UC Berkeley Journalism - Program - Covering a Community

Covering a Community

Eleven ambitious first-year students signed up for Bill Drummond's spring course "Covering a Community." We were intrigued by the idea of community reporting and creating our own paper.

We wanted to cover the full scope of Oakland, concentrating on low-income communities that are either ignored or have traditionally received only negative coverage. Our hope was to become a voice for those under-represented communities, not merely by writing positive stories, but also by examining their problems in-depth and presenting them in a larger context. We wanted to involve the community in deciding what issues to cover and how to cover them.

Our first order of business was to gain a broader understanding of the issues and institutions that shape Oakland's identity. We did this by exploring issues like public housing, the Oakland music scene, the mayoral race, and the history and content of the Oakland Tribune. Each reporter was then assigned a beat. Beats included the seven council districts, education, police and politics. We spent as much time as possible in the community, speaking with residents to determine what issues are important to them.

We also engaged the community by getting a wide array of people to participate in three focus groups. About 40 people who live or work in Oakland read our newspaper and offered opinions, suggestions and criticisms. They shared their ideas of what they would like to read and what stories they feel need to be told. This feedback was essential to determining the direction of the paper.

We created five issues of the paper, which we named Inside Oakland. Each issue had a theme: Religion, Quality of Life, Youth and Education, Places, and Jobs and Employment.

Inside Oakland became an insert in the Oakland Post, a Black-owned paper that is distributed throughout the city. We had to present the Post with camera-ready pages. Two of our colleagues in the desktop publishing class assisted with the layout of the newspaper.

Putting out a newspaper meant many sleepless nights cropping photos, writing headlines, and proofing copy. But we did it. Inside Oakland is our paper. We envisioned it, created it and distributed it on our own, with little direction from higher-ups. We are proud of our work. We came in as eleven individuals, wondering whether or not we could pull this lofty idea off. We are leaving as a family with a beautiful product born of hard work, energy and a lot of heart.