In the fall of 2022, AHCJ held a summit in the Chicago suburbs that brought together researchers, clinicians, journalists and organizers to talk about how to change the “frame” of firearm violence reporting. The question was (and continues to be), how to apply a public health reporting approach to this problem. A movement toward ending “the crime brief” is gathering strength, but slowly, and there’s been pushback in newsrooms.
This webinar will explore how four journalists have tried to be part of the solution and the changes they’ve observed. They’ll share tips for managing managers, taking small steps (and feeling okay about that) and the importance of working closely in the communities most affected by the violence.
Speakers
Kaitlin Washburn is AHCJ’s core topic leader on firearm violence. She is also a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times. She was a gun violence reporter for two years in Missouri for The Kansas City Star as a Report for America corps member. Before that, Washburn was an agriculture reporter covering the omnipresent industry in California’s Central Valley for The Sun-Gazette, also as a part of RFA.
Abené Clayton is a reporter in the Guardian’s California office and is the lead reporter on the newspaper’s “Guns & Lies in America” series, which launched in 2019 and focuses on the impacts of and solutions to community violence. She started covering gun violence in her hometown of Richmond, California and is now based in Los Angeles where she covers the people who live where shootings and homicides happen most.
Christopher “Flood the Drummer” Norris is a two-time Emmy-nominated broadcast journalist and former managing editor for community and engagement at WHYY, the Philadelphia NPR and PBS affiliate. He established the radio/TV station’s community engagement department and hosted Community Conversations, a series of public affairs specials that tackled gun violence, police reform, voting rights, reparations and more.
Norris serves as the strategic advisor to the CEO of StoryCorps, a 20-year old national nonprofit organization that preserves and shares humanity’s stories in order to build connections between people and create a more just and compassionate world. He also oversees StoryCorps’ One Small Step, a national program that pairs strangers across the political divide for conversations about their lives, in an effort to reduce toxic polarization and highlight a shared humanity.
Sammy Caiola was most recently a gun violence prevention reporter at WHYY News in Philadelphia. In 2022 she was a professional mentor with the Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting’s Credible Messenger Program, and she currently serves as a senior fellow with the University of Southern California’s Domestic Violence Impact Fund. She was a 2023 Ochberg fellow with the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. She is the co-host of “Stop and Frisk: Revisit or Resist”, a Murrow Award-winning podcast about policing and public safety, and “After the Assault”, a participatory journalism podcast about healing from sexual violence.
