HowsYourNews.com

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Welcome to How's Your News?

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was an idea which started way back in 1993 at Camp Jabberwocky, a summer camp for adults with mental and physical disabilities in Massachusetts. I had never worked with people with disabilities before and had very little idea what to expect when I first started working there. A friend of mine who had worked there for a few years told me that it would be "a lot of fun", which isn't necessarily the first thought that might pop into most people's minds. Earlier that year some friends and I had put together a public access TV series called "Street TV" and I thought it would be a good idea to teach a video class while at the camp. So that summer I brought along a simple S-VHS camera and an inexpensive microphone so that the campers could try to make their own videos.

Those first video classes were interesting. Camp Jabberwocky has people with all ranges of disability, from downs syndrome to severe spastic cerebral palsy. Some can talk, some can't. Some have mental disabilities, some don't. It was often difficult to find common ground. During one of the very first video classes one of the campers, a guy named Sean Costello, took the microphone and decided to interview the participants in another class, the sports class. Sean has Downs Syndrome and speaks very softly and slowly. He went up to each of the member of the sports class and asked them a simple question: "How's your sports?"

He asked this to people in wheelchairs and to people who could barely speak at all. Their answers were varied and touching, and humorous too. We showed this video, unedited, to the entire camp at lunch that day. Everyone loved it. Most of us had never really been able to understand Sean when he spoke, but now, with the microphone, his voice was amplified, and he seemed to pronounce his words more carefully. He took on a sort of funny, bewildered newscaster persona as well. We watched this video over and over, late at night after the campers had been put to bed.