Award winning journalist Lisa Loving is packing up the car with stacks of her 2019 book ‘Street Journalist: Understand and Report the News in Your Community’ and heading south from Portland, Oregon to visit Redding, California this Saturday from 10-4pm
Besides signing and selling the easy to follow manual for any aspiring writer or communicator, she will be speaking in two separate workshops. First the process of How to Write Your Rant has been reduced to a few easy, key steps that will serve participants every time they need to explain an important point–and sort through other peoples’ important points–for years to come. Rant Writing is a 2-hour workshop with Slideshow, Q&A, writing session and mentoring by the author. After a lunch break Lisa returns to focus on Fact Checking 2020 & Beyond, a workshop looking at the tools of fact checking, the fake news industry, and a few of humankind’s own flaws in logic that make fake news and media errors so common.
Our guest recently reaped praises from Aileen Aylward Hammar, the founder at Summit Learning Services in Washington State where they hosted Lisa a few weeks ago when she was in Seattle to present to the WA Journalism Education Association conference at the UW.
Hammar, a former educator raved “I was lucky enough to witness Lisa’s ability to connect with youth and their advisors. She presented two workshops, “How to Write Your Rant” and “Street-Journalism” aligned to her new book. She had them eating out of the palm of her hand…over 80 kids, standing room only, attended her talks when the average attendance apparently was 15-20! We are fortunate that Lisa will be back for a local bookstore talk at the end of this month and I’ve invited the surrounding high schools, community colleges and nearby UW branch campus. Hope that will boost the crowd, sell some books and that maybe a few of those programs will host Lisa for a talk on their campus!”
Closer to home, Redding citizen activist Patricia Lord grew tired of accepting the state of local reporting with mega media corporations buying, merging, and selling once local companies.
“I decided to do something about it and in the process stumbled on Lisa Loving’s book “Street Journalist: Understand and Report the News in Your Community.” The book is a how-to primer on Journalism that both reiterates decades old traditions of breakthrough media coverage by outsiders and new media egalitarianism. Excited to hear from Lisa as well as a fresh panel of seasoned local journalists and indie media peeps.
Overseen by Shasta County Arts Council’s media program SCACtv as a way to educate and motivate our community into covering issues themselves that are slipping thru cracks in the ever changing mainstream media. Besides touring their studios and learning how to access video gear free of charge or at very low costs, SCACtv is happy to welcome a panel of local writers, journalists and outside the box thinkers to answer any questions from the audience.
Unbiased diversity is the main goal of SCACtv Station Manager Michael Flanagan.
“As we are funded partially by an arrangement with the City of Redding, providing up to date video gear is the easiest part. More difficult is finding the voices willing to provide ethical and factual content. Bringing Lisa Loving is our first step to engage all ages and hopefully embolden them to speak out on the important issues of the day.”
“This Saturday looks to be a fun and fast-paced workshop on opinion writing for everyday people, teaching basic skills for critical analysis: how to sort through your ideas, research them, and put them into a format that allows you to share them–whether as public comment in a municipal process, a letter to the editor, or a viral social media post, to name a few. It will offer a few ethical guidelines as well as we want users to understand the power of journalism.”
The one day event is asking a $10 donation for general admission to the event from 10-4pm at Redding Old City Hall at 1313 Market Street with lots of parking options one block west on California street. People are being advised to bring a pad and paper for some of the exercises and some extra money to purchase the book for under $15. Questions can made to Shasta County Arts Council at (530) 241-7320
