South Side Weekly Workshop Series: Community Engagement and Collaboration in Reporting

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PEN America is thrilled to continue our partnership with the South Side Weekly with a series of hands-on journalism skills workshops this summer and fall. In this workshop, we will explore methods for connecting and collaborating with your audience during the reporting process and after your story is published. We’ll talk about how to identify your target audience, learn their needs, and develop a story accordingly. This includes topics such as alternate ways of communicating and the difference between reporting about vs. reporting for a community. Participants will have an opportunity to share their own experience with engagement strategies via breakout sessions. 

While not required, attendees are encouraged to bring a story or project idea to share. 

Ellen Mayer is a community journalist, producer, and facilitator. She’s a producer for The Hoodoisie, a radical talk show about culture and politics. Most recently, she was politics editor for the South Side Weekly and City Bureau fellow. She started her journalism career at WBEZ’s Curious City, where she learned to put audience curiosity and collaboration at the center of her work. She also spent two years as an Engagement Consultant for the journalism-tech startup Hearken, helping newsrooms around the world build relationships and engage more effectively with their audiences. She is also a recovering music journalist and ex-musical theater kid. She’s from Brooklyn and enjoys arguing about the best place to find bagels in Chicago and convincing people not to move to New York.

Additional information on this workshop series can be found here.