News Voices Offers Media Training to NYC Housing Organizers

Journalists and other media makers report on and tell stories about every issue that our communities fight for, from climate justice to creating a new economy to housing as a human right.

Sometimes the reporting and storytelling help build solutions and sometimes, intentionally or not, they harm us. Oftentimes that outcome is based on the relationships the journalists and storytellers have with the people fighting for their lives.

To shape some of that relationship-building work, Free Press’ News Voices team had the opportunity to work at the intersections of housing justice and local news by facilitating a training with housing organizers at New York City’s Urban Homesteading Assistance Board in early October.

The training moved from mapping local news ecosystems in Brooklyn and Harlem to dreaming and visioning interventions and improvements to those systems. From there we talked about and developed tactics to turn those dreams and visions into reality.

Spoiler alert: All of the tactics to transform local news start with relationship building, either with fellow community members or directly with local journalists. Sometimes relationships are built by hosting and participating in a story circle and other times it happens by setting up a 1:1 meeting with a journalist.

News Voices facilitates these trainings around the country because we know that a local journalism landscape built on strong relationships between residents and journalists is a landscape that allows everyone to win.

If you or your organization is interested in collaborating with News Voices, you can email us to turn that thought into a reality.

Check out the videos featuring two of the organizers who attended our training: