Amina Rahman and her daughter, Hafsa, reflect on their experiences with the NPR Illinois J-Corps pilot. Follow along each Friday through May with this J-Corps Audio Journal.
Hafsa Rahman: This is Hafsa and Amina Rahman with our J-Corps Audio Journal. This week we want to talk about how we got into being citizen journalists and doing this project specifically. Last year in May, we participated in a community panel for a LISTEN session with NPR Illinois about our Muslim community.
Amina Rahman: I remember last year when we were asked to do this project and it was a little bit intimidating, but in the end it was very informative. It was great to see the final product after the editing where it moved around different pieces of the conversation so that it flowed better, and so it created a concise program. I remember Randy and Michelle spoke to you, Hafsa, about citizen journalism.
Hafsa Rahman: Yes, I approached Randy and Michelle about how I wanted to go into journalism, possibly for college, and I was able to talk to them a little.Uunfortunately, then I wasn't able to participate immediately. Over the winter, Randy reached out to us and told us about this opportunity to create this mini-series about our community.
I really hope that there are people who hear this, and ask themselves, "Hey, I wonder if I could do this?"Amina Rahman, NPR Illinois J-Corps Citizen Journalist
Amina Rahman: Initially we were both a little intimidated because we don't have journalism training and it felt like a huge responsibility and something that we were not prepared for. But one of the things that helped us a lot is having the mentorship of Randy and Priyanka and some other people at the station, but also being part of a cohort hearing from other journalists who are working on their pieces and some of the challenges they encountered. They work together to suggest ways in which they can address issues and problems in order to get that story that they're trying to get or get that comment from somebody. That was really beneficial in addition to so much help provided and support provided by Randy and Priyanka. From learning editing, to learning about journalism, how to build the structure of the story, how we can push the items we wanna investigate and get more information. It was a great learning experience and if anybody wants to take on this kind of challenge and represent their community, or some area of the community that people don't know about, it's such a great opportunity to get those stories out there in a way that somebody who is experienced as a journalist but may not know enough about that particular story or community, they may not be able to fully represent the story as well.
Hafsa Rahman: I definitely agree that it's become easier and a little less daunting as we've gone on in this project, but definitely at the beginning, to me, it was like, "Why are they asking a high schooler to contribute to this?" Even though I have no journalism experience, but as I've gotten to work with Randy and Priyanka and others, it's been very helpful to see that I have certain skills already. Being able to expand on them and put them towards finding this journalism story in our own community, to be able to share more in-depth things with others that they may not know about, it's been a really interesting process, I'm really glad we got be a part of it.
Amina Rahman: Another aspect that I wanna point out about citizen journalism is that in the past when we had media requests for our community, it was hard to get people to go public with their opinions or with their speech. A lot of people are really hesitant because they're like, "Oh, you're already doing it. Why do you need me to comment?" It's been great, too, to encourage community members who want to express themselves and wanna put their ideas and their voices out there because a lot of people have unique perspectives. When we get to hear those unique voices and unique perspectives, it grows our understanding of our own community. As an outsider to any community, it gives us a lot more perspective so we can understand and bridge those gaps — find a lot of commonality together for things that we wanna work on.
And I hope, I really hope that there are people who hear this, and ask themselves, "Hey, I wonder if I could do this?"
Hafsa Rahman: That's all for our J-Corps Audio Journal this week. Stay tuned for our final episodes, the last few audio journals. Thank you.
Edited for length and clarity.
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."
