[Workshop] Delaware County Alternative (Print!) Newspaper
Tue, Feb 23, 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm
CLASS / WORKSHOP
Delaware County Alternative (Print!) Newspaper
A 6-week, hands-on intensive for all ages. No experience required.
Taught by award-winning journalist and publisher Anne Elizabeth Moore.
February 23, 2021 – March 30, 2021
Tuesday evenings, 5-7pm
(Weekly 2-hour meetings* plus 3 hours of independent or small group work weekly.)
*Meetings will be hosted online until further notice. Participants must be based locally, and the workshop will be capped at 10 participants.
[Registration is now closed.]
So you want to be a reporter?
During the pandemic, it’s become clear that having access to local, trustworthy information is of life-saving importance, yet news media throughout the country have cut costs, fired staff, and turned over control of content to advertisers at unprecedented rates. Many newspapers have moved online, but there is still a value to printed news, especially in small communities with spotty internet. Luckily, making a newspaper does not have to be difficult. And it can be fun!
As we enter a moment of political, climate, and economic change, Bushel is pleased to present an all-ages, six-week workshop intended to create a local alternative newsweekly. Alternative newsweeklies, which had their heyday in the 1990s, are youth-driven, culturally focused, often experimental, and most importantly, free. The format allows for the widest possible array of participants, skill levels, and subjects—and it’s long overdue for a revival.
The workshop will be facilitated by local publisher and veteran alternative newsweekly editor Anne Elizabeth Moore. Participants will explore all aspects of small-press publishing—including writing, editing, illustration, layout, design, and distribution—as well as newspaper reporting and beat coverage, media ethics, and the history of print publishing in the US.
After an initial training period, participants will create and distribute a pilot version of a weekly print newspaper focused on local issues. Each participant will develop their own beat (or area of interest) and explore it weekly through interviews, reviews, reports, comics, or photographs. The workshop will culminate in an interactive exhibit based in Bushel’s storefront gallery, Response Space. The exhibit will utilize outdoor space and (safety permitting) Bushel’s interior to engage and educate local residents by demystifying parts of the journalistic and publishing process and soliciting immediate participation in future issues.
Anne Elizabeth Moore started self-publishing at the age of 11 with a comic about a flea that said “darn” when it flew into a stack of pancakes based largely on Garfield and, later, a fanzine about people who shared her first name called AnneZine. Somehow this turned into a career, and she went on to edit the magazines The Comics Journal and Punk Planet, the Best American Comics series for Houghton Mifflin, and the alternative newsweekly Chicago Reader. She has written for The Onion, The Baffler, Teen Vogue, Them, Salon, and Truthout and won a prestigious Eisner Award for a book with a swear in the title, as well as a National Endowment for the Arts Media Arts Award and a free house, both for comics journalism. She has taught self-publishing and journalism throughout the US, Europe, and Southeast Asia
DETAILS
This workshop will meet weekly on Tuesday evenings from 5-7pm, beginning on February 23. All participants will have weekly reporting assignments. Ability to meet deadlines is important. Participation is capped at 10. All ages and experience levels are welcome! Your fee will cover workshop costs and create an initial print fund.
Have questions about this workshop or the paper? Email them to altweekly@bushelcollective.org
Cost: $60-$100 (sliding scale) for the 6-week session. Participants are expected to commit to the full program. *If cost is prohibiting your participation, please let us know by emailing the above address.
REGISTRATION
[Registration is now closed.]