HEATDRAWN’s The Thread Partners with AfroLA for Black History Month Editorial Collaboration
LOS ANGELES (February 4, 2025) — HEATDRAWN Media announces a February 2025 editorial partnership between The Thread, its AI-powered narrative publication, and AfroLA, the award-winning nonprofit newsroom serving Black communities across Los Angeles.
Throughout Black History Month, AfroLA and The Thread will collaborate on a four-part series highlighting everyday Angelenos whose lives shaped their communities, but whose stories often go unrecorded outside of obituaries and family memory.
The partnership aligned with both organizations’ missions: AfroLA’s commitment to solutions-oriented reporting centering Black communities, and The Thread’s approach to responsibly using artificial intelligence to surface overlooked human stories from obituary archives.
Each week in February, AfroLA will publish curated excerpts from The Thread exhibitions centered on themes of migration, memory, joy, sound, love, and cultural preservation:
Week 1: The Los Angeles Issue — Exploring migration and belonging through the lives documented in L.A. obituaries.
Week 2: The Love Issue — Guest curated by funeral home owner Candy Boyd, honoring artifacts of remembrance and community care.
Week 3: The Sound Issue — Featuring radio archivist Jocelyn Robinson and the preservation of Black voices from HBCU archives.
Week 4: The Joy Issue — Examining how uncovering family histories can reveal unexpected forms of intergenerational joy.
The Thread is guided by “Echo Weaver,” an AI archivist designed to analyze patterns across obituaries and transform them into curated narrative exhibits. Created by award-winning journalist and HEATDRAWN founder Ethan Ward, the project explores how technology can preserve cultural memory with care and intentionality.
“This partnership reflects a shared belief that everyday lives deserve dignity,” said Ward. “By working with AfroLA during Black History Month, we were able to center Black Los Angeles not as a footnote to history, but as an active archive of migration, resilience, creativity, and love.”
The collaboration also reflects AfroLA’s newsroom ethos of responsible AI integration — using technology to enhance reporting rather than replace human judgment.
The Thread is published by HEATDRAWN Media, an independent studio developing original work across publishing, audio, and emerging formats.
For more information, visit:
AfroLANews.org (afrolanews.org)
The Thread (followthethread.beehiiv.com)
About AfroLA
AfroLA is a nonpartisan, nonprofit digital newsroom producing solutions-focused, data-driven and community-centered journalism for Los Angeles, told through the lens of the Black community. Founded to challenge tropes and surface stories with nuance and context, AfroLA centers the lived experiences of Black Angelenos and communities of color most impacted by local policy. AfroLA is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt public charity. Learn more at AfroLANews.org.
About HEATDRAWN Media
HEATDRAWN was founded in 2020 by award-winning journalist and executive producer Ethan Ward. The studio develops original reporting and narrative projects examining power, culture, and belonging across publishing, audio, screen, and digital platforms. Its projects include INHERITANCE, a publication examining what we carry forward from family, ambition, race, and nation; REPUTATION, an award-winning limited series podcast on homelessness and housing policy; and THE THREAD, an AI-powered narrative experiment exploring obituary data, memory, and legacy. HEATDRAWN has been recognized by the LA Press Club and supported by the Omidyar Network Tech Journalism Fund.
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