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MISSION
The Ida B. Wells Media Justice Center (MJC) will create a revolutionary model of media coverage, documentation, first-person storytelling, and community based news making on location at the United States Social Forum. The MJC will use a journalistic method that upends the traditional relationships dominating most media production: reporter/subject, people with class privilege/people struggling with poverty, white/people of color, documented/undocumented, able-bodied/disabled, formally educated/educated in the school of hard knocks, among others. This collaborative media training, resource, support and press relations center will be a cornerstone of this summer’s first-ever U.S. Social Forum (USSF) in Atlanta.
MEDIA TRAINING
You and your organization’s members can attend daily trainings for revolutionary community/grassroots journalism including:
- Radio, TV, print and Internet journalism
- Advocating and organizing to and with the media
- Technical training on radio, video and computer equipment (The MJC will also offer technical support for equipment access and use)
- Media critique, analysis and strategy
- Spokespeople training: represent yourself and your organization
- Documentary video production and storytelling
- And much more! Check this site for training updates and opportunities for media collaboration!
This training will be in support of first person journalism about the people, ideas and events of the US Social Forum. All participants will be encouraged to report on-site for themselves, their organizations and communities, and will be supported in delivering these stories to wide audiences during and after the USSF.
COLLABORATIVE REPORTING AND MEDIA STRATEGY
As well as offering media training and support to grassroots leaders of the movements at the Forum, the MJC will pair experienced media producers (or media producers with degrees from formal institutions of learning but with a kindergarten education in poverty, racism, disability, incarceration, etc.) with grassroots producers to collaborate on stories. Together these teams will deliver breaking news and create in-depth reporting on the people, ideas and events at the US Social Forum.
At daily Community Newsrooms, created in the model of PoorNewsNetwork’s weekly Community Newsroom, the reporters and collaborators of the MJC will assign coverage, discuss stories, and create media strategy for the length of the conference.
LOCAL AND NATIONAL STORY DELIVERY
Up to the minute radio, print and video reports created by collaborative teams at the MJC will be broadcast on partnering radio and TV networks such as Pacifica, fed to local and national media outlets and published here on the USSF website.
MAINSTREAM COVERAGE
With daily press conferences and a diverse speaker’s bureau, the MJC will also connect grassroots scholars and leaders with mainstream journalists to generate widespread intelligent coverage of the ideas, events and people of the USSF.
MEDIA POOL AND ARCHIVE
Comprehensive video coverage of the events, panels and plenaries of the USSF will be coordinated through the MJC. A core group of volunteers will digitize and log footage to maintain a database of material for collective use in on-site and future reporting and documentation of the USSF. All media productions and stories (print, blog, radio, video, etc) will also be archived for future outreach and distribution.
A GRASSROOTS NATIONAL NETWORK
This collaborative, integrated media center will establish a groundbreaking, sustainable model of community/people-led news making. The equipment and other resources donated to make the MJC possible will be used to sustain multiple grassroots newsrooms after the USSF, making the Ida B. Wells Media Justice Center the first of a network of People’s Community Newsrooms from Atlanta to San Francisco and beyond.
HOME ABOUT SUPPORT CONTACT PARTNERS HOW IT WORKS
MEDIA POOL MEDIA REGISTRATION
