'We're Still Here'
Fighting gentrification and student housing encroachment into a Black neighborhood in Chapel Hill, NC.
In a departure from my normal film-focused writing, I’m sharing today a radio piece I worked on five summers ago. I had the pleasure to spend a week at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies under the tutelage of the great radio journalist, podcaster, and all-around good dude John Biewen.1 If you are not familiar with John’s work, please make haste to his excellent work for This American Life and his podcast Scene On Radio, the twice-Peabody nominated show that for my money blends scholarly rigor with compelling storytelling and gorgeous sound design better than other program in the audio realm. The latter’s season-long exploration of the history of racism, Seeing White, from 2017, is a monumental piece of work. Indeed, it’s what led me to this intensive workshop in the first place. You really should check it out!
I and a dozen or so other writers and media makers convened in Durham and broke into pairs to produce short audio documentaries on local nonprofits and advocacy organizations fighting the good fight in the Research Triangle area. My partner for the week was the brilliant labor historian John McKerley, and he and I set about highlighting some of the Marian Cheek Jackson Center’s work towards housing justice in the historically Black Northside neighborhood of Chapel Hill.
Not only was our week at Duke the best professional development and media training experience of my life, but it also resulted in one of the pieces I’m most proud of —print, video, or audio; scholarly or otherwise.
If you’ve got four minutes to spare, I invite you to give it a listen, and welcome your thoughts in the comments.
We return to our normal programming next week.
Cheers!
-J.
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Since then, CDS has axed its audio division, but Duke’s Kenan Institute for Ethics wisely decided to support John and his work by becoming the new home for Scene on Radio.