The Homelands Blog

Rest in Peace, Marco Antonio Armendáriz Vega

We are saddened and angered by news of the murder of Marco Antonio Armendáriz Vega, a self-taught lawyer who devoted his life to defending the poor and powerless against the corrupt and powerful in the northern Mexican state of Sonora. Marco Antonio, known to friends as Marcos, featured in a profile of Vicki Ponce, an electronics recycler, produced by Ingrid Lobet as part of the WORKING series. He was shot in his home in Agua Prieta at point blank range. Marcos was, by all accounts, an extraordinary man. May he rest in peace. His good works will not be forgotten.

You can read more about Marcos on the blog of a close family friend.

Must-Hear Radio Event in Chicago

If you love radio documentaries and you’re anywhere near Chicago on October 23, you should check out the Third Coast International Audio Festival‘s annual awards ceremony. It’s a celebration of the extraordinary work being done by audio producers around the world. The winners have been announced and the award-winning audio is up on the Third Coast site. The drama of the ceremony is finding out who won what; the joy is in hearing powerful pieces and getting to meet the makers.

Homelands’ co-founder and board president Cecilia Vaisman will be there to pick up an award for Gregory Warner, who won for his profile of Fidele Musafiri, an artisanal miner in the Democratic Republic of Congo. As faithful readers of this blog will know, the piece was part of the WORKING series.

Congratulations, Gregory!

I’m just back from the Public Radio Program Directors conference in Cleveland, where the good people at the Third Coast International Audio Festival announced that Gregory Warner‘s WORKING profile of Congolese miner Fidele Musafiri had won a Third Coast Festival/Richard H. Driehaus award. Gregory and I were on hand for the announcement. The same profile won a Silver Medal in the human interest category of the 2009 New York Festivals award competition.

Jon

WORKING Featured on Chicago Public Radio

Happy Labor Day! The documentary program Re:sound devoted this weekend’s show to the WORKING series, airing six profiles along with clips from a conversation between me and show host Gwen Macsai. It’s a good introduction to the project if you haven’t heard any of the pieces. You can listen online by clicking here. You can also download the podcast. Re:sound is produced by the Third Coast International Audio Festival.

The Sigma Delta Chi awards ceremony in Indianapolis last week was good fun. Inspiring to learn about the other winning projects, many of them investigative reports requiring courage and perseverance. The plaque they gave me was too big to fit in my carry-on bag!

Jon

P.S. I’m off to Nairobi for a very quick work trip starting Tuesday, and (barring plane problems) will be back just in time to fly off to Cleveland for the Public Radio Programming Conference. If you’ll be there, and you’re reading this, I’d love to say hello.

Off to Indy to Pick Up Some Hardware

I’m heading to Indianapolis on Friday to accept the Sigma Delta Chi award for Radio Feature Reporting at the National Journalism Conference organized by the Society of Professional Journalists. Homelands won for the WORKING project. I’ll be in very good company—other award winners this year include NPR, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Vanity Fair, Playboy, NBC News, CBS News, and several other big-time shops. If you’re planning to be there, please make sure to track me down and say hello!

Jon

Worker Browser Finds a Home

I’m tickled to announce that the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations has agreed to take over the interactive Worker Browser site that Homelands created as part of the WORKING series.

The ILR School is the world’s leading college focused on work, employment and labor issues. Faculty, students and staff members there hope to use the Worker Browser as a teaching tool, and to link it to impressive digital resources such as daily and weekly labor news services, research databases, etc. They’re also interested in making the site more user-friendly and attracting a wider range of visitors.

The Worker Browser was developed by Thiago Demello Bueno of MadeOfPeople.org in close collaboration with yours truly. We’re proud of it, and glad that it has found a home now that the WORKING project is history.

Jon

The End of WORKING As We Know It

The profile of Kenyan marathon runner Salina Kosgei is the 29th and final feature in the WORKING series. Kenya is the 25th country we’ve visited.

It’s hard to believe that the series is coming to an end. We set out two and a half years ago to create a sort of group portrait of the working world. The best place to see if we succeeded is here. Click on the “Listen” button or the “Radio Stories” tab. You can hear the audio, see photos, and read reporters’ notebooks for each profile. You can also check out the Worker Browser, a spiffy web tool we created for this project.

As we have reported in this space, WORKING won the 2008 Sigma Delta Chi Award for Radio Feature Reporting from the Society for Professional Journalists. Also, Gregory Warner’s portrait of a miner from the Democratic Republic of Congo won a New York Festivals Silver World Medal in the “human interest” category. The series as a whole was a finalist under “community profiles.”

A huge thank-you to the many fine people who have made this project possible, and especially to our friends at Marketplace. It’s been a lovely run!

Salina Kosgei, Runner

Salina Kosgei was the 10th and youngest child of poor farmers in the highlands of western Kenya. The family home had no electricity or plumbing; Salina got her first shoes at age 14. As a kid, she used to run 10 kilometers to school, barefoot, just for the fun of it. Twenty years later, she’s still running, not for kicks but for a living. It’s been a long slog, with plenty of ups and downs. Then this year she found herself elbow to elbow with the defending champ in the most prestigious marathon in the world, with the finish line in sight.

Jon Miller’s profile is scheduled to air on Marketplace on Thursday, July 16. To hear it, read more about Salina, and see 23 terrific photos by Kenyan photographer Stevie Mann, click here. The story will be posted around showtime.

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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.

WHO WE ARE

Producer-members Sandy Tolan, Alan Weisman, Jonathan Miller, Ruxandra Guidi, and Bear Guerra work in radio, podcasting, photography, video, and print. We are also authors, teachers, and mentors.

WORK WITH US

We love collaborating with other people, projects, and organizations. We also serve as fiscal sponsor for projects that align with our mission. If you’d like to explore how we might work together, send us a note at info@homelands.org.

SUPPORT OUR WORK

Our work would be impossible without the generosity of supporters who share our commitment to high-quality public-interest journalism. Please donate online or visit our support page for more options.