Scenes from our Local News Job & Internship Fair on 3/26/22
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Join the 2022 Planet Forward Storytelling Summit on April 7
At a moment of urgency and crisis, stories can motivate and mobilize, inform, and engage.
The University of Connecticut, through UConn Journalism, is now a member of the Planet Forward Consortium, a network based at George Washington University in Washington, DC dedicated to advancing solutions-oriented storytelling from students reporting about the climate, food, water, sustainability, conservation, and environmental justice.
On Thursday, April 7 from 1-3pm, Planet Forward will host the 2022 Summit, “The Storyteller's Journey: Navigating Crisis, Seeking Solutions. The event will gather experts, media leaders, and young people from around the world to offer solutions and share narratives that address the planet’s most pressing problems.
Special guests include celebrity chef and humanitarian José Andrés; National Geographic Explorer Arati Kumar-Rao; Adobe Creative Cloud’s Mala Sharma; director of FAO North America Jocelyn Brown Hall; and manager of storytelling and engagement at Project Drawdown Matt Scott.
Additionally, winners will be announced from this year’s Storyfest competition, featuring the best of student environmental journalism from around the country. UConn Journalism student Zoey England is in the running for the grand prize —a trip to Alaska in June with Lindblad Expeditions to report on climate change.
Students, faculty and staff from all UConn departments are invited to cheer on Zoey and join a stellar gathering of experts and students.
Attend from your own computer or drop by Oak 439 anytime from 1-3 p.m. to be a part of this exciting event!
We hope you will join us at the Summit for this exceptional learning and networking opportunity. Discover how you can amplify stories and communicate strategies to help move the planet forward.
To register and learn more about Planet Forward, visit: https://www.planetforwardsummit.org
Journalist and activist Marvi Sirmed has found safety and academic freedom through UConn’s Scholars at Risk Network
In 1991 in Pakistan, there was a surge of women being burned.
A stove would burst, the official report would say – a terrible accident – and only the young bride of the family would be injured or, more often, killed.
“It was very intriguing for me,” says Marvi Sirmed, a journalist and activist who was one of the rare young women working at a newspaper in Pakistan at the time. “When I started digging, first they said, ‘Oh, you know, because in the kitchen, only the daughter-in-law works, so everyone else remains unhurt.’”
Most newspapers in Pakistan at that time employed only one woman, says Sirmed, and that woman was known as the “lady reporter” who would exclusively write for women. Articles about the latest fashions, or recipes, or romantic short stories were the sorts of topics that women in the patriarchal society should be reading, according to the men who ran the newspapers.
Sirmed, who was working as the editor of her newspaper’s weekly women’s edition, felt otherwise.
“I kept digging for four or five months for this story, and some of these incidents would be accidental,” she says, “but most of it was because the daughter-in-law did not bring enough dowry. So, it was a dowry killing, or an honor killing, concealed into accident.”
Her enterprising journalism was not welcomed.
“I brought several stories of the survivors of these ‘accidents,’ and my editor just refused to entertain that,” she says. “He said that women buy the women’s edition because they want to read more about the pleasant subjects. But what you are doing is exactly what they don’t want to know and what we don't want to put in our publication, because these are not pretty faces. If you want to do a modeling session with a high-ranking model girl who would display good apparel, we are all for it. But these faces of burned women, it’s absolutely a ‘no’ story.”
The stories of the burned women were far from the last time Sirmed would face opposition, controversy, harassment, personal attacks, and outright violence for the stories she wanted to tell and the light she aimed to shine on some of the darkest corners of Pakistani life and governance.
In fact, she’s still telling those stories, and working as an activist for change in Pakistan and other South Asian countries, though she’s now more than 7,000 miles away from her home country, in the United States and teaching at UConn through the University’s longstanding and unique partnership with the international network Scholars at Risk.
Prof. Steve Smith recognized by POYi for Issue Reporting Picture Storytelling
Crawford to moderate book talk about women Vietnam war correspondents
On Wednesday, March 16 from 7-8 p.m. the Westport Library is hosting a virtual event featuring journalist and author Elizabeth Becker, whose new book “You Don’t Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War” tells the story of three pioneering women Vietnam war correspondents.
Becker will be in conversation with Assistant UConn Journalism Prof. Amanda J. Crawford. The event will be held on Zoom. More information and registration details here: https://westportlibrary.org/event/you-dont-belong-here-how-three-women-rewrote-the-story-of-war-with-elizabeth-becker/
Sarah Al-Arshani ’19 selected for Widening the Pipeline Fellowship
Congratulations to Sarah Al-Arshani '19, one of 25 journalists selected for the National Press Foundation's Widening the Pipeline Fellowship. The program is designed to support early-career journalists of color and help them rise to positions of influence in U.S. newsrooms. Training topics include leadership, investigative reporting, accountability reporting, data journalism, multimedia skills and in-studio media skills.
Over the next 12 months, fellows will receive training in leadership, in-depth reporting and more to expand the pipeline of diverse journalists. Fellows will meet in Washington D.C. for a three-day workshop March 20-23, then meet once a month for virtual training sessions and return to Washington for a concluding training in 2023. The journalists are based in 18 states and hail from print, radio, TV and digital newsrooms.
Sarah is currently a news reporter at Insider, Inc.
Kyle Huson ’16 in Beijing to Cover Paralympics
When Kyle Huson ’16 (CLAS) played competitive ice hockey, he’d lug his heavy gear to the rink. Now, he carries a laptop, and for the next week and a half credentials and a passport, as he covers the U.S. Paralympic Sled Hockey Team at the Paralympic Games in Beijing.
Huson, who majored in journalism and communication, is digital content manager at USA Hockey in Colorado Springs, Colorado, writing stories, posting content, and managing its social media channels. During the Winter Olympics, which closed Feb. 20, he stayed state-side and received content from staffers who were at the Games. But during the Paralympics, March 4-13, he’ll witness the action in China firsthand and provide his own accounts.
“A lot of what I do I owe to what I learned at UConn and the journalism and communication departments,” Huson says. “What I do is not just journalism-specific in terms of writing stories, but it’s also photography and videography. I’m able to provide in-depth content from different competitions and tournaments because of what I learned in my classes at UConn.”
Kevin Lindstrom Places in Top 20 of Hearst Photo Competition
Congratulations to UConn Senior Kevin Lindstrom for placing in the Top 20 of the 2021-22 Hearst Journalism Awards Photo One Competition. Lindstrom serves as photo editor of The Daily Campus and is a student of UConn Journalism Prof. Steve Smith.
Here is one of the images from Kevin’s winning photo entry.
The Hearst Journalism Awards program provides scholarships to students for outstanding performance in college-level journalism, with matching grants to the students’ schools. There are 103 nationally accredited undergraduate journalism programs participating in the competition in 2021-22.
UConn Journalism senior Gladi Suero wins 2021 Zavala Scholarship
Gladi Suero, a senior at the University of Connecticut who is double majoring in Journalism and Communications and double minoring in Latino Studies and Diversity Studies in American Culture, is the 2021 winner of the Hortencia Zavala Scholarship from the New England Chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
Suero is the first in their family to attend college and has a 4.0 GPA. Suero is interested in the intersection of journalism and social justice and is currently interning at St. Vincent DePaul Mission of Waterbury, the largest homeless shelter in Connecticut.
“Latinx people have been shut out of the media for far too long. We need to have a voice in news writing and newsgathering in order for readers, Latinx or not, to get the full picture,” Suero wrote as part of the winning application. “This goes so much deeper than needing to meet diversity and inclusion expectations. This is about whose voice is telling the story and the Latinx voice is a strong, colorful, multifaceted one that needs to be heard.”
Suero, who uses they/them pronouns, is the tenth Latinx student to receive a Hortencia Zavala Scholarship. The fund was created in 2016 by Hugo Balta, a former NAHJ president, as a way to help striving Latinx students while honoring the legacy of his grandmother, Hortencia Zavala.
“It is crucial that the next generation of diverse journalists get the education and mentoring necessary to produce authentic narratives about the challenges and opportunities of the emerging majority,” Balta said. “The lack of Hispanic/Latino representation in newsrooms often produces one dimensional, biased storytelling shaping the general public’s perception of a dynamic community.”
According to the U.S. Census, there were 62.1 million Americans of Latin American descent in 2020, representing about 19% of the U.S. population. Clost to one in five Americans are Latina/o/x. In New England, Latinos are also the largest minority group, comprising 12% of the population.
The Hortencia Zavala Scholarship Fund has awarded a total of $21,000 since 2017 through NAHJ chapters to support Latino students pursuing a career in journalism. This year’s scholarship was facilitated and judged by three members of the New England Chapter of NAHJ: Mónica Hernández, an anchor for WMUR TV in New Hampshire; Steph Solís, the digital editor of the Boston Business Journal and the Providence Business Journal; and Kevin G. Andrade, a freelance journalist based in Rhode Island who specializes in issues related to immigrant communities.
Coming to a consensus on a winning applicant was difficult because all of the submissions were exemplary, according to Andrade.
“Gladi’s submission showed a commitment to NAHJ’s mission,” Andrade said. “Most impressive were the guts they demonstrated in their submitted story sample which examined issues of racism and sexual violence on the UCONN campus in a way that centered the narrative not only on those affected directly by the issues, but extending that spotlight to show how that community is taking power into its own hands as they advocate for solutions. Gladi’s willingness to tackle these topics at such an established institution demonstrated the guts necessary to fulfill our mission as journalists to speak truth to power,” he said.
‘WILDFIRE’ selected for Global Conscience World Film Festival
UConn Journalism Prof. Steven G. Smith‘s short film WILDFIRE was recently accepted into the Global Conscience World Film Festival. The film was also selected for distribution on the Global Conscience World streaming channel.
Utilizing powerful images of major blazes known as “mega-fires,” the film reflects on our relationship with fire, past and present, and asks how fire will define our future. Mega-fires are erupting at a rate seven times greater each year in the past decade. They are burning upward of 10,000 acres and sterilizing the earth with their intensity.
WILDFIRE: Forest Fires in the American West was selected as one of the “best short films of the last ten years” at the Reel Earth Environmental Film Festival in New Zealand. The film has also won awards at the Los Angeles New Media Film Festival and was featured in the Planet in Focus, International Film & Video Festival in Toronto, Canada.
The film was produced and photographed by Prof. Smith. It was written and narrated by Walter Gallacher.
Watch the film on Global Conscience World or on Vimeo.