Between Friends: Jenny Casas

The City Bureau network is full of incredibly committed community builders. Their contributions are at the bedrock of what we do and a fundamental part of what makes City Bureau a force for change. Get acquainted with the City Bureau family as part of our new blog series Between Friends.

WHO are you and what do you do?

I am Jenny Casas. I am a Chicago-based audio recorder and producer from California. And I love Chicago and that’s why I’m here.

HOW did you come to be a part of the City Bureau Community?

I was recording at a public radio station in St. Louis and I had this giant awakening for who I was supposed to be in this media landscape because I saw so many things I really didn’t like… so, I came to a City Bureau Public Newsroom and I met Darryl [Holliday, City Bureau co-founder]. And he was like, “You seem really great,” and we all got brunch and he was like, “We’re going to try to get you to come to Chicago.”

I was on a road trip in Louisiana and I was trying to figure out what I was going to do because I really didn’t like the station I was at, and he [Darryl] was like, “Come to Chicago, we want you to be a team leader for a fellowship cycle.” And it was the first time in my career that somebody had seen me and said, I see the potential in you and I know that you can do this. Like, I want to cultivate you to be the best version of yourself that you can be. And I have just never had that before… so I came straight to Chicago.

WHAT are you working on right now?

I am a team lead for the [current fellowship] cycle again. This is my third cycle. It’s been such a joy to be back because I feel like I am so much better than I was before. I am sitting in myself now and collaborating with my team members in a way that is not about ego. And so City Bureau has always been a central place for me to figure out where my power sits.

But I always end up back here. I think it’s extremely unique. I have never been in an environment like it before. And not because of the structure of the fellowship so much as the people that are involved and who is allowed to make decisions and what types of skill sets are important or valued.

WHAT is it about this space that works for you, next to those more traditional spaces?

Many parts. The first part is the foundational value; I think nobody comes into City Bureau thinking they can speak for other people… and if they do, it leaves them pretty quickly. I think two, the makeup of the space; I’ve never been in a newsroom where there are so many people of color, in big roles or little roles. The overwhelming whiteness of media spaces is so exhausting. Even just that makes a huge difference. And then a third part, it’s low pressure but high support. And that is what helps create really, really, wonderful content and this ability to focus on the process of reporting—which is what [reporting] is, and I think too many media outlets focus on the end product.

WHEN did you know you wanted to be a storyteller?

Maybe eighth grade. I had this idea of what made a journalist and that’s what I wanted to be. I loved these long, overly-writerly, magazine pieces. I wanted to be a longform magazine writer. I just remember feeling like it was a really good way to communicate information.

A big part of my mom’s side of the family doesn’t speak English and have various documentation statuses. There was information I wanted to communicate to them, and information from them I wanted to communicate to the outside world. Journalism seemed like a righteous way to do that information transfer. There was something about it that seemed very ethical.

WHERE are you now in your creative and/or professional life?

That’s a great question. I don’t know, I feel adrift in a lot of ways. But also, there’s a lot of solidness that I didn’t have last year. I feel like I have my tool kit, now where am I going to go build? I have all the materials I just don’t know, where am I going to set down the house? It’s nice in some ways because I get to choose the projects I want to work on as a freelancer and that feels really positive.

WHY do you believe an equitable and inclusive approach to storytelling is important?

Our connections to communities are stronger when our sources feel like they are collaborators more than people who are being picked on. It’s undeniable that journalism is going through this tumultuous crisis: Who are the power brokers and why do people get all of their news from x, y and z news outlets? I think journalists too often get into this idea that they are giving a service to somebody—that they are the keeper, the one who decides what gets disseminated. And if we are not constantly questioning, why am I the person who gets to hold the microphone? Then we’re actually not serving anybody. I think I still believe that journalism is a service and I always try to push myself and my work to be in service of the public

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