Center for the Untold Story Programs:
Media Fellowships
We envision a center that serves working journalists at any point in their careers, who would visit the George S. Turnbull Portland Center for one-week funded residencies and participate in take workshops run by SOJC faculty and professionals from around the nation.
The workshops might include:
Experienced narrative reporters from around the country detailing how they discover, uncover, research and write the untold story.
Editors discussing how to pitch the untold story within the newsroom or editorial meeting.
Former reporters and magazine writers on the SOJC faculty detailing advanced fieldwork and reporting techniques, making use of methods from anthropology, history and journalism.
A Center for the Untold Story Resident Writer presenting the fundamentals of dramatic factual storytelling.
Faculty and working professionals from other disciplines (sociology, psychology, urban studies, ethnic studies, e.g.) helping to enlarge participants’ social and cultural perspectives.
Journalists participating in workshops that bring them together with individuals and groups who have remained invisible. The journalists could learn how these groups define themselves, what issues they perceive as important and how they believe journalists can best gain entrée into the group to tell the stories that need to be told.
Not only would these professionals enhance their skills in narrative journalism, they would be inspired and inspire others in their newsrooms to recognize—and reveal—the richness and diversity of our society.Public Fellowships
“The reason we are unsung is because we have not found our voice.”
The ability to tell one’s own story is the beginning of self-empowerment. We envision a center that serves un- or underrepresented groups—groups traditionally overlooked by media coverage. Members of these groups would visit the Center for funded one-week residencies to learn how to tell their own stories.
A public fellowship might include:
Participants would have access, perhaps for the first time in their lives, to working journalists. The Center for the Untold Story will provide them not only with a way to tell their own stories, but a chance to influence the issues covered by the media. For people or groups of people who have not seen themselves or their issues reflected in the mainstream media, the effect can be powerful and transformative.Participation in special, intensive workshops on narrative nonfiction, documentary photography and/ or documentary video.
Participation in a proposed ongoing Center for the Untold Story Oral History Project.
Support for participation-related expenses.
An annual magazine filled with stories written and photographed by that year’s public fellows.
Student Seminars
Our vision includes an ongoing series of weekend workshops, evening courses and short courses geared to both undergraduate and graduate SOJC students interested in learning how to identify and cover the untold stories around them. Workshops and short courses focus on research and reporting techniques as well as offer a grounding in the sociology and psychology of the “voiceless.”
Oral History Project
We envision an Oral History Project, which would collect, preserve and make accessible (through a dedicated website) the stories and photographs of un- or under-represented groups.
This project would not only provide excellent practice for our students who would serve as oral historians, but will also be a lasting resource for researchers and writers who seek to tell these important stories. This web-based archive could be accessed from anywhere in the world.
Learn more about our vision and how to support the center:
ContactSara Mason
Director of Development
saram@uoregon.edu
(541) 346-2358
Lauren Kessler
Director, Graduate Program in Literary Nonfiction
ljk@uoregon.edu
(541) 346-3753