This first year has had its challenges and rewards. Most rewarding has been the fact that participants have produced some amazing pieces on issues/topics from perspectives that we often do not see in our local media. Inspiring an appreciation and respect for community media in students and community residents has been something that I didn’t expect, but am glad to see happening.
At the same time we’ve had our challenges. Establishing a sustainable production schedule has been slow going, but I think we are getting there.
Essex Community Media Project held six workshops during the Spring semester:
- Reporting On-Air Master Class (February 2011) facilitated by Cheryl Washington, former CNN reporter.
- Community Radio (February 2011) facilitated by Dahoud Andre, Haitian Community Radio.
- Voicing On-Air (April 2011) facilitated by Gail Walker, Pacifica Radio and United Nations Radio.
- Editing with FInal Cut Pro (a series of 3 in March/April 2011) facilitated by Andrew Teheran, filmmaker and new media artist.
In terms of stories, participants produced a number of pieces ranging from news reports to short documentaries to in-studio interviews with local figures. All are viewable on the Essex Voices channel on Vimeo as well some of the Essex Voices website. Examples include an in-studio interview with Newark HBO Def Poetry performing artist Helena Lewis, documentaries on the life of an undocumented college student and the fight to save a historic African American slave community site, coverage of Mayor Booker’s Newark Peace Education Summit, podcasts on Newark’s Hip Hop Education Week and race/media with Andreas Jackson of the NJ Performing Arts Center and an interview with Kaia Shivers of Rutgers University on Nollywood in NJ.
The production schedule this year was about seeing what was feasible. It is possible to distribute pieces on a monthly basis in tune with the production schedule of the ECC student newspaper. We will be taking the newspaper and transforming it into a converged media operation so Essex Voices can offer multimedia content for the student newspaper as well as stand as its own entity. The best way to interact between production is by aggregating feeds via Twitter from other NJ community-based sources. In terms of audience building, 2011-2012 will be the big push now that we have build a body of content. We will target ECC students, Newark community groups and residents.
Colleges are large and extremely complex organizations, and one major challenge has been establishing a workflow for processing equipment requests and personnel payments. This has proven to be arguably one of the most difficult and time-consuming areas of the operation. Just getting people paid takes about three months. Getting equipment takes about six months to a year. Also, the amount of time taken to process this paperwork is considerable.
In May we met with the Star Ledger, the major local newspaper, to discuss partnering for the 2011/2012 academic year. This could have a tremendous impact on the program. SL is offering to provide workshops on everything from layout to social media, as well as hosting the student newspaper and EV content on their website, which could significantly drive traffic and help us build an audience. They also have a mentoring/internship program for college students.
These services will be funded through the college, however, due to New Jersey “Pay to Play” legislation, the Star Ledger has to go through a bid process, which will take place this summer.
We are also expanding our partnerships with local non-profits. This year we were able to partner with the Shake It Up foundation, which assists parents with epileptic children to connect to resources in the area. Students were also able to cover efforts by local immigration advocate organizations to stop the building of an immigrant detention center in Newark. These pieces will be posted in July. For 2011/2012, we are are discussing ways to partner with the American Friends Service Committee, which focuses on immigrant rights and prison reform.
Our next steps are to secure in-kind contribution of camera equipment from Panasonic, formalize a partnership with the Star Ledger and develop a journalism training program as well as host Essex Voices content on their site, hiring a part-time promotions coordinator to work with a team of student interns to promote EV content on Facebook and Twitter to build an audience, approach Patch.com in Newark about hosting EV content and partner with at least five Newark/Essex County non-profits to produce stories/short documentaries/in-studio interviews on immigration, prison reform and other issues. We also hope to generate advertising income of $10,000.
