When They Zig, You Zag: Disrupting The Framework For More Inclusive, Empowered Reporting

3:00PM Aug 25, 2023

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Keywords:

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communities

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voices

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Great. Thank you so much.

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cool Hi everyone. Alright, before we start, I'm going to pass around this this signup, signup sheet but we really like to stay in touch and get to know where everyone is from. So feel free to put your name your organization and just pass it around design. Thank you for watching

Hi, everyone, welcome. Thanks for joining us this morning. Hope you're doing well and feeling well. This is prizms presentation because when they say GuZheng disrupting the framework for more inclusive empowered reporting. So at prison, we believe that justice requires a full story. Prism was established in 2019 because we knew that the status quo of the media landscape wasn't really reflecting enough of the truth. And it wasn't bringing us closer to our vision of collective liberation and justice. We saw a path forward one that we could forge by disrupting and dismantling toxic narratives, uncovering the hard truth of injustice alongside the people experiencing the acute impacts of the injustice and providing a platform for people of color to tell their own stories and to those of their communities. So our mission is to provide in depth and thought provoking journalism. And we reflect the lived experiences of people most impacted by injustice as an independent and a nonprofit user led by journalists of colors color we tell our stories from the ground up to disrupt the harmful narratives and inform movements for justice. So my name is Lara wit. I am the editorial director of prism. I am actually here from Philadelphia. A lot of my background includes working at local news outlets here, including the Daily News City Paper rip. And after working in Philly newsrooms, I started working for digital platforms including a now defunct platform called where your voice which was focused on feminism and uplifting people of color all around the US. And then I started working here at prism. It is my role to run the day to day management of the newsroom, ensure that our coverage reflects our goals and our and our vision. And I'll pass it along to Ricky

Hi, everyone. I don't really speak into a microphone that often so if it sounds weird, that's probably why. But yes, my name is Ricky Lee. I'm the developmental editor at prism. I actually started out last year as acting news editor when our news editor Carolyn was away on parental leave and then after that, I transitioned into being developmental editor. So I'm also from Philadelphia. And a lot of what I do at prism on a day to day basis is helping to fill in any editorial gaps that we may run into and also helping to manage our reflective journalism project, which is sort of a journalism one on one training that we offer to interested folks. This presentation actually is a bit of a variation on one of our reflective journalism trainings. And finally, the other thing I do is I'm the primary editor and CO creator along with Leora of our right to write program, which is an editorial initiative in which we work with incarcerated writers. And we will definitely get into more of that as we continue the presentation. So just a brief session overview of what we're going to talk about today. First, we're going to explore how our prism newsroom develops stories that uplift our underrepresented communities and activate our readers around solutions. Solutions are definitely really important to us. So we're going to talk a little bit about solutions journalism as well. And for the sake of this presentation, we're going to focus on workers rights. I'm sure as journalists, we all know that workers rights is a very newsworthy topic right now. So we're going to use that as the framework to talk about how we use our when they zig zag mentality, but also please keep in mind that you can act you can use our strategies and best practices, best practices to essentially cover any community, any type of story. And then after we talk about that, we're going to show that you don't have to just use the when they zig zag mentality to cover journalism. You can also apply it to editorial initiatives. And so we're going to talk a little bit about how we implemented our right to write program or incarcerated writers program and also talk about some of the things we learned and some challenges we faced as we've implemented this program. Okay, so before we really get into it, I want to ask everyone a question. When you hear the phrase, mainstream media, what words phrases or feelings come to mind, I'm gonna give you guys a couple of seconds to think about this. Feel free to write down your phrase or word or feeling type it and keep that in mind as we continue the presentation.

All right. Would any brave soul like to share their word phrase or feeling? Just raise your hand? Yes, corporate very nice. Yes. Oh, that's a good one. Yes. Perfect. succinct Yes. Yes, excellent. These are all really great words, phrases and feelings. I definitely want to share mine as well. When I was writing the slide. My thought was, doesn't tell the full story. And the reason why I thought that is because a short example last year I was covering some Philadelphians may know I was covering a story about how the 70 Sixers want to build an arena in Philadelphia, near Chinatown. And in all of the early news articles written about the topic. We didn't hear any voices from people actually within Chinatown about how they felt about this arena development. And the articles were saying, Oh yes, we're going to be a good neighbor, the 70 Sixers are so excited to help the community with this development. But of course, as I continued the research I found that in fact, most of the people in Chinatown were staunchly against this arena development. So the fact that a lot of these news outlets did not go to these communities to include their voices, especially in a community where not a lot of people spoke English. That definitely showed that a lot of media that we consume only shows one side of the story

Okay, so now that you have written down your words, here are just a couple of phrases that I pulled from various surveys news articles online about how people perceive mainstream media. So maybe some of the words that you wrote down, match some of the things up here we have things like perpetuates harmful narratives, more interested in commercial gain than what's best for society. exploitive, more negative than positive, exclusionary hurts or threatens democracy. overwhelmingly white doesn't care about the people and communities they report on and biased and sensationalist again, these were pulled just quotes from what people thought of mainstream media. In fact, 2022 Reuters survey showed that only 42% of American readers trust the news. And a 2020 Pew Research Center survey showed that 53% feel that news places don't care about the people they report on. So as you can see, it's quite a negative landscape but that's definitely something that we a prism want to combat and want to fight against.

That leads us into how prism storytellers how we tell our stories from the ground up from our own communities to disrupt our the harmful narratives that continue to proliferate within Media. So a lot of our coverage comes from reporters, freelance writers, staff reporters from within their own communities. So it is very important for us it's crucial for us to be able to tell all facets of the story but also be able to share the distinctions and the nuances from our different communities. I think that's what Black's from a lot of new reporting news stories features op eds on and so forth is that people don't really have an understanding an in depth understanding of the communities that they're reporting in. A lot of it is parachute reporting, which is something that we try to fight back against. And it is reflected in our coverage on race, politics and democracy workers rights in the economy, the criminal legal system, gender justice and the climate crisis. A lot of our reporting especially within for the climate crisis centers, black and indigenous voices. Those are perspectives are usually very much left out of the narratives, which is harmful and does not center solutions because a lot of these communities actually have those solutions to the crises that we're facing. And that includes our workers rights coverage. So in covering our workers rights and economic justice, vertical, we tell stories that are interested at the intersection of economic justice, but also race, immigration status, gender and other identities. There's not just all of these stories do have intersections and so just covering one facet, of it does leave out quite a few narratives. So prisms coverage centers a lived experience of workers amplifying their stories with a collective collective organizing to claim their rights and wield their power. Some examples of our approach are here and in these links. So one of the things that we really like to include in our coverage is sharing some how tos. So one of the most popular pieces on our site is is a piece about whether joining a union is right for you. And here are some things to consider. A lot of people may not be as familiar about what it looks like to join a union what's involved, the process that it involves, and so it's without that information available out there. We lack the connections to build movement and a lot of this is movement building. And so a lot of our pieces try to reflect what people may be asking and we try to answer those questions for them. So this is one of our pieces managed to do, who can and can't join a union is a frequently asked question. Save with recent efforts to discourage you in isolation we've covered union busting in different in different industries across industries extensively, might be one of the things that we cover honestly, the most often. Closing the racial wealth gap isn't isn't essential perspective of of unionizing, and worker coalition building, then go back.

Prism also recently, well, as recently as last year shifted to a four day workweek after we published a piece about what a four day workweek could look like. It's quite unique for a media organization to do so as we know a lot of the news is 24/7 but we wanted to holistically center all of us as whole people, not just as reporters and editors. We wanted to figure out what the best way was to balance our mental health, our families, our lives, and the work that we do. A lot of us experience burnout and one of the key things that we found was that a four day workweek was not only beneficial to our newsroom, but it didn't hinder our productivity in any way whatsoever. We still hit and actually exceeded our benchmarks. We managed to you know, continue our coverage, not lose any traction on our site, not lose any numbers. So all these things that are that we cover we tried to implement with our newsroom as well because these are things that we wholeheartedly believe in because we are the communities that we're reporting from another and a few other things that we have covered sorry. Include blockages and people of color workers grappling with public anger over masks that condemn the working conditions for the workers at Amy's kitchen. They've been organizing for quite a few years around unsafe working conditions in different facilities in California. And then another example is how worker cooperatives can shift power to workers. So you know, unionizing is not the only answer for worker power. Cooperatives are also a very wonderful way for workers to be able to gain more power in the workplace.

So we can open up for a little bit of a conversation here we wanted to ask you what are some major workers rights and economic justice issues in the US today? Which ones are top of mind for you? And what are the prevailing media narratives? around these issues? And Are they accurate? Yes.

Is always talked about it's like kind of like a morphine or whatever. And it's really an economic economic story, and I wish that it was

like that. Yeah, absolutely. We've also done some coverage around how abortion is a workers rights issue. It's an economic justice issue. It is. It is all of these things. It's also a climate justice issue. It's it's everything and a lot of coverage really just sees it. A lot of mainstream media coverage is very much just in a tunnel of like, this is just it's women, right? We think probably that's it's just their problem. We'll cover it because it's in the news right now, but then we're just going to shift away because like, who cares right? But it's been our it's been consistent coverage. For us. It has been it's been exceptionally difficult but also very worthwhile to continue to cover, abortion rights, gender, justice, and all the things all the different effects ripple effects that it has on people's everyday lives, but also abortion funds that are currently struggling to raise money because people just stopped donating after roe fell. So right now they're running out of money because people are like, that was yesterday's problem. We're just gonna move on to the next thing. Donald Trump's mug shot is way more important than the fact that there's a 16 year old who cannot afford to go to New York to go get her abortion. You know, it's these are the things that we try to ensure that we cover strategically. Is there anyone else? Yes,

I would say well, can we that we there's two things there's this possible policy that would ensure that kids stay in school year round. That the person that is most likely going to get it makes me believe is trying to push for like year round schooling. What does that do to teachers, to families is that then this conversation about the government's response to violence or violence, mostly black communities. is to have students work on a weekend or like work as a part of their schooling. Does it seem as though local media is kind of looking at that as like, you know, exploitation, but that's not the response to a violent society or violence happening to the kids.

I could go off on like five tangents about this in particular, because I'm very familiar with what you're talking about. And I've noticed that there hasn't been a lot of coverage in the main outlets here about the effects of that, but also how it really just is like a larger carceral framework for kids like we don't want you on the streets. You can't play outside. We're gonna have curfews you can't be in a mall. You can't do any of this shit. So you're just gonna be in school and but we're at war with the teachers. We don't want them to get paid more at all. Yeah, it's it's a lot. Sorry. Go ahead. Yes.

They have child labor laws around the country that are being lowered the minimum wage being lowered and being kids being welcomed into factories where they're getting hurt and they are not going to proper safety precautions, as a you know, as the fix to the labor shortage. And

we in Louisville, we've been following UPS negotiations. Yes. Those are where I mean it's become Union City. I think with the way that we're covering ups, there are different tiers of workers, some of whom are happy with the negotiation, some of whom are not and they feel that they've been sidelined. And I think we're at this moment trying to figure out a way to cover this without having a very simplistic narrative, which is what people mostly like. I mean, some people like but I think we're grappling with how do we get into how complicated negotiations as well and that it's not going to keep everyone happy. That's

ya know, definitely like an 80% voting when there's that's 20% of workers who are not happy with their current current contract. And it's not unfair to report on that 20% to ask them like what their issues were with the current with a new contract. So yeah, that's very fair.

And not everyone UPS

deliveries, know exactly. Yeah, no, there's different tiers. And there's different jobs within ups for sure. Yes.

Justice and versus hazardous air quality. Wildfires and then, obviously, like when the sky was orange, everybody was reporting on it. He's got like some push notifications of like, wildfires, that there wasn't a lot of coverage about workers, especially crews that are dominantly immigrants. They're working outdoors, any safety precautions they might be given or not given. And, obviously, getting masks is not something that people just hand out a lot, especially not anymore with the the health emergencies of this. So that was something that kind of caught my eye.

He's really coffee. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the the intersection of workers rights and climate justice and climate crisis, like current climate crisis is a systems breakdown. It's not just like, it's gonna be too hot. It means that, you know, streets could sink in because the infrastructure can't hold them up. That's actually happening in Chicago, which is terrifying to think of, but it means whole agricultural industries, not be able to operate at the levels that they used to operate at which they shouldn't be anyways because the settler colonial structures of agriculture is just not sustainable. And it also means that you know, people ended up dying at higher rates just because they happen to work outside. It's just fundamentally a systems failure all around.

Yeah, we'll take one more.

Just to piggyback on that one, that wildfires are longer and longer every year. And that's something that

wildfire, firefighters

Yeah. Thank you, everyone, for sharing your thoughts. I love just as Leora was saying that all of these things that you're talking about, include these intersections. It's not just workers rights, its climate justice. Its gender justice, its racial justice. The list goes on and on.

And so part of the work of shifting the narratives on workers rights is our policies, or at least our editorial structure ensures that we put workers voices first. We highlight agency and activism. We ask what the we asked for versus a ceiling of rights and protections. We don't replicate existing power and hierarchy, we append it, we're looking for solutions and action, especially grassroots solutions, because typically the solutions come from people who are experiencing day in and day out. Naming the intersecting issues and impressions which we just covered very well with all of you expand who counts as a worker. You know, there is there are different tiers of workers there are also there are exploited workers who are actually just unpaid caregiving is one aspect of it, who actually gets paid for caregiving is a huge gender issue and critical for us. Sharing the strategy so being able to share how people unionized their workplace is crucial because then it could apply to another workplace. We did that with Starbucks. Same thing with Trader Joe's. And even when those solutions aren't, don't always have the best outcome. We want to share, like what the strategy was and like what they're looking for next. And then understanding your impact and being a safe space for people to come to as as an outlet. We want to be able to answer the questions but we also want to be able to provide people with with the respect that they deserve when they come to our outlet.

Okay, so now we really want to get into the best practices and strategies of this mentality that we've been talking about this when they zig zag. So hopefully these are practices that you already do or things that you can incorporate in your writing or bring back to your newsroom. So a lot of the time when we report we're asking ourselves what is missing from the reporting. So what are the coverage gaps or gaps in information? What analysis is missing? What historical grounding is absent and what is the root cause of the problem? Again, we want a very holistic sense of news reporting. We want to get the voices that are usually marginalized or underrepresented or unheard. And then kind of following those big four we have these more minut questions are smaller questions that we ask ourselves as we get into the nitty gritty of the reporting. So things like what is the community most impacted by the news? And are they being centered in existing reporting? Right, are we hearing those voices who is being left out trying to look at the negative space in in a piece? Who are the most vulnerable impacted people? And how is this news or policy playing out in their lives? A lot of what we'd like to cover we really want to highlight the voices of people on the frontlines or the people in those communities. And sometimes that means as told to stories or stories where we have the grassroots organizers or the community members writing it themselves. And our job as editors is to help shape that into something that is a recognizable journalistic format, right? This person doesn't have to be a seasoned writer. Our job is to help their voice become that journalistic voice. What people are grassroot organizations have been working on these issues for a long time and are absent from the conversation. Again, this will kind of go into the solutions reporting we'll talk to talk about later where we want to highlight these orgs and what they're doing and what's working or alternative alter. Alternatively, what people were grassroot orgs know more about the subject than we do, who can provide additional insight into what is happening. Again, like I said, this concept of getting the person on the front lines to write for us or to tell us and as told to story, and then finally as a reporter, yourself, you can ask what is the value that I add to this reporting? If I tackle this, this topic, so what personal say do you have in this story? Are you the right person to tell this story? Again, sometimes maybe you are a vehicle for this grassroots organizer to talk to you and as the q&a format might be the best way to to dispel this information.

So in developing our story ideas, we have a few examples that we can show you more practically. For any reporter news story example. We have this for the last three plus years the COVID 19 pandemic has been a source of workplace safety concerns and economic pressure and a catalyst for worker led organizing for better conditions. How can coverage of this ongoing issue be shaped to center workers and then use idea that new story idea that came from this is to talk directly with frontline workers about how they're organizing and pushing for higher pay increase safety protections during the pandemic, and looking toward the future? And the story that came up this was a piece on how workers are organizing across industries for better conditions in the wake of COVID-19. We covered the modern day labor movement and how it had reached its new heights on April 1 in 2022 when Amazon workers won one of the most significant labor victories with the first successful unionization at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York, workers across other industries have also organized while facing union busting efforts by their employer. We spoke to Helen Tracy, who worked as a barista at the coffee tree in Pennsylvania since May 2021. As soon as she heard that her colleagues were forming a union In August she joined their efforts. She said her and her co workers felt voiceless on the job. They were working eight hours straight without any breaks. And when they express concerns about pay discrepancy management did not do anything to address it. According to Tracy, she was first hired at 850 an hour while her colleagues made $9 an hour that really motivated me to seek another opportunity to feel seen on the job and the peace continues. So one of the as you can see here is the crucial aspect of it was to speak directly to a frontline worker, someone who was seen as like, I don't know when coffee shops were still operational. People saw them as like heroes. And now people are complaining about the fact that there's like a mandatory tip. So that's where we're at now. Sorry to be like that and then for an op ed, or commentary example, as the reinvigorated labor movement leads to workers demanding improved benefits. disabled workers have stepped forward to ensure that their needs are met. So the opposite idea was an argument specific focused on a specific benefit, unlimited paid time off and explaining why employer should adopt the policy and how it's a matter of disability justice and increasingly urgent giving the mass disabling impacts of COVID-19. The piece that came up this was from one of my favorite writers K and they wrote about how the impacts of how difficult it was to navigate their workspace. So they have chronic pain and the piece that resulted from this is about how people with chronic pain. Know that familiar feeling or dread that happens during a period of particularly heightened pain, typically referred to as a flare up. flare ups are destabilizing parts of an already destabilizing illnesses. They make it so that everyday tasks that may not typically worry about are now even more time consuming and sometimes simply impossible to reach. I'm going to pause here just to note that for people who are experiencing fatigue from long COVID This has been a consistent strain on them and has impacted their job. Most nonprofit jobs do not offer their employees unlimited paid time off which can be a life which can be life saving for disabled employees as a trans person hoping to have top surgery this year. I have to be cautious with using my hours because I will need to use a significant portion for surgery recovery. Though it's illegal I have been fired and harassed at previous jobs for how my chronic pain impacted my work. COVID is one of the largest mass stabling mass disabling events in our nation's history. So you would think that nonprofits would look toward a disability justice framework for maintaining work environments for employees. We know that that's not always the case with nonprofits, even though they can position themselves as being better than corporations or for profit industries. That isn't always the case.

All right, so now that we've shown you a couple examples of pieces that we've covered before, we really want to get into the sort of nitty gritty of what solutions journalism is. So solutions journalism, this is a definition that we really like is a rigorous evidence based reporting on responses to social problems. Solutions based reporting confronts ugly truths, aims to be critical, clear and work to highlight the people that work towards solutions. So it's not just telling your readers, this is what you can do. Obviously, that's very important, but it's mostly to highlight the people who are who are working toward these solutions so that maybe you as a reader who are also community oriented community organizing can bring those solutions back to your own community. So typically, in depth stories that we do see in mainstream media will cover the five W's right the who, what, when, where, why, but we don't actually get the how, how are people proposing to solve these problems? And what's the evidence that what they're doing is actually effective? And what limitations are there because if we think about journalism as a way to create a generative conversation, if you introduce the limitations in your piece, maybe you as a reader can think, Oh, I have a solution to that. It really answers. How can we help which I think also battles that helplessness that I think a lot of us feel whenever we read how bleak the news can be. So there are sort of four main steps to every solutions piece. Obviously not every piece will have these four steps and there are also others that can be included, but I think this is a really nice framework to follow. Number one, you want to focus on response. So this focus is on a response to a social problem, whether that's workers unionizing, or perhaps a hurricane, and how do we help the people who have been affected by this hurricane? And we also look at how that response has worked or how or why it hasn't then the second step, you want to do insight, which shows what can be learned from a response and why it matters to us as the reader or to your audience. Three, you want to provide hard evidence. This is still of course, evidence based fact based journalism. So you want to provide data or qualitative results that indicate the effectiveness of the solution, or again, the lack thereof. And finally, you want to go into limitations. So you want to think about the context of these solutions and responses and you don't shy away from revealing the shortcomings because again, this is not about just saying this thing is magical and it works. We want to create a conversation and we want to get people thinking about solutions. So now we're going to highlight two pieces that are sort of solutions journalism based and apply the framework to that piece. So this one by our features, reporter Tamar is titled banned the box policies reduce job barriers for formerly incarcerated people. So if we apply this four step framework, number one, what is this piece responding to? It's responding to grassroots organizers who started the ban the box campaign to address the myriad employment discrimination by demanding change to help people with arrest or conviction records are treated during application processes, because incarcerated people who have come out of incarceration have a huge problem finding jobs or applying for pretty much anything after after they come out of incarceration. And then our insight. bandbox advocates argue that these policies will yield the best results when implemented in conjunction with other legislative efforts. So in this piece, we go over some of those legislative efforts in hopes that our audience can read that and think okay, these are the legislative policies that I need to stand behind if this is something that I also would like to fight for. Then in terms of evidence, overall, we found that bandbox seems to have been significantly helpful in raising employment outcomes for applicants with criminal records. Research actually showed for example, that the number of job applicants with conviction, or sorry with conviction records recommended for hire tripled in Durham County, North Carolina with over 96% ultimately getting the job. And finally some limitations. This is a quote from the peace. A lot of people working for this ban the box campaign felt demoralized by being unable to find jobs and by the by the landscape. So Oscar Flores, who was one of the sources said that this discrimination, this demoralization was something they really had to deal with. Having that audacity brought us a lot of recognition of our power recognition of our organizing skills and organizing potential and put us on the map. And then our second example is warehouse worker protection act grants, migrant workers in Minnesota landmark safety protections. So again, if we apply this four step framework, what was this responding to Somali Amazon workers in Minnesota organized and fought to help pass this warehouse worker protection act? Why is this important to our readers? These Amazon worker chapters from various states were able to inspire each other from their own collective actions, even though they were fighting for different bills in their own states. So again, if you're a reader who is a worker in one of these places, you can think oh, this is how I use my collective action or inspired collective action to get results. The evidence the bill, the Act did pass, which ensured protections around Minnesota workers selfhood, such as transparency for the quotas they were expected to meet, available in their preferred languages, and preventing employers from disciplining workers for taking meal breaks, prayer breaks, bathroom breaks. Many of these regulations were also helping to alleviate anxieties for workers who didn't speak English. Very well. And then finally, limitations one of the sources in the piece acknowledges that the time and energy it took to watch this bill pass through the system was very exhausting. So this, you know, this organizing works but it takes a toll. She was saying that along her side her day job as a nurse and raising two children she was offering whatever remaining time she had to show up to hearings in defense of warehouse workers. So it does take a toll and this is something that we wanted to make clear to our readers as well. Okay, so now that we've shown you two of these pieces, we want to kind of turn the question to you again and brainstorm some story ideas. What are some other stories on workers rights or other underreported communities that need coverage and how would you apply a solutions lens to those stories? We invite you to talk to the person next to you about your thoughts and then in about a minute or two, we'll see if anyone wants to share their ideas.

Hi, thank you so much.

Oh my Wow.

Probably too little.

So are you?

Ready then we're good to go.

Was

lucky I was lucky, someone's smiling down at us.

It seems like you're so present really? Yeah.

My degree was good for one thing, teaching you how to take it.

Together as I

am, so no question.

Okay, we're gonna bring it back together now. Okay. All right. If we could wrap up our conversations. We'll definitely have 10 minutes after the slot of the slide presentation to talk some more about all these really great conversations that we're having. All right, so I heard some great conference will actually I mostly just heard like, I'm really excited to hear what people have to share. So what anyone will take like two and then we can talk more at the end of the presentation. But Would anyone like to share what thoughts they generated and what conversations they had? It's okay, if you don't Okay, no worries. We'll move on. But we will Oh yeah, please.

Cafe workers RCS to be able to have a career in that job. And after work job or

something I mean back to school so

that people actually to spend a long time working in those places and safer. Yeah, absolutely. Anybody else? Yes. We're talking about wage theft and Florida. So wage, like anything by not paying someone over time, skimming off their wages. And this happens a lot to like gig workers. People who are working construction farm workers are part of like a larger, organized union. And so I think there's been some action have to see around changing that there's not like a dedicated euro to address wage theft concerns. But I think during the pandemic, a lot of people had those issues and there's been more attention to it. So we were talking about like, where do we look to find solutions, maybe in other states that have a better system for addressing wage theft? So yeah, just what was the original story look like? In that case?

Excellent. Yeah. Thank you guys for sharing those. Literally, we're writing these ideas down because we want to we want to pursue them. Alright, so now that we've sort of finished talking about solutions, journalism, we're going to move on to talking about how we can apply it in this framework to editorial initiatives.

So when was it January, January, we felt refreshed from the break, and we had ideas and we're like, everything is wonderful. We, I there was an issue that we were confronting a prison, which was that we were getting a lot of emails from either incarcerated writers themselves or from proxy reporters who were working with people behind bars to tell their stories. But we didn't have a process to ensure that we were giving the attention to detail that is required to work with incarcerated writers, which includes complicated mail systems includes complicated pay systems, a myriad of things that you know, if you don't have the structure in place, you're not actually doing justice to the reporters who are working behind bars. So that's how we came up with the idea of the right to write project which is an editorial initiative to work with incarcerated writers in the US. The right to write is rooted in the legacy of black Indigenous and People of Color revolutionaries, writers and reporters whose work from prison drew greater attention to what was happening behind bars and across the nation. And as one of my favorite writers has noted before, what happens behind bars will happen outside of them. So that's why it's critical for us to cover what is happening in prisons across the US. So in applying this framework, we noticed the coverage gaps that were consistent in platforms that were consistent. And very few platforms actually have a dedicated section for incarcerated writers. So that means that there aren't as many platforms for incarcerated writers to reach out to to write for to get paid by. And if you are familiar with the incarceration system or the carceral system in the US, most incarcerated people are laborers as well, but they're paid I think, on average 86 cents per day. So that means that they can't afford items at the commissary they can't afford basic health care, they can't afford most of the things that are necessary. And the the overall misconception about prison is that once people are incarcerated, they're upset, they're taking care of they get all the things that they need. This is false. And in, in not sharing those perspectives, those are the things that people will start to believe and so that is why we decided that we needed to make more space at prism for those coverage gaps. The analysis that was missing as well was incarcerated women's voices incarcerated women in the US are the largest growing population of incarcerated people in the US. It is an astounding number and it just keeps getting worse and worse. And so we put a lot of intention behind the right to write project and so that means Ricky and I work together hand in hand to ensure that we are platforming them.

Alright, so we wanted to show just a couple examples of the types of stories that you know that we feature from our incarcerated writers. So one of these includes incarcerated students can now teach at the first accredited prison. College in the US. This is an example of just a classic reported news story. I'm going to click on it so we can kind of go through. This one was special because it was a joint piece between an incarcerated writer and a proxy Reporter So this is one option for the types of stories that that you can they can show so they were talking mostly about this program, what it can offer what the incarcerated people within this, this program felt after, you know, not being able to get pretty much anything and then realizing, oh, I can do have economic education, this is an opportunity for us. One also very interesting thing that we noticed in this piece is that the writer talked a little bit about a class on cryptocurrency, which is something that we know is rife. With all kinds of scams and all kinds of things. So we had to make the editorial decision to take that part of our story out, which kind of shows that we apply the same rigorous thought and care to these stories as any other story that we do on our platform. So the second kind of example is an op ed, this is a recent op ed called I wasn't sentenced to be cooked heat desperation in a Texas prison. This one actually came to us by one of our features reporters, uplifting it to us and it was a very quick turnover to get this piece up because it was a very crucial and time time sensitive topic. So a part of the piece social media has brought more attention to the torture in the name of punishment. I'm being punished by being away. That is the punishment. I wasn't sentenced to be cooked. The Texas Department of Justice reported that 32 people died this June from various causes. And we know at least nine of those deaths were in prison lacking air conditioning. None of those people had a death sentence. The money spent on defending lawsuits staff injuries, staff turnover and local hospital and ambulance bills in June alone dwarfs the cost of just providing air conditioning in his record breaking heat I just hoping I'm not in the seasons body count. The heat is life threatening and the useless advice give it a stay hydrated drink water. How and I think this piece is so powerful because we get to hear directly from someone in this situation in this prison. Talking about what they're suffering and what they're going through. And their voice is just so powerful in this kind of piece. And finally, we have an example of a column where Derek Trumbo is a writer who writes with us soon to be a bi weekly column on his sort of experiences in prison and being incarcerated. It's called never eat the candy on your pillow, a common sense guide to prison. It's definitely one of my favorite pieces that we cover it right to write. He is a fantastic writer, and in every single one he covers different topics so for example, holding on to hope or how to stay, how to stay in contact with people outside of prison. And also this one never eat the candy on the pillow because things will happen.

But he's the most prolific writer we've ever worked with, but this actually started as a newsletter. In prison. And a lot of his fellow inmates really really loved the the newsletter and so he reached out to he started working with a program at Penn America which connected him to our editor at large Tina Vasquez, who then pitched this idea to us of having Derrick write for us on a regular basis. And next week we'll have a COVID MPs between Tina and Derrick out about prison labor and prison wages as part of a larger package to observe the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. So that will be up on the site next Monday. If all goes according to my plan.

Yeah, we highly recommend that you will read all the pieces on prison site but also specifically to read this column because Derek is truly a fantastic writer, phenomenal writer. And so kind of to wrap things up, we want to talk about the things we learned because as we to kind of bring this back to solutions journalism, we want to talk about the limitations of the solutions that we'd like to implement if we see the right to write as our solution to the lack of incarcerated writer or incarcerated people in in news media. So some things we learned image sourcing is extremely difficult. We typically use Getty Images, I stock or original photos in our pieces, but when it comes to write to write most of the I stock photos are just of a person in an orange jumpsuit behind bars, which is extremely limiting and also very stereotypical and quite awful. So we have to get a little bit more creative and I think as you saw in the previous piece, we'd like to use Canva as a way to create more of these artistic or abstract images. So Leora and I will usually be the ones to base these off of what goes on in a piece. Communication. So when working with incarcerated writers, we often have to communicate via proxy journalists. This requires a lot of flexibility, a lot of awareness of the time. That that takes, you know, getting the word out to the proxy journalist and then trying to contact the person who is incarcerated. So again, you need to really kind of be ready to face last minute changes or things having to change after the fact. And then finally, maintaining agency. One of our main goals is to empower the writers who share their stories with us as well as the audience who reads them. So this means always keeping an open mind to implementing new strategies, terminologies and best practices when challenges occur. So a really great example of this is at Prism. Prism. We really like to use the term incarcerated writer over prisoner we think it's more humanizing to use incarcerated person but then at one of our pieces, one of the writers told us that he actually preferred to use the term prisoner. I kind of put it here it might be hard to read, but he essentially told us, this is the term I generally prefer. And there are certain progressive radical publications that use it too, such as prison legal news, black and pink. It does not have the humanizing effect that incarcerated person has, but it's less euphemistic. It reminds ourselves and others that our situation is not neutral. There is a very clear agent, the state holding us prisoner. So this was very illuminating to us and we kind of include this little blurb at the end of our pieces to alert our audience as well why we choose to use prisoner in some cases or incarcerated person in other cases. So I know for me I learned something new every single day working with the right to write program.

Okay, so we have reached the well the funnest part for Ricky and I. If you would like to share with us after the session how you plan to one push for a national narrative shift on workers rights to incorporate a solutions lens in your reporting, and apply the when basic user ag mentality to your newsroom, but we'd also like to open this up for larger questions around our presentation. If you have anything in particular that you'd like to ask us. There are microphones here if you're struggling to protect your voice. But yeah, otherwise, feel free

to just feel free to talk amongst yourselves about this or if you want to come up to us directly. You had a question? Yes. Yes, of course. We will find that one. What's missing? Is it this one? Let's go through oh wait sorry that might be been wrong. Is it this one? This or was it this one oh sorry. Okay. Okay. Let's start from the beginning. Is it not this one? We talked about this one earlier. I think you might be referring to this one. What's the thing Yes. Great. Fantastic. Yeah, of course.

Right, more questions are officially released people okay.

We've met Yes, yes. Yeah. Thank you for coming.

Yes, I'd love to

have access to some resources as well as their kids science Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we national skill set. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's great to see interesting to look at what their language services look like. What whether they have translators facilitated

Okay, okay. Yes, yes sir. She's also on the National

Bureau, so she's she's a good source on her food workers I should say. Suzanne SUSE? A any Adeli a de loi. Thank you. Thanks so much. Especially Australia. Representation. Yeah. Thank you because this was really great. And you said that you share his reasons as to why Yeah, they are going they should be uploaded to their to their app app. And I'm thinking about like, that model but you have like two questions that you'd have like estimating coverage and what's the nice idea on the right. Side? Yeah, thank you so much. A lot of this information is put on our site. We also

have our projects. We wrote it down on the ISS.

Oh great. Thank you. Thank you for coming.

In right, we were

supposed to

maybe there's a potential for collaboration. Where are you guys? We're fully remote workplace. We're seeing myself here. But yeah, we're all we have a few co workers in California.

Okay. Anybody in LA? Yes. Actually, no, we don't have anyone don't want everyone to know like how many people on staff

I made my own card cards.

All right, right.

up to the top. So I am the student newspaper. I was wondering if you guys would like to just ask one question. If there's anything else

you'd like to do I have a checklist of

questions. That will come up right now. Thank you. Hi, how are you?

Together? It's been really helpful. I graduated college. And I worked at UC Berkeley. And everything's been very dated. I literally just Yeah, it was, it was just too much like that story. idea about workers comp sad and was not really taken well by my editors. Yeah.

I'm gonna I'm gonna give you my email address and you can teach

whatever you say I was kind of curious about the brighter brighter Yeah. I think you guys are I think he said yes. Okay, perfect. And then I'm the primary editor to get into that. Like, I don't

I don't learn to stuff like that. A lot of emails coming that way or just from these proxy journalists. They were like, Hey, you should do something. And I think we've been really lucky because there are folks that have probably Avenue who will work with incarcerated people and writers if they connect this to a lot of these cases. Yeah. And then I think once you start publishing these stories, more people will gather. Oh, we can ask this person.

Yeah, we got to we get submission via mail, like physical mail. via email. Yeah, it was really just if we didn't if we just did it like with our regular freelance submissions, it wasn't gonna work properly, because it does take like extra legwork and attention. And yeah, we just have to like, we have proper implementation that it just works better for them. And also incarcerated or whatever should get paid really well for their

work. But yeah, I um, right after college. I started working at a writer's center in upstate New York. And I got Oh, I had to, like handle a lot of administrative stuff. And a lot of it was getting inquiries from people in prison who were just interested in like, How do I turn this writer center right and then they had a program where they had an instructor come to New York State Prison, and teach creative writing. And then with the pandemic hit person, they only had one instructor and he's like, I'm not doing this right. And so I've been kind of I've left that job, obviously, but like, I've still been communicating with my own supervisor, like how do we start to speak up because I think it's so it's like the voice that we like, because there's literally like that barrier

than a single barrier. I also found in our research that a lot of us writing programs if they

exist at all right if you have nowhere to publish afterwards. Yeah.

That's right. Yeah. So let me give you my email. And if you pardon, yes, please.

Perfect it's just our first names. And then you can pitch a few

things like that. Yeah. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah. And I'd love to just like if there's any way to get involved in that. Program in any other way.

We've got your content. super interested

in that, specifically in that population, that demographic? Because of that connection, because I've gotten those letters and you know what to do with them and stuff? Yeah, I mean, the most that I've done that because I've run into my supervisor, and I'm like, What do I do? And she's like, well, you have to read a rejection, email or letter back and it's so difficult, but I'm like, okay, and then I like, also try to be able to, like, give them back like poetry books and other stuff that I can give, but it's obviously you know, like, it's hard to keep helping you. Yeah, it's truly just comes from your own personal Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, all right. Well bye bye

so proud of you to your wonderful Christine from democracy fund asked me to tell you that she thought the presentation was wonderful. Shall we do the thing? Are you both going to see Nicole Hannah Jones and

I didn't have breakfast today. So I can't eat before thing because

Oh. Do you want to like go have food or I don't want to like make him socialized? NOT want to socialize with you? Like let's hang out for like yeah

why should we? Yeah. So here's my phone putting on shoes because it happens. Never happened to me before. It's really good. How did I find them? I haven't. I just told me the second time I've worn them and I was trying to like pulled a little sock setup. Okay, lesson learned. For the other day I looked at my pie. And I was like, I wish I knew where this came this same thing is part of life.

Now and I was like,

Excuse me.

Where did they come from? I walk into stuff a lot.

Oh yeah. What does that hurt? Oh, it's probably

RIGHT.