a doorway to ethnic media in the american heartland
July 30, 2010 at 4:11 pm · Filed under community reporting that matters, latino news media
Up on the very crowded stage the mayor was shouting the kind of things that made the overflow crowd howl with joy.
He talked about how Chicago was made by immigrants, how immigrants are welcomed to Chicago and how Chicago needs immigrants.
Que cierto!
For a room packed one night this week with Latino politicos and community activists and friends of Extra newspaper, the mayor’s words and presence were a nice tribute to a newspaper celebrating its 30 year history and to a news media that continues to grow as Chicago’s Latinos claim their place in the sun. http://www.extranews.net/
If you wanted a reminder just how far the Latino meeting has come, you needed to sit in on the recent meeting here of the National Association of Hispanic Publications. Zeke Montes of El Imparcial is the group’s new president.
The message was that nationally Latinos are a fast growing market for advertisers, that Latinos respond very well to online advertising and that the publications which engage their audiences in high quality content and which listen to their audiences will prosper and survive. An important message.
And while we are talking about immigrants, do yourself a favor and click on this link to listen to immigrants talking about their lives here and there. This is from our collaboration with Medill professor Jack Doppelt, an effort funded by the Chicago Community Trust. http://www.immigrantconnect.org/?p=7516.
Northwestern University students have panned out this summer at festivals and parks and gathered the voices of Chicago’s immigrants. Listen to the audio files that they brought back.
Richie was right.
July 29, 2010 at 3:57 pm · Filed under African-American news media, black news media, community reporting that matters
We were talking about the stories that could be written about North Lawndale and Isaac Lewis reeled off one idea after another.
Stories about health and the economy and what’s happened to the community. Stories about now and then. Stories that lift people up and stories that give you a sense of what needs to be done.
Shameka Robinson, our intern with Isaac’s North Lawndale Community News, wanted to do all of them too.
I thought about brainstorming with Isaac when I came across this discouraging report on the mainstream news media’s coverage of African-Americans.
The report by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism reached this conclusion after a long term study:
“As a group, African Americans attracted relatively little attention in the U.S. mainstream news media during the first year of Barack Obama’s presidency — and what coverage there was tended to focus more on specific episodes than on examining how broader issues and trends affected the lives of blacks generally”
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1676/media-coverage-african-american-issues-first-year-obama-presidency
It explains further:
The study finds that 9% of the coverage of the nation’s first black president and his administration during Obama’s first year in office had some race angle to it. Here, too, this coverage was largely tied to specific incidents or controversies rather than to broader issues and themes.
These findings come from an examination of more than 67,000 national news stories that appeared between Feb. 16, 2009 and Feb. 15, 2010 in different mainstream media outlets, including newspapers, cable and network television, radio, and news websites.
Just 643 of those stories, 1.9% of the total newshole examined by the study, related in a significant way to African Americans in the U.S.1 (To be considered a “significant” part of a given story, 25% of the content of that story must be about a demographic group and its race/ethnicity). However, this was more coverage than was given in the s same time period to two other minority groups — Hispanics (1.3%) and Asian Americans (0.2%). As a percentage African Americans make up 12.9% of the U.S. population.“
This has been a difficult and complex year for many black Americans. The economy has swallowed millions of jobs and taken away thousands of homes, virtually the only source of wealth for many blacks. Crime consumes a large part of the worries in many black communities. And so do concerns whether the schools that serve black children will collapse under the weight of shrunken budgets.
Where were these stories?
Apparently, they didn’t show up in the mainstream media.
“The storylines that generated the most press attention on African Americans were driven primarily by black figures who made news. In its coverage of race, in other words, the press largely responded to breaking news during the year studied rather than exploring the state of African Americans or developing African-American angles around events or issues in the news.”
So what does that mean?
That we live in separate worlds as ever before? That the black news media has to work harder to tell the story it knows so well. But if it does, if it churns out compelling, important news, will it matter if it is only read by its audience?
What do you think? Talk to me.
Steve@newstips.org
July 29, 2010 at 2:31 pm · Filed under community reporting that matters, latino news media
Here is a story from one of our interns that connects people with agencies that can help. And nowadays getting the right help is more important than ever for folks searching for new futures.
This is the article from EXTRA:
by Kaaren Fehsenfeld | trad. Víctor Flores
After 27 years of hard work at a factory, Martha Jaramillo was left with a knob in the place of her right hand, limiting her capacity to acquire other skills. Typing on a keyboard and learning to use a computer seemed out of the question.
“I thought I wouldn’t be able to learn,” Jaramillo said. “I had no idea how [computers worked]!” When Jaramillo was laid off two years ago, a friend suggested she enroll in Digital Divide, an adult computer-training program at the United Neighborhood Organization (UNO).
Classes are held in eight to 10 week sessions in UNO charter schools throughout Chicago. A suggested $20 donation covers enrollment. Digital Divide hosts three course levels. In the first course, students learn how to turn on a computer, how to search the Internet and use Microsoft Word.
After the second and third level, students learn how to make a PowerPoint presentation, chat through Skype or instant messenger and even use Google maps to track public transit. The Digital Divide courses also teach students how to protect themselves from identity theft and fraud while using the Internet. For Jaramillo, the class quickly turned from a hobby into a necessity.
“It helped me not feel depressed [after loosing my job],” Jaramillo said. “I met new people. [The class was] like therapy, it raised my self-esteem,” she said.
Enrollment in an education program qualified Jaramillo to receive financial benefits from her previous job, specifically those for laid off employees.
After completing three consecutive course levels, she learned to write e-mails, shop and search for jobs online. “[I] didn’t even know how to write a check,” laughed Jaramillo. “And I learned how to pay my bills online.” Jaramillo is now looking for a computer-oriented job, hoping to move away from physically demanding assembly work.
“Our computer classes are part of a bigger vision for the adult community [toward] American assimilation,” said Masha Chernyak, who emigrated from Russia as a teenager. Chernyak, former adult enrichment program director of the Digital Divide program, now heads the parental leadership program. She said computer literacy gives parents a voice in their community.
“If we have successful parents, we will have successful kids and most likely we’ll have a successful community,” Chernyak said. “[It’s about] building their own power. But there is no American dream if you’re not connected to the Internet.” Chernyak said UNO’s student retention rate is 20 percent higher than the national average for similar adult education courses, while the Digital Divide program has boasted over 2,000 graduating adults in the last four years.
She attributes this success to UNO’s no-nonsense approach to learning, where she says achievement is an “expectation, not a hope.”
“Students make a big sacrifice to come [to class],” said Jaime Leal, a Digital Divide instructor, who recalled a first time father who came to class regularly, though it meant not seeing his newborn son all day. Dámaso Ramírez, co-founder of the United Southwest Chamber of Commerce and owner of an auto and body repair shop in the Southside of Chicago, signed up for a Digital Divide class after he met Chernyak at his shop.
A successful businessman and community leader, Ramírez had almost no first hand experience with computers when he registered. “It’s time to change,” Ramírez said. “You can learn as much as you like,” he said. “We had a lot of fun. The teachers are patient, [and] it’s a good service for the community [because] it helps business owners be more efficient.”
Ramírez now saves money on customer thank-you cards his business sends. He used to pay for their design and printing, but now does it on his own using his home computer. He also uses Microsoft Excel to manage expenses and employee schedules. Ramírez, who studied through the third grade in his native Guanajuato, México, said he valued the opportunity for further adult education.
As for Jaramillo, her connection to the Digital Divide classes was so strong that after completing the three course levels, she returned voluntarily to help incoming students. “There was one woman who was so nervous, she was sweating [just] holding the mouse,” Jaramillo said. “I sat next to her, and [said] ‘don’t be scared, you won’t break it.’ I helped her not feel so nervous.”
For Jaramillo, helping her community became an integral part of the class. “I made a lot of friendships there,” Jaramillo said. “I wasn’t at home, thinking about the problems I had. I liked helping people [learn].” This community growth is what UNO emphasizes in its mission. “[We build] a micro community within the classroom,” Leal said. “[Where] people exchange information and resources.” Computer training program — The Digital Divide courses begins in mid-September; Registration begins the first week of September. To enroll at an UNO charter school near you, call Jacob Pérez, adult enrichment program director, at (312) 520-6937 or (312) 432-6301.
July 26, 2010 at 10:50 am · Filed under photography and the ethnic news media
If folks stare at your pictures and wonder how you messed up, that’s okay. We all can do better.
And if you take part in tomorrow’s photography workshop for the ethnic news media, the chances are you will do better. We’ll meet at 9 am (July 27) at our offices, 218 s. Wabash, 7th floor and Carlos Javier Ortiz will help us figure out how not only to improve our photography, but what to look for.
Here too is a guide to online sources:
If you find others that help, let me know,
Stephen Franklin, steve@newstips.org
Community Media Workshop, July 2010
Take Great Pictures. com
http://www.takegreatpictures.com/
BBC Photojournalism Training http://www.bbctraining.com/modules/5915/index.asp
National Geographic Students’ Guide to Photojournalism http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/09/g68/photographyguidestudent.pdf
UBC Wiki Photojournalism Guide http://wiki.elearning.ubc.ca/PhotojournalismTips
Kodak Top 10 tips for great pictures http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=317&pq-locale=en_US
Knight Digital Center
http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/cat/photo
July 23, 2010 at 1:05 pm · Filed under black news media, community reporting that matters
The front page catches your eye and brings you straight to the editorial page. Here, it reads:
‘We have to formulate a way to make sure that criminals in our midst know that they are not welcome, that they are not safe, that there is no harbor for them…The only way that kind of criminal excess can be avoided is if we take responsibility, take control and stop letting criminals have their way, even if that means making a call to the police, or even putting a criminal out of your house.
This has to stop!”
Read the whole editorial from this week’s Defender and you appreciate what power comes into the hands of a newspaper when it stands up and says this is what we need to do in our community. Strong words. An unflinching dedication to a bound unbroken.
This is when the ethnic media is maybe one of the strongest tools we to have making a difference.
Read the editorial and you know it is talking eye to eye, heart to heart.
And here’s a story that accompanies the editorial.
http://www.chicagodefender.com/article-8325-residents-violent-weeks-in-neighborhood-just-before-officer-fatally-shot-there.html
July 23, 2010 at 9:40 am · Filed under photography and the ethnic news media
We’re very lucky to have Carlos Javier Ortiz for our photography workshop this Tuesday for the ethnic news media. The session is from 9 to 11 am at our offices, 218 s. Wabash, 7th floor. We’re close to capacity but we can squeeze a few more folks. Let me know if you want to join us. Steve@newstips.org
Here’s his bio.
Carlos Javier was a finalist for the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography for his project, Too Young To Die in 2008. Carlos Javier recently received the 2009 domestic photography award from the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights for the Too Young To Die project
Carlos Javier Ortiz was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico and raised in Chicago, Illinois. As a teenager, his love of photography led him to work at a traveling carnival to save money for photography equipment and college tuition. Later, Carlos Javier attended Columbia College in Chicago, where he studied photojournalism. Following college, Carlos Javier was a staff photographer for Chicago In The Year 2000 (CITY 2000), a yearlong project documenting the city and its inhabitants. He worked for several years as a photojournalist for newspapers in Philadelphia and New Jersey. Carlos Javier is currently working on a cross-cultural youth violence project, which documents adolescents in Chicago and Guatemala. The project documents the lives of youth victims of violence as well as the teenage perpetrators of these crimes. Carlos Javier’s work is sponsored by the Blue Earth Alliance, a non-profit organization that supports documentary photography projects of endangered cultures, threatened environments, or current topics of social concern.
His work has appeared in Ebony Magazine, Newsweek, Time Magazine Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine, NPR, Chicago Public Radio (WBEZ) The Guardian, Stern Magazine, Internazionale Magazine, and other publications.
Here are his award winning photos from Ebony:
http://www.ebonyjet.com/culture/index2.aspx?id=12410
July 22, 2010 at 2:11 pm · Filed under making the news local
We sang. We hung until they closed and they waited for us to leave. We filled the people with ourselves and filled the Heartland Cafe with a great heap of generosity.
Our Scribe Aid fundraiser was so good because so many cared to help our journalism colleagues who’ve lost jobs and are trying to start over.
We raised $1,100 and then the NABJ kicked in another $200 and others folks have been joining in.
The money will go to help with freelancing costs, with classes to help your career or with equipment such as tape recorders. If you want to help out, the donations go to the Chicago Headline Club Foundation, which is a tax deductible organization, 1633 Central St. Evanston, Il 60201 and if you want to apply or know folks who can use the help, drop me a note,
Steve@newstips.org
Near the end of the night, we had a very loud, very out of tune sing along. The song was Stand by Me. It had a good feelingt
July 21, 2010 at 11:07 am · Filed under community reporting that matters
We were talking about how the explosions in Baghdad marked us. I was saying how I jump whenever there’s a large explosion, and he looked at me and flatly said he has never stopped hearing the explosions. Even here. Even months later after arriving from Iraq.
I fumbled to say something. I was stunned.
“Do you talk to anyone about this,” I asked.
“No,” he replied.
“But there are people here who can help,” I said.
“Who are they?” asked the middle-aged Iraqi, a recent arrival in the growing tide of refugees coming to Chicago from Iraq.
He is hardly the first Iraqi refugee to share the story of the indelible scars they carry. But I was quickly reminded of them by a story in today’s Tribune about Arab immigrants. It quotes an Arab-American family therapist who talks about the depression he sometimes encounters among immigrants, and the lingering wounds of war he finds among refugees.
So how does the ethnic news media help immigrants from war-torn places in the Middle East, Central and South America, Eastern Europe and Africa, people who now call Uptown or Rogers Park or the Far South Side their new homes? How do we journalists tell about the emotional crises faced by these refugees and by the immigrants whose lives and journeys here have similarly marked them?
First, we can identify the places that provide help, especially those that treat victims of torture. The Heartland Alliance’s Kovler Center is one of the pioneers in this issue and it began by helping immigrants from Central America.
We can ask the mental health agencies and the mental health professions that serve these immigrants how they have adjusted to their needs. Another Iraqi who has faced similar scars told me of the medicine he gets from his doctor to treat his anxieties, but nothing else.
We can ask them what programs they offer as a way of fitting in and what examples they can offer for these immigrants to start their lives over. We can ask the agencies that serve these immigrants how well they are prepared to cope with these challenges.
And we can make all of these stories far more compelling by putting a human face on the scars that do not go away.
Again, if you do any reporting on this, please let me know.
Steve@newstips.org
July 14, 2010 at 5:09 pm · Filed under community reporting that matters
Nowadays when I reach for a bunch of blueberries, I pause and wonder.
Who picked these berries?
Was it the work of some of the people I met recently in Western Michigan?
The people who told me about long days in the sun without a break or without water or a toilet and how they are sometimes cheated out of their earnings.
The people who talked about desperate families sneaking underage children onto the fields so they can earn as much possible because the fields are so crowded nowadays with new workers – people fleeing the immigration raids, or new recruits on the migrant stream from places as far away as Oaxaca or simply jobless folks scouring for work, any work.
I went to Western Michigan because that’s the Midwest’s garden, drawing about 90,000 farmworkers yearly. But here in the Chicago area we have about 50,000 workers, many of them farmworkers and many others who tend the nurseries and gardens.
Nearly all of them are Latino and because so many are without papers, they suffer in silence from abuses that you would imagine went out of practice decades ago.
I know about these workers in the Chicago area and their problems because of a thoughtful and wisely timed article some weeks ago by Fabiola Pomerada in La Raza that talked about the agencies that help these workers with the challenges they face.
So, now while they have finished picking blue-berries and are moving on to other crops, it seems a good time to go out and witness the lives of these people who harvest our foods.
Or with the explosion of small farmers’ markets in the Chicago area, a good story might be about these farmers and where our crops come from. If your audience cares about where it gets its food, this can be a good story to tell. This can become a moving narrative story about farmers and the people who work for them. Or a story about simply knowing who harvested your food and focusing on them.
Driving home from Michigan, I thought about the stories I heard and stories I heard years ago in central Florida where slavery still lingered in the fields and I thought about how little life has changed for some in the nation’s farm fields and I hoped the blueberries I bought at a road stand stand didn’t come from the wrong place.
Once again, if you do any reporting on this or want some suggestions, drop me a note.
saludos
Steve@newstips.org
http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6225/how_would_you_like_his_job/
and here’s a column by Teresa Puente
http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/chicanisima/2010/07/this-summer-ive-spent-time.html
July 6, 2010 at 11:00 am · Filed under Events, Training, photography and the ethnic news media
You take pictures, but they don’t get any better, right?
That’s not good because this is a place that cries out for photographs and that’s what we need to reach our audience and to tell our stories.
So let’s work on this together.
We’re holding a photography workshop for the ethnic news media on Tuesday, July 27, at our offices at 218 S. Wabash, Chicago, 7th floor. The workshop is from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. We’ll go over basic techniques and strategies and you do not have to have fancy equipment at all. Cellphone. Point and shoots. If you use photos for your newspaper, magazine, website or blog, then you will want to come to this free session taught by award-winning photographer Carlos Javier Ortiz
Check out his photos here:
http://www.carlosjortiz.com/
We only have so much space, so please let me know if you are coming.
Steve Franklin, steve@newstips.org, cell 773 595 8667 or 312 369 7782
All of our work with the ethnic news media is supported by the McCormick Foundation
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