Dear Colleague,
We are sometimes only as good as our sources and lately I sense that we need more voices to tell us what’s happening with youth violence here.
That’s why the Headline Club is co-sponsoring a meeting on June 28th to bring journalists together with those who deal with youth violence. As this story seems to tragically grow larger, we need, I think, to find new sources to explore and explain and to help us describe the toll of the violence and what could be done.
The Community Media Workshop and a broad coalition of organizations that deal with violence, called Strengthening Chicago’s Youth, is putting on the meeting.
WBEZ reporter and South Side bureau chief Natalie Moore is the moderator for our event. We will have close to 30 organizations along with public officials waiting at tables separately to offer their insights and contacts.
Think speed interviewing. Think dozens of stories. Think contacts you never had before.
The meeting is from 9 am to 11:30 am on June 28th at 33 East Congress, first floor, Columbia College, journalism building (Congress and Wabash) CTA bus and train stops are nearby. Here’s the link for a map: http://mapq.st/LzUNYs. If you can make it, please click here so we know how many folks to expect.
I hope you can benefit from this resource at a time when we journalists need to do our best.
WHY WE MAKE THESE EFFORTS
In the last year the Headline club has put on workshops that helped us know our rights and privileges to public information and meetings, helped us to cover traumatic situations and to deal with what we experience ourselves, and guided us through covering potentially dangerous stories as we feared the NATO summit might become.
We have no choice as journalists to keep learning if we want to keep our profession alive and pertinent. So, tell us what else we need to do. From now on you also talk to Alden Loury who is the new Headline Club president (aloury@gmail.com). I’m still on the board and so are bunch of talented and caring folks, so you can talk to us as well.
But talk to us. We need you to tell what we need to do.
And thanks for your help and support this last year.
Steve Franklin