Home Editor Managing Editor’s Column: August/September 2019

Managing Editor’s Column: August/September 2019

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Managing Editor’s Column: August/September 2019
Oona Mackesey-Green

Welcoming Pride to the Northside

The front page says it all: on the 30-year anniversary of Pride celebrations in
Madison, and the 50-year anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, OutReach
Magic Festival will bring citywide Pride to Madison’s Northside for the first time. And yet, regardless of its length or the number of interviews that informed it, the front page article does not tell the complete story. 

Last August, when the Pride Parade exploded into local headlines following decisions about the presence of police officers at Madison Pride, no single article could capture the many months of conversations and organizing that preceded those catalyzing moments. No story could summarize the many decades of experiences, both deeply personal and collective, that shaped the conversations, decisions and responses that had suddenly become part of a public exchange.

So often, media coverage spotlights brief but significant events while obscuring the complex contexts that those events are embedded in.  While I am excited to feature Pride on the front page of this issue, and grateful to the many people who spoke with me about their experiences supporting the event, our article is one small piece of a larger collage of content created both by major media outlets as well as by individuals. The stories about Pride are told in newspapers and magazines, in videos and in oral archives, on Twitter and Facebook and other social media sites. 

I hope that we’ve shared a glimpse of the trajectory that led to the OutReach
Magic Festival arriving at Warner Park this year, the hopes of organizers for the event and a sense of what attendees can expect from the new format. Come Aug. 18, please feel free to share your images and stories from the Magic Festival with us on Facebook at facebook.com/TheNorthsideNews.

Nonprofits strengthen Northside partnerships

Beginning with OutReach Magic Festival on the first page and closing with a column from Warner Park Community Recreation Center, collaborations take center stage this issue. While Northside nonprofits are the theme of our second section, most of the stories involve partnerships between organizations. These partnerships span from neighborhood and school summer block parties, to a partnership to increase land access for Hmong farmers, to Abha’s column referencing peace-building efforts through the collaborative Safe & Thriving Community initiative, and many other stories. It is exciting to see the results of energy poured into collaboration, rather than competition, and to amplify those partnerships as the Northside’s community newspaper.