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Editor’s note: The Reader helped fund the Documenters in Omaha program through its non-profit Omaha Institute for Journalism.
The legislative chambers of Omaha City Hall do not evoke gravity. It exudes bureaucracy with its purple and blue seats, white ceiling and orange wood typical of many office furniture. But looks are deceiving.
It’s where local government officials make some of the area’s biggest decisions — and it’s where a new program hopes to engage citizens in a renewed battle for transparency and civic engagement.
“When regular citizens want to go connect the dots, it’s often a little late,” said Abbie Kretz, director of Omaha Documenters, a new chapter of a national network that trains and pays citizens to cover their local government. “Things build on each other, don’t they?… If you’re not really aware, it can be hard to figure out how to get involved until it’s often too late.”
Omaha Documenters, which launched this fall, is the latest addition to a national network started in 2017 by the City Bureau in Chicago that has since expanded to Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Fresno, Minneapolis and Omaha. The network also received an Award for Strong Democracy, with $10 million going to expand the network further. The underlying goal is simple: empower community members to cover local meetings, ask questions of their public officials and report back to their neighbors. Each chapter organizes interested candidates, without the need for writing experience, and then trains and pays them $15/hour to attend meetings, interview people in their communities and research long-term projects on civics.
All output from the program is free to republish. Its repository of searchable, tagged notes gives local media, non-profits, grassroots organizations or whoever, a great tool to reference old meetings and keep officials in check.
It is a different model from the way communities were in tune with their local government. Years ago, the responsibility rested with local newspapers. But staff cuts and changing media trends have opened up new opportunities for more collaboration and grassroots approaches.
“If we look at the press rooms today, they have been cut significantly in the last 10, 20, or even 30 years. We used to cover a full meeting of the City Council, right? Well, it doesn’t happen anymore,” he said. Omaha Documenters director Abbie Kretz.
The first Documenters orientation took place virtually on October 13. Kretz said the orientation introduced the program to people who want to get involved in their community. What’s more important, he said, is to listen to what they think is important in coverage.
“What do these people want to learn? What are other community partners interested in? And how can we do more research on that or provide training and background on that,” Kretz said.
After training, documentarians can sign up for assignments on the program’s website that may require note-taking, live tweeting or other skills. Assignments are made based on the skill sets and experience of the candidates. Once the documenters finish the assignments, the notes are edited and published on the program website.
The initiative started all with the aim of addressing inequitable coverage in the different neighborhoods of the city on the south and west sides. The City Office found that many people thought that their communities were underserved by the local media, and when they were presented they often dealt with crimes. Natalie Fraisier, Chicago Documenters community coordinator, said the goal was to provide people with a new platform to take that narrative back. “The documentaries and the City Office are all about media fairness and making sure people have the information they need to hold their government accountable.” Fraisier said.
Fraisier said that one of the best parts of the Documenters program is watching people who are interested in a topic like transportation or the police, to make a difference.
“We had a documentarian, Samantha, who started out writing about the housing situation in the city and then went on to get a job at a non-profit home in the city and recently won a $2 million grant to beautify a park on the west side of Chicago.” Fraiser said. “That’s what makes me really proud.”
There is also a great opportunity to address big civic questions beyond individual meetings. Noah Kincaide of the Detroit Documenters program said the chapter’s voter guide for Detroit’s primary election made a big difference — and it all starts with a documenter.
“We got paid to build an outline of how the Voter’s Guide would flow and then some of our editors … assigned the Documenters to write their sections,” Kincaide said. “We divided it into 10 different chapters, eight of them were written by Documenters … We put everything together, added artwork, made it really nice, then put it online and all our media partners shared it .”
D’Shawn Cunningham, a documenter from Omaha, said that the reason why he decided to participate is to help implement changes in Omaha. By tracking local meetings and documenting plans as they form, this program has a real opportunity to increase transparency during what Cunningham feels is a critical time for the city.
“A lot of us in the Documenters program feel like Omaha is at a point where we can become a city that is informed and makes its plans as opposed to being a city that is just steamrolled by developers with politicians in their pocket” , Cunningham said. . “If the plans and meetings are not announced or accessible, maybe this is the project that the Documentaries will take.”
To participate in the Documenters program, email Abbie Kretz at [email protected] and fill out an application form at omaha-ne.documenters.org.
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