COVID-19 specific pitch doc
Martha Bayne
Putting current hospital efforts in historical context
What does the preparation of South Side hospitals look like? What have infectious disease outbreaks (like 2009 pandemic H1N1 flu) looked like on the South Side in the past? How have South Side hospitals learned from that history? What’s going well, and what additional steps could hospitals be taking, if any? This would involve talking both to individual hospitals and consulting with an outside expert, ideally from a Chicago university, for input on evaluating preparations and/or detail on what happened in 2009. [pitch from Olivia Stovicek]
University responses
UChicago just said that all classes will be online for the rest of the school year and that students can’t stay on campus unless they apply. Summarize the current state of things at all South Side universities, and look at how students are caring for each other there and at any other universities that are going to distance learning (e.g. at UofC there’s a community resource list going around—can reach out to UofC student orgs that are promoting it + https://www.facebook.com/events/200014111222173/- collection of food/moving boxes etc for students who have to move out of campus housing→ can contact Christina Stebbins who is one of the UC United organisers). It could also be interesting to include information about what the transition to online classes looks like for professors, how they’re learning about how to do that, etc. [pitch from Olivia Stovicek]
How to Engage With South Side Arts
In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, not only are restaurants, schools, and shops closed. Creative and artistic spaces--museums, galleries, art centers--have been temporarily shut down on the South Side. The Seminary Co-Op in Hyde Park has cancelled its speaker series for the remainder of the spring, projecting to lose roughly $1 Million in revenue from March to June; Rebuild Foundation sites like the Stony Island Arts Bank are closed until further notice; Bronzeville’s Gallery Guichard has postponed its exhibitions and events; and the Hyde Park Art Center has moved all of its classes online, among many others.
Governor J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Lori Lightfoot have announced that they are giving out $1,500 grants to artists “in need” during the pandemic, certainly a positive step towards championing the creativity of Chicago-based artists. However, what can people do at home to not only support such artists, but also to engage with artwork? And why is this important? The piece would address how individuals can engage with South Side arts--whether that’s in looking at galleries online or listening to an author talk via Zoom. Rather than simply providing a bullet point list, the author should speak with a range of artists, curators, and business owners representing a diversity of South Side neighborhoods and point residents to some unexpected strategies. [pitch from Ellie Cintron]
How Are South Side Artists Adapting and Surviving?
Artists create art because it’s their way of processing the world. Now, with the world shut down, how are artists focusing on continuing their practice. This piece would be less concerned with residents’ consumption of/interaction with art and more an examination of the artistic process. At a time of both crisis and isolation, when inspiration may be hard to come by, or generated from unfamiliar sources, how are artists adapting? For this piece the writer should speak with a range of South Side artists across disciplines (visual art, writing, music, dance…); artists previously profiled in the Weekly would be a good place to start to find sources, but I can help as well. [Martha Bayne]
What’s my alderman up to?
How are local elected officials responding to the COVID-19 crisis? Have they taken ward nights online? Have they organized outreach in their communities? Have they disappeared? For this a team of writers would check in with South Side aldermen with a set of standard questions, and write up short briefs (250 words).
Questions are:
Is the ward office open? (Presumably no but you never know.)
Are you hosting ward nights online, by phone or some other method?
What sort of outreach has your office done to constituents about COVID-19?
What form(s) does your communication take (Mailers? Radio? Social media? Etc)
What concerns are specific to your ward?
What, if anything, is being done to address them?
This is in progress with the goal of publishing in print 4/15 (copy deadline is Monday morning, 4/13), but we are seeking additional writers. See spreadsheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ywVYSjyQWpuVN1rV-t31rMNIhOTDuRKmJBiTOD03a5Y/edit#gid=0
[Martha Bayne]
Future Visioning
With our dystopian present, it seems like more and more folks are seriously considering the possibility of new radical futures. But of course, some people have been envisioning new futures for years! This radio and/or print piece interviews folks who have already been thinking about new futures and working towards them (possible interviewees: H Kapp Klot, Benji Hart, Bria Royal, Molly Costello, Ladipo, Chandra Christmas-Rouse). This piece is about process (how have these folks gone about envisioning radical new futures when the template of our current society pre-pandemic was still quite bleak?) moreso than the what (although what they’re envisioning is still important!). Also interested in hearing how the current pandemic has (or hasn’t) changed the way they go about this work. Is there more energy in the air to actually make these changes now that much is imploding? Before publishing, we’ll put a social media call out asking people to call in or message us with what radical futures they’re envisioning and include these in the piece. [Erisa Apantaku]
Can telehealth therapy reach public mental health patients?
City-run public mental health clinics have scaled back hours and are conducting talk therapy sessions by phone, and say they will provide psychiatry sessions by video chat. Do therapists have an opinion on the efficacy of this approach? Will clients be able to access the tech required for remote therapy sessions? I’m interviewing therapists and will follow up with the CDPH once I have comment from them [Jim Daley]
HOW ARE CHURCHES COPING WITH COVID?
This would, ideally, not just be another story about the struggles of holding services via Facebook Live. There’s an interesting and underexplored angle about the financial impact of a pandemic on churches — with all the stories about restaurants and other businesses, churches seem to be under-discussed, but Easter is the largest donation day for a lot of churches, and missing it could have serious financial impacts. Notably, churches are eligible for the small business loan program included in the most recent stimulus bill, though it’s unclear how quickly that program is actually working. This story should explore how churches have been impacted (with an eye toward the financial), and how that’s impacted their programming (especially their food banks). [Sam Joyce]
These are a couple general ideas that have yet to be developed:
NURSING HOMES AND ELDER ABUSE
CPS MEAL DISTRIBUTION
CPS ELECTRONIC DEVICE DISTRO
HOW ARE CPS TEACHERS PREPARING/MANAGING ONLINE LEARNING