Media group helps people tell 'other side' of the story
How do you help people tell their story effectively?
In the late 1960s, a turbulent time in Chicago, Hank De Zutter was an education writer at the Chicago Daily News. He and some of his colleagues felt that main-line journalism's coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the police killings of Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark and other stories was incomplete.
De Zutter and his colleagues founded the Chicago Journalism Review to provide a place for stories not covered in the press while also giving an important critical perspective on the news establishment itself. The Review became the model for similar publications in cities across the country.
At this point, De Zutter and his colleagues must have decided that the best way to go about helping people tell their story is to tell their story for them.
By 1989, De Zutter had met Thom Clark, a community activist who shared De Zutter's opinion that the public often did not get the whole story from mainstream media. Together they founded Community Media Workshop dedicated to encouraging the media to tell the stories of the "other" Chicago -- stories from "… the oft-neglected neighborhoods and back streets of Chicago, where the problems are felt most deeply and where solutions are most likely to be born."
De Zutter and Clark decided on a two-pronged approach toward better news stories. The Workshop targeted journalists themselves by offering additional sources on stories, not just the obvious "official" source. "By making available the names of people affected by the actions of officials, we wanted to help journalists add depth and dimension to their reporting," Clark said.
Another strategy was to create background papers. For example, in 1996 when the Democratic National Convention was again held in Chicago, the Workshop offered journalists, particularly foreign journalists, briefing papers on topics such as school reform or public housing. "For a reporter from Greece, for example, these briefing papers gave a context for what was happening at the convention," Clark said.
Next, the Workshop targeted nonprofit organizations, reaching out to the staff and volunteers and guiding them with training and courses.
"We weren't particularly interested in teaching how to write a press release to get the boss' name in the newspaper. Rather we wanted to teach a mindset along with some public relations skills and techniques that would equip these organizations to tell their stories not only to the media, but also to the policy makers and funders who supported them. More than that we wanted to teach people how to connect ideas. We wanted to help them focus on getting their audiences to do something -- to change things. Telling the story is nice and a big part of this, but we wanted more. We wanted to teach how to inspire action."
Has it worked? I'd say so. To date the Workshop has trained thousands of not-for-profit staff and volunteers, primarily through several five-week intensive courses. Additionally, it offers a number of special-subject workshops and will consult with organizations in Chicago and the Midwest.
Have a look at the Workshop's Web site at www.newstips.org. You'll see resources both for the media and for those working in the nonprofit arena. In fact, there are helpful resources right on the Web site such as a "Press Release Generator."
For more background on the Community Media Workshop @ Columbia College and effective advocacy communications, listen to my podcast (#83) with Clark at www.sarahlong.org/podcast.