We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Stephanie Steinberg a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Stephanie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. One of the most important things small businesses can do, in our view, is to serve underserved communities that are ignored by giant corporations who often are just creating mass-market, one-size-fits-all solutions. Talk to us about how you serve an underserved community.

Many high schools in the Detroit Public Schools Community District and districts across Metro Detroit have eliminated their journalism programs or never offered one to begin with. Many students are interested in storytelling and writing about issues in their school or community that they care about, but they have no platform to do so. For students who love to write, they may not know that journalism — whether it be print, online, radio or television — is a viable career path until they are exposed to the industry.

While our journalism camp teaches journalism principles like fairness, balance, transparency and the truth, we ultimately teach the students how to become better writers. The skills they learn from developing story structure, interviewing and researching can be applied to their essays for high school and college. Writing is also vital for countless career fields outside of journalism. The storytelling techniques students learn from our camp are useful for students interested in marketing, public relations, law, politics, film, business, education and many other fields. Those who do want to pursue a career in the media have the opportunity to learn writing and reporting skills firsthand from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists.

Stephanie , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am the founder and CEO of The Detroit Writing Room, which opened in downtown Detroit in June 2019. The DWR launched as an event and co-working space for writers, creatives and entrepreneurs, and features over 40 professional coaches who are all award-winning authors, journalists, photographers, designers and communications professionals. The financial impact of the pandemic unfortunately caused the space to close in July 2022. However, we are continuing virtually with coaching sessions and partnering with local businesses and organizations to lead in-person author events and writing workshops.

We launched our nonprofit arm Coaching Detroit Forward in 2019 to give Detroit high school students the opportunity to learn from our coaches through free two-week summer camps and after-school workshops. Since summer 2020, we have held in person and virtual journalism and photography camps — coaching a total of 100 students in Detroit and nationwide.

We’ve partnered with over 50 professional journalists and photographers based in Detroit and across the country who teach everything from news, feature and opinion writing, to headline writing and photojournalism. These professionals become mentors to the students and have helped write recommendation letters for college, internships and jobs.

During the journalism camp, each student writes a story on a topic of their choice. Many choose issues they deeply care about as a teenager or stories they wish were covered in the news. Students have tackled topics such as the pandemic and how it has impacted their schools and community; the Black Lives Matter movement and racial injustices; the effect of social media on teen mental health; and more.

The students’ stories and photos are published in our annual print publication, Perspectives Magazine. In the past two years, 20 of our students have won Society of Professional Journalists Detroit Awards for their storytelling and photography in the magazine.

Our journalism camp has become a launching pad for students interested in pursuing a career in the media, and many have gone on to study journalism or communications at universities in Michigan and nationwide. Others use the writing, researching, interviewing and storytelling skills they gain for fields ranging from education and business to law and medicine.

The students in our photography camp each receive a professional camera to document people, architecture, nature and Detroit during the camp. Many have never used a digital camera before attending the camp and leave with know knowledge of how to work a camera, but also lighting, shutter speed, aperture, ISO and more. We take the students on photowalks throughout Detroit with professional photographers who share their skills and expertise. The photographers also become mentors to the students and help them continue to hone their photography skills long after camp ends.

Thanks to our Coaching Detroit Forward grant partners and supporters, we’ve been able to keep the camps free for students who attend a Detroit high school. We’re looking forward to holding the camps again in 2023. If anyone would like to support our efforts, you can visit coachingdetroitforward.org/donate.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

The hardest decision I’ve had to make as a business owner and nonprofit leader was the decision to close our physical space in July 2022. I opened the physical Detroit Writing Room only 9 months before the pandemic hit. Looking back, I’m grateful I was able to pack a lot of in-person book talks, writing workshops, open mic nights, coffee and wine tastings and even improv shows into those 9 months. When the pandemic hit, it was an easy decision to keep the workshops, book talks and coaching sessions going on Zoom. I held onto the physical space, having no idea how long it would take for the pandemic to ease up or for the city of Detroit to bounce back. When our lease was up over two years later, the pandemic still lingered and the downtown workers hadn’t returned as quickly as I thought they would. It was an emotionally tough decision to close a space that I had poured a lot of time, energy and passion into (not to mention, it was decorated with Detroit artwork, antiques and photos, and was a unique writing spot in the city). But we had been connecting with writers in Detroit and across the country and world virtually, and I realized I didn’t need the physical space to keep doing that. We also are partnering with local businesses for select in-person events like our 2023 Author Series that will be held at The Whitney mansion in 2023. And our Coaching Detroit Forward camps will take place at another location to be announced. So while we no longer have the physical place we started in, we’ve been able to grow our community far past Detroit’s borders. And that is something I never dreamed would happened when we opened our physical doors.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

You can’t underestimate the power of word of mouth. I’d often ask people who attended workshops or events, “How did you find out about us?” Nine times out of ten they would say something like, “A friend had come to another event and told me about The Detroit Writing Room. It sounded cool, and I wanted to check it out.” Those who didn’t hear about us through word of mouth may have seen us on the local news when the Detroit TV stations covered our opening. The Detroit community has been really supportive of our efforts to uplift the literary community and help writers grow. We wouldn’t still be here without them.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.detroitwritingroom.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/detroitwritingroom/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DetroitWritingRoom
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-detroit-writing-room
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/DETWritingRoom
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw-2QO60-6Ko3fuyTPYw4LQ
• Other: coachingdetroitforward.org https://www.instagram.com/coachingdetroitforward https://www.facebook.com/DetroitWritingRoom https://twitter.com/coachingdetroit

Image Credits
Tess Crowley and Dominick Sokotoff