Participants in last year’s Reporting for Civic Power pose with editors and publishers of local community news organizations and members of the Signal Cleveland staff.
Participants in last year’s Reporting for Civic Power pose with editors and publishers of local community news organizations and members of the Signal Cleveland staff. Credit: Cole Goins

Do you want to learn how to tell stories about and for your community? The free Tri-C course Community Journalism: Reporting for Civic Power, supported by Signal Cleveland, begins again on March 26.

This eight-week, online-only certificate program is designed to teach journalism skills and design practices to Clevelanders who want to find and share the information that communities need to thrive. The program offers a hands-on exploration of how community journalism works. You’ll learn tools for understanding the local issues that are affecting you and your neighbors, how to see the larger systems at play, and how to report on important stories with and for your communities.

This program is facilitated by writer and educator Charlotte Morgan and offered through support from the Neighborhood Media Foundation, Journalism + Design at The New School and Signal Cleveland.

The classes are designed to help participants learn how to think like a journalist, how to find and share information and how to get involved in the local community media ecosystem. 

After the sessions are completed, participants will be invited to a mixer with publishers and editors from the Neighborhood and Community Media Association of Greater Cleveland and members of the Cleveland Documenters and Signal Cleveland staffs.

Participants will also be connected with other opportunities to build upon and apply the skills they’ve learned or pursue other pathways in local and community-based media, such as paid assignments with Cleveland Documenters, continuing education at Tri-C, ongoing assignments with community media outlets and support to create their own media endeavors.

A participant in the last session of Reporting for Civic Power, Elaine Kosco, went on to write a two-part series on controversies related to school vouchers for her local newspaper.

Sessions are held Tuesdays, 6-8 p.m., via Webex. Computers are available at Tri-C or to borrow. To be eligible for the certificate, participants must attend six out of the eight sessions and complete a short form at the end of the program, sharing an act of journalism they engaged in during the course. Participation is free but limited, and registration is required.

Associate Editor and Director of the Editors’ Bureau (he/him)
Important stories are hiding everywhere, and my favorite part of journalism has always been the collaboration, working with colleagues to find the patterns in the information we’re constantly gathering. I don’t care whose name appears in the byline; the work is its own reward. As Batman said to Commissioner Gordon in “The Dark Knight,” “I’m whatever Gotham needs me to be.”