This is a guide for your coverage of youth violence. It will walk you through reporting strategies, offer examples of reporting, and ask you to consider how you can do your best for an issue that touches so many lives today. Why do we need a guide? Because the work you do, shapes [...]
Youth violence is a crash. It can be one many or one or two forces colliding. So how do we decipher what drove the crash? Listen to this excellent and compelling reporting by Adriana Cardona-Maguigad for WBEZ and you realize how domestic violence is one of those forces that drives violence on Chicago streets. http://www.wbez.org/news/violence-streets-can-start-home-107225 [...]
Tragedies stain us today and tomorrow and sometimes forever. Here, where so much tragedy confronts so few, we’ve just begun reporting on the marks that we many never lose. And that’s a step forward in how we cover violence, I think. Why? It is good reporting that humanizes and takes us into lives we might [...]
We know the numbers. We know where they happen. But what we know about stopping the violence? We’ll talk about that on June 11 from 10 am to noon at 618 S. Michigan, Stage Two, Columbia College. It’s a workshop for journalists on how we measure what works and how we know what’s missing. We’ll [...]
Mired in our struggle with violence, we need to figure out whether the solutions offered by public officials really work. This is something we – the news media- can do and lately WBEZ has been doing an incredibly good job. Here, for example, is one program that raises questions about mandatory minimum sentences. Are they [...]
Nobody needs to tell us that violence has given us the jitters. Really bad jitters. But we seem likely to be mixing the numbers and losing focus as well. What do I mean? We seem to be counting acts of violence when they are not violent. And we seem to be applying broad labels about [...]
We paint the pictures that stick in peoples’ mind. So when we talk only about the horror of youth violence, we leave an indelible message. And the message says do something. But when we mix images, talking about a gang of kids downtown with lives lost and threatened, our image-making leaps beyond reality, and accountability. [...]
What’s killing Chicago? Is it more than gangs, and drugs and guns? Stuck on a cycle of harm that doesn’t fade, I hear more asking us to look deeper. Writing this week in the Chicago Reader, Steve Bogira says: “The perpetual focus on whether a crime is gang related ignores another common-denominator that’s an even [...]
Say you live in a dangerous place. Say you worry just about going out. Say you’ve had a neighbor, a relative, someone close get hurt. Say you are a kid in high school and you think that the only way to live in peace is to be part of a gang. Say you are worried [...]
As we wade ahead, we’re taking a much better count of the toll of violence. We’re also thinking more about solutions. Here is a good example from DePaul University journalism students http://redlineproject.org/gunviolence.php Guns, gangs and grief have all played a part in Chicago’s grim history of violence — from the days of Tommy guns and [...]
Sometimes the reporting on guns and crime in Chicago forgets the basic facts, and forgets too how to explain them. Here’s an excellent piece by Jim Warren who has moved to the New York Daily news. Steve@chicagoistheworld.org BY JAMES WARREN / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2013, WASHINGTON — When it comes to [...]
Photo by Carlos Javier Ortiz. View More
Most of the stories you see here are written for the We Are Not Alone – No Estamos Solos campaign and provided to ethnic news media outlets free of charge. You are welcome to republish these stories as long as you attribute the author and source under the Creative Commons License. If you want to contribute please contact Steve Franklin, steve@chicagoistheworld.org or 312 369 7782. We encourage stories that counter stereotypes, that emphasize the folks and groups who work against violence in their communities and that point us to solutions.
The message of this project centers on residents working to make life better in their communities, that we need to know what others are doing and to remind us that this is a struggle that can be overcome.
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Do you want to find an agency that helps youths? Are you an agency and you want to spread the word about your work? Please go to our list of Chicago area youth agencies. We think it is the only one of its kind here. And we created it so that journalists, agencies and folks in need can have a place to turn. So check it out.
