Advocate/Organizer
Community Media Scholar and Educator
Antoine Haywood spent fifteen years working in community engagement and access media before entering academia, including positions at People TV in Atlanta and PhillyCAM in Philadelphia, where he led community engagement initiatives that connected public access channels to civic participation and local storytelling. He joined the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications as an assistant professor, where his scholarship focuses on community journalism, media history, and the use of place-based communication infrastructure to strengthen civic life. In 2026 he received the ACM's Dirk Koning-George Stoney Award for Humanistic Communication, recognition that connected his practitioner background to the intellectual tradition the award has always honored.
His research, published in Journalism Practice and Javnost, argues for the civic value of community media infrastructure at a moment when local news is disappearing and the case for public access needs to be made in scholarly as well as organizing terms.
Antoine's career moves between the station floor and the academic journal, carrying the practitioner's knowledge of what community media actually does into the arguments about why it should be defended and funded.
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Atlanta’s public access story began in 1980, when the city’s cable franchise created space for residents to make television of their own. Under Cable Atlanta, Jabari Simama became the city’s first director of public access, and the early system was built around the idea that Atlanta residents should have access not only to a channel, but to the tools, facilities, and training needed to speak for themselves.
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