Our Mission

For the ever-evolving.

 

Our Values

We believe everyone deserves authentic and fair representation in the news and equal access to information. Without these, communities are excluded from the conversation and left behind. Yet, in our current news ecosystem, many do not receive what they need. This gap drives much of Resolve’s work, especially in our hometown of Philadelphia. But we also know we can’t do this alone. The issues faced by the news industry require us to work together to make significant changes. 

We believe in collaboration and sharing resources and knowledge. Our entire body of work was built on creating cooperation and congeniality where there had once been only competition. Now, when we learn or discover a new way to improve our work, the last thing we want to do is keep it to ourselves. We want to bring what works to as many other organizations as possible because we believe in working smarter, not harder. We’re all on the same team, so you’ll find no gatekeeping here. 

We believe big change can be both scary yet exciting, difficult yet enjoyable, unimaginable yet accomplishable. Facing everything from global pandemics to climate change to threats to civil rights, our communities can’t afford to be excluded from information that helps them survive and thrive. This is not the time for incrementalism. But we also recognize that changing time-honored practices, well-worn behaviors, and institutional workflows can be extremely difficult. We bring our most impactful practices to the table so that our partners can receive the maximum benefit of investing in change — and their audiences can as well.

 

Our History

Modifier’s parent organization, Resolve Philly, is a proving ground for news and information initiatives that challenge the field of journalism to be more equitable, collaborative, and based in community voices and solutions. Resolve was founded in 2018 by Jean Friedman-Rudovsky and Cassie Haynes, emerging from a 2017 collaborative reporting project covering reentry from prison, a critical issue facing Philadelphia. 

In 2019, Resolve began informally consulting with newsrooms on its programmatic work and organizational approach to equity and inclusion. As demand for the organization’s expertise grew, Cassie and Jean formalized Resolve’s consulting practice. Since early-2021, the Co-Founders and their team have been supporting journalism organizations across the nation in becoming the most equitable versions of themselves—in both their work and operations.

Modifier was created in 2022 to combine this growing consulting practice with the professional development work that the wider Resolve team has been conducting as its knowledge base expanded. This includes the work of Reframe, our previous initiative devoted to education on language and framing, as well as the work of our community engagement and collaborative journalism teams.

Read more about our transition from Reframe to Modifier.