Oakland Voices Blog: Part 1

The Oakland Tribune's Oakland Voices project launched last weekend. I knew the two days straight of training would be intense. I expected the ten people we'd chosen as 'community correspondents' to be wholly knackered come Sunday afternoon. And it's this project's first run, so I was more than ready for copious stumbling - maybe over a misshapen curriculum, over a tech glitch, even over my own toes and then a table crammed with sandwiches and coffee.

The truth is that the launch was stone solid. The Oakland Tribune editor Martin Reynolds, Maynard's Evelyn Hsu and Dori Maynard, and myself delivered warm welcomes, declared our commitment to the project & to each OV participant, and we looked forward to six months of great things. In that room, on that morning, the anticipation behind this maiden voyage was palpable. The project glided on all weekend with a cozy hum (refreshments in tact).

Still, the days were long and challenging. Of the group that came from in and around West Oakland to learn to be citizen journalists, storytellers, and voices for their neighbors and their communities, most sported bleary eyes and fatigue down fingertips by the end. Their brains had been wrung through a 14-hour news boot camp. Sally Lehrman from Santa Clara University lead a dense and dynamic lesson plan through news writing 101 - a session that sparked some exacting philosophical and ethical conversations about 'truth vs. Truth' and the value of news from an undisclosed source. Here were ten community members with little to no journalism experience between them, charging head on at questions with which many of my most seasoned industry colleagues still wrestle.

Joaquin Siopak's hands on photography lessons engaged everyone's visual imaginations. Participants were urged to consider the value of the image as a storytelling tool. Then Joaquin guided the team through step-by-step camera and software tutorials. Plus, they got to play, spinning left and right, snapping their shutters at will, becoming comfortable with both the technology, and with one another.

OakBook's Alex Gronke, and Tom Peele of the Bay Area News Group lent their time to walk the correspondents through online and public records research basics. The room filled with 'ooh's and 'ahh's when they saw all the data on incomes, arrest records, and tax evasion available to anyone with an Internet connection.

For myself, throughout both days, the best part was learning about all the different people whom, to me, had been mostly phone voices, email chatter, and application bios up to that point. Among us, there's a West Oakland woman raised her grandson after his young father was murdered during a basketball disagreement. During a break, we put journalism on hold to sit outside and talk about another of her son's very recent troubles with the law. Her smile is enormous, her wit sharp as razor wire, and she kids with everyone in the room like we've all been friends for years.

A young woman at Oakland Voices grew up living in cars and homeless shelters, and impressed me immediately with an application that featured a raw, untutored skill embedded in her writing. We have a high school student turning 18 while an OV correspondent, a 63 year-old West Oakland woman who tells the best stories about living with and caring for her mother who has Alzheimer's. We have a filmmaker and globetrotting musician, a private investigator and new mother, an environmental activist, and an art teacher. Men and women; black, white, and Latina; baby faces, and eyes that have seen a lot of life.

After Saturday's session, some people went home and took their new research skills for a test drive. Others took in the Alicia Keys concert in downtown Oakland. And once Sunday wound down, I expected to hear mostly about how exhausted the group was. I was ready for cries of 'enough!' and 'stop this thing, I want off!' But after I handed out the week's assignment and folks trudged past my goodbye waves and out into a damp West Oakland late afternoon, over and over and over again, I heard 'that was fun. It really was. Fun.'

When the project opened, I promised all the correspondents they would be asked to do some hard work, assured everyone that they would be pushed to take risks and try new things, and guaranteed a lot of learning. Also, Finally, 'have fun,' I said. Because to me there's no point if you're not enjoying it. I couldn't have been more pleased to hear that OV was delivering.

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