Jazzlyn Johnson

Jazzlyn Johnson reports for The Community Voice, a publication that focuses on African-American communities. While The Voice began in Wichita, Kansas, it has expanded to include Kansas City, Missouri, where Johnson focuses on violent crime, affordable housing and other issues of concern. Before this, she was an editorial intern for the Outdoor Writers Association of America’s membership magazine Outdoors Unlimited. She has also worked with Garden City Harvest, a local nonprofit in Missoula, Montana, as a public outreach intern. While earning her B.A. at the University of Montana School of Journalism, Johnson covered Montana’s legislation surrounding the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’s crisis. Johnson’s reporting on the legislature for the Montana Native News Project sparked national attention and she was consulted for one of MTV’s True Life Crime episodes. The project as a whole is a finalist for an Online Journalism Award.

The Community Voice

The Community Voice is a bi-weekly, state-wide publication that targets Kansas' African-American community. The publication was founded in 1993, and purchased by the Gooch family in 1996. The publication was originally a monthly, and has been bi-weekly for almost two decades. Until 2015, our coverage area was predominately the Wichita community, but we've expanded into the Kansas City market, focusing heavily on the Kansas side of the metropolitan area. Again, in response to a request to expand, we formally expanded our coverage in 2018 to include the Missouri side of the Kansas City metropolitan area.