Production for the People by the People

Community News Production Institute reporter Abdulai Bah interviews a disability rights activist in Memphis.

"People's Production House is an unusual media organization not only in being led by young women and people of color, but also in creatively combining training, reporting and policy advocacy,” explained Brenda Coughlin, Senior Program Officer at Wallace Global Fund, when asked why her foundation elected to provide support. “PPH understands that those people most adversely affected by media consolidation and by conglomerates that put profit before public interest are the same people whose stories either remain untold in the news or are told by a reporter on a drive-through visit to a neighborhood."

People’s Production House (PPH), based in downtown Manhattan, is creating a new model for replicable, community-based media organizing, training, and program production. The project is supported by a number of foundations including the Wallace Global Fund. Brenda Coughlin continues: “PPH's work resembles old-school community organizing, but in the digital age. Wallace Global Fund looks for projects that deepen democratic participation in and control of the Fourth Estate and PPH does this and more.”

Led by investigative reporter Deepa Fernandes, longtime radio producer Kat Aaron, and a team comprised mainly of young women and people of color, PPH teaches students in public high schools radio reporting and production skills through its Radio Rootz program and runs a community reporting project with low-wage and immigrant workers called the Community News Production Institute. The project leaders say their goal is to teach organizers to make media in order to change public policy and influence public debate; empowering affected communities to create media allows them to frame the debate on their own terms, using the language of their choosing. PPH characterizes itself as a media justice organization, working on issues of gender equity, educational justice, labor rights, and immigrants' rights, involved in challenging a wide range of policies affecting women, immigrants, people of color, and low-wage workers. In 2007, PPH started a new media reform project, the Digital Expansion Initiative, which works to educate and organize the public — especially marginalized communities — about access to the digital spectrum.

People’s Production House is active in New York City, Washington, DC, and on the Gulf Coast.