By Micki Leventhal / Photography by Evan Berkowitz ('05)
“It is increasingly challenging to sell your story to a media that is saturated by sleaze, sex, and celebrity,” asserts Mike Burke, public affairs director for the not-for-profit Bounce Learning Network. “It all gets back to voice. You can’t have equal opportunity without having equal voice."
Burke is also the chairman of the board of the Community Media Workshop, a service organization focusing on public relations and marketing training for not-for-profit organizations. “The Workshop labors tirelessly to assist organizations and individuals whose goals and missions are positive social change,” he explains. “To me, the soul of their work is that they help people find and cultivate their voices and give them the tools—the megaphone if you will—to make sure their voices are heard.”
Community Media Workshop was co-founded in 1989 by Hank DeZutter and Thom Clark, who still serves as its president. The organization has been housed at Columbia since 1993, when it came to the college at the invitation of Lya Rosenblum, former dean of the Graduate School. With a nod from the chairs of the Television, Journalism, Radio, and Arts, Entertainment and Media Management departments—and a handshake agreement with then-Executive Vice President Bert Gall—the Workshop established a home base on the Columbia campus.
Since that time the Workshop has trained more than 16,500 not-for-profit staff and volunteers in the fine art of publicity through its five-week intensive course, Professional Media Relations; its annual Making Media Connections conference; about 25 special-subject workshops annually; and more than 200 custom-designed consultations for agencies in Chicago and across the Midwest. Every day, the Workshop connects community organizations and their issues with the network of print and broadcast journalists who can tell their stories—stories that need to be told in order to educate the public and ultimately influence public policy on issues important to these organizations.
“It is no accident that the Community Media Workshop is housed at Columbia,” says Burke. “Think about the mission of Columbia and the transformative experience of Columbia for so many students who would otherwise not have had access to higher education. And think about the mission of the Workshop, which is to give people voice. To me, what it comes down to is this bedrock American value of equal opportunity. It’s a perfect partnership of shared values.”
Mike Burke
Director, Bounce Learning Network
“It is no accident that the Community Media Workshop is housed at Columbia … it comes down to this bedrock American value of equal opportunity. It’s a perfect partnership of shared values.”
To truly capture the essence of the Workshop community, you need to attend an annual Studs Terkel Media Awards event, a gathering electric with purpose yet so charmingly nostalgic that you can almost hear Pete Seeger and Woodie Guthrie strumming their guitars in the background. In keeping with this grassroots spirit, for the past couple of years the crowd has been treated to a revival-style sing-along, complete Chicago Tribune columnists Mary Schmich and Eric Zorn on piano and banjo, respectively, and actor/musician Christopher Walz on guitar. This past spring, clients and supporters of the Workshop rubbed elbows with the elite of Chicago journalism as they joined together in a rendition of “This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land” that brought tears to more than a few eyes. Nonagenarian Terkel, the quintessential crusading journalist, once again delivered a rousing speech exhorting his colleagues to use their craft to create positive social change.
Journalists who have received the Studs Terkel Award—which recognizes excellence in covering Chicago’s underrepresented communities in their fight for equality, social justice, and political voice—include Alex Kotlowitz, Teresa Puente, John Conroy, Carol Marin, Phil Ponce, Ira Glass, Renee Ferguson, Harry Porterfield, Laura Washington, and a host of others who represent the best practices of the profession.
Not surprisingly, many of the Terkel winners teach in Columbia’s Journalism department. The Workshop maintains a valuable presence in the department, having established two core courses: “Community News” and the graduate-level “Local Government and Politics.” The Workshop also grants a scholarship each year to a Columbia student for a distinguished documentary or journalism project that examines a social issue. In 2006, the $1,500 award went to Sean Patrick Fahey for his documentary The Tractor Builder.
Alton Miller, associate dean of media arts and a member of the Workshop’s board, notes that “they put Columbia College at the center of convergence between newsmakers and journalists. For reformers and public-policy advocates, it’s a resource for getting the message out. For journalists, it’s a standard bearer for intelligent, principled media practices. For students in both arenas, there is no program at Columbia that more strongly promotes the college mission ‘to educate students who will communicate creatively and shape the public’s perceptions of issues and events and who will author the culture of their times.’”
Lori Clark
Executive Director,
Jane Addams Senior Caucus
“For years I struggled with how I thought the world should be and how the world really is. Organizing was how I was able to find my voice and power and create change.”
Visibility in the public media is essential when it comes to affecting public opinion or gaining support for changes in public policy that will enhance the quality of life for citizens of all ages, races, and economic conditions. A closer look at three of the Workshop’s client organizations illustrates how it helps those organizations succeed in their missions.
Jane Addams Senior Caucus (JASC), a grassroots senior-citizen advocacy organization, turned to the Workshop in 2005 for assistance in raising awareness of issues surrounding home healthcare for low-income seniors. Community Cares, a program of the State of Illinois, provides personal assistants to help with basic housekeeping tasks so that older adults are able to stay in their own homes rather than being prematurely forced into nursing homes. However, to qualify for this program, seniors had to be on the edge of complete poverty; they were allowed only a minimum of financial assets. *
As part of its advocacy agenda, JASC decided to fight for a reasonable increase in the allowable asset level. “We’d been working on this issue since 2000, says executive director Lori Clark. “In 2004 we succeed in getting the limit raised from $10,000 to $12,500, but this was still unrealistically low. We needed to create visibility for this issue in order to influence the state legislators and the budgetary decisions. We needed a strategic media campaign.”
Clark and her board of directors secured funding from the Chicago Community Organizing Capacity Building Initiative and turned to the Workshop for expert assistance in developing a customized media strategy to obtain feature placement for their organization and their issue. “The most important thing we learned was how to correctly pitch the right story to the right reporter for the best article, the best results,” says Clark.
The results of this media effort were outstanding. JASC obtained feature coverage in the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. In April 2006, Governor Rod Blagojevich approved changes to the state budget, increasing the asset cap to $17,500. JASC also developed important and ongoing relationships with reporters, so that this year’s priority—increasing home healthcare benefits for disabled seniors—is already getting feature coverage.
“We all pick up the papers and wonder how some of the ‘news’ made it in,” says Clark, who came to JASC after 12 years with the Lake County Center for Independent Living. “For years I struggled with how I thought the world should be and how the world really is. Organizing was how I was able to find my voice and power and create change.
“What is really important about the Workshop is that they provide us with the skills and savvy to bring important social-justice issues, such as giving older adults a voice in determining their own quality-of-life issues, into the public debate. Because after all is said and done, the important thing is the issue. The Workshop helps us get the real stories into the news so that people can get angry and take action.”
Ruth Igoe
Communications Director,
Greater Chicago Food Depository
“We oftentimes have to answer tough questions such as: How can obesity and hunger coexist among the poor? It takes clarity of message to communicate the complexity of this issue.”
The Greater Chicago Food Depository is a not-for-profit food distribution and training center that provides food for hungry people while striving to end hunger in Chicago. The organization distributes donated and purchased food through a network of 600 food pantries, soup kitchens, and shelters to almost a half-million adults and children every year.
Ruth Igoe, the Food Depository’s communications director, came to the nonprofit sector after a seven-year career in newspaper journalism and two years in corporate integrated marketing. “I always had a desire to give back to the community and actively volunteered during my time in the corporate world,” she says. “My work at the Food Depository marries my commitment to civic life and giving back with my writing and communications skills.”
What the Workshop provides for Igoe is a forum, a community with which to share concerns, knowledge, and strategies, plus newly honed skills in public speaking and messaging. “Several of the organizations the Workshop serves deal with poverty and hunger issues,” Igoe explains. “We oftentimes have to answer tough questions such as: How can obesity and hunger coexist among the poor? In that example, our challenge is to communicate that obesity is not necessarily a sign of bounty, but may be a sign of limited food options for people with low incomes. People don’t understand this and it takes clarity of message to communicate the complexity of this issue. The Workshop provides an environment for the exchange of ideas and insights about how to confront such communications challenges. Some of my most rewarding professional experiences have been spent brainstorming with colleagues in the cozy rooms of the Workshop.”
Although he now helps guide the Workshop as its board chair, Mike Burke began his odyssey with the organization in 1990 as a student in the basic Professional Media Relations course. “Despite an academic background in journalism and a job doing member communications for the American Academy of Pediatrics, I had never been trained in media relations, particularly the special needs of not-for-profits,” he says.
Burke’s role as public affairs director at Bounce Learning Network is the latest sojourn in a career of advocacy on behalf of children and education. Bounce provides early care and education for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers from low-income families through its Educare Centers. “I wouldn’t be in my current position today if it wasn’t for Community Media Workshop,” says Burke. “I couldn’t do my job without the ongoing learning their workshops provide.”
Burke particularly values the relationships he has built with journalists through the workshops, conferences, and other outreach events that the Workshop hosts for its clients. It is those relationships that ultimately assist organizations in shifting public opinion and moving their policy agendas forward. In a world where data overload is a constant threat and media is increasingly a reflection of the market-driven economy, the Workshop and its client organizations stand out in their effort to continue “the good fight.”
“Amidst the celebrity buzz and consumer stories, it remains the job of media to tell us the problems facing society,” says Thom Clark, Community Media Workshop president. “But we also push for the follow up – the report on the often-successful community response to those problems. Good news for the organizations we work with can be so much more than human-interest puff pieces, it can in fact truly empower us as citizens to participate in solving the problems and changing society.”
Footnote:
* In 1979 the limit on individual assets (i.e., savings account, stocks, etc. beyond one residence and one car) allowed in order to receive assistance was set at $10,000, where it remained for over 20 years. In 2004 JASC succeeded in getting this asset cap raised to $12,500, but that increase was deemed inadequate in relation to the current economy.
Micki Leventhal is the media relations director for Columbia College Chicago. With a background in feature writing and adult education, Micki turned to the Workshop more than 15 years ago to learn the fine art of public relations. She owes her current career in great part to the skills she learned in those courses. Evan Berkowitz (’05) earned his B.F.A. in Photography from Columbia. He is a freelance photographer concentrating in portraiture.
