THE VIEW FROM THE GROUND / Jamie Kalven
PUBLIC TALK
October 18, 2025
The View From The Ground:
The Practice of Guerrilla Journalism on the South Side of Chicago
Jamie Kalven
A reflection on the evolving life of the Invisible Institute, from its insurgent beginnings to its role as a Pulitzer-winning newsroom. A lecture on reporting, community, and the urgent work of sustaining public truth.
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Lecture
Jamie Kalven will frame the challenges of contemporary reporting in relation to the history of the Invisible Institute, which began as an insurgent human rights reporting project operating from a vacant unit in high-rise public housing on Chicago’s South Side. Over time, it has grown into a nonprofit news organization that has improbably received three Pulitzer Prizes and other national honors. Kalven presents this history as an organic process of design — an iterative unfolding that has continually opened new possibilities and new puzzles — and will share his current understanding of both. He will also reflect on the ways in which the work of the Institute has been shaped by the communities it serves and the urgencies of its historical moment. The lecture will draw together the lived experience of reporting with the ongoing effort to imagine structures that sustain public truth-telling.
SATURDAY, OCT 18, 2025
TIME
DOORS: 5:30PM
START: 6PM
LOCATION
1548 Burden Lake Road, Averill Park, NY
Announcement →
Jamie Kalven
/bio
Jamie Kalven is a writer and founder of the Invisible Institute. He is the author of Working With Available Light: A Family’s World After Violence and the editor of A Worthy Tradition: Freedom of Speech in America by his father Harry Kalven, Jr. He has reported extensively on patterns of police abuse and impunity. He was the plaintiff in Kalven v. Chicago, in which the Illinois appellate court ruled that documents bearing on allegations of police misconduct are public information. His reporting first brought the police shooting of Laquan McDonald to public attention; and he co-produced 16 Shots, an Emmy Award winning documentary on the McDonald case. His 2016 series “Code of Silence” in The Intercept exposed the criminal activities of a team of corrupt Chicago officers operating in public housing and has contributed to the exonerations of 183 individuals. Among the national awards he has received are the 2015 George Polk Award for Local Reporting, the 2016 Ridenhour Courage Prize, the 2017 Hillman Prize for Web Journalism, and the 2022 I. F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence. The Invisible Institute received the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting and 2024 Pulitzer Prizes for Local Reporting and Audio Reporting. “Incident,” a documentary short by director Bill Morrison based on Kalven’s reporting was a 2025 Academy Award nominee and received the 2025 National Magazine Award for Video.
In collaboration with the NYS Writers Institute & cosponsored by Metroland magazine.
