Heroin Addict Finds Hope for a Drug-Free Life After His Prison Sentence
Posted on | August 1, 2010 | No Comments
This is a perfect example of great multimedia storytelling, beautifully executed by Djamila Grossman of The Standard-Examiner in Ogden, Utah. Djamila and I attended a multimedia workshop in May at the Knight Digital Media Center (KDMC), University of California-Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism. We were among 20 journalists there to boost our digital storytelling skills — photos, video, audio, graphics and text. Go to the Knight Digital Media Center and register. You’ll find a wealth of resources you can use to learn more about digital media. These are the tools we all need, whether we hope to return to a newsroom or strike out on our own with a new venture or a freelance operation. Return in the fall and winter to apply for a KDMC workshop. — Susan Older
Better Locked Up from djamila grossman on Vimeo.
By Djamila Grossman
GUNNISON, Utah — After six months in prison Damon Conrow feels better than ever and looks optimistically toward another couple of years.
Photo by Djamila Grossman/The Standard-Examiner
He works out in the morning, running laps between barbed wire fences in the arid yard of the Central Utah Correctional Facility.
A weight gain of at least 30 pounds and clean-cut hair make him almost unrecognizable from the emaciated self he was in winter when he was injecting heroin several times a day into nearly every part of his body.
He laughs in a jovial and carefree manner that seems to be coming from a 20-something at the cusp of his life, not a prison inmate convicted of a first-degree felony charges of drug distribution.
“I have to look at it as the positive thing that it is,” he says. “I could be out there committing crimes and doing drugs or be in here. I can’t say that I’m living the good life, but it’s making me a better person for all I know.”
To most, the idea of prison being a welcome life opportunity is absurd.
But for Conrow it was a chance to get better.
Read the entire story at the Standard-Examiner.
If you have questions you would like to ask Djamila Grossman, she has asked that you feel free to contact her. She’s happy to talk about how she created this multimedia package — from storyboarding to completion.
Her contact info:
Djamila Grossman | Photographer
Salt Lake City, Utah
djamila.grossman@gmail.com
520.971.1839
djamilagrossman.com
djamilagrossman.blogspot.com
Comments
Leave a Reply
Admin
Recently Written
Click on a tag
Welcome to Our Community
Is there life – or work – after newspapers? A lot of us are in the process of finding out. Because it’s generally a somewhat lonely endeavor, it struck me, in January 2010, that it might be comforting – and possibly very productive – to go through it together.
Displaced Journalists is a community – our community – where we find common ground, where we can begin to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and get on with our lives and livelihoods. [more]