About the SHOUT

We're a Wichita-based independent newsroom that launched April 1, 2024. The SHOUT covers arts and culture in Wichita, Kansas, and the communities that surround it. Subscribe to our email newsletter to receive our monthly event calendar, plus reviews and stories about the work of Kansas artists, performers, musicians, dancers, writers, and creative people of all kinds.

We're one of three micro newsrooms selected in 2023 as part of the Wichita Foundation Info Challenge, an open call for independent news ventures to address information gaps in underserved communities. Each newsroom received $30,000 from Press Forward Wichita at WF to jump-start their operations plus a two-year membership to the Tiny News Collective to enhance their resources and network.

These resources helped make our newsroom a reality. But the SHOUT is also the culmination of nearly four years of collective dreaming and brainstorming between longtime journalists and communications professionals Emily Christensen and Teri Mott, who have been friends and occasional collaborators for nearly 20 years.

We share a passion for the arts, a commitment to accessibility, and a certain level of awe at the exceptional talent we observe all around us.

Watch this space. 🗣

And if you like, drop us a line: emily@shoutwichita.com.

Staff

Teri Mott, co-founder
Teri Mott is a writer and actor working in Wichita, Kansas, where she has covered the performing and visual arts as a critic and feature writer and worked in communications and development at not-for-profit arts organizations for 40 years. She currently serves as creative communications manager for the Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University. She is a 2023 fellow of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Critics Institute. Notable moonlighting gigs include dive bartender, zine publisher, low tech DJ, tarot reader, answering service operator, herb gardener and magician’s assistant.

Emily Christensen, co-founder
Emily Christensen is a freelance journalist based in Wichita, Kansas. She has written about visual art, pop culture, food, health and other topics for publications such as the Wichita Eagle, Wichita Beacon, and Philadelphia Inquirer. In 2022, she designed and facilitated the Creative Writing Initiative, an intensive arts writing workshop, for the Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission. Emily is a previous Dow Jones Newspaper Fund intern, a 2020 fellow of the National Critics Institute, and a recipient of a 2022 arts writing grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation. Find examples of her writing on her website and her semi-defunct Substack newsletter.

Genevieve Waller, visual arts editor
Genevieve Waller (she/her) is an artist, curator, and writer who was born in the heyday of disco and grew up in Wichita. She currently splits her time between Wichita and Denver, where she is the founder and editor of the art magazine DARIA: Denver Art Review, Inquiry, and Analysis. She has worked as a copy editor for the visual culture publication Afterimage and as a book reviews editor and co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal (In)Visible Culture. Her education includes a BA in art history, an MFA in photography and art history, and an MA in visual and cultural studies. She is also a long-time college radio DJ, most recently on Radio 1190 in Boulder, Colorado.

Contributors

Masara Al-Sharieh, writer
Samantha Barrett, writer
Abby Bayani-Heitzman, writer
Lori Brack, writer
Stacy Lee Chestnut, writer
Leslie Coates, writer
Lonita Cook, writer
Kendra Cremin, photographer
Jason Crile, photographer
Edward Faun, writer
Cecilia Green, writer
Ksenya Gurshtein, writer
Jacinda Hall, writer
Lou Hebert, photographer
Sam Jack, writer
Kevin Kelly, writer
Kevin Kinder, writer
Chloe Lang, writer
Shannon Littlejohn, editor
Emily Mayagoitia, writer
Kate Nance, writer
Joseph Purcell, photographer
Fernando Salazar, photographer
Naomi Shapiro, writer
Jeromiah Taylor, writer
Krista Vollack, writer
Anne Welsbacher, writer
Connie Kachel White, writer

Last updated: March 31, 2024

Mission and Coverage

The SHOUT is an Wichita-based independent media organization that empowers Kansas citizens to engage with the arts through reporting, criticism, and the sharing of useful information.

Our reviews and critical writing contribute to and encourage a robust dialogue about the arts. Our feature stories and photo essays add to the record of creative activity in Kansas. Our “explainers” equip readers with the information they need to be informed audience members and artists. Our event calendar serves readers with useful, well-organized information.

Ownership and Funding

Emily Christensen and Teri Mott founded the SHOUT in 2024 and are equal owners in the enterprise Peerless Princess Press, the parent company of this publication. Peerless Princess Press has filed paperwork with the state of Kansas as a statutory public benefit limited liability company, defined by the state as an LLC “intended to produce a public benefit or public benefits and to operate in a responsible and sustainable manner.”

The choice of legal structure reflects our commitment to both the principles of entrepreneurship as well as to our readers and the community we serve.

Peerless Princess Press received $30,000 in startup funds from the Wichita Foundation through its project the Wichita Info Challenge, an initiative supported by Press Forward Wichita. Though it’s too early to tell what our ultimate revenue strategy will look like, we plan to pursue a mix of individual and corporate donations, grant funding and advertising. We are committed to transparency around our business practices and funding, and we will update this section with more information as we grow. One thing that won’t change: Our editorial strategy and decisions are completely independent of any revenue source.

Donor and Financial Transparency

We are committed to transparency in every aspect of funding our organization.

Accepting financial support does not mean we endorse donors or their products, services or opinions.

We accept gifts, grants and sponsorships from individuals, organizations and foundations to help with our general operations, coverage of specific topics and special projects.

Our news judgments are made independently – not based on or influenced by donors or any revenue source. We do not give supporters the rights to assign, review or edit content.

We make public all revenue sources and donors who give $5,000 or more per year. We avoid accepting charitable donations from anonymous sources, government entities, political parties, elected officials or candidates seeking public office. We will not accept donations from sources who, deemed by our board of advisors, present a conflict of interest with our work or compromise our independence.

Editorial independence policy

We subscribe to standards of editorial independence adopted by the Institute for Nonprofit News:

Our organization retains full authority over editorial content to protect the best journalistic and business interests of our organization. We maintain a firewall between news coverage decisions and sources of all revenue. Acceptance of financial support does not constitute implied or actual endorsement of donors or their products, services or opinions.

We accept gifts, grants and sponsorships from individuals and organizations for the general support of our activities, but our news judgments are made independently and not on the basis of donor support.

Our organization may consider donations to support the coverage of particular topics, but our organization maintains editorial control of the coverage. We will cede no right of review or influence of editorial content, nor of unauthorized distribution of editorial content.

Our organization will make public all donors who give a total of $5,000 or more per year. We will accept anonymous donations for general support only if it is clear that sufficient safeguards have been put into place that the expenditure of that donation is made independently by our organization and in compliance with INN’s Membership Standards.

Ethics Policy

With some exceptions, the SHOUT follows Associated Press style. Our editorial policies generally follow the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics. One important exception: We work with contributors who engage in activism and political activity as long as their coverage is unrelated.

A special note about personal relationships: In a relatively small community, it’s impossible to avoid writing about people we know. However, we strive to make editorial decisions independent of personal relationships, and we generally do not allow writers to cover stories about their employers or their business or romantic partners. When writers have a pre-existing relationship with subjects they cover, we require that the relationship is disclosed within the body of the story or review.

Our editorial policies and standards are a living document that will be updated based in part on feedback from our advisors and readers.