Jared Avril, who plays left field for the Atlantic City High School baseball team, at ‘Pop’ Lloyd Stadium, in Atlantic City, Wednesday, April 24, 2019. Photo by Vernon Ogrodnek for the Press of Atlantic City

We’re thrilled to announce that the first nine articles published today for Stories of Atlantic City, a collaborative journalism project focused on restorative narrative.

The project’s premise was simple: A group of community members scoured Atlantic City looking for untold stories of resiliency in a city that has been battered by bad news for the last decade, and a group of media partners committed to tell those stories.

Early this morning, five media partners in the project published 10 stories and videos — all of which were originally selected and pitched to the journalists by a team of community partners.

Those stories include:

All the stories are also featured on the project’s website, www.storiesofatlanticcity.com.

Invitation for the Stories of Atlantic City launch party.

The people featured in these stories will come together next week for a storytellers event at The Leadership Studio. That launch party is open to the public; RSVP via Facebook here.

Stories of Atlantic City is a collaborative restorative narratives series. It’s an initiative that grew out of Free Press’ News Voices work in Atlantic City in 2015 and culminated in a partnership in 2018 between Free Press, the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University, Stockton University, Images and Voices of Hope (ivoh), a group of engaged community members and five local media outlets.

Stories of Atlantic City was made possible by grants made to Stockton University and the Center for Cooperative Media by the NJ Community News and Information Fund at the Community Foundation of New Jersey, a partnership of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The Center for Cooperative Media, Free Press, Stockton University, and The Leadership Studio are co-managing the project.

We hope you’ll read the stories produced by the partners in this project and consider attending the launch party if you can make it. To learn more about the project, also consider reading these two previous posts:

Then early this summer, the Center and Cooperative Media and Free Press will publish a full case study and evaluation and behind-the-scenes video about Stories of Atlantic City, to hopefully inspire similar collaboratives in other cities across the United States.