estimate to start at 125. So we're gonna get started. Thanks everybody for coming. I'm Nina. I'm one Okay, so when you're done with your lovely lunches the recycling boxes at the back My name is Nina Ignaczak. I'm founder and editor of the online news organization plant in Detroit and Martina Guzman, who is my co founder is also here. You want to use yourself.
Too many courts which recover Hi, everyone, my name is Martina Guzman, I am with Planet Detroit, as Nina said, and we're super excited not only to have founded planet Detroit, because there was no one really no one covering the environment and the environmental impacts on communities of color. And we've been doing this for five years. And we're thrilled, and we're thrilled to be here. So.
All right, I apologize in advance if I trip over the cord. So we're really excited today to introduce a new program and that is the Detroit Detroit or the Planet Detroit Neighborhood Reporting Lab. We piloted this program last year. It's basically a program to train community members to write stories for us for playing in Detroit and for their communities. And we did we did it last year, we had just a very small amount of funding, we had 40 People applies only take five. So we're going to be unveiling it this year again, and hopefully getting even more really good stories. Oops, I didn't realize all this animation was gonna happen. Okay. So Planet Detroit. As Martina mentioned, we are Planetdetroit.org. We relaunched in 2019. And we cover environmental news and information about the Detroit city of Detroit region, a little bit statewide, but really focused on Southeast Michigan.
So I'm just going to talk a little bit about what is what's community journalism, why are we doing this? So community journalism is really the practice of community storytelling, telling people stories about your community, documenting the people, the places, and the things that are happening, focusing really on community life or things that you have people in either a city or neighborhood or region. And you know, why? Why do it? Well, a few reasons, fostering community connections, inspiring people to think and to act, making sure people know what's going on. Also promoting skills promoting job development. We've trained quite a few writers that have gone on to either do additional recording or freelancing or gone on to other communication jobs, in nonprofits and other spaces. And then, you know, making sure that people have a reliable source of information. Can you guys hear me okay?
Also, when we talk about community reporting, you know, communities of color have long traditions of like, storytellers, they are natural storytellers. They pass these stories down. And a lot of the journalists of color use that when they report in their own communities, they report with nuance, they see things that a helicopter reporter wouldn't be able to see, they know members of the community in a completely different way. So building this kind of, of, you know, sort of what we I hope we call like a small army. So it's what I hope to have a small army of community reporters to do those would bring out stories that even go deeper into what planet Detroit is already reporting or reporting on things that no one else reports on. And with the community reporting component, I hope to go even deeper.
Yeah, and I just wanted to also mention Angelia Lugo-Thomas, who was our last community engagement reporter left us recently to go work with Keep Growing Detroit. But, you know, check out her stories on planetdetroit.org, there were some really great stories about people who are doing things in the community that you know, otherwise weren't having their stories told. So, you know, it can look, community journalism can look like a lot of different things. It can just be a black club newsletter. It can be an email list. It can be an online website or blog. It can be a podcast it can be all kinds of different media formats. It plays Detroit, we generally write articles for the web, that includes text and photos that are about 750 to 1000 words, but that's just one kind of form it can take. So you know, it's certainly more than just than just one kind of format. And, you know, what, what is it? What are the topics, it can be slices of life, you know, we've published sort of just, we actually we had a couple of years ago, we had a parks reporter that just would go into a different Park and kind of report what they what they saw that day at the park and took some pictures so that there's just some elevation about, you know, life in the parks, no real, you know, issue at what uncovered by the issue being there, you know, we'd see things like broken equipment, or, you know, new equipment or trash or cleanups, you know, kind of highlighting what was happening, and also just highlighting the experiences of people that were in the park that day, and you can find those on our website. So a couple years old now, and I'd love to refresh that program. But they can also be reporting that highlights a problem and a community, something that you see that you know, needs attention, or a solution, something that somebody's doing to address the problem that's already there. And, you know, do quite a bit of that kind of reporting. And then, you know, kind of the more in depth stuff is when you really hold power to account and say, you know, this organization, this group, this, you know, government agency, whoever is, you know, not fulfilling their obligation to the community, and here's why here's the evidence, and reporting it out and making sure that, you know, that information is seen, and a lot of times, you know, it requires people who live and work in the community to see that happening on the ground, and to notice when the bus doesn't show up on time, or, you know, the trash isn't picked up or whatever it is. And then there's also opinion pieces. So we publish a lot of opinions that are well researched and grounded, in fact, but you know, really kind of represent the as a point of view of the writer.
So it was Zaire Daniels as an African American photographer, who was actually trained by Nina to go into the parks and do this kind of reporting. But even just at its most basic level, what he did was, he allowed people to feel seen, you know, in these parks that have overgrown grass, or that their basketball courts weren't working that they were seen. And that's really important in a city like Detroit, that's, you know, these small communities feel neglected for what's happening in some of the bigger what they call you to the green zone of the city. So that kind of training is really invaluable.
If anybody has any questions on the program, not too beholden to our schedule here. So I wanted to just take a minute to ask you, where do you get your information about the community that you live in? Where is what what news sources or other sources of information do you use to find out what's happening? In Detroit? Alright, so curious, where
do you guys get your community information from?
Sign up for Detroitmi.gov sign up. O'Hair Park Community Association on the northwest side. Okay, the first thing we did was we went to the government sites for the Department of neighborhoods, parks and recreation, anything that our neighborhood was really focusing on, you sign up for them, you also sign up for your public officials with people that represent you. So that, you know, we can better know how you feel about certain things that are going on in this state. And then you branch out from there with people into your community partners, whether it be your churches, or businesses or whether that's how you just kind of appeal to
the pilots. So you're kind of directly from either city government or churches and organizations in your community.
I live between North End and Boston Edison area, most of my communication comes either from direct, so I've just signed up for emails, whether it's government or periodicals, or professional word of mouth, with my regular relationships, and social media as well like social media has its problems. But it's a great place to find things that don't get picked up by larger publications. And sometimes the court gets to grant robbing was shared in the same way.
Yeah, yeah, social media has got so much attached to it. Does. Anybody else want to chime in?
Yeah. If the government is part of our coalition, we work with the schools to make sure that all of school permission does requires we meet with them I hope so school in our schools in our neighborhood, are very aware of what we're doing hardship relationships, schools that you're working to bring into the party. Maybe we still were to participate lose a crash or
whatever it may be very important.
Yeah, I'm just curious, what what would anybody say? are the pain points or like hard places to find community information? And what are you always struggling to find more about the don't is not readily available, and the kinds of things that you're already subscribed to or on social media. Anybody thought had thoughts on that? But you always kind of looking around for that you just can't seem to get? Yep. And we're kind of recurring issue. Any district that has more affluent neighborhoods are specifically meant to take up a lot of airtime community issues. So
a lot of the reporting out will focus on those neighborhoods, instead of the smaller ones.
Somewhat more of an emphasis on affluent neighborhoods, I've learned
a lot with a lot of reporting has a strong emphasis on the actual neighborhood
can meet meaning in like the mainstream media. Yeah, okay. Got it. Anybody else? Information that's hard to find. Okay.
So just a little bit about, you know, from our perspective at Planet Detroit, what we look for, in terms of what's a good story, you know, elements of a good story that, you know, ideally, there's some kind of conflict or tension, somebody sees a problem that solves it, somebody, you know, has a has a story. And then they did something in their life, that maybe they opened a business or they started a program, they're actually doing something to overcome a problem, but there's got to be some kind of, like, challenge that they're addressing. So, you know, we can talk a little bit more about what those are, you know, we placed a high priority on being accurate, making sure that we verified facts, and I can share these slides out with anybody who wants to after somebody finally heads, yeah. Is that you know, is the story relevant? And does it contribute meaningfully to, to the audience, to the readers, to the community. Most importantly, for our stories, and we try not to do too many stories without this at Planet Detroit, some of the news, you'll see without this component, but having that human connection, most of our stories will begin with a story of the person or character of you know, somebody in these spaces that is being introduced, who is either making that impact or being impacted by whatever the story is about. And then, you know, ideally we have we are stories have an impact. And that can look like a lot of different things, maybe it's just raising awareness, and more people are now aware of an issue, maybe it prompts a public official to bring something up or to, you know, maybe try to change a law that's kind of like, changing policy is kind of a big, big objective, it takes often more than just one news story to make that happen. But impact could be as small as as, you know, somebody learns about a new program, and that program now is getting notoriety or funding. Or it could be as big as you know, a whole new program comes to various city with funding and or new policy around it. So it's kind of a whole broad spectrum. And we spend a lot of time talking about what impact looks like. But ideally, we want to do the do reporting that's going to tell stories that are going to you know, not just be entertaining, but actually have some kind of consequence.
The other thing community reporting does, and the work that we do at Planet Detroit is like, we turn on its head, what it means to be an expert. You know, I mean, I think for so long, like there was this like coveted idea that you had to be a university professor, you have to be a PhD. Well, let me tell you, the woman that's been living 30 years on that block is more of an expert than anyone living in an institution in Ann Arbor. And so that idea for us is really important to sort of raising those voices, because they have details and they have nuance that other people don't have and mind you we fact check everything, but that's a critical component of what planet Detroit does also.
So when we when we do our training, our our News Lab training, we start with the idea of going from topic to story because when you a lot of times, especially new writers or new storytellers that are starting out and looking around and thinking about well, I see all these issues or topics in my community. Maybe I see you know, blight or I see mental health issues or I see, you know, water affordability or I see, you know, you know a need for more recreation. So we want to go from like these topics to an actual like story, which is more like what's happening around that what, what changes are being made, what are people trying what's happening. So that's what we're going to just spend a little bit of time on. I'm gonna give you guys like, probably five minutes, I think, to do a little breakout, if that's okay. And just, you know, come up with oops, come up with maybe, you know, one or two, I said, Five. But that's too many, one or two topics that you see in your communities, and then try to come up with an actual story that's happening that you see that you could actually tell. So ideally, we would have had tables, but maybe just turn around to the row behind you. And I'll give you guys started, Martina and I can kind of like flit around and just chat with you guys. So we're starting now we've got five minutes, introduce yourselves to the row behind you. And your your goal is to identify, you know, one or two topics.
Off with certainty, so we ended up in a conversation and Gail really led it talking about about he is asking questions about who runs Belle Isle, who does the work that were put in. And so that is talking about the issue is really what the gentleman raised in the last session, the public private partnership, and what is that? And then we started talking about how that works. And and when it began,
oh, yes, adding the final part about how individuals are what role individuals and park users play in that relationship, and how they can contribute or we can contribute through engagement and participation. So we were headed towards public, private and
citizen engagement, and how do you connect that
is not on your paper? So it's one word, what's the topic?
The topic is kind of what I just said, We haven't gotten yet to what would be
the public private or public private connection? And then how do the residents get involved in that whole cycle for belle isle
it's actually telling stories of residents who got involved because we knew that human connection or you want to identify a story?
Yeah, yes. going from you can hear me going from topic to story ours was abandoned buildings. Someone got blighted so abandoned building, for example. My hair is jittery part, 52 acres, waterfront park property. We have an abandoned rec center, someone had it on YouTube. The topic was abandoned buildings. The story is getting it out to the public, the city know about we've been fighting back and forth for the city of Detroit. And I mean, fighting is a bad thing with the sales, not the people. Now I heard earlier down the road, you have to educate the people, that what we're doing now is network. So our strategy is getting it out. So we took this and it was on YouTube, we put in a picture, we go to the local community, and we say, hey, we tried to get people to come back. That's our story. Now to me, there should be one other thing up there called result and moving forward. So with me in our group and we went to libraries and getting children killed the tough part to learn about nature. We've talked about Scout camp sleepover, but the story is us and how we move forward. So here we stay all together. We're here for parks. There's an abandoned building rec center the city of Detroit talk to speak about blight the government give us money. Our mayor's on TV talking about we're doing a great job taking care about many homes, the city of Detroit, you go back and build his own your own property that we pay taxes for. So our story is giving back to the city. Even Mayor Duggan was down here. Mayor Ben was Dr. Kwame Kilpatrick. Mayor was down. They were there. They seen it with their own eyes. We have spoke to them. And this is our story to get him out. It did we need results, not just storyteller. Results from the stories is still there still. So new
accountability story. And you know the story of the history of what people tried to do about that building. In fact, it's still there. Yeah, so
I was gonna ask, is that part of it? They exception. So we've got we all have stories. How do we get you and others to listen to them and publish them? Or are we supposed to be publishing our own stories?
Well, yeah, this part is at the very end, but you know, you always can start your publishing stories. But does anybody else before we I think we just have a couple of minutes left. Does anybody else want to share what they came up with in their group? This group hadn't really heard. Anything you guys are sharing? Yeah, yeah.
The viola findings collected from the vital Amusement Park Association, the sun that created building eight mile areas. And we helped we developed a nonprofit about nine years ago. And even though we had a lot of infusion into the park, we had for the first bioswales in the area, to stop flooding, we still have to have a security
and topic is your dump secure? Have you Saturday, we
have we've had vandalization of our beautiful statue, and we have illegal dumping, like just in front of a house dumping, you know, furniture up this high. So we've taken pictures and we sent it to the community, Kim Tandy, and they have been responsive, sometimes it takes a little while, but it we'd like more lighting, to, you know, kind of help protect that neighborhood from that kind of issues.
So the story is what you what you all have been trying to do document this. And again, it's an accountability, why or why it hasn't there hasn't been has or hasn't been working. All right, well, I think we're running out of time, so you didn't have to. So there's a lot in here about what how to do, how to tell a story about an interview, what to do next, I'm going to skip to the end. Because we are going to be going over this information in our training class. So I really encourage all of you to hopefully, participate in that. Well, there was a lot in here. Okay, getting it out there. So you have your story. We've worked with you on shaping and doing all the recording and the interviewing and the crafting of the story. You have it well now what? So find the publication that it where it fits in the publication, you know, it could mean the community newsletter, an email a server could mean planet Detroit, and my email is Nina at Planet detroit.org and Martina is Martina at Planet detroit.org. We work with community members to help publish stories all the time and we want to be doing more of it. We email us yeah, please email of everyone who stood up and has
a story please email us. Repeat. Martina ma RTI ma at y Detroit
org.org or Nina and I had a look at the same plan of Detroit that work. Or go to our website at plan@detroit.org. Sign up for our free email newsletter, you'll you'll hear more information about our upcoming Detroit plenty Detroit story lab. And that's where we can work with you. To actually train you we offer a $300 stipend for folks that actually complete the class and publish a story. We'll be launching it in January. And we hope that you, you apply and attend and even if you don't, and you still want to work on a story or an opinion piece, please email us and we'll be happy to try to either work with me directly on it or help you find maybe another place where if it makes sense to publish it.
I want to bring this up. I'm not sure why it's the Virginia is Viola leaves of Heart Association. Yes, sorry, Viola because of park but, but who Viola was and why she's important is that she went down to be a part of the Freedom Riders in the civil rights movement and was murdered. So there's a statue in her honor. This year
we installed the Civil Rights monument a great civil rights rally with dedicated to the people of Detroit, who supported that who led the way
and who inspired vertical down there. I'm gonna see it are we at a time or do we have any time for questions? Let's keep going to do anybody have any questions or anything else they want to share? Yeah, yeah.
What are some of the other things that your organization does? I briefly saw when I pulled you up online it was like solar panels like reminded things. Are there other things you do besides offering sorry? We
report and publish stories were journalism outlet primarily. So in our topic is focused on environment and health. We're a full fledge online media outlet reporters and other type checkers. We also partner with other news outlets and publish stories because we're small. Expand our audience. Yeah, you guys publish events, we do events, events. So we do Yeah, we do publish events in our email newsletter we did have a place in our website where it's down right now that I'm working on getting a backup to help people self publish their events. Yeah. Is that something people in imagine that you want to have access to? Yeah. That's good to know. Yeah. Questions? Yeah, I didn't know I have different posters. And we talked about
after and having said that efficacy so for part of the deleveraging said that the choice and the results resources resource for all times
yeah, we have we have a resource guide on our website that I can share out to you if there let me share with email list that goes over how to how to write an opinion piece published those regularly
Yeah. You were a character in article before you. Thank you everybody for coming. If you have you want to talk one on one. Stick around for a little while. And again, a mighty Bell is Nina. I got a Detroit network. Please reach out if you have ideas for stories and just one information line. We're more
than happy to share our newsletters
and presents a roundup of really good stories and these
