From Our President
July 2024
Greetings!
We got fantastic news this spring: a $75,000 award from The Cummings Foundation $30 Million Grant Program.
The award will help fund our programs to teach people essential information-gathering and evaluation skills and help nonfiction storytellers hone their craft. We are thrilled to be supported by such a prestigious organization, which gives out tens of millions of dollars to worthy causes in the Boston area every year.
We’ve been reflecting on our journey, which started with a conversation among college classmates over brunch at our Tufts University reunion in 2022. We’re immensely proud of our collaboration to form this organization and make it a success – just as we did more than 30 years ago as undergraduate leaders at campus newspapers putting out weekly and daily editions.
Here’s what we’re celebrating as we enter our second year:
We’re planning our second annual Power of Storycraft forum on Sept. 21 at Tufts, where we’ll explore "The Human Touch: Storytelling and Trust in a World of Bots, Bad Actors, and AI." We will build on the success of our first forum in October 2023. That one-day event brought together a powerful coalition of students and accomplished alumni, including keynote speaker Geoff Edgers, the national arts reporter for the Washington Post. (More about this below.)
Also this fall, we’re launching a news literacy initiative for public school students in partnership with the Somerville, Mass. YMCA. Fifth and sixth graders in the Y's after-school program will interact with working journalists, talk about how they get their news and evaluate information, and will then report and write their own articles for a newsletter they will produce.
In addition, we’re moving ahead with our fireside chat series. Our first session on May 22 featured Tufts trustee Kalahn Taylor-Clark, a health advocacy expert, who led a lively dialogue about evaluating health and healthcare information, including pointers for finding the most current and objective reports and research that affects our well-being. Our second fireside chat is planned for Sept. 24 with Mike Wilson, an award-winning deputy editor of the New York Times Great Read feature. He’ll speak about crafting stories that captivate audiences – a counter to today's short attention spans.
Providing networking and mentoring opportunities for students is a critical component of our mission to inspire and develop the next generation of nonfiction storytellers. Our 2023 Power of Storycraft forum is a case in point.
Panelists included Wall Street Journal reporter Mengqi Sun; New York Times deputy opinion editor Patrick Healy, distinguished professors Seth Mnookin (at MIT), Ravi Shankar (Tufts), and Dan Kennedy (Northeastern University); Jim MacMillan, a former war photographer and now an advocate for better gun violence reporting; NBC Dateline producer Karen Israel, and Tanya McKinnon, a leading literary agent who represents several best-selling and award-winning authors.
These speakers addressed such urgent issues as how reporters, writers, and readers handle "bothsideism" in news coverage; how content creators can zero in on the most compelling human elements in telling a story; and how students can forge a career path in the communications and media fields.
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We were pleased to have the Tufts Journalism Society and the Tufts Daily Alumni join us as co-hosts of the forum. And we are grateful to the Tufts University Alumni Association and Tufts’ Office for Campus Life for their ongoing sponsorship and support.
Student journalists had a chance to reconnect with Jim MacMillan in March 2024 when he returned to Tufts to screen a thought-provoking documentary co-produced by his organization, The Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting, and the Logan Center for Urban Investigative Journalism at Temple University. The film, “The Second Trauma,” asks how the news media and news consumers alike can improve the coverage of gun violence and elevate the voices of survivors. In the discussion that followed, participants explored practices for more empathetic reportage.
We are only beginning. As we continue to help others gather, evaluate, and share information accurately and responsibly, and create compelling nonfiction, we are eager to hear your ideas.
Our deepest appreciation to everyone who has helped us get this far.
Brad Hamilton (he/his)