This week we are updating you on what's going on at the Midwest Center---lots of news and more to come! We're also sharing a Graphic of the Week.
Stay well and read on.
Midwest Center receives $91,000 grant from the Chicago Region Food System Fund
We are pleased to announce that we have received a $91,000 grant from the Chicago Region Food System Fund. This funding will go toward two additional reporters that will focus on our food system in depth.
For the past year, we have reported on work hazards and failures in the meatpacking industry that sickened thousands of immigrant and minority workers with COVID-19. Our stories uncovered the influence of this industry on local, state and federal officials, who favored the interests of big business over people, while consumers saw the price of their meat skyrocket under the threat of low supply.
We plan to build upon this work and dig deeper into these issues at the Chicago Region’s food plants and fields. Using Freedom of Information Act requests, data and interviews, we will highlight the impact on the public of local, state and federal decisions and laws that govern the region’s existing food system and draw attention to the often-overlooked plight of the food worker and hold those responsible accountable.
About the Chicago Region Food System Fund
Since June 2020, the Chicago Region Food System Fund has addressed hunger and business disruption in and around Chicago by bolstering the region’s communities and local food system in response to COVID-19 and other systemic shocks.
Midwest Center Awards
We are honored to have been recognized for some of our recent work.
Our story by Sky Chadde with Rachel Axon, Kyle Bagenstose and Kevin Crowe, USA TODAY, ‘They think workers are like dogs.’ How pork plant execs sacrificed safety for profits. — 11/11/2020 wonfirst place in the News category of the 2021 North American Agricultural Journalists Writing Contest and Outstanding Occupational Safety and Health News Story of the Year Award from the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA).
The overall series was also a Semi-Finalist for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting (Sky Chadde, Rachel Axon, Kyle Bagenstose, Kevin Crowe, Erin Mansfield, Frank Hernandez, Doug Caruso, Emily Le Coz, Chris Davis, Pamela Dempsey, and Staffs of the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting and USA TODAY).
Meet Alison Perkins, the most recent addition to our staff. As the Midwest Center continues to grow we realized we needed someone to help with structural and operational oversight. Alison joined our staff In March as our Operations Manager and has quickly become a key member of our team. She's busy behind the scenes so you won't see her name here often, but rest assured she is making all of us able to do our work better.
Alison is an award-winning journalist/video producer for documentaries and non-fiction television. After completing her PhD. examining how people learn about science outside of school, she taught visual storytelling and a graduate science journalism course at the University of Montana School of Journalism and worked as a freelance producer at Montana PBS.
Alison has a thing for building collaborations and leveraging resources to support journalism because, outside of schools, journalism is where people learn about science, agribusiness, the environment and climate change. At the University of Montana, she developed a reporting model designed to reach Native American audiences, and at Oregon Public Broadcasting, she managed large-scale collaborative reporting projects designed to build audience reach and engagement.
Meet Alison Perkins, the most recent addition to our staff. As the Midwest Center continues to grow we realized we needed someone to help with structural and operational oversight. Alison joined our staff In March as our Operations Manager and has quickly become a key member of our team. She's busy behind the scenes so you won't see her name here often, but rest assured she is making all of us able to do our work better.
