Ward 6 Community Meeting (in-person preferred for notes and audio)

11535 Shaker Blvd Cleveland, OH 44104 (Directions)

Cleveland Public Library, Rice Branch

Remote Event Link

Members of Cleveland City Council often hold ward meetings as an opportunity for community members of their ward to ask questions and connect with their elected representatives. Learn more about ward meetings from Signal Cleveland’s Najee Hall.

While there is typically not a formal agenda for this meeting, Council President Blaine Griffin told Signal Cleveland that his Ward 6 Community meeting typically features safety updates from police representatives, other speakers, and a Q&A section where he fields questions from community members.

Note: As we understand, ward meetings can be a little less formal than typical public meetings. Lead with your curiosity and feel free to describe the scene and note if something doesn’t make sense or is confusing.

Tips for covering ward meetings from Signal Copy Editor Mary Ellen Huesken, informed by Akron Documenters coverage of their ward meetings:

• Arrive 10-15 minutes early and ask the council member or staff to give you the full names of the speakers (police, community groups, whoever.)
• You can attach pictures of any handouts to Documenters.org in the attachments section on the assignment role page.
• Don’t worry too much about residents’ names if you can’t catch them–just focus on their concerns.
• Include some scene details if you can, such as what food is being served, what the meeting space looks like, noises from outside that crept in.
• Don’t worry about catching everything–you won’t be able to. And keep the notes short and sweet (2-6 pages is the recommended guideline!).

There are separate notetaking and audio roles on this assignment. Notetaker: It may be helpful for your coverage to record your own audio of the meeting, but it is not a requirement of your assignment.

Attending in person? We add two hours of pay ($36) to the assignment. In-person attendance is preferred for the notetaker on assignment to get a sense of the scene and setup. In-person attendance is also preferred for the audio role. This particular ward meeting does have a Facebook livestream, but because we’re testing out audio assignments, it’s best to try recording in person to see how that goes and how the quality compares to the Facebook livestream. Learn more about the audio roles we’re testing out.

Watching remotely? If something comes up and you cannot attend in person, you can find the Facebook livestream on this page: https://www.facebook.com/Griff4CLE6

Find past Documenters coverage of this Cleveland City Council here: https://cleveland.documenters.org/reporting/?agency=158

Check the source website for additional information