Oregon Humanities Fall/Winter 2008

Cover of Oregon Humanities Fall/Winter 2008
Kathleen Holt
EDITOR
Jennifer Viviano
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Leigh van der Werff
PUBLICATIONS ASSISTANT
Allison Dubinsky
COPY EDITOR
Editorial Advisory Board
Tom Booth
Brian Doyle
Debra Gwartney
Julia Heydon
Marianne Keddington-Lang
Guy Maynard
Win McCormack
Camela Raymond
Kate Sage
Rich Wandschneider
Dave Weich
Curt Yehnert

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Field Work: A Summer of Social Change

An innovative institute for college students merges journalism and politics

Rather than spending the summer working menial jobs, twelve lucky college students and recent graduates picked up some real-world journalism skills this year as fellows of the Northwest Institute for Social Change, a two-month media and politics camp based in Portland.

The fellows spent the first week of the institute in a cabin at the base of Mt. Hood. In between hiking and tofu barbecuing, they got to know each other and learned the basics of journalism. Then they spent the rest of the summer in Portland where they receive assignments, track down sources, and work in teams on radio clips and documentary films.

Cofounder and instructor Phil Busse says the goal of the institute, which is in its second year, is to promote an unorthodox hybrid of media and politics. "We're teaching students journalistic tools: interviewing, narrative, fact checking," Busse says, "but we're showing them how to put that in the context of rhetoric, argument, and persuasion." Busse says this method of reportage goes further than just telling a story: "Without a doubt it's advocacy. We're not billing this as a journalism school; we're billing this as learning journalistic tools and learning how to use the media for public policy."

Busse calls himself the "P.T. Barnum of academics," but he's better known in Portland as a former editor and writer at the local alternative weekly The Mercury and as the populist 2004 mayoral candidate who baked hundreds of pies for potential voters. Given his background, the institute and its goal to affect social change make a lot of sense. "[We're] trying to reach elected officials and convince them of a new program or a new project or a new way of doing business," he says. "And you change elected officials' minds--for our purposes--by giving them engaging media pieces."

Fellow Tom Niemisto, who came west just weeks after receiving his bachelor's degree in music from St. Olaf College in Minnesota, and two other fellows worked on a ten-minute documentary about the public housing community for artists known as Milepost 5. "This is the first time I've really been involved in a project that's hands on," he says. "It's exciting because the stuff we're doing--the topics that the students are covering--are really in motion right now." Niemisto's team's film, along with two others (one about Portland's day labor center and the other about a former prison inmate's search for a job) were presented as capstone projects during an evening program in the University of Oregon's Turnbull Center in downtown Portland.

In preparation for their assignments, the fellows spent a week learning digital video technique at Portland Community Media (PCM), where hardware and lessons were donated. Most of the institute's amenities and equipment have also been donated, and Busse and cofounder Louis Cohen teach for free. The institute also uses partnerships with supportive organizations such as the UO and PCM to keep costs down. Busse raised enough money to fully fund the fellows, who do not pay to attend the institute, and says that approximately 80 percent of funding comes from private donations and 20 percent from grants.

Idealism is both the inspiration and product of the institute. "I think a lot of [college graduates] get very frustrated by the time they're thirty and they've been in the workforce and they're not finding the jobs they want," Busse says. He adds that not only the institute hope to give fellows job skills and a sense of professionalism, "a lot of this is to help them keep their idealism."

--Dan Anderson

Dan Anderson lives and writes in his hometown of Portland. He is a public advocate with the City of Portland.

Published in the Fall/Winter 2008 issue of Oregon Humanities.

© 2008 Oregon Council for the Humanities