Homelands co-founder, senior producer and current board president Cecilia Vaisman was part of a multimedia team working on the Open Society Institute’s initiative on statelessness. She conducted interviews with people of Haitian descent who are denied many basic rights by the government of the Dominican Republic. The multimedia project was posted on OSI’s website earlier this month. According to OSI, 15 million people around the world are denied the rights of citizenship. Citizenship enables people not only to vote, hold public office, and exit and enter a country freely, but also to obtain housing, health care, employment and education.
Salina Kosgei Profile on World Vision Report
My profile of the Kenyan marathoner Salina Kosgei is airing around the country this week on World Vision Report. Salina, who grew up poor in a remote village in western Kenya, is considered the top challenger to favorite Paula Radcliffe in the ING New York City Marathon on November 1. It’s her first race since she won the Boston Marathon in April by less than one second.
Jon
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
