corollary to the "Rebuilding Local Journalism" report?

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 06:47:11 -0400

Erika Owens https://erikaowens.com/blog/a-corollary-to-the-rebuilding-local-journalism-report/ -

After receiving 500+ applications for $20M in Press Forward Infrastructure funding, it was great to see a thorough report and analysis by Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro on insights that can be gained from this process. I appreciate the chance to share high-level findings with a funder audience, and to surface some of the difficult considerations funders are trying to balance.

I wish there were a corollary to this report written for a journalist audience though. I had a bit of insight into the process last year as a reviewer and later project coach, and my main takeaway was how incredibly valuable the corpus that Hansen Shapiro analyzed would be for other journalists. It was a process that highlighted to me that journalism organizations themselves also suffer from the “inequitable access to information” that Hansen Shapiro notes as one of the “persistent challenges.”

I agree with Hansen Shapiro’s note that this is a collective, systems-level challenge as well. And as such, I hope we can find ways to democratize access to information about sustaining the work of journalism. To me, that challenge seems to be a lot about power. Who has access to information about what ideas are out there, what organizations are collaborating with each other, which ideas are being successfully funded (and for how much and for how many years!), what relationships result in partnerships that are financially beneficial and meaningfully help audiences? Too often the answer to those questions are only known by people who already hold tremendous power in the field, whether it be because of background or who they sat next to at a dinner one time (true story!).

These are also the kinds of answers that funders already have and would cost relatively little to share. They are also a lot of the content in the business training programs Hansen Shapiro mentions, either because one of the ways you gain knowledge is by joining an extremely well-connected alumni network (admitteldy, I am a member of a few) or because you learn the skills of how to suss out this information individually, on your own. It’s just a shame that either by accident or by design this information is then usually stuck within those silos. In my experience, one thing that is tough is to know what information would actually be useful to someone else, so in a way, this post is an attempt to break out of that. (Please do reach out if you have an org strategy or fundraising question you want a thought partner for!)

Instead of boiling this process down to the usual familiar takeaways ("you can’t rely on foundation funding forever, you silly nonprofit leaders!!"), I would love to see it as an opportunity to invite more sharing of information and relationships and reflections.

- https://erikaowens.com/blog/a-corollary-to-the-rebuilding-local-journalism-report/ - This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license

Kicking robots, or how 'Platonic' gives me hope

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 06:47:11 -0400

Erika Owens https://erikaowens.com/blog/kicking-robots-or-how-platonic-gives-me-hope/ -

I finally had the chance to burn through another season of “Platonic” and it’s unexpectedly been the shot of hope I needed.

One of the running gags in the first season was Seth Rogen’s character kicking over electric scooters whenever he saw them. This time, it’s food delivery robots.

At a basic level, it’s just a good sight gag. It’s funny watching people kick things. You can imagine how it’s also just physically satisfying to unleash some frustration at an inanimate object that also represents, potentially, some of the most annoying encroachments of technological “progress” in daily life.

But in a coaching call with Annika Westlake today it also came to mind as a visual for a dynamic I appreciate in the workplace. Each time Seth Rogen kicks a robot he’s actually doing something. Yes, it’s basically a completely futile something! But, it’s something. It’s physical. It’s public. It’s intentional—he’s tired of seeing those stupid things everywhere and what they represent and he wants to do something about it.

The doing something about it is what a lot of people seem to miss in the workplace. They don’t list the pay. They don’t treat applications as a relationship building opportunity. They don’t reject the latest tech fad. They don’t reach out with a note of appreciation, most of all to the leaders of color who may be feeling lonely. They don’t get creative and think of ways to protect the collective of the workplace.

There are very many ways to just do something to make the workplace slightly better instead of the default mode we’re all pushed to. These types of interventions are part of creating the world as we want it to be, of making it slightly more just, slightly less precarious, just that bit more human.

So, thanks for everyone kicking at robots, shouting at clouds, slightly adjusting a word choice here or a process there to do something to try to make their organization a better place. And especially, thanks for writing and speaking about it. Letting other people know we notice (and value!!) these actions seems to be a critical part of helping them (and not the robots) proliferate.

If you’re interested in these kinds of things and may want to chat about it, please reach out. I am trying to figure out if I can pull a question out of this realm for a research project, and would greatly value chatting about this area. If Seth Rogen can make a whole show out of friends shouting at each other and kicking stuff and still sorta making their lives work, why can’t we work together to make workplaces just a little bit less crap?

- https://erikaowens.com/blog/kicking-robots-or-how-platonic-gives-me-hope/ - This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license

Attempting to ethically sell a house

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 08:47:11 -0400

Erika Owens https://erikaowens.com/blog/attempting-to-ethically-sell-a-house/ -

A few years ago, I noticed houses seemed like they were being flipped on my block. Neighbors moved, the tell tale gentrification font house numbers turned up. I looked up the houses on Zillow and saw their updated interiors and prices many multiples of what I bought my house for about a decade before. I asked on my synagogue’s list serv about how people had handled their house sales in markets like this and got a lot of great advice. Now that I’ve actually sold my house, I can share about the experience.

Estimate a “reasonable” sales price

In a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, prices can go up a lot in a short time. Kaytee Ray-Riek walked me through the math she used. She suggested, starting from a more typical appreciation rate and then adding in the money put into the house, adding in a little to cover the difference for the new increased mortgage interest rates. What estimated appreciation rate you use could be lots of things, I tried out math with the return on CDs at the time ~3% or the “typical” stock market return of 5% or you could go by inflation, typical house appreciation rates (~10%/yr depending on the area), or some other comparable benchmark. I did this math after I talked to Kaytee and it also brought me under the Zillow-based market value range. It was a super helpful benchmark to start from.

For additional context, The Reinvestment Fund and Pew have done some fantastic recent research on the single family home market in Philly, diving into topics like racial inequities and the impact of investors.

Consider your neighbors

I stumbled on a research paper about selling your home in a gentrifying neighborhood that made me think about whether significantly underpricing my home might affect my neighbors when they go to sell their houses. This was especially on my mind because in the intervening couple of years since my initial research, mortgage interest rates went up even more and a nice, well loved, and fixed up (but not granite countertop level) home across the street from me languished on the market at a price it would have easily commanded a year or two earlier.

While a lot of people advised that a single lower price isn’t going to throw off the comps, I didn’t want to make my neighbors’ lives harder. So this did weigh on me.

You can help sell it by marketing to your network

Multiple people mentioned doing your own outreach. There’s also the option of working with a lawyer to handle the paperwork of the sale, and for a fraction of the cost of working with a real estate agent. Even when working with an agent, people I talked to did a lot of their own outreach to their personal networks of people who may be looking for a solid house at a non-exploitative price.

I did this a bit, but there were some issues with my house and I wasn’t sure whether they were big issues or small issues. It made me nervous to do too much outreach when I wasn’t totally sure what it is I was selling. Given this, I did ultimately work with a real estate agent and that was a huge help with this issue. (I worked with Ife Foy, who I highly recommend!) Ife said we could get a pre-listing inspection, which was a thing I did not even know existed. So not only did I get a sense of what the issues were, we were able to be completely up front with buyers about it. It was such a great idea and made me feel a lot more confident in the process.

In working with Ife, I was clear that I did not want to sell to a developer. While we did get offers from developers and Ife presented those offers to me (as agents are required to do), Ife helped me assess the other offers and didn’t push me to re-consider the ones from developers. As far as I can tell through the process, I sold to someone who intends to live in the house. I hope they like it as much as I did!

Thinking about the proceeds

Part of what got me on this ethical homeselling thread was Rick Steves. He’s written about his experience leasing and then ultimately donating homes to a local nonprofit. I found this super inspiring, and still hope to do it at some point in my life! Given that I still owed on the mortgage, and due to life factors could really use the nest egg that had built up, I wasn’t able to donate the home at this time and selling it directly to a nonprofit did not work out. (In the future, something like the pre-listing inspection could have been a great document to bring to a nonprofit with an idea like this too, so they have a better sense of what they might be getting into.)

So, I ultimately sold the house at a pretty regular price (slightly under its assessed value and in the range of the napkin math I had done on Kaytee’s recommendation). The final step in this process was considering what to do with the money. I’m not immediately buying another home, so the options were a bit more open than in most sales situations. Some considerations I came across:

as mentioned in the research paper and in other conversations, you can donate part of the proceeds! I’m still deciding exactly how to do this, but have budgeted roughly 10% of the proceeds.
if you ever had a roommate, you could consider sharing some portion of the proceeds with them. Ash Sarkar has spoken about how even having a roommate makes you a landlord and that it privatizes gains to only one party. Sharing with roommates pushes back on that dynamic.

I was surprised how different this process was from buying a home. After a while, I realized I know way fewer people who have ever sold a home than who have bought one. There’s so much information about supporting first time buyers. It felt harder as the seller to understand what were rules, what were ways people usually do things, and how to weigh competing priorities and needs. Being able to ask friends and neighbors for feedback was a huge help! Thank you to everyone who helped me through this process.

If you have any questions or want any further details, please feel free to reach out. Housing is a human right, and as we work to change the systems that try to privatize profit instead of providing housing, we can also try to do our part as individuals to make things that tiny bit less shit.

Header image description: an askew view of a for sale house sign
Header image: Ian Muttoo, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr

- https://erikaowens.com/blog/attempting-to-ethically-sell-a-house/ - This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license

Moving from the US to the UK via a transatlantic boat crossing

Mon, 15 Sep 2025 08:47:11 -0400

Erika Owens https://erikaowens.com/blog/moving-from-the-us-to-the-uk-via-a-transatlantic-boat-crossing/ -

In 2024 we moved across the ocean on a boat. First thing to acknowledge is:

Cruise ships are the worst for the environment

About 20 years ago I saw a little chart in GOOD Magazine that compared the carbon impact of various types of travel. The method that was the worst, and by a long, long, long way? Traveling by boat! Or, well, on a cruise ship, which is the way people these days typically travel by sea. I never forgot that little data viz cause it was so surprising. How could it be so bad when you can just float!? Well, it’s basically like carrying an amusement park and hotel with you everywhere you go.

I avoided cruises ever since. But when it became apparent it was a way to get our cat across the ocean, I began rationalizing, surely in 20 years, technology must have improved, right?! I did not search for the answer to that question till midway through the journey. Unsurprisingly the answer is no, the situation has not improved and, if anything, has gotten worse with cruise lines building ever bigger ships. The multitude of ways cruise ships are bad far exceed the little glimpse I got in that chart. I had heard about the crowds trampling Venice and Barcelona, but until this piece hadn’t realized about the health impacts on people who live near popular ports. To say nothing of the waste and disturbance of the oceans themselves. Maybe I just cashed in my environmental karma of not owning a car for 20 years? I dunno. But it’s bad and I participated and cannot talk about the rest of the experience without that acknowledgement.

Cruises are for extroverts

The journey we took is technically a crossing not a cruise (which also contributed to my rationalization that maybe it wasn’t as bad), but just because it’s a purpose built ocean liner to go from North America to Europe does not make it environmentally friendly. While it didn’t have the climbing wall we saw on another cruise ship that went past, it had multiple pools, theatres, restaurants, and of course, the entire hotel and structure for 2,400 passengers and 1,200 staff. And, boy, those thousands of passengers want to chat. I was not in any way prepared for the social aspect of being on a boat with thousands of people. Every passenger we encountered wanted to talk basically all the time. People were really friendly, but I didn’t know that it was going to be round the clock small talk for a week. Some things immediately became clear in these conversations:

People on cruises love cruises. Almost every person we talked to is a regular cruise goer. It was rare to find another first timer. Even after just one day, it was easy to see why this would be the case. You can completely remove your brain from your skull. Everything is done for you. Plentiful food and drink. Endless activities. Room housekeeping multiple times a day. Thousands of strangers to chat with. If you want to chill out, everything is designed to make that easy, and even to help you explore what exact kind of chilling out you may want to do (watercolors? pub quiz? aqua zumba? Shakespeare workshop?).
You are on holiday and the rest of the world does not exist. The small talk was small. We were surrounded by mostly Europeans who clearly enjoy international travel and it was abundantly clear it would not be OK to talk politics. Once or twice, much later in the trip, conversations veered even slightly in that direction and I was so hungry for more but it was clear that was not the setting. Yom Kippur fell during our trip and multiple times the cantor who led the Kol Nidre service said since we’re on holiday, it’s fine, do what you want! In practice, I did mostly follow his advice (streaming yizkor service while visiting our cat aside), but I was still a little surprised how overriding the holiday vibe was above all else.
There’s a strict divide between passengers and staff. Everyone I encountered was super nice and friendly. But the hierarchy present in so many ways was still jarring, and largely ignored in conversation with other passengers. Some staff members did share a bit about their experience, and how within the staff there are rigid hierarchical subdivisions (maybe cause it’s a British ship and they love hierarchies?). The racial and economic divide was also not frequently commented upon, but hard to ignore. The passenger demographics were shockingly white. It made sense the demographics are older (who else would have a week to travel in the middle of the school year?) but I could count on my hands the number of families I saw with at least one Black family member. And other ethnicities were not much more prevalent, which was in contrast to the staff that was majority people of color and at least a plurality of whom were from Asia. The class piece was kind of fascinating because the cheapest ticket is about $1,000 per person, which is a significant amount of money, but if you think of it as a week of food and hotel, it’s really not a bad value. Some rooms cost exceptionally more than that though, but honestly, I don’t know enough about retiree fashion to be able to tell the full class picture of passengers.
It was really convenient to be able to talk about moving. Since the culture is so chatty, it was very handy to have a topic of conversation that was pretty neutral and could be short or long depending on the context. People also loved hearing about our cat being in the kennel. I’ve found talking about the move to be convenient in many other social settings as well! (family reunions, work conferences, random parties) I wonder how much mileage you get out of a move, 6 months, 1 year, 5 years? I’ll try to reportback.

Packing for the cruise

After initially booking the boat in order to move the cat to the UK, we went back and forth a bit about whether we would stick with the plan or just take the cat through mainland Europe instead. What ultimately swayed me to stick with the boat was reading people online who talked about how on the boat you have unlimited baggage so you can take as much as you want. The only requirement is that it all of the bags have to fit in your room. (We heard of one other passenger with 36 bags!!) Online someone mentioned it’s also a really good way to take fragile things like artwork, which sounded like a great idea to me!

So I read you could take a lot of bags, but not about the logistics, how does this work in reality? This I could find very little information on (even though one person on a cruise forum reported seeing a sofa someone wrapped and put on their balcony). I scoured forums, watched Youtube videos on how to transport art, and then realized there was actually a more significant limitation: getting the luggage to and from the boat!

This led to another research phase of van rentals, bag shipping companies, “man with a van” companies, and even a stray idea of posting on reddit to see if someone in our new town might drive four hours and pick us up from the port. All of these options were some annoying combination of expensive or risky.

Instead, we went with the simplest option. We got a ride from family to the port and from the port so we were limited by their car sizes. This meant no random artwork or a big jumble of fragile things, but it did make it a much easier process of figuring out what to pack cause we just took a few suitcases and other kinds of bags.

My mom dropping me off at the boat. Yes, it is October 2024.

The other unknown was — how does baggage actually work with the boat? I read conflicting information online. Some things said you had to be able to carry your bags onto the boat, so we limited our array of bags to what we could actually (if we had to) carry (plus the cat!). But it turns out that was not the case at all. Upon arriving at the port in New York, there’s a giant trolley that you throw all your luggage on. We could have loaded that up with all the bags and then only carried by hand a random assortment of stuff (I even had a little handtruck ready for this task but we didn’t bring it since we thought we had to carry all the bags ourselves!). For disembarkation, if you can carry your things by hand, you can do that yourself, otherwise you can put all your bags out in the hall the night before. A bonus of using the kennel is you are in one of the early groups for disembarkation, so again we didn’t have to lug every single bag ourselves (and at the port there were extremely easy to use and free carts for us to get all our stuff to the car).

So the baggage situation was actually much easier and manageable than we thought. With what I know now, I would have taken more random things onto the boat. Maybe some art, if it would have fit in the car, but already there’s some random things we want like a bathroom scale or a like, one foot cube bluetooth speaker or small stool. Or our cat’s running water dish (most electronics are not a good idea to transport but that is such a silly one, it probably would have been fine or at least worth the maybe savings of $40 to try!). Some of these things I may be able to shove into a large suitcase on a plane in the future, but good lord there’s a lot of stupid tiny household items that just really add up and we could have easily jumbled into a car trunk.

More trips to come

In the end, we treated packing for the boat more like packing for a holiday than for a permanent move. (I didn’t even mention the whole “smart attire” and gala evenings aspect of the voyage, which necessitated a very specific wardrobe! As usual, Man in Seat 61 has an amazing point by point overview of the every facet of this trip.) We always figured we’d do a shipping container eventually and now we definitely will need to because it’s very unlikely we can in good (climate) conscience do the crossing again and there is a stupid amount of books, art, bric a brac, and maybe some furniture we still need to transport. I guess we could research if we wanted to join our stuff on a shipping container voyage across the ocean, which is allegedly better for the environment somehow, I guess maybe because it is more efficient use of the space on the ship?

Anyway, I’m already planning all the random things I will need to lug back on my next trip (on whatever mode of transportation) back and forth. I will definitely continue taking my friend Eva’s advice to load up my bags (and those of any willing friends and family) for each journey. I will seek to document the shipping container phase of this project as well (…and maybe the home buying/selling/how do you have parts of your life in multiple places aspects, too).

Let me know if there’s anything you’d like to know more about or if there’s anything about how terrible cruises are that I should know more about (I am very motivated by guilt). If you are also planning a similar move, feel free to reach out. It is a stressful process and happy to help if I can!

Header image description: a look at the Queen Mary 2 ship at the port in Brooklyn with some luggage carts about, a “welcome to Brooklyn” sign, and a gigantic cruise (crossing?) ship
Photo credit: Katherine Wood (all photos)

- https://erikaowens.com/blog/moving-from-the-us-to-the-uk-via-a-transatlantic-boat-crossing/ - This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license

Moving a cat from the US to the UK

Sun, 14 Sep 2025 08:47:11 -0400

Erika Owens https://erikaowens.com/blog/moving-a-cat-from-the-us-to-the-uk/ -

One of the first things we did to begin planning our move was research what to do about our cat. Cats cannot enter the UK on a plane in the cabin (they can enter mainland Europe this way, which I will say more about later). Cats can only fly directly to the UK in the hold. Our cat was already a teenager when we began planning and we were worried as an older cat, he wouldn’t do so well in the cargo of a plane. So we researched other options.

…enter, a boat

We quickly found out that it’s possible to take the cat on a boat instead of flying. The Queen Mary 2 from Cunard has an onboard kennel, but there is limited space and they sell out quickly. I first emailed about availability in August 2021 (!) and got this auto reply Unfortunately, because of the many cancellations since the onset on COVID 19 and the increased demand, the kennels are completely sold out eastbound for 2021 and 2022..

So that told us you really gotta plan ahead to take the boat! In May 2023 I booked a ticket for October 2024. All of the eastbound kennel spots for 2024 and even early 2025 were already booked at this point, but it’s only once you book your ticket that you are able to even join the wait list. Cunard lets you email to request information about the current status of the wait list as many times as you want (shout out to Debbie Fernandez, Cunard’s kennel contact, who was always so fast and helpful with replies). They send out a spreadsheet listing all of the crossings and describe how many (if any) spots are open and let you know how many people are on the wait list in increments of five. I asked a few times as I decided which crossing to book as I was trying to gauge which times were more busy. Since we had flexibility with our travel times, I reasoned fewer people would travel during the fall so booked to avoid the summer.

After joining the wait list in May, we found out in August that they had space for our cat and our kennel reservation had cleared! We paid the $1,600 for his reservation (cats have to book two kennels, one for them and one for their litter box). The trip could really happen!

Preparing for the voyage

Zeus was already 17 when his reservation got booked. I honestly had a bad feeling the whole time that something would happen to him before the trip since he was so old. Then, in April 2024 he got sick and stopped eating. I started asking for the kennel availability spreadsheets again. There actually was some availability on the crossings that were happening quite soon! I was really surprised. I think it may be that last minute bookings can work if you have flexibility with your plans. We ultimately decided to stick with the October plan (there were several open kennels on our crossing, but the one after us was 24 dogs in 24 kennels, so you really just never know!).

We monitored our cat extra closely over the summer (…and I began hand feeding him from a spoon) and got him some new prescription food for chronic kidney disease and he seemed to do better.

It finally came time to get him officially ready for the boat!

There’s a bunch of paperwork you need to get ironed out to take a cat into the UK.

They need to:

have an ID chip
have received a rabies vaccine within one year (you can get a three-year vaccine but the UK requires it to be within the first year) and to have received the vaccine with the chip already in place
have received the rabies vaccine at least 21 days prior to the voyage (our vet got nervous and had us do an extra dose of vaccine cause even though he received his vaccine earlier in the year, there had been a monthlong gap between his prior one-year booster and that vaccine and the vet worried it wouldn’t have been considered “continual” coverage given the gap, ugh!)
get a checkup from the vet who then fills out paperwork that gets sent to the USDA by snail mail and back to you by snail mail

The paperwork has to be signed by your vet no more than 10 days before arrival in the UK. Given that our boat trip was 9 days, I was really confused how this is even remotely possible given snail mail back and forth! After calling the USDA, they confirmed the “arrival date” for a boat trip is considered the day you board the boat, not the day you physically arrive in the UK. So that was a huge relief! We scheduled the visit 10 days before the day we left (one of the other pet owners mentioned he sometimes even fudges the leaving dates by a day or two since they aren’t on the official form. It’s a bit risky because if the form somehow got turned around instantly, it would be too early, but could be a way to build in a little more cushion). It was very stressful waiting for the mail, but our vet setup the mail to be overnighted there and back so that took out some of the uncertainty and waiting.

The total cost for the final vet appointment and paperwork was $674.20. (Our usual vet had a USDA certified vet on staff luckily, but if you have to go to a new vet, they often make you pay for an intake appointment too. This fee included shipping, appointment, and a fee for them to research all of the requirements for our specific trip.)

It was also $118.60 for the appointment to get another rabies booster. Basically, you should plan to just spend a lot a lot of money.

To recap, total cost:

Kennel on the boat - $1,600
Vet and USDA paperwork - $674.20
Additional appointment - $118.60

Total for the cat: $2,392.80

Our cost for the boat (two people): $3,422.89 (we got a room with a balcony but easily could have paid about half this cost for a regular room, you’re basically never in the room!)

Finally getting on the boat

Once our paperwork arrived, the next hurdle was getting him to the boat! We live about two hours away from New York so got a ride from my mom to the cruise terminal. It was really easy to find the terminal. We read confusing information online about what happens with your bags, but it was actually very easy. When you pull into the parking lot, there’s tons of carts collecting luggage, so we were able to put all of our big bags on the carts and did not have to carry them with the cat into the ferry terminal. What a relief!

After going through security at the terminal, we got directed to an area with other pet owners. The kennel master, Oliver, was already there and welcomed Zeus by name right away, just seeing his carrier!! We were wowed! Even though we were a little early, everyone was very welcoming and helpful. We waited a little bit and a Cunard staff person reviewed the documents for “Zeus the cat” and he said we were good to board. What a relief, he could board the boat!! We found out later another pet owner actually got turned away because they did not have the snail mail physical copy of their documents, so that definitely can happen. But, luckily all of our paperwork was in order and we could board the boat!

First, we dropped off Zeus at the kennel. There was a cage with his name on it already (and the cat icon even sort of looks like him!). We left his food also and instructions for feeding and were told to come back at 5:30pm for an official welcome to all the pet owners.

Zeus in his home for the week.

When we returned, we found out Zeus was one of 4 cats and 8 dogs on this crossing, which was apparently a very small number for how busy the kennels usually are. We also found out … in addition to his regular food, Zeus could be fed fresh poached salmon every day, if we thought that was ok. After trying to search a bit online about whether salmon is safe for sick kidneys, we agreed. Apparently, Zeus would go on to devour salmon twice a day.

Several pets on the boat were doing return voyages. Everyone was really friendly and would chat a lot since the dog owners needed to walk and visit their dogs a lot. Oliver and the other kennel worker, John, helped everyone get settled and oriented, and told us stories of many pets from prior voyages.

There were visiting hours three times a day and we tried to stop by during each of the time frames. Zeus hadn’t been around dogs really before and would hiss at the dogs sometimes but he really seemed fine. Especially as the week went on, he was devouring all of his food, including his prescription food. The luxury may have brought his appetite back!

Later in the week, we got a folder with Zeus’ official paperwork back. I thought there would be one final hurdle when we disembarked the ship and went through the border crossing, but actually the entire border crossing was handled while we were on the boat. So actually, he was all set. He was ready to be a British cat!

Disembarkation was similarly easy to getting on the ship. We got tags to put our bags out the night before and then just had to take him out by hand. All the pet owners gathered in the kennel in the morning to leave together as one of the earliest groups to get off. We got a ride from our mum on the British side and we were off!

Even though I was nervous, and there were many many stressful times of second guessing and worrying, we made it!

Zeus looking at me dozing off on the way to our new home in the UK.

Alternate route: US -> AMS -> UK

We almost went this route instead. It requires getting paperwork for the EU in addition to the UK, but you can do a direct flight to Amsterdam and then a train in the Netherlands (pets are allowed on the train) and then a ferry to the UK (pets are allowed on the ferry). This person described on reddit how they did this point by point.

In my (and that person, and many other people on reddit and Facebook and similar pet moving forums) experience, you really can do it yourself and don’t have to pay thousands of dollars to some pet transport company! If you’re nervous about it or have any detailed question I didn’t cover, please reach out.

Header photo description: our cat Zeus, a stripey guy with a “Queen Mary 2” little cat coat on and on his leash on deck on the boat.
Photo credit: Katherine Wood (all photos)

- https://erikaowens.com/blog/moving-a-cat-from-the-us-to-the-uk/ - This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license

A guide to boycotting Coke

Fri, 15 Aug 2025 08:47:11 -0400

Erika Owens https://erikaowens.com/blog/a-guide-to-boycotting-coke/ -

It’s no surprise that a company as huge and ubiquitious as Coca Cola may not be the most ethical, but I like Coke. “I don’t drink coffee or alcohol, can’t I drink one bad thing?!” I would whine when friends tutted at me. But a post in April from Ethical Consumer about the Palestine Solidarity Committee putting Coca Cola on their Don’t Buy Apartheid list finally (finally!) got me to re-evaluate my behavior.

It took me some fighting with myself and minor behavior modifications, but I haven’t had a Coca Cola product in a few months. Here’s the process that worked for me.

Starting slow

I told myself I could have one Coke a week to start. The idea of going cold turkey was just too much for me to commit to, even just in my own mind. But giving myself a weekly out made it a lot easier for me to imagine being able to do it. I did use this out, and then some, in the first few weeks. Sometimes I get migraines and caffeine can help and I reasoned my body needed that specific mix of sugar and caffeine and had a few during a particularly annoying stretch of migraines. (Medicinal!)

I also played some wishy washy games, like if someone else bought the Coke, it didn’t count toward my weekly ration. Silly, but I did it and … then I felt a little guilty. Ultimately, I think giving myself some time to work through these choices was more productive than starting off completely rigid.

Gotta do some research

My first pub visit after this pledge to myself, I made a huge sacrifice and ordered an Appletiser instead of a refreshing glass bottle of Coke. I felt really self satisfied. Later, I realized, hmm, Coke is a huge brand, I know they sell other stuff than just Coke. So I looked at the Wikpedia page. Right in A, Appletiser. Dammit.

BUT! This list also told me useful things like apparently Dr. Pepper sold its international rights to Coca Cola, but not its US rights. So (if I am understanding correctly and I hope I am), US-based Dr. Pepper is fine!

Thank goodness for so many non-alcoholic drink options

I still really like fizzy sugary drinks, and luckily there are tons of options these days. It’s easy to find alternatives in the grocery store, and most places (at least in the UK), even if they only carry Coke brand drinks, they also carry fizzy water or make mocktails, which I also enjoy. To be clear, none of these things taste like Coke, but nothing does, so I’m not expecting it. Just trying to get my fizzy sugar fix. (Side note: Pepsi is obviously not a substitute, but in my desperation, I was considering it. But for some reason I don’t understand in the UK all Pepsi products have fake sugar? And Pepsi MAX is way more available than Pepsi regular? I don’t get it. I have given up on Pepsi as a swap.)

I was a bit worried about no caffeine for a while, but then I realized that some of the fancy colas also have caffeine in them, like Fentimans. That’s now what I stock in the fridge for migraines. It’s been a lot of trial and error with different flavors and brands, but it’s been fun, and again, not expecting it to taste the same is the absolute key.

One challenge with the non-alcoholic drink options is, well, got another piece from Ethical Consumer. This time it included info about Nestlé. My first thought was “great, I don’t even like chocolate that much!” but, having had this Coca Cola experience I immediately went to their brand page. They make all kinds of fizzy drinks! Even just fizzy waters! Who knew!?! I decided I just can’t go there right now. I am avoiding their chocolate, which is maybe not actually what a boycott means, but gotta start somewhere.

Keep on keeping on

After the first few weeks of making deals with myself, I eventually just stopped looking at Coke as an option when I bought drinks. When it would come to mind, I would think to myself “am I really trying to persuade myself to drink a Coke when people are starving in Gaza?” and then that basically sealed it.

It’s a bit ridiculous to admit how hard this small change was for me, but, if other people might be in a similar situation, I hope sharing my experience might be useful.

Free Palestine.

- https://erikaowens.com/blog/a-guide-to-boycotting-coke/ - This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license

Reflections from TICTeC 2025: The role of journalism in pro-democracy tech

Fri, 20 Jun 2025 06:37:11 -0400

Erika Owens https://erikaowens.com/blog/reflections-from-tictec-2025-the-role-of-journalism-in-pro-democracy-tech/ -

I finally got the chance to attend the TICTeC conference hosted by mySociety, and this year’s theme was about “Pro-Democracy Technology,” as a more directed framing than the more general term of “civic tech.” It was great to attend as part of the Open Parliament TV team and be back in a space focused on the public service aspect of technology, and, as one might expect that meant there was also a lot of overlap with journalism.

Several sessions referenced three key ways that civic tech interacts with journalism: usage, visibility, and learning.

Usage: getting tools and data into the hands of journalists

A familiar refrain came up in many presentations: technologists built these tools to make the work of people who care about civic discourse and democracy easier! Journalists are a major subset of that community. Giulio Carvalho presented about Diários do Clima, a project from Open Knowledge Foundation in Brazil to make climate data more open and accessible. He advised that a “build it and they will come” approach will not work to engage journalists, you have to work with them directly. This is a point that cannot be repeated frequently enough!

He described how they held small group workshops, as opposed to recorded webinars or other passive tools, to get hands-on with journalists and the data. They also offered small grants to help with the reporting. This wraparound approach was successful and led to several stories. He also suggested ideas like convening an editorial advisory group to talk about ideas across organizations, which I love as a way to get people really working together and to break down divides between news organizations and technologists or civil society organizations.

Visibility: news coverage to increase awareness

Ultimately, the openness of many civic tech projects is about helping more people understand what is going on around them, whether that be in politics, policymaking, or their environment. Journalism still has reach to help get this information out beyond a project’s own platforms. Gitungo Wamere from Mzalendo shared how their promise tracker tool helped inform news coverage of promises made by politicians in Kenya and influenced the mainstream national dialogue about how or whether politicians were upholding their campaign pledges.

This comparative approach raised questions about what happens after the data collected by many tools. For example, a project that tracks bills, how does the policy described in the bill get implemented? Does it have the intended impact? This also seems like a ripe area for journalism to build on the work of these projects, situating policies with ongoing reporting on the broader context of a single bill or issue. I can also see how this is an area for long-term collaboration between journalists, civic tech, and other civil society organizations (and potentially a strong fundraising pitch)—working together with each group playing their unique role but being much more effective in making impact by collaborating directly rather than just hoping a news investigation influences further data work or long-term changemaking.

Learning: journalism’s role in deciding who we learn from

News organizations still have tremendous power to shape what ideas are seen as valid. (A power that is being dramatically misused against trans people in both the US and the UK, but that’s a rant for another day.) But, through engagement we have the chance to learn from each other and broaden what views are seen as worthy, authoritative, meaningful, or persuasive. Fernanda Campagnucci spoke about her research on civic participation and technology, including referencing the classic concept of the ladder of engagement from Sherry Arnstein. While the ladder references citizen engagement in civic processes, the concept of deepening engagement with audiences comes up in journalism as well.

In addition to the role journalists play in deciding who the engage or address in their work, audiences are also exerting power by withholding their attention to news. Billion Lee from Cofacts in Taiwan pointed out how she’s seen people engage less with journalism directly, and so journalism needs outside support to build tech tools that engage audiences in other ways. A presentation later in the day mentioned a new crowdsourcing platform for annotating public documents, which reminded me of journalism tech projects from the past that made it easy to get help from audiences in that way. I think the learning and support can go both ways, between journalism, tech, and beyond.

I appreciated these perspectives across academia, tech, civil society, and more as they demonstrated the importance of learning across disciplines and being able to apply lessons to new settings. Billion was part of a session about designing engaging sessions for people to participate in civic tech, and demonstrated strategies on interactive workshops while underlining the importance of the basics, like good food and good company! It was a fitting way to wrapup an event that itself demonstrated the importance of connection and learning (across all continents!) to understand who is building what, what we can learn from each other, and ultimately how to better inform and equip our neighbors, whether that be through journalism or another method.

Header image description: a view through a giant window toward the canal in Mechelen across a table with Post Its

- https://erikaowens.com/blog/reflections-from-tictec-2025-the-role-of-journalism-in-pro-democracy-tech/ - This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license