a doorway to ethnic media in the american heartland
Archive for October, 2009
October 29, 2009 at 5:42 pm · Filed under Business strategies, Ethnic Media in Chicago
So, a student asked, learning forward to ask a tough question, how is the ethnic media going to survive?
Everyone else is collapsing, he said.
Hmmph. Quiet. Tough to answer.
And then Lou Ransom, executive editor of the 104-year-old Chicago Defender, explained how and why and it seemed so perfect and so true.
We will survive, he said, seated among the panel of editors and journalists at our job fair the other day for college students to learn about the ethnic news media, because we have always survived.
We will survive, he said, because we have always had to do more with less, because surviving was the only choice and because we learned how to survive long ago.
And now, he said, while others are bankrupt and suffering because they’ve come down from the mountain of good times, the ethnic news media will survive because it never had that much to go on and so it is not scared of tough times.
Amen,
And in case you need some survival theme music, here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBR2G-iI3-I&feature=fvw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xui7x_KF7bY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8PUSg5SL7s&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvsI3jc4pPA&feature=related
and this is my favorite -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdcZvnSjFIk&feature=related
October 25, 2009 at 11:17 am · Filed under our stories - story telling we need to do
Is the swine flu affecting Latinos and blacks more? Here is a story from the L.A. Times which suggests that this has been the case.
But the ethnic composition of victims is changing somewhat, Lyn Finelli, head of flu surveillance at the CDC, said at a meeting Thursday. During the spring, Latinos had a disproportionately high number of infections, presumably because of contact with people returning from Mexico, where the virus is thought to have originated.
Here is the link:
http://tinyurl.com/yhe3yc8
Chicago has witnessed a dramatic increase in African refugees. Some of what they have found here has been dismaying to them. This Chicago Tribune story talks about the young Africans caught in the midst of school violence. But there is a bigger question: how are they and their families adjusting and how are they changing the nature of Chicago’s African communities?
Here is the Trib’s story
http://tinyurl.com/ygfjm6l
Stephen
This fall, the proportion of Latinos affected has declined, and the number of African Americans infected has grown for reasons that are not clear.
There has been some concern that swine flu is especially severe among Native Americans, but so far the CDC has received reports of only two deaths among that group, Finelli said.
October 22, 2009 at 8:24 pm · Filed under art and life
What I remember first is blood.
It wasn’t everywhere and it was only one day when I went searching in Iraqi hospitals for colleagues badly hurt in a blast that is stuck in my mind’s eye. A door swung open in one hospital and there was blood everywhere. On the floor. On the walls. On the beds. And there didn’t seem anything else.
But that’s not what I talked about when I talked about Iraq the other day at a presentation on the Iraq war at the MCA, an exhibit that is amazingly brilliantfor its reliance on dozens of people to sit and tell their stories one at a time, day after day: soldiers and refugees and anti-war activists and scholars and physicians.
I talked about the Iraqi psychiatrist in Baghdad who told me how Iraqis were too numb to feel because of all they had suffered and this was in the early days after the U.S. led invasion. I talked about the fear I remember seeing on the face of young soldiers headed out on patrols and how one night at a military hospital a young soldier waiting to hear what happened to a pal said he wished he got hit too so his waiting would be over. And I talked about the smothering oppression in the Saddam years and how I met people digging up mass graves and families searching for lost friends or relatives and people who had spent years in prisons for the slightest disregard to the former regime.
There was so much to say and I seem to have said so little and I wanted to say more.
In the days to come folks will sit, as I did, on a couch in the middle of the very modest exhibit, drink tea and nibble on Middle Eastern sweets and talk about what they know from their time in Iraq or from their contact with those of us touched by Iraq: a VA hospital psychologist, soldiers who have fought in Iraq, Major L. Tammy Duckworth (Nov.7) who is now an assistant secretary with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, artists, anti-war activists, human rights experts, and Iraqis from Chicago and its long-established Iraqi community, some new arrivals and some passing through. Some of the sessions will also be Arabic.
In so many ways this too is a Chicago story.
The picture up top is of Muntabbi street, a street of booksellers, a revered place for Iraqis who sought books banned by the old regime, and a place the exhibit commemorates with the wreckage of a car blown up in an attack there. A place where I bought a caligraphy of great art work and lovely meaning from the Koran from a well-known caligrapher who was killed in a random attack some time after.
The exhibit runs until Nov.15
click here to learn about the exhibit at the MCA:
http://tinyurl.com/yfm5pwk
And here is wonderfully reported and told story from the Trib about the despair of some newly arrived Iraqis in Chicago – a story that could easily be told in parts and across the ethnic news media
http://tinyurl.com/yz7ky4h
And this is from a soldier’s blog about Essam Pasha, an Iraqi artist now living in the U.S., who is traveling with the exhibit.
As a soldier serving in Iraq, I saw for myself how high the stakes can be for our Iraqi friends. My interpreter, Esam Pasha, was a charismatic young painter who spoke four languages and loved American movies. He bravely painted the first post-war mural on a public building–a historic piece covering a huge portrait of Saddam Hussein called
In addition to being talented and smart, Esam was also the most important weapon I had on the battlefield. On tense patrols, during dangerous house searches and at dark checkpoints, he often had only a few crucial seconds to help us explain to civilians why we were there and what we were asking them to do. More than once, Esam’s quick thinking and careful words saved lives – both American and Iraqi. He was “one of the guys”–and we trusted him with our lives. When my unit left Iraq in 2004, Esam was left behind to fend for himself. He was repeatedly threatened, and his name added to a public death list by local insurgents. Every day I checked my email, hoping to hear news that he was still alive. After many nervous months of constantly looking over his shoulder and navigating red tape, Esam finally escaped Baghdad to Jordan, than eventually made his way to New York City. He got a student visa, has refugee status pending, and is now thriving as an artist in Connecticut. His work was featured in
“Resilience.”a gallery in SoHo, and he was even on CNN. But Esam is one of a small number of lucky ones.
salaam,
Stephen
October 20, 2009 at 7:50 pm · Filed under Covering the Census
You want to know why this time around the Census will do a better job and fewer persons will be missed. You want to know this because Cook County alone has lost an estimated $200 million in the last decade because of the undercount.
You want to know how well the Census is prepared to reach people who are not easily reachable: elderly, those with minimal or no English skills, those on society’s financial margins, and those frightened that their participation will mean their arrest or deportation.
And you want to know how the Census is spending the millions that the government has set aside to buy advertisements in the ethnic news media and in separate efforts to reach out to communities. You want to know how this money has been spent and has it been spent in the best ways possible. You want an accounting, up front and clear.
And you can ask all of these questions on Thursday meeting at a briefing for the Chicago area’s ethnic news media held by the U.S. Census with the support of New America Media. The meeting begins at 10:30 a.m. at the Hyatt Regency, 151 E. Wacker, downtown, Chicago and there will also be a lunch served afterward.
I’ll be there to listen and ask and I hope you will be to.
Stephen
October 19, 2009 at 11:40 am · Filed under community reporting that matters, reporting on crime and safety
So there are stories that show programs that succeed. These move the issue ahead. Stories that tell about the daily lives of children on their ways to school, as the Chicago Tribune did recently. These make the issue real.
What about stories that talk about the holes left behind when Ceasefire lost much of its support from the state? And what about the shrinkage of other programs that were making a difference? How is being spent today and how much was spent a year ago?
And how about stories about what it is like in the schools? In the rush to safety is something else being lost? Are there children being pushed out of the schools because they misbehave and cannot make their way back to school? The American Bar Association is holding a conference this Friday here in Chicago on the rights of children, and that is a place is learn what is happening.
Talking about what needs to be said, here is an excerpt from a column by Hermene Hartman of Ndigo. Click on the link for the whole column.
Our children have gone wild. The occurrences of random killings seem to overshadow the education that’s going on. Students are afraid to go to school, and teachers are afraid to teach. Adding more security enforcement to the school is not the best answer. Throwing money at the situation is not the answer. Educators and community leaders need to address the issue or admit that they can’t. One thing’s for sure: We have to get out of the military style resolve.
http://www.ndigo.com/commentary.asp
Stephen
October 18, 2009 at 11:59 am · Filed under darn good writing, making the news local
Not all stories flow straight forward. Some stop. Some wander. Some feel like the talk that shapes our conversations. I like the way this story gives me a feel for the people and the neighborhood and makes me wonder about the bigger picture. Stephen
http://tinyurl.com/yf5c4zy
October 15, 2009 at 9:10 am · Filed under Latino TV
Univision seeks videos
Univision is looking for videos from independent producers and others to expand its reach to its audience. Click on this video above and it will tell you about it and how to get to the folks at Univision.
Lo que decir, Latino TV is growing or at least holding its own.
And while we are talking about this, here is a neat video on the history of one part of Latino TV in the U.S.
http://vimeo.com/1526727
Stephen
October 14, 2009 at 3:28 pm · Filed under Reporting on ethnic communities, immigrants and healthcare
Here’s a blog from a Cleveland reporter that gets me thinking about some figures he points to dealing with infant mortality. As he notes, there are federal figures for most counties and so I wonder how we are doing here in the Chicago area. His reporting approach might also be a guide. So, too, his frustration about what hasn’t happened yet.
Sustaining the Outrage: Revisiting America’s Most At-Risk Residents – Our Children
Our children shouldn’t live this way.
They shouldn’t have to play at contaminated abandoned industrial sites because their neighborhoods have no green space. They shouldn’t be at risk of dying before their first birthday because the color or their skin makes getting health care difficult. They shouldn’t go to schools where there is no learning and where their parents’ greatest hope is that they don’t join a gang or get attacked.
They shouldn’t be well on their way to becoming hardened criminals by age 11, or be forced to drop out of high school because they got pregnant.
Our Children shouldn’t live this way. But they do, especially in big cities like Cleveland. And it seems we have grown accustomed to it.
A few years back, Joan Mazzolini and I and a group of Plain Dealer reporters took an exhaustive look at our nation’s most at-risk citizens – the half million children who call greater Cleveland home.
We set out to precisely assess the problems children in Cleveland face.
For example, we found that half a million Ohio children live next door to a toxic waste site. We visited the neighborhoods with the most dangerous sites and found youngsters playing in abandoned factories.
We found that nearly 1 million children in Ohio live in what we defined as poor housing, putting them at greater risk for fires, accidents and environmental health hazards such as lead poisoning and asthma.
We found that babies born to teenage mothers are much more likely to be premature, and that those babies had cost Ohio roughly $161 million in five years. We found that in some inner-city neighborhoods infants are dying at rates that rival Third World countries like Guatemala.
And we found that children of color were most in danger.
and the blog picks up here:
http://tinyurl.com/y9a79zq
Stephen
October 14, 2009 at 1:01 pm · Filed under African-American news media, community reporting that matters
So what do you do next after you talk about violence in your community?
Richard Muhammad, editor of the Final Call, is looking to present stories that tell about ways that communities have faced the problem and found some solutions. And then the stories will link to organizations and resources on the web.
Here’s a fine story his paper did that laid out what has happened across the country when it comes to fighting violence in the black community. What makes it a better story is that it puts the problem into a larger context; that it helps the reader frame their own questions and that it moves the story ahead to what can be done.
http://tinyurl.com/y9tf92f
Stephen
October 11, 2009 at 5:31 pm · Filed under our neighborhoods, our streets, reporting on crime and safety
A few days ago I was sitting in a room in central Egypt talking with reporters and NGO officials about how to tell the story about child brides, and child labor and all the bad things that happen when poverty swallows hopes and ambitions.
We talked about campaigns where the news media work with the NGOs to get things done and after some grumbling, some complaints and some uncertainty, folks agree that their problems were too important not to do anything. That was in Egypt.
And that is what I’m thinking about now and about Chicago. We’ve had a heap of violence lately and so isn’t this time to do something special?
Why can’t the news media that serves Chicago’s black and Latino neighbors form partnerships and set a goal of telling this story and telling it in as many ways as possible until it is not a story of heartbreak and loss anymore. Amen.
Any thoughts? Any suggestions?
Stephen
And here is a wonderfully thought out story about immigrant workers. It takes place in Decatur, Ill. It can be a good guide for another one of the hundreds of tales of immigrant workers who die or suffer severe losses on the job and who suffer from the lack of justice.
http://tinyurl.com/yfm7aju
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