Like a president named Millard, Grover, or Calvin, the Community Media Workshop came into the world with a name that did it no favors. CMW began 26 years ago as a class—or workshop—taught at Malcolm X College by Hank DeZutter and Thom Clark (each one a former Reader contributor), who wanted community organizations to learn how to approach and connect with downtown media. Today it’s an amalgamation of programs based at Columbia College. But as the current executive director, Susy Schultz, remarks, “We’ve had people call and say they’d like to take the community media workshop. It sounds like a one-off thing.”
“The website was broken in a million different ways,” says Firebelly’s founder and managing director, Dawn Hancock. But a new site by itself “might only be a Band-Aid on bigger problems. I said, ‘Let’s do some investigation and see what you really need.’”
If you ask me, “Public Narrative” is head and shoulders above the runners-up: Crafting Media (a timid step away from the old name), and Syndicate, which might have led to a trademark war with the mob.
Schultz goes on: “We talked about the two worlds not being covered thoroughly—the community and the police. In both cases, there is a no trust when reporters parachute in to a story.”
