In our LISTEN sessions last year, we asked for volunteers to continue to report on their communities. A grant gives us the opportunity to provide two of aspiring community journalists with training and professional editing. It also helps us better understand our neighbors.
Follow along each Friday through May with this J-Corps Audio Journal.
This week, team Rahman shares how persistance can warmup intervierw subjects and reaction to a Muslim reality dating show.
Randy Eccles: Welcome back to another J-Corps Audio Journal, I'm Randy Eccles. We have our team here that is working as part of a Healing Grant on representing part of the community you may not hear from often, and that's the Muslim community. We have Amina Rahman, Hafsa Rahman, and editor Priyanka Deo.
This is our fifth edition of this, so it's been five weeks we've been working on this project. Where do we stand right now?
Hafsa Rahman: I was able to join in on my first interview with some community members. It's definitely interesting to see how the conversations can start a little stiff, not going in deep into the issues, but as you talk for a while people start to get more open. You start to get more to the deep root issues that they have to talk about. I'm gonna get some more interviews this week and...
Amina Rahman: I've noticed too, you're trying to ask a certain thing but people want to give a light answer. They don't want to go into too much depth. As you have a conversation, I'll bring back the same topic again. I'll reiterate what they said and say, "Hey, can you tell me a little bit more about that?" Then they get a little more conversational. One of the interviews, Shaista Shaikh, who's been a longtime community member, mentioned about some incidents that happened to her kids, how it was addressed by the community, and how they were able to work with the schools or other communities where these incidents happen.
It didn't come out initially, but with a little more prodding and a little more questioning, it comes out later.
Randy Eccles: Amina, we had a meeting with the overall group last week about how the process is going, not only for us, but the other media participating — Illinois Times and Capital News Illinois. What was your takeaway from that meeting?
Amina Rahman: First, I'm so excited to hear their stories. Covering things I didn't really know about that I've been curious about in Springfield and in Illinois. Also, the pressure's on to get some journalistic aspects, dig a little deeper into how this relates to current events. Can we pull out some statistics or some trends that are happening that can paint a broader picture of how our stories within the Muslim community are significant for the rest of Springfield or for the rest of Illinois.
Randy Eccles: Priyanka as editor, how do you help them with that?
Priyanka Deo: We have a system going. These ladies are getting really good. They're being modest about trying to dig deeper because they already are. We have a rough outline of the pieces that they are doing and the stories that they are working on.
As Hafsa said, she had an idea in her head, but then sometimes in an interview, they've learned that it can change, which is very common. Then you have to reiterate or paraphrase the question so that it comes back. To what you had in your mind. Sometimes the story can go the other way. They're learning about the world of media and communication.
Things change by the second, and you have to adapt to that. You've still got to put something out by deadline. This is just all part of the learning process. I'm thrilled at the interviews, the questions, the answers that I'm reading. The transcriptions are coming a long way in just five weeks.
Randy Eccles: We posted all the prior J-Corps Audio Journal episodes. It's now a podcast. If you go to nprillinois.org, you can click on it and subscribe or listen to them on demand.
Hafsa Rahman: One of my cousins got very excited when she saw the page. She specifically said, "I love how it says, 'the Rahman team.'"
Randy Eccles: The other thing we heard about this week, to give a sense of culture, is a story of a reality dating show for Muslims (Hulu's Muslim Matchmaker).
Amina Rahman: It should be interesting. With reality tv, there's always the potential to get into extremes. Of course, that's part of portraying a community. You're gonna wanna portray the whole gamut of what's going on. Everybody can take it with a grain of salt and realize that there's something in between. That's really the middle ground. I'm sure it'll be interesting for people to see how Muslims go about navigating that sort of thing.
Priyanka Deo: I saw a reality show talking about the gypsy culture in New York City and how they get married. I knew that they existed, but I never knew their customs. It just goes to show in a local community, Springfield is 120,000 people, there's so many different cultures and so many different traditions. It's really cool that they're highlighted. This happens at the local level too, not just in a New York city. It happens right here in Springfield with multiple cultures.
Randy Eccles: That's today's audio journal. Thank you for joining us. We look forward to continuing to follow your progress toward the stories you're going to deliver.
Press Forward Springfield is awarding its first project grants. NPR Illinois along with the Illinois Times and Capitol News Illinois are each receiving funding to report on different untold stories in our community. The three reporting projects will be posted in May.
Community Foundation for the Land of Lincoln in collaboration with the Field Foundation and the Illinois Department of Human Services are leading this project as part of their Healing Illinois program.
NPR Illinois is using the grant to test its vision for community reporting and journalism training — the Journalism Corps or "J-Corps."
