Highlighting Black Hoosiers

Black Indiana residents report higher news consumption, lower expectations and identity-based trust in new LIFT report.

After almost two years of continuing our work to figure out who Midwesterners trust, what they care about, and from where they get their news, the LIFT Project has published its 2026 report on Indiana. While the survey was open to all communities in Indiana, we found specific nuances among Black Hoosiers worth highlighting.

You can read more about the News for Hoosiers: Community Priorities and Media Preferences Report—made possible with funding from the Lumina Foundation.

Read the report here: LIFT releases first report on Indiana

This is LIFT’s first state-wide survey-based report; previous surveys in Michigan and Minnesota focused exclusively on Black and immigrant communities.

As always, the LIFT Project seeks to understand and identify areas to improve information pathways for historically underserved people in the Midwest. Our data informs us about th unique landscape in Indiana including: media consumption habits, community concerns, and trust networks. But the following are some of the most important takeaways for anyone interested in learning more about Black Hoosiers specifically.

Black Hoosiers and the News

We surveyed 233 Indiana residents who identified as Black. Based on previous LIFT work, we expected some differences between Black Hoosiers and the statewide population.

For instance, we know Black Midwestern communities tend to be most concerned with misrepresentation versus other media concerns like disinformation or AI. This held true in Indiana. Black Hoosiers also expressed more concern about issues like voting access, police violence, and gun violence than the general population.

The Hoosier survey also validated a repeated LIFT finding that links trust and identity. Black people are more likely to name trusted messengers (including politicians, journalists, and community leaders) who share identity markers with them, such as race.

When looking at habits, we found that Black Hoosiers engaged with local news slightly more than the statewide population, and that they trended toward relying on internet searches and social media more than statewide averages.

Community-Centered Production

Black Hoosiers play a substantial role in news production in their state across the media landscape. As alternative, community-supported journalism plays a bigger role in filling the gaps left behind by the decline of traditional news, nonprofit outlets like Capital B Gary and Fort Wayne Ink Spot have been established as organizations centering Black communities in their respective cities. We also saw several news-based social media pages commonly listed as trusted spaces, including the frequently mentioned Black Indy Live.

Additionally, we identified several trusted messengers who are Black across the state, including journalists like Tony Betton Jr. and Sandra Chapman.

Expecting Less—and Getting It?

Some of the more surprising findings from the survey dealt with what audiences expect from local media versus how they feel local media is actually performing.

Ultimately, we found that the gap between what Black communities expect of local media and how they rank its performance was significantly smaller compared to all other populations in Indiana.

This tells us that while Black people have vastly better assessments of the actual performance of local news, they maintain some of the lowest expectations for what news can actually accomplish.

Trust in news remains low among Black Hoosiers, as it does with all other communities in Indiana. Still, our findings show several potential areas where newsmakers and trusted messengers can step up to improve the information ecosystem.

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Stay tuned for our upcoming insights from the Hoosier Report focused on immigrant Hoosiers and trusted messengers in Indiana.