Common Language Project

The Common Language Project is a new-media nonprofit with a mission to engage, educate and inform Americans of all ages on the crucial human issues of our time through innovative and accessible journalism. In collaboration with the UW Department of Communication, CLP offers quarterly journalism workshops, student internships, and an innovative undergraduate course in entrepreneurial journalism. In addition, the CLP provides an on-campus resource to students and faculty interested in issues of new media and nonprofit journalism.

 

CLP staff

Sarah Stuteville graduated from Hunter College in 2006. She won the 2008 SPJ Award for Business Reporting, First Place (with co-writer Alex Stonehill), and has won several Independent Press Association Awards, including the 2006 award for Best Feature article, Dismantling a Dangerous Past. Sarah's writing has been published in the Seattle Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Seattle Weekly, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among others. In addition to reporting, Sarah heads up the CLP's educational programming.

 

Alex Stonehill graduated from New School University in 2003. He won the 2008 SPJ Award for Business Reporting, First Place, for the feature Bitter Harvest (co-written with Sarah Stuteville). His video work has been featured on PBS's Foreign Exchange with Daljit Dhaliwal and FRONTLINE/World and his photography has been printed in the Seattle Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Seattle Weekly, Kenya's Daily Nation, and others. In addition to reporting, Alex oversees our international and local reporting projects.

 

 

Jessica Partnow graduated from Hunter College in 2006. She has produced radio for NPR, KUOW, the World Vision Report and PRI's The World, and she was a 2006 Knight New Media Fellow at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Her radio series Life on the Duwamish received the 2008 Regional Edward R. Murrow Award for News Series. In addition to radio reporting, Jessica leads the CLP's administration and organizational development.

 

 

Entrepreneurial Journalism

The CLP teaches an Entrepreneurial Journalism course in which undergraduate students are taken through the process of researching and forming story ideas, pitching to editors, reporting as teams and storyboarding multimedia packages, and production in online writing, video, audio and interactive web formats.

This course arms students with the skills they need to succeed in a dynamic media landscape. Students are exposed to contemporary journalism strategies such as collaborative reporting, building a freelance brand, and marketing and funding their own journalism. Through a collaboration with Next Door Media — an award-winning network of Seattle neighborhood blogs — students are given the opportunity to push the boundaries of online storytelling while publishing their work on popular and growing web sites.

Student Mentoring

CLP internships and independent study opportunities offer students the chance to learn practical real-world skills for a new and changing media climate. Fall 2009 intern Gladys Chiu produced a Flash slideshow exploring immigration and deportation statistics in the Pacific Northwest; Winter 2010 intern Nicole Ciridon is developing a social marketing campaign and best practices manual; Winter 2010 intern Rebecca Livingston is heading up a student-staffed team to compete in the International Documentary Challenge. In Spring and Summer 2010 we’ll supervise a UW student’s in-depth investigation into homelessness in Seattle.

We also provide regular workshops for UW students and alumni on a range of topics from ethical issues in freelance journalism and digital media literacy to afternoon-long crash courses in documentary film making.  These workshops are offered once a quarter and include several off-campus professionals.

CLP Fish Bowl

We think of our office at the university as a “fish bowl” — an open door where students, faculty and staff can stop by to discuss ideas for journalism projects, grant proposals, ethical questions and reporting strategies. We’ve been working to engage with the university community, and have spoken at a Communications Career opportunities event, a training for high school teachers sponsored by the Jackson School, participated as a client in an MCDM Strategic Research class, and visited journalism classes taught by Randal Beam, Florangela Davila, and Roger Simpson.

Overseas Projects

Every year CLP journalists travel overseas on multimedia reporting projects that explore underreported issues and themes.  Last year our team reported on education in Pakistan; in 2008 we reported on climate change in eastern Africa and in 2010 we plan to travel to the Middle East to report on water politics in the region as well as document the drawdown of American troops in Iraq. We will involve students in the exciting experience of international freelance journalism by including them in the preparation and research of our projects and offering them the opportunity to form an at-home “support team” for overseas CLP journalists. Eventually we would like to bring outstanding students overseas for portions of our international reporting trips and include their work in our final projects.