Capital B is excited to announce the addition of two editorial leaders to guide our expanding newsrooms. Dalila-Johari Paul has joined as national editor, and Adeshina Emmanuel will join in April as managing editor of local.
Paul comes to Capital B from CNN Digital, where she most recently led the race and equality team. She managed coverage of various historic moments and cultural events that uniquely impacted people of color, from the 2022 mass shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, to the rise of Lil Nas X as a figure of Black queer expression. She developed a track record for working across the newsroom to highlight the perspectives of marginalized communities in news coverage, and helped spearhead the launch of CNN’s Race Deconstructed newsletter.
Prior to CNN, Paul served as the homepage editor at The Guardian and assistant business editor at The Star-Ledger in New Jersey. She started her career as a copy editor at Newsday and later at the Hartford Courant, but her first reporting assignments came in high school, as a student covering homelessness and race relations in New York City’s five boroughs. A native New Yorker, Paul holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and journalism from Rutgers University – New Brunswick. She currently lives in Atlanta.
In her new role, Paul will manage Capital B’s growing team of national reporters, located across the country, covering politics, criminal justice, health, and other beats.
(J. Tyler Franklin)
Emmanuel comes to Capital B from the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting/Louisville Public Media, where he serves as managing editor. Previously, he was the editor-in-chief of Injustice Watch, a Chicago-based investigative news outlet with a focus on inequities in the criminal justice system. There, he helped spearhead an expansion of the organization’s judicial election guide with new features and targeted distribution across the Chicago metro area, including in jails and Spanish-speaking communities.
In both positions, Emmanuel exhibited a sharp eye for enhancing investigative projects, building partnerships, and infusing empathy into coverage of marginalized communities.
Emmanuel’s career is steeped in the world of nonprofit news. Prior to Injustice Watch, he was an education reporter for Chalkbeat and earlier covered race, class, and inequality for the Chicago Reporter. He has a long track record of identifying and serving the journalistic needs of communities, starting with his early-career experience as a hyperlocal news reporter for DNAinfo.
Emmanuel was a 2022 fellow in Columbia Journalism School’s Sulzberger Executive Leadership Program. He is a native Chicagoan and attended Loyola University. He currently lives in Louisville, Kentucky.
In his new role, Emmanuel will oversee Capital B’s growing network of local newsrooms, which launched with our Atlanta newsroom in 2022 and will grow with the opening of our Gary, Indiana, newsroom in 2023.
Capital B is a local-national nonprofit news organization that centers Black voices, audience needs, and experiences, partnering with the communities it serves.