A platform to support community-minded journalists
In 2019, the year-long Criminalizing Disability project investigated special education in New Mexico. One of the four most common experiences parents described was the restraint and seclusion of disabled students within the Albuquerque School District.
Free Press is launching “Media 2070,” an in-depth research essay and organizing hub that documents and analyzes the history of media harm. Alicia Bell from Free Press talks about the origins and goals of the project, how they plan to engage their communities, and how you can stay in touch.
DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) audits are one way to check how well your coverage and staff reflect the communities you serve. But how can you get started? Join Caroline Bauman and Bene Cipolla from Chalkbeat as they share why Chalkbeat decided to conduct a DEI audit, how they defined the scope of their first audit, what they’ve learned, and what’s next.
How can journalists surface community perspectives through doing, not just talking? CapRadio in Sacramento, Calif., collaborated with an elementary school to host an activity-based listening event to find out. Here’s what happened.
CapRadio celebrated (and shared) the six-part documentary podcast called “Making Meadowview,” which profiled community leaders tackling big neighborhood problems in South Sacramento. It was a year-long project, born through a process of relationship-building with Meadowview residents.
#MeToo. #BlackLivesMatter. #NeverAgain. #WontBeErased. Though both the right- and left-wing media claim “objectivity” in their reporting of these and other contentious issues, the American public has become increasingly cynical about truth, fact, and reality. In The View from Somewhere, Lewis Raven Wallace dives deep into the history of “objectivity” in journalism and how its been used to gatekeep and silence marginalized writers as far back as Ida B. Wells. There’s also an accompanying podcast.
Grace Weber’s Music Lab, forged from collaboration between music artist Grace Weber and 88Nine Radio Milwaukee, is a free, monthly music and arts education program aimed at teaching high school students across Milwaukee, Wisconsin, about music and the entertainment industry.
With dwindling time and resources in newsrooms, does it make sense to invest in citizen-powered journalism and training? These programs might accomplish the mission of many newsrooms and improve democracy as a whole, but do they actually change communities? There are plenty of places to seek answers, because there is no shortage of programs that seek to train and “empower” people on behalf of journalism. At least part of the answer lies in those existing programs and their successes and failures. I want to understand the ingredients of a successful strategy to shift power within communities through training and journalism contributions, and whether people who were involved stay involved or become more active citizens.
Susan Robinson, a University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism professor, is on a self-professed racial journey. A journey she says all journalists should take. Here are 10 tips on building bridges between the mainstream media and underrepresented voices.
In 2015, The Seattle Globalist launched Your City. Your Story. Your Voice., a community media workshop series that served as a deconstructed journalism school for Seattle’s international communities. While it has always been their mission to elevate diverse voices, the daily online publication provided a formal orientation and introductory training to new writers and visual journalists.
In 2016, after Donald Trump proposed a ban that would prevent Muslims from entering the U.S., KUOW radio station Executive Producer of Community Engagement, Ross Reynolds, wondered how he could provide people with the opportunity to learn about communities they may know nothing about. The answer he reached was the “Ask A…” project, a series of in-person events.
In light of the media industry’s growing focus on audience engagement, this article explores how online and offline forms of engagement unfold within journalism, based on a comparative case study of two American public media newsrooms.