Donna Ladd

Journalist and Editor

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Preventing Violence from New York City to Mississippi

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The “Preventing Violence” reporting series started in the Jackson Free Press in 2015 and continues today. Photo by Imani Khayyam

In 2015, both I and my small-but-bullish reporting team decided to really double down on coverage of youth crime in Jackson and how young people are policed. We wanted to look at the evidence behind the enforcement strategies and do solutions journalism on current and potential intervention strategies. The work in Jackson, Miss., built off work I had started in New York City in early 2015 for The Guardian on the NYPD and its attempts to adopt “smart policing.” Two John Jay College of Criminal Justice fellowships and two Solutions Journalism Network grants helped this work happen, leading to dozens of long-form articles, shorter news pieces, opinion columns, public events and in-depth video interviews, all posted at jfp.ms/preventingviolence.

In the last two years, the ongoing work introduced a variety of new potential solutions to violence in Jackson, and the way crime has long been sensationalized here, several of which have been adopted or are being discussed by public officials. The work also won multiple awards from the Associated Press, the Society of Professional Journalists (south) and the Association of Alternative Newsmedia.

Working with Jackson-based photographer Imani Khayyam for the Jackson Free Press and now The Guardian—whom I call my partner in crime prevention—then on staff and now freelance, I contributed the first two long-form pieces to the series, and later several other pieces. I’m particularly proud of the first two long-form stories, which explored the realities and hunger of a group of young men in the Washington Addition and exposed that police had simply left off the services component of program it received funds to do, focusing only on massive enforcement.

Here are the first two stories:

A Hunger to Live: The Struggle to Interrupt the Cycle of Violence

Ceasefire in the City? How Police Can (and Cannot) Deter Gunfire

 

 

Mod in Mississippi, and Other Thoughts About Southern Creativity

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I’m not the biggest fan of being on screen; I honestly never remember whether to look at the camera or not, and get twitchy about it. But I was honored to do this episode of “Mapping a Modern Mississippi” for the uber-creative Mississippi Museum of Art. I love talking about Mississippi, and especially Jackson’s potential. I believe strongly that all of us need to believe strongly in the possibility of change here, and then just make it happen. Yes, we have to cut through the cynicism and the tendency of too many people here to “attack their own,” so to speak. (It comes with our historic territory, I believe: inferiority complexes and all that.)

And the crew liked my “toy office.” She who dies with the most toys, and tchotchkes, wins, you know.

 

Been Podcastin’ My Face Off

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It seems that every time I turn around of late, I’m doing one or another podcast. Here are three I did in recent months, each focusing in a slightly different direction. I enjoyed them all. It’s great to get a chance to talk about bigger issues. The best podcasts are about ideas, as any storytelling is, not gossip. OK, maybe the Roguish Gent and I did gossip just a little—about the late Mayor Frank Melton, whom he knew as a young man, and I covered intensely in a way no other journalist dared to. What a time that was.

In this Let’s Talk Jackson episode, I’m well talking about Jackson, and Mississippi and, of course, the Youth Media Project. I talk about some of my heroes, too, with the delightful Chellese Hall.

This Faith & Reason podcast on “Women’s Voices in Religion, Journalism and the Workplace” was big fun—and an honest conversation with three fabulous and outspoken women—Debo Dykes, Kate McNeel and Ann Phelps—about the crap women still face in 2017 and shouldn’t. That includes women perceived to be “powerful” enough to have strong voices, which really pisses off too many people still. I talked about some stuff here that I’ve just recently become willing to say out loud in public. And that in itself is kind of sad.

OK, this is the one where we dish about Frank Melton. He also gets me to talk a lot about being a club DJ in five states, my hometown’s racist and violent history, and of course the Youth Media Project.