By Sonu Trivedi
This year, WUSF Public Media teamed up with USF’s Advanced Reporting students for their series, Telling Tampa Bay Stories. They focused on Newtown, a neighborhood that is the center of Sarasota’s African American community.
Mark Schreiner, assistant news director at WUSF, knew it was the right place to highlight for the event.
“It’s kind of a section that people just pass through on the way to the beaches and downtown Sarasota. And so we want to focus in on these communities that are sometimes left behind ,” said Schreiner.
In past years, the Telling Tampa Bay Stories event has brought attention to special communities throughout WUSF’s listening area. There have been shows about Plant City and Progress Village.
Florida Matters Producer Stephanie Colombini also knew Newtown was a great addition to the list.
“We wanted to shine a light on Sarasota. And Newtown just has so much history as being the first African American community here. We just thought it was a really culturally rich neighborhood that has gone through some interesting challenges and evolution over the years. So it just seemed like the perfect community to highlight,” said Colombini.
Students from the University of South Florida each chose a person from the community to interview at the event, held at the Robert L. Taylor Community Center. The community center is a rich part of Newtown’s history. The community had to fight long and hard for the facility.
“The people are trying to make it a community that works. That survives. That hopefully thrives. They just want to get their message out,” said Schreiner.
Schreiner and Colombini helped guide the students through interviews. They want the event to teach students some new reporting skills, but also inspire them to be the next generation of journalists.
“It’s a learning experience for the students. What concerns people have and how to communicate those concerns,” said Schreiner.
“A couple students in particular have asked some really fantastic questions, so you’re blown away when you know they get it. And I hope that they build careers out of this,” said Colombini.
Everyone involved with the event heard moving stories from the people of Newtown. The students were blown away and left motivated to share the message of the community.
“These people, you can genuinely tell they care about this community. Like they love it and they put their heart and soul into it. Events like this they’re willing to participate in because they want to tell their stories. And it’s awesome that we got to put it out there for them,” said Cheyenne Pagan, a reporting student at USF.
Destiny Liddle, another student from USF’s Advanced Reporting class, had a similar experience.
“This experience basically outlines what I want to do. I want to give voices to the people who don’t have them. To the communities that need to speak up, that have stories to share. And that’s exactly what we did with this Newtown series. We got many amazing stories, amazing voices from people that we otherwise wouldn’t have heard from,” said Liddle.
Stephanie Colombini is the producer of the show. She hopes people understand the importance of telling stories like these.
“We’ve got to keep doing it because Florida’s population is changing day by day. So there are going to be more and more new residents that need to know what happened here and why the neighborhoods the live in are so important, so that they can contribute to those communities,” said Colombini.
