Professionals

If you want to know more about Chicago Public School music teachers or what Barack Obama really did (or did not do) as a young community organizer on Chicago's Southeast Side--and more on nearly two dozen other topics, these are the folks who can tell you.

Five weeks after we started, Community Media Workshop's winter 2007 Professional Media Relations class wrapped up, with 24 folks having mastered media relations basics.

They are volunteers as well as communications, advocacy & organizing, and development staff from nonprofits
as far south as Altgeld Gardens on the South Side and Highwood in Lake County on the north.

We decided to take a picture of this year's group because we've found in the past that people who take this class go on to do pretty high level communications work, as this recent article from Columbia College Chicago's alumni magazine demonstrates.

Also on hand and in the picture from our final class were journalists Melanie Coffee from Associated Press-Chicago, Catrin Einhorn from Chicago Public Radio, Anita Selvaggio from CLTV, and Bob Secter from Chicago Tribune. They let the nonprofit communicators practice pitches on them and were very gentle--although as Bob pointed out, he might not have 15 minutes to give to a pitch on an average work day!