a doorway to ethnic media in the american heartland
Archive for May, 2009
May 26, 2009 at 5:27 pm · Filed under Business strategies
When the advertisers vanish and money goes away what do you?
One answer for the Chicago Defender has been to host events. It’s not traditional journalism, but its money and it serves a community purpose.
Cafe magazine has also been holding gatherings and that’s given them a lot of attention. Money too.
But what else can ethnic news media do to stay alive?
L. Nicole Trottie, publisher of the West Suburban Journal, sells videos that her paper takes of public and sporting events.
Scott Bae, vice-president of KBC-TV, looks for ways for Asian-American television stations to cooperate so they can cut costs.
And on and on. Some have solutions. But many do not in this terribly withered economy.
That is why we invited Mike Smith, head of the Media Management Center at Northwestern University, to talk at 11 a.m. Thursday (May 28th) about business strategies for the ethnic news media.
Whether it is advertising or circulation or just making a business plan, Mike will be ready to deal with your questions. If you work on the business side of your news outlet, this is especially meant for you.
The meeting is at the North Lawndale Community News, 1211 S. Western (corner of Ogden), Second floor. There’s parking on the street. The meeting should last just about an hour so you can get back to work.
May 19, 2009 at 7:24 pm · Filed under mortgage crisis, sources for reporting
Where do they go, the new nomads? What happens to the families who’ve lost their homes in foreclosure?
What happens to the families who have to flee their apartments when the buildings’ owners go bankrupt?
They wander. They search for cheap housing. They double up. They crowd into places where they left years ago.
The tide of humanity shifting about the Chicago area because of the mortgage crisis was clearly laid out by Geoff Smith of the Woodstock Insitute at the briefing we just held.
So what can the ethnic news media do?
It can write about the families dumped into the housing market. It can track the greater losses suffered by blacks and Latinos in Chicago, losses that swell in neighborhoods like Austin and Lawndale, and it can show how community groups are trying to deal with the crisis.
As Andrea Frye of the National Training and Information Center explained, the problem is only getting worse and more complex. Her organization is a good source if you are writing about this.
http://www.ntic-us.org/
So, too, the Woodstock Institute has date and experts that you can use to make a human story truly important. Their website:
http://www.woodstockinst.org/
And here is a page one story from the New York Times about how the foreclosure crisis is worse for blacks and Hispanics in the New York City. But the way I read the figures, the losses are even greater here in the Chicago area.
http://tinyurl.com/ou9opx
May 5, 2009 at 8:03 pm · Filed under community reporting that matters, economic and consumer reporting
Many others suffer from foreclosure
Here’s one on the 500 block of W.61st. And other on the 5500 block of Normal Blvd. And nearby on the 5600 block of S. Throop and over there on the 6400 block of S. Sangamon and down over at the 7100 block S. Peoria.
Gone. Busted. Homes foreclosed. No other community tops Englewood for foreclosures in the last two months in Chicago, according to figures from Chicago.everyblock.com
But how do you tell this story after you count up the numbers?
You go back to the numbers and explain what is happening now. Are they declining? Not in Chicago or nearby. Are they changing? Yes, more condominiums face foreclosure and many more homes have been lost in the suburbs lately.
How about the programs to help homeowners facing foreclosure?
By most accounts, they are not working nationally. See this excellent article in the Nation magazine: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090518/wright.
But what is happening here in Chicago? There’ve been efforts to protect tenants in foreclosed buildings in Cook County? But what is happening elsewhere in the Chicago area?
And how is somebody just scrapping by able to detect a fraud from a real helping hand; how can they tell the difference between people taking advantage of desperation, and others trying to stem their despair. Apparently, the swindlers are as sharp as ever.
What do you do when somebody calls your newsroom and says they have been cheated out of their home? How do you make the story bigger or more local or more meaningful?
There is a special meaning for this mortgage crisis for many in Chicago’s ethnic communities. Their home is their only savings. As modest as it is, it is their only foot on the first step of the stoop leading up to middle-class life.
Knock them back down and they and their children may not climb back up for a long time. And that’s a tumble only decades will undo.
We’ll be talking about these and other ways of reporting on the mortgage crisis here in Chicago on May 14 at a news briefing specially created for the ethnic new media. The 11 a.m. Thursday session will be held at 3200 S. Kedzie, first floor. Experts from the Woodstock Institute http://www.woodstockinst.org/ and National Training and Information Center http://www.ntic-us.org/ will talk about what the numbers mean, what is happening and what homeowners and communities here in Chicago have been doing.
The meeting is free and so are the coffee and donuts. Bring your notebooks and questions. We’ll also hand out some guides to help you report this story.
This story matters.
Update:
As the economy has collapsed, the gains made by African-American and Latinos homeowners is being erased fast. But the situation for Latino immigrants is different. Their rate of home ownership has not changed.
Black and Hispanic homeowners in these last few years were more than twice as likely as white homeowners to have subprime mortgages, and that was even in the case when they earned the same as whites.
In 2006, 17.5 percent of white home buyers used subprime loans as compared to 44.9 percent for Hispanics and 52.8 percent for blacks.
These figures are from a report released May 13 by the Pew Hispanic Center. Here is a New York Times story and then the report itself:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/us/13homeowner.html?th&emc=th
http://pewhispanic.org/
