Journalism: Storytelling & Mediums with Masuma Ahuja

Meet the Teaching Artist

Masuma Ahuja

Masuma Ahuja is a freelance journalist reporting on gender, migration and human rights. She was previously a producer at CNN and national digital editor at the Washington Post. She uses words, photos and emerging media to report and tell stories about gender, migration and the impact of politics of people. Her projects have ranged from long-form stories to sending disposable cameras to women around the world to document their days to crowdsourcing voice mails from Americans about the impact of the 2016 election on their lives. She was part of a team that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014. Her new book Girlhood: Teens Around the World in Their Own Voices is out now from Algonquin Young Readers.

Who, what, when, where, why! Journalism isn’t only about finding a story and the best way to tell it, it’s also about finding the best platform/medium to share the story (i.e. Instagram, diary entries, disposable cameras, voicemails and more!). In this workshop, participants learned how to identify a story and how to report it.  They also learned how to engage readers in the reporting process by using voices from the community to inform the stories they tell. Participants embraced diving into journalistic storytelling that goes beyond words! This workshop was themed: Reality.

Mentees & Mentors learned:
How to find stories they want to cover in their communities
How to frame journalistic stories and projects through a creative lens
About different storytelling platforms and how to pick the right one for the right project

Highlights:
“This was so helpful and inspiring. I loved hearing about how [Masuma] shifts the lens to have people tell stories on their own terms, it’s such a feminist way of working.”
 “I loved hearing about the small, actionable ways to start new projects. It helps me think about how to start my own. I struggle a lot with pitching and coming up with ideas.”
“It was wonderful to think critically about how to form questions and discovering stories “gently” – e.g. not asking directly, but eliciting those narratives via giving people space to share.”
“So many of [Masuma’s] example questions were insightful and made me think about how I can be more creative in considering interviewing.”