Open call: South Jersey Community Reporters workshop series
Applications now open for new program, a collaboration between the New Jersey Council for the Humanities and the South Jersey Information Equity Project
The South Jersey Community Reporters workshop series was conceived in mid-2023 as a collaboration between the South Jersey Information Equity Project and the New Jersey Council for the Humanities.
The program builds upon the organizations’ successful work in the New Jersey local journalism space to launch a new training and workshop program specifically for aspiring Black community reporters in South Jersey.
By fusing community journalism with public humanities practices and knowledge, the South Jersey Community Reporters workshops aim to create opportunities for residents of South Jersey to reshape how their communities produce, share, and engage with local news.
Program description
The South Jersey Community Reporters workshop series will be targeted to Black communities in Camden, Burlington, Gloucester, Salem, Cumberland, and Atlantic counties from November 2023 through August 2024. SJIEP and NJCH will recruit a small intergenerational cohort of South Jersey Community Reporters to participate in expert-led journalism and media workshops and work alongside recent fellows from SJIEP’s existing journalism program.
The Community Reporters cohort will learn from the SJIEP fellows’ efforts to produce solutions-based, restorative narrative journalism in their respective communities across the region.
With funding support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, this inaugural cohort will explore how storytelling can combat rising hate-based violence across the Garden State. The workshop series will ground this trend in local historical and cultural contexts, while giving New Jerseyans the skills — including information literacy and journalism and multimedia story development training — to create positive community narratives.
We hope that the workshops’ combination of journalism training and humanities education can help to amplify dialogue, resilience, and a sense of common purpose among BIPOC communities in South Jersey.
🚨 DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS: JAN. 15, 2024 @ 11:59PM ET 🚨
Participants will:
- Receive up to $5,100 each. That amount includes the program stipend, a flat fee for independent work at the end of the program and a transportation stipend.
- Participate in a series of in-person and virtual journalism and media workshops on topics such as: Community journalism and South Jersey’s media landscape; media literacy and how news is made; finding data and information about your communities; storytelling; multimedia production skills training (audio, video, photography, and social media); and co-creating community narratives, including story development, narrative arcs, and editing.
- Produce 1–2 collaboratively reported stories (exact media format TBD) per program cycle, to be published by the program’s media partners
- Attend the program’s “Telling Our Stories” public community learning events (one virtual, one in-person), which will explore community journalism’s role in strengthening Black communities through a humanities lens
- Meet regularly with the program’s Multimedia Producer and Assistant Producer for additional training, support, feedback, and coaching.
Project values + principles:
The team believes in storytelling as:
- A practice that creates and sustains collective cultural memory
- An act of resistance
- A means of preserving truth
- A shield against disinformation
- A mode of care and healing
- A vehicle for intergenerational dialogue and community building
Become a South Jersey Community Reporter
Where do stories live? What obligations does a storyteller have to their community? If you like pondering these questions, then join us! NJCH and SJIEP are seeking community reporters for the first South Jersey Community Reporters cohort.
We are looking for South Jersey residents from the counties of Camden, Burlington, Gloucester, Salem, Cumberland, and Atlantic who are passionate about storytelling, whether it’s local news coverage or local history; knowledgeable about Black communities’ information needs; and eager to build projects and networks to address media inequities in New Jersey.
Previous experience or educational credentials in journalism or media are not required!
🚨 DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS: JAN. 15, 2024 @ 11:59PM ET 🚨
If you know someone who would be a great South Jersey Community Reporter, please send us their name and contact info and tell them to apply!
Questions?
For questions and additional information, contact the program organizers by sending an email to sjreporters@njnewscommons.org.
Cassandra Etienne is the assistant director of membership and programming at the Center for Cooperative Media. Contact her at etiennec@montclair.edu.
About the NJ Council for the Humanities: The New Jersey Council for the Humanities (NJCH) explores, cultivates, and champions the public humanities in order to strengthen New Jersey’s diverse community. Since 1972, NJCH has partnered with statewide and community organizations to bring meaningful public humanities programming to the local level. We do this in 3 ways: by awarding grants and sponsorships, by providing programs ourselves, and by convening individuals and organizations that care about cultural and civic life in the Garden State. To learn more about our work, visit: https://njhumanities.org.
About the Center for Cooperative Media: The Center is a primarily grant-funded program of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. Its mission is to grow and strengthen local journalism, and in doing so serve New Jersey residents. The Center is supported with operational and project funding from Montclair State University, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Democracy Fund, NJ Civic Information Consortium, Rita Allen Foundation, Inasmuch Foundation and the Independence Public Media Foundation. For more information, visit centerforcooperativemedia.org.
Image prompt: “/imagine media diversity, BIPOC, local news, graphic novel, hopeful, optimistic, bright -ar 14:9 -s 750 ” via Midjourney v4.
