This is a conference about community engagement. If you’re a media/journalism professional, we strongly encourage you to share projects on which you’ve collaborated with your community or bridged the work of the newsroom to other sectors. We also encourage proposals that include community partners or collaborators from outside the profession as presenters.
In addition to describing the topic and the proposed format, session proposals should identify objectives and outcomes as clearly and specifically as possible. How will your session provide attendees with knowledge, skills, tools, etc. (and/or create ways for attendees to provide those things for one another) they can use in their work after the conference? A strong proposal will go beyond the self-contained case study or “show and tell,” and offer concrete take-aways that translate usefully to other settings.
Sessions should be conversational and collaborative. While traditional panel discussions can be valuable, we encourage you to think carefully about the format of your session rather than simply defaulting to a lecture or panel format. If you are proposing a lecture or panel discussion, your proposal should explain why that format will be the most appropriate and effective.
Advance registration is required to participate in the Clinic track. Participants should plan to attend all five Clinics. Click here to apply to participate in the Clinic track.
The clinic track is designed to provide a space for attendees to workshop an engagement idea or project in depth. In contrast to stand-alone sessions, attendees who participate in this track will come to the conference with an early-stage idea for an engagement project that they’ll develop gradually over the course of several clinics. Participants will come out of the clinics with a clear, actionable plan for executing that project after they leave.
They’ll also be eligible for funding to help put those plans into action: at the end of the conference, selected clinic participants will be awarded “seed grants” of up to $2000 each.
You might think of the clinic track as a miniature engagement “accelerator” or “boot camp” where they’ll get guidance from experts, feedback from one another, and time to brainstorm their ideas with other conference attendees.
These sessions will equip practitioners to research the stakeholders in a project, build and nurture those relationships, draft a plan to manage the basic logistics, and be ready to follow through on the momentum a project creates, among the other fundamentals that are central to authentic engagement. While each project attendees generate may look different, they will all be rooted in these principles.
After completing the clinic track, participants will have the opportunity to share their work with a panel of judges (and with other conference attendees). On the second day of the conference, the judges will select and announce the seed grant recipients.
If you’d like to attend a clinic, we simply ask that you sign up and tell us a little bit about something you’re working on (or have worked on recently) that you’d like to talk about with the group. Remember, participants should plan to attend all five Clinics. Click here to apply to participate in the Clinic track.
Clinic Track Details
System and Stakeholder Mapping, Part 1
Find Water in a Media Desert: Mapping Information Ecosystems to Serve Local News Needs
Thursday, November 15
9:45 – 11:15 AM
Michelle Ferrier
Dean, School of Journalism & Graphic Communication, Florida A&M University
Fiona Morgan
Principal, Branchhead Consulting
Mapping the media ecosystem is a critical first step to identifying a community’s information needs and discovering opportunities to serve it.
Understanding how people who lack access to local news fill the gaps helps you see the organizations, networks and individuals your community can leverage to strengthen existing communication ecosystems. This ethnographic, asset-based approach will teach participants strategies for mapping communication flows and designing new information sources. We’ll look at both traditional and non-traditional news and information sources as well as digital and analog assessment techniques, using human-centered design, social media monitoring and user personas.
We’ll also talk about how the mapping process itself offers an opportunity to engage community stakeholders in developing projects in the earliest stages, increasing buy-in and positioning projects for greater impact, community ownership and sustainability.
System and Stakeholder Mapping, Part 2
Systems thinking for journalism: Working with your community to address complex problems
Thursday, November 15
11:30 AM – 1:00 PM
Heather Chaplin
Director, Journalism + Design, The New School
Cole Goins
Engagement Lead, Journalism + Design, The New School
Kayla Christopherson
Program Associate, Journalism + Design, The New School
Finding effective ways to tackle the most pressing challenges in our communities requires a holistic, collaborative approach. Using a practice called systems thinking, journalists can take an active role in examining complex issues with the help of community stakeholders, surfacing opportunities to meet information needs and tell stories that can help spark change.
The New School’s Journalism + Design program has developed a series of workshops and resources to help journalists apply systems thinking when digging into difficult problems. In this session, J+D staff will introduce participants to flexible tools for identifying and collaborating with stakeholders around a particular issue.
Clinic participants will learn the fundamentals of how systems thinking can open up new avenues for their reporting, create an “actor map” for a story, topic, or problem that they’re exploring, and develop storytelling and engagement strategies that empower people to take action.
Building Trust and Building Networks
Don’t Just Engage, Organize! Learn How Outreach, Relationships and Sharing Power Can Build a Movement for Better Local News
Thursday, November 15
1:45 – 3:45 PM
Mike Rispoli
News Voices Director, Free Press
James Thompson
Organizer, Free Press
Alicia Bell
Organizer, Free Press
For three years, News Voices has brought an organizing approach to engaged journalism, and we’ve found communities are eager to be part of the conversation about local news. By organizing, we mean a set of specific principles and practices such as outreach, building and sharing, developing leadership and reporting with rather than for communities to serve their needs.
In this clinic, participants will learn from News Voices organizers in the field about what the basic frameworks of organizing are and how journalists can adapt them to build deep trust and commit incredible journalism. We’ll discuss the challenges these strategies may present for reporters and how to address them.
Each participant will have the opportunity to workshop a specific idea or challenge and receive coaching from our team and from a small-group of peer participants. We’ll reflect back as a full group on the projects and ideas people have been exploring. Participants will walk away with tools and templates for applying these principles to their work, and contacts with fellow participants and clinic organizers who can support their efforts in the coming months.
Event Design for Real-World Dialogue
Developing Engaged Journalism Through Dialogue: The World Café Method
Thursday, November 15
4:00 – 6:00 PM
Jesikah Maria Ross
Senior Engagement Strategist, Capitol Public Radio
For engaged journalism projects, it’s vital to connect with and listen to the community members you hope to serve. The World Café is a simple and flexible format for engaging stakeholders in creative conversations that generate input, share experiences, and explore actions around real-life issues and questions. For journalists, it’s an effective way to engage community members in naming and framing concerns, stories, and solutions. The process builds trust, surfaces local knowledge, and generates community ownership in project outcomes—all of which helps produce relevant and nuanced reporting.
The World Café method focuses on listening, cross-pollinating ideas, and identifying shared insights in an atmosphere that is beautiful and welcoming.
In this clinic, you’ll participate in a World Café experience, debrief it for key lessons
in designing a community convening, and then apply those learnings to your projects back home.
Reporting Collaboratively, Partnering Equitably
What is Accountable Local Community Reporting?
Friday, November 16
9:00 – 11:00 AM
Andrea Hart
Co-Founder and Director of Community Engagement, City Bureau
Jen Sabella
Co-Founder, Block Club Chicago
Val Free
Southeast Block Club Alliance
Jahmal Cole
My Block, My Hood, My City
Demario Phipps-Smith
Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief, CULTURE
This clinic introduces models for how news outlets can partner with community groups to do better, more accountable local reporting. Drawing on our experiences creating reporting partnerships, we’ll go through when things haven’t worked, share lessons learned, highlight triumphs, and showcase tools of what we use to get these kinds of partnerships off the ground.
We’ll allow for participants to explore these tools and give feedback on what would/wouldn’t work for them.
The conference will take place at 1104 S. Wabash Ave on the Columbia College Chicago campus. We’ll update the session list with room assignments for individual sessions soon.
Lodging is available at a variety of price points within walking distance of the conference. A few of the closest options are listed below. Please note that Illinois Humanities cannot guarantee rates or availability.
Best Western Grant Park
1100 S. Michigan Ave (<0.1 mi from venue)
Hilton Chicago
720 S. Michigan Ave. (0.3 mi from venue)
Travelodge Hotel Downtown Chicago
65 E. Harrison St. (0.4 mi from venue)
Congress Plaza Hotel
520 S. Michigan Ave. (0.5 mi from venue)
If you’re willing to go a bit farther afield, there are many more options at multiple price points within walking distance of the CTA’s Red, Orange and Green Lines, which stop at the Roosevelt station (one block from the conference venue).
For the latest updates about the conference, subscribe to our mailing list and follow Illinois Humanities on Facebook and Twitter.
If you’re in Chicago before the conference begins, don’t miss these special events hosted by conference speakers and partner organizations. For more information about an event, please contact the event organizers.
We’ll add more events to this list soon – stay tuned!
Strategies for Transforming Journalism
A special pre-conference session of the People-Powered Publishing Conference
#PPPC18 #MovementJournalism
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
1:00 – 4:00 p.m.
1104 S. Wabash St., Room 808 (space is accessible)
Registration required – register here
Facilitators:
Lewis Wallace, Scalawag Magazine
Mia Henry, Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership
Want to work together to challenge white supremacy and sexism in journalism? Lots of journalists are dissatisfied with the racism, patriarchy, gatekeeping, and exploitation we encounter in the journalism industry today. So let’s get organized around changing it!
This interactive workshop will break down how the journalism industry today traffics in and benefits from oppressive practices towards both journalists and the communities we cover. We’ll use Iris Marion Young’s model of the Five Faces of Oppression to talk about how oppression plays out in journalism in the form of exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism/dominance, and violence.
But it’s not all doom and gloom: Participants will work together to consider liberatory strategies for engaging with editors, editorial policies and processes, publications, and journalism education towards transforming how journalism works today. We’ll learn historical examples of journalists organizing and resisting, and connect workshop participants who are ready for solidarity.
Strategies for Transforming Journalism is open to journalists, editors, newsroom leaders, and members of the public interested in a journalism that better serves our communities. It will be facilitated by Arcus Center for Social Justice director Mia Henry and independent journalist and editor Lewis Wallace, both experienced political educators passionate about moving from talk to action.
This workshop is a special pre-conference session of the People-Powered Publishing Conference, an annual gathering focused on strengthening the connections between journalists and the communities they cover in order to create a more collaborative, equitable news and information landscape. The conference takes place on Thursday, November 15 and Friday, November 16.
Registration is limited! Please register here for this free pre-conference session.
Please note that you must register for this event separately from your People-Powered Publishing Conference registration. To register for the People-Powered Publishing Conference, click here.
Public Newsroom: Reimagining Public Funds to Rebuild Local News
Presented by City Bureau as a special event of the 2018 People-Powered Publishing Conference
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
6:00 – 8:00 PM
Experimental Station
6100 S. Blackstone Ave
Speakers: Mike Rispoli and James Thompson, Free Press
Newsroom employment in the United States dropped by 23 percent from with most of those jobs losses coming from newspapers, according to Pew Research Center released in July. Meanwhile on the economics side, Pew found that revenue from advertisement for newspapers declined 10 percent between 2016 and 2018.
The local news crisis has left many communities in the dark. But it’s also led to new opportunities to transform what local media looks like. Most recently, Free Press, a nonprofit media and technology advocacy organization, led a statewide campaign in New Jersey that would reimagine public funding of media to support innovative ideas in local news and to keep communities informed and engaged.
This summer, two years of effort paid off, when Gov. Murphy signed the “Civic Info Bill,” a first-of-its-kind public nonprofit that would invest millions of dollars into projects meant to revitalize local news, community information, civic engagement and technology across the state.
This grassroots campaign to pass legislation to support the future of local news brought together a cohort of local organizers, universities, artists, students, media-makers, and other stakeholders. For New Jersey folks, this effort showed that the public will take action to keep their communities informed – but only if you build investment in them and listen to their concerns.
So how does it work? What lessons have emerged that can be considered beyond New Jersey? Could other newsrooms, nonprofits and civic agents try to launch a campaign where they live? What can journalists learn from organizers when it comes to getting people invested in supporting local media?
This week at the Public Newsroom we’ll answer the above and more with Free Press’ Mike Rispoli and James Thompson. A reception will follow the discussion with snacks and drinks.
This installment of the Public Newsroom is a special event of the 2018 People-Powered Publishing Conference, where attendees can connect, dialogue and get their creative gears turning before the conference formally kicks off.
Hearken is an audience-driven model and platform enabling newsrooms to meaningfully engage the public throughout the reporting process, resulting in original, relevant and high-performing content.
GroundSource is a community engagement platform that powers direct, two-way conversations between newsrooms and the communities they serve, to gather on-the-ground perspectives and build lasting relationships.
City Bureau is a newsroom and journalism training lab that seeks to regenerate civic media ecosystems within historically disenfranchised and underreported neighborhoods, and to create a sustainable pipeline of innovative and locally responsive reporting on the city’s South and West sides.
The Listening Post Collective provides resources, tools, peer-to-peer support and a shared learning space for journalists, newsroom leaders and community groups looking to revitalize their local news and information ecosystems.
Gather, a project and platform to support community-minded journalists and other engagement professionals, is a collaborative initiative led by the Agora Journalism Center, the gathering place for innovation and communication in civic engagement, at University of Oregon’s School of Journalism & Communication.
ProPublica Illinois is a non-profit newsroom focused on investigative journalism in the public interest. It is the first state-level expansion of ProPublica, headquartered in New York City.
The Coral Project brings journalists and their communities closer together through open-source tools and best practices for newsrooms of all sizes.
