Stories Of Atlantic City
The Atlantic City Rotary Club's Scholarship Committee has awarded seven local high school seniors $10,000 in scholarships to be used at the college or university of their choice. The winners were chosen from an impressive group of applicants from Atlantic City. Stories of Atlantic City. Amber Hamlett, photo by Francisco Viera. An entrepreneur falls in love with public relations, and uses her skills to highlight the spirit of Atlantic City and the businesses who are reigniting it. A young man pushes past the stereotypes of his surroundings, and works to clear a path for other kids. Stories of Atlantic City. 585 likes 20 talking about this. Stories of Atlantic City is a collaborative reporting project focused on telling restorative, untold stories about the city and its people.
by Madeleine Feldman
Summary
Stories of Atlantic City was created as a way to shed light on the marginalized communities and individuals within Atlantic City while building a collaborative space for journalists and residents to work together. Stories of Atlantic City focused on creating a restorative narrative, a journalistic method intended to build trust and communication within communities who have experienced marginalization, trauma and misrepresentation. This methodology offers a chance to restore trust in media and collaboration. Members of the New Jersey news system and advocacy efforts began to recognize a need for diverse voices and stories within the greater Atlantic City area as well as a need to improve relationships with residents. The partners in this collaboration included Stockton University, Free Press, News Voices, and Center for Cooperative Media who worked together to manage each aspect of the project. This gives residents the opportunity to tell their stories through the work of journalists dedicated to the restoration methodology.
Snapshot
Project Goals: Stories of Atlantic City was created to foster a restorative narrative between journalists and citizens. This project hoped to create trust within the community while “elevating unheard community perspectives” The project began with three hypotheses.
Hypothesis as stated in the Stories of AC Report:
- That the project would result in a more positive public perception of Atlantic City.
- That having been introduced to restorative narrative, newsrooms might begin to incorporate it into their workflow.
- That the project could help build better relationships between local news media and the local community.
Tools and Technology: Stories of AC used their media partnerships to create a team of contributors including five student reporters. Additionally, two community organizers were hired to support the ongoing success of the project: Alexandra Nunzi from the community organization The Leadership Studio and Evan Sanchez, a community entrepreneur. Their dedicated efforts were essential to the project’s success. “The volunteerism of Evan Sanchez, and those who did help, you know, they went above and beyond,” said Toby Rosenthal, a media partner from Stockton University.
Impact: Stories of AC created a space within which restorative narrative could help the community thrive through collaboration and education. Community members and journalists both reported feeling as if their understanding of each other had improved while trust and open conversation was created. The project brought together 25 individuals in their initial restorative narrative workshop, 50 participants for the community mixer that ended the outreach phase, and around 100 people attended the final event. Additionally, the success of this project allowed Stories of AC to receive a second grant for the next round of the project which will allow them to expand both in reach and time. Stockton University has also created a restorative narrative course to continue the educational success of the project.
Organization Background: Stories of Atlantic City is supported by the ongoing efforts of several dedicated media partners and community members throughout the Atlantic City and New Jersey area. These included Stockton University and the Communication Studies Program, students, Free Press, the Center for Cooperative Media, as well the essential contributions of community organizers like Evan Sanchez. The individuals spearheading these efforts collaborated in order to effectively share responsibilities and resources.
Full List of Partners:
- Authentic City Partners, Evan Sanchez, community partner.
- Breaking AC, Lynda Cohen, media partner.
- Center for Cooperative Media, Stefanie Murray and Joe Amditis, project management and coordination of media partners.
- Free Press, Mike Rispoli, project management and coordination of community partners.
- Images and Voices of Hope (ivoh), Ilsa Flanagan, restorative narrative partner
- The Leadership Studio, Alexandra Nunzi, community partner.
- Press of Atlantic City, Buzz Keough, media partner.
- Route 40 News, Elinor Comlay, media partner.
- SNJToday, Megan Wolf, media partner.
- Stockton University, Toby Rosenthal and Erin O’Hanlon, media partner.
- Shannon Joyce, Marissa Luca, Luke Miller, Alexa Taylor, Katelyn Woolford, student media partners
Project Resources: Stories of AC received an initial grant of $18,500 from the NJ Community News and Information Fund at the Community Foundation of New Jersey, a partnership of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. This funding was used to support staff, events and organizations logistics. Through a multi-organization partnership, Stories of Atlantic City utilized the manpower and resources from each contributor.
Here’s What Worked
1. Utilizing partnership and collaboration
Multi-organization partnership and community passion motivated this project through collaboration. According to Rosenthal the community support and partnership has a major impact on the success of the project. “I think outside of the formal structures of organization, it really took, like the community interest to move it ahead. And I think that that was sort of the force that influenced the organization to keep it moving.”
2. Active listening within the community
The nature of this project was based on collaboration and restoration, creating a space for community members to tell their stories and journalists to learn. By focusing on asking what participants feel is essential in order to tell their stories, Stories of AC was able to create a restorative environment and build trust between media and citizens.
3. Continuing to learn throughout the process
As members of the journalistic and academic community, the media partners within stories of AC are motivated to learn from each phase of the project. In addition, collaborating they have created a new format for the next round of the project in order to understand how to improve.
Here’s What Could Have Worked Better
1. Putting community connection first
Though Stories of AC prioritized community input, Toby Rosenthal explained that an additional focus on initial input would have been very beneficial. Understanding what specific expectations members of the AC community had for each story would help journalists and media partners build stories that felt authentic to participants’ needs and expectations. “How could we have more of a conversation in the beginning with the community? We have these ideas, but we know you have your ideas too. Can we come together more and better? On the front side so that it’s more balanced.” Toby explained that deadlines, media partners’ needs, and community expectations meant that some of the story selection process was left to the journalists.
2. Grow staff and community partners
The limited number of staff members and community partners placed a great deal of pressure on those within the Stories of AC team. Hiring administrative staff and a larger number of community partners can help create an efficient team as well as diversify the voices within each story. According to Rosenthal, this led them to make the decision to hire a part-time dedicated staff member for the next round of the project.
3. Reducing the pressure with balanced deadlines
This project worked within a tight and concentrated deadline in order to maintain momentum and accommodate student schedules. Though all projects were successfully completed, Toby Rosenthal acknowledged that creating a larger window for planning and further community connection would be helpful in the future. “We had the restriction of working within the spring semester, which is really January and it wraps in the beginning of May, at the end of Mother’s Day weekend, which is that first or second week and like that, then your students are gone.” Rosenthal said. “ I think being able to really plan and pre-produce things in a different way would have, you know, get better. “
What Else You Should Know
- Ongoing Efforts: Stories of AC has received additional grant funding for $50,000 and Stockton University is in the beginning stages of continuing the project. They hope to create a story bank within the near future which media partners can use to create stories within the restorative narrative framework. This can also be used for artists and community members as a creative resource.
- Restorative Narrative Education: After the success of Stories of Atlantic City, Stockton University’s Communication Studies Department has introduced a restorative narrative class. In addition to promoting student contributions to the next Stories of AC project, students will have the opportunity to grow their understanding of engaged journalism as a whole.
- Relationships are Key: Students were offered the opportunity to collaborate with community members in a mutually supportive relationship and learned how to build restorative narratives into their journalism skill base. Additionally, due to the collaborative nature of this project, many supportive relationships were fostered between journalists, students, and community members.
Learn More
Go to the Stories of Atlantic City website to learn about each individual media partner and check out the full stories of Atlantic City report and contact Toby Rosenthal to learn more about the project.
Additional information/podcast: https://acstories.podbean.com/e/episode-2-1585603616/
It’s a diverse coastal town with a rich cultural and economic history. Like other cities across America, there are many, many stories to be told in Atlantic City. Unfortunately, there are far more stories than there are storytellers — especially in an age of dwindling local-news coverage.
In Atlantic City, we saw an opportunity to test out a new kind of collaborative-journalism effort, one that focused entirely on restorative-narrative storylines and one that put the community squarely in the driver’s seat of what stories got told.
And now we’re thrilled to announce the launch of Stories of Atlantic City.
Stories of Atlantic City is a collaborative restorative-narrative series. It’s an initiative that grew out of Free Press’ News Voices work in Atlantic City in 2015 and culminated in a partnership in 2018 between Free Press, the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University, Images and Voices of Hope (ivoh), a group of engaged community members and six local media outlets.
Our current partnership began last fall when we convened a meeting of journalists and community members to discuss media coverage in Atlantic City and consider what stories would look like here if they were told through a restorative-narrative lens. We brought in Ilsa Flanagan from ivoh to lead a training session on restorative narrative. Restorative narrative is best described as a “strength-based” approach to media. The term refers to journalism or storytelling that highlights the assets of a particular individual or community instead of the deficits and shortcomings.
We kept the conversation going after that meeting, and that’s how Stories of Atlantic City was born.
The basic premise is simple
A group of community members are going to find good stories, and a group of media outlets have agreed to tell those stories.
The community team, led by Alexandra Nunzi of The Leadership Studio and Evan Sanchez of This is AC, is spending nearly two months talking to people in Atlantic City and scouring the town for story ideas that show the city and its people through a restorative-narrative lens. They’re compiling dozens of story tips now and will narrow that list down to a handful of the best ones. Mike Rispoli of Free Press and Ilsa of ivoh are providing guidance for Evan and Alexandra.
The community team recently held an event that brought together over 50 leaders, artists, teachers, students, professionals, local business owners and concerned residents.
People from all around the city came to nominate people and stories they felt exemplified the strength and resiliency of the city, people who were doing good work that the media weren’t seeing. The goal of the event was to move below that grasstops level, the part of the community that are often most in touch with reporters. We wanted to really reach out to folks who we knew were doing impactful work, had stories to share, but were harder to reach.
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The team and a group of community members will reconvene in April with our media partners, including The Press of Atlantic City, Route 40, Atlantic City Times, Breaking AC, Stockton University and SNJ Today, to pitch the stories. At the end of that discussion the journalists will each choose a story to tell.
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Our media partners, working with Ilsa as well as Joe Amditis and me at the Center, will then report out those stories and co-publish or co-broadcast them all on an agreed-upon day. Following publication, we’ll host a storytellers event in Atlantic City to bring the community together and let the people featured in the pieces talk about their experiences in front of a live audience.
All of this is being made possible thanks to grants made to Stockton University and the Center for Cooperative Media by the NJ Community News and Information Fund at the Community Foundation of New Jersey, a partnership of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The Center for Cooperative Media, Free Press, Stockton University, and The Leadership Studio are co-managing the project.
We’re hopeful that this can be a model for other cities. We are fully documenting the project now and, when we’re done, we plan to release a behind-the-scenes video on “how we did this.” We’ll also publish both a guide and a report that evaluates what worked and what we’d do differently next time around.
Stories Of Atlantic City
You can follow our progress in real time at storiesofac.com. If you have questions or want to participate in this project, send an email to info@storiesofatlanticcity.com.
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Stefanie Murray is the director of the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University.This piece originally appeared inMedium.