Blog - Homelands Productions

February 25, 2015

You will be missed, Dori Maynard

Homelands board member Dori J. Maynard died yesterday at her home in West Oakland, California. She was 56. A fearless champion of diversity in America’s newsrooms, Dori was sharp, funny, kind, intelligent, insightful, and a great friend. We will miss her dearly.

This is from Homelands’ co-founder and board president Cecilia Vaisman:

What a loss for us, for the community, for journalism. But my god, Dori made the most of her extraordinary gifts. She was so steady and brave. Dori was a marvel, speaking brilliantly and clearly on racism in the newsroom, standing firm in a hostile environment, leading, opening spaces for others to be brave. She was a powerful presence and had command of that power in a way that I have rarely seen. What a person. We are so fortunate to have had her in our circle for all these years. Her work was so important, critical to journalism and our world.

There’s an excellent article about Dori in today’s San Jose Mercury News, full of testimonials from colleagues. For instance, Dawn Garcia, managing director of the Knight Fellowships at Stanford University, calls her “an amazing force for good in journalism…. the voice that must be heard.”

You can hear that voice in this video of Dori speaking about the relationship between black men and the news media, and remembering her father, the pioneering journalist and publisher Robert C. Maynard.

Below is a statement from the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, which Robert Maynard founded and Dori served as president:

Maynard advocated tirelessly for the future of the institute and its programs, reminding all that the work of bringing the diverse voices of America into news and public discourse is more vital than ever. Under her leadership, the institute has trained some of the top journalists in the country and helped newsrooms tell more inclusive and nuanced stories. New programs are empowering community members to voice the narrative of their own lives. On the morning of her death, she was discussing plans with a board member to help the institute thrive and to attract funding to support that work.

You can learn more about the Maynard Institute here. If you’re inclined to make a donation in Dori’s memory, you can go straight here.

February 9, 2015

Desert food story airs on Reveal TV

Sahara_Master-Printc — The Sahara Forest Project is meant to mimic a natural ecosystem. Its designers say the concept should work in any low-altitude desert area near a large source of salt water. A small prototype has been operating in Qatar since 2012 and a second pilot site is planned for Jordan. Above, an artist’s rendering shows what a full-scale facility might look like. Graphic provided by Sahara Forest Project.

What if we could transform sand, salt water, sunlight, and carbon dioxide into soil, fresh water, vegetables, trees, biofuel, and electricity? That’s what an ambitious Norwegian-led initiative has been doing in the desert near Doha for the last two years.

The Sahara Forest Project combines several technologies – including concentrated solar power, evaporative cooling, and thermal desalination – to function the way an ecosystem functions, where the waste product from one component provides fuel or food for another.

Virginia_Corless — Astrophysicist Virginia Corless is the project’s Science and Development Manager.

So CO2 from a neighboring ammonia factory is pumped into a state-of-the-art greenhouse, making the cucumber plants grow faster. Seawater from the nearby Persian Gulf cools the air inside the greenhouse before it’s transformed into drinking water. Outside, shrubs and grasses sprout in the shade of cardboard evaporators.

It’s an exciting idea, to be sure. But how useful is this kind of complex, capital-intensive, high-tech approach for the two billion people who live in the world’s arid areas?

Jonathan Miller‘s story has been viewed more than 425,000 times on YouTube since it originally aired on PBS NewsHour in 2013. Now it’s being rebroadcast as part of Reveal TV, a project of the Center for Investigative Reporting and Oregon Public Broadcasting.

You can catch the segment live on Tuesday, February 10 at 11 pm on KQED TV in San Francisco. Or watch it anytime right here. And if you’re thirsty for more, check out a radio version here.

January 13, 2015

Ecuador welcomes its migrants home

Ecuador market — A market in Quito. Remittances from migrant workers have been a major driver of Ecuador’s economy. Now President Rafael Correa is trying to lure migrants back with incentives and social spending. Photo by Bear Guerra.

On the day Ruxandra Guidi arrived in Quito last year, she spoke with the owner of her bed and breakfast, an English-speaking Ecuadorean in his late twenties with obvious entrepreneurial savvy. He’d attended college in the U.S. on his parents’ savings, then traveled the world on his own dime before deciding that the best place to start his own business was back in Ecuador.

Soon Ruxandra began to notice a trend: Talented young Ecuadoreans were taking advantage of opportunities to study or work abroad. But in a break from their parents’ generation, they were heading home as soon as they possibly could.

That can be explained in part by ongoing economic troubles in Europe and a tight job market in the U.S. But a major factor is a boom in social spending in Ecuador, coupled with an aggressive government program to lure migrants back from overseas.

You can check out Ruxandra’s story for the Christian Science Monitor here. The piece was produced with support from The International Reporting Project.

December 23, 2014

Big year coming (you can help!)

Police patrol — Peru’s national police patrol the Interoceanic Highway, which connects the road systems of Peru and Brazil. After decades of planning and construction, the road opened in 2012. It has made travel easier, but it has also paved the way for illegal logging and mining and other activities. Photo by Bear Guerra.

Before we say goodbye to 2014 we thought we’d give you a sneak peek at what we’re cooking up for the year to come. If you feel it’s worth supporting, far be it from us to stand in your way!

Work in the works

For the last few months we’ve been heavy into research and planning for a project we’re calling “Displaced.” It’s about people leaving their homes because of climate change. Climate-induced migration could become the single biggest impact of climate change on humanity, but hardly anyone’s talking about it, and the world isn’t anywhere near ready. We thought we’d help get the conversation going.

We want to produce a video documentary, a series of radio and video pieces, a website, data visualizations, and a slew of other things. Sam Eaton, an award-winning environmental journalist who reported many of the “Food for 9 Billion” stories, is taking the lead, along with our Jonathan Miller. The Oscar-nominated filmmaker James Longley is also on board. We have no funding yet (we’re just starting to write grant proposals); a few donations would really help about now!

We’re also hoping to create an immersive interactive web documentary building on Bear Guerra’s extensive photographic work on Peru’s new Interoceanic Highway. The highway goes from the Pacific coast, over the Andes, and through the Amazon basin to tie into Brazil’s road system; the main idea is to facilitate trade between China and Brazil. It’s a fascinating case study of the ramifications of large-scale development in socially and environmentally fragile regions.

Bear has already made three trips to the area; we’re seeking funds to allow Jonathan (who used to live in Peru) to accompany him there to collect stories and sound, and to engage the services of a web designer and developer. We’re at the proposal-writing stage on this one, too. It would sure be nice to have a little funding to get us through!

Bear and Ruxandra Guidi are also exploring the possibility of a multimedia project (including photography, audio, text, and live events) highlighting the human connections between a small city in Ecuador (where a high percentage of people emigrate) and a small city in Massachusetts (where many of them end up). Rux and Bear recently collaborated on an Op-Ed piece on the subject in The New York Times. Again, we’re working on proposals.

Also, big news coming on the publishing front: Sandy Tolan‘s latest book, Children of the Stone, is due out in April. Look for Sandy on the radio and TV and in bookstores everywhere. Also in April, keep your ears open for a special episode of the terrific public radio show State of the Re:Union guest-produced by Jonathan.

Extending the umbrella

A perk of nonprofit status (making donations tax-deductible!) is the opportunity to support worthy projects by providing fiscal sponsorship. We’ve got three sponsored projects humming along at the moment: The Seams podcast and radio series led by longtime NPR host and correspondent Jacki Lyden; a book-in-progress about Native American cultural patrimony by poet Jim Schley and Lakota journalist Gemma Lockhart; and a hard-hitting investigation of the global fisheries trade by veteran reporter and author Mort Rosenblum. We’re considering other requests for sponsorship as well.

Rather than end this post by suggesting once again that you consider a tax-deductible donation, or by reminding you that Homelands is an independent freelance shop with no benefactor or endowment or other secret sources of funding, and that the time between big projects is the hardest time to fund, we’ll wrap up by thanking the generous souls who have supported us already, and wishing all of you, generous and soulful or not, a joyous and peaceful holiday season.

December 6, 2014

Welcome to The SEAMS

The Wadi Rum, in Jordan. — Jacki Lyden in Jordan. The motto of her new radio series and podcast, The SEAMS, is “Clothing is our common thread; in every stitch, a story.” Photo by Bill O’Leary.

We were closely watching the Kickstarter campaign for “The SEAMS,” a new podcast and radio series probing the history, culture, class, gender politics, and other deeper meanings hidden in the folds of clothing and fashion. And we were jazzed to see the number soar past the $49,500 target during the final hours.

“The SEAMS” is the brainchild of longtime NPR host and foreign correspondent Jacki Lyden. Jacki is a character and a half. She was raised in rural Wisconsin by an eccentric runway model mother (Jacki wrote a book about her), went to Chicago to seek her fortune, and, in 1979, found her way to NPR. The young network turned out to be the perfect place for her distinctive voice and sensibility. Now she’s gone independent.

Jacki started producing occasional SEAMS stories for NPR earlier this year. She and her team of “seamstresses” (including editor extraordinaire Deborah George) are determined to transform “The SEAMS” into a full-time thing. That will take a lot more than $49,500. They’ve asked Homelands to serve as their nonprofit fiscal sponsor, and we’ve agreed to take them on. We’re proud to welcome them under our small but sturdy umbrella.

If you’re inclined to make a tax-deductible donation (and why wouldn’t you be?), go to our support page and look for the link toward the bottom. Feel free to send us a little something while you’re there!

December 3, 2014

Introducing the all new Homelands.org

Our spiffy new website went live four weeks ago, and now that we’ve lived with it for a while, we thought it was time for a formal introduction.

The redesign is meant to make it easier to search, see, and listen to our archive of more than 180 stories dating back to 1991. It also works pretty well on phones, tablets, phablets, tablones, and other mobile devices, real or imagined. And it doesn’t look quite so 2004 as our old site.

While our friends tell us the style is clean and sleek, there’s a lot going on under the hood. The biggest thing is probably the custom search function, with all sorts of “advanced tags” to let you specify topics, geographical regions, producers, and so on.

The “Who We Are” section makes it easier to check out our bios and admire our mugs, the “Work With Us” section is an open invitation to colleagues and would-be colleagues, and the “Support” section makes the case for why you should be donating to Homelands RIGHT NOW.

Homelands.org was designed by Lael Tyler and developed by Alex Hall. Curiously, neither has a website or a social media presence, although they assure us they’re legit. They do have email addresses; you can reach Lael here and Alex here. We heartily recommend them both.

November 17, 2014

Jacobson’s photos document life on pipeline route

A cow, owned by John Harter, is trucked to a sale barn auction in Winner, South Dakota. The photo, by Jeff Jacobson, was taken on his journey to meet the Americans whose lands would be disrupted by the controversial plan to pipe petroleum from Canadian tar sands to export facilities on the Gulf of Mexico.

As the U.S. Senate prepares to vote on the Keystone XL Pipeline this week, we thought we’d let you know about a terrific photo essay from the path of the proposed pipeline that recently appeared in Politico. Photographer Jeff Jacobson is a long-time friend and collaborator with Homelands producers.

Jacobson’s photographs are in the permanent collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Houston Museum of Fine Art, George Eastman House in Rochester, NY, The Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, AZ, and Center for Photography at Woodstock, NY. His latest book is The Last Roll, Daylight Books, 2013.

November 4, 2014

A boon for the women of Ecuador

Barbarita Pichasaca, left, with an employee of the banking cooperative she founded in Cañar after several years in the United States. Photo by Bear Guerra for The New York Times.

For the 60,000 residents of Cañar, Ecuador, the costs of migration can be great, especially for children. But the benefits can be great as well: unprecedented access to education and jobs, freedom of movement and financial independence for women, especially indigenous women, whether they left and returned, or never left.

Homelands’ Ruxandra Guidi and Bear Guerra discuss the two faces of migration in Ecuador in an Op-Ed piece in today’s New York Times. Their reporting was supported by the International Reporting Project.

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About Homelands

WHAT WE ARE

Homelands Productions is an independent nonprofit journalism cooperative. Since our founding in 1989, we have reported from more than 60 countries, produced nine special series for public radio and television, and won 22 national and international awards.

We also serve as a nonprofit fiscal sponsor for projects that excite us, and our Public Interest Reporting Defense Fund helps journalists whose work has gotten them in trouble.