Videos

Detroitisit Immigrant Life: Shaffwan Ahmed

Video: Matthew Jenkins. Interview: Brian Allnutt

A Detroiter since birth, Shaffwan has been actively involved in community work since he was a child. He has always possessed a knack for problem solving and thinking outside of the box, which served him well when he led a previous employer's corporate responsibility team. This team ran a water and food drive for Flint, Michigan residents – providing over 1,000 families impacted by the lead crisis with food and clean water. Shaffwan will be serving as the Systems Change Manager for Global Detroit, and he is excited that his work will serve as a turning point for community members throughout the city. Shaffwan is a graduate of Cass Technical High School and he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Wayne State University in public relations. Shaffwan is currently an executive MBA candidate at Michigan State University. In his free time you can find him playing football with friends and spending time on Belle Isle.

Brian Allnutt is a Detroit-based writer who has covered food justice, urban agriculture, and environmental issues in both Flint and Detroit. His work has appeared in The Detroit News and Detroit Metro Times among other places.

More about Detroitisit

CONTRIBUTE
We Have a Unique Voice. And it's all About Detroit. Want to Contribute to Detroitisit? Find Out More Here.
We’re a forward thinking, media platform sharing on all things Detroit. We’re always looking for contributing writers, videographers, photographers, and illustrators ready to share their creativity and new ideas for, from, and about Detroit. We engage and excite our audiences through digital content and discussion about urban development, smart cities, culture, civic, non-profit, education, ecology, food, events, business – in brief, all topics that encompass a city, it’s citizens, its visitors and its communities.
Did you know we have 24K Facebook friends? 7K Insta friends and almost 3k Twitter followers? Our writers come from some of the most reputable publications while our editorial teams have earned awards and recognition from the industry and peers. Contributing to Detroitisit puts you and your idea in good company, allows your creativity to shine and provides you a chance to make a difference in this world.

General submissions guidelines:
How do I pitch written work to Detroitisit?
Send us a draft of an unpublished piece, one that it hasn’t run in other publications or one on your personal blog or website, alternately, an introduction to the piece. Your email should include a brief, clear, specific summary of your main idea.

Send us a pitch: a paragraph or two, describing what you intend to say. If we think you can deliver, we’ll usually ask to see a draft. And if we have any thoughts about your idea, we may offer some feedback designed to help you shape your story, so that it has a better chance of being published.

Submitting a story: We invite you to submit stories that lead with an idea–an argument to think about something in a new way. Such stories can be the product of research, reporting, personal experience, professional expertise, or a combination. They can take the form of opinion or commentary. Most importantly, tell us something we don’t know, or something new about a thing we already know. That’s the first step to writing for Detroitisit.

If you’re interested in submitting a written piece, know we focus on great articles that lead with a main idea. And the best one often start as a single sentence–a line that stops you in your tracks. That’s probably your headline, or at least your starting point. Always write what you know.

DII covers new ways of discovering cities, citizens and community, so we’re interested in stories that have some aspect of education, welfare, economics, technology, policy, health, business, culture, sports, and automotive. We’re very interested in the intersection between community and personal stories, and how one informs the other. We’re also interested in stories that originate from or discuss national and international issues because we believe a global footprint is a successful and informative one.

Many of our stories take the form of a personal narrative, the best ones are often built on a foundation of facts, not meandering stories. Include a clear thesis that provides an anchor for the story and ask yourself: Which components advance the story you are trying to tell in the most effective way? Discard the ones that don’t. And feel free to include reporting, interviews, research, data, charts, graphics.

Are you in a band? A musician? We’d love to hear from you. How to submit your music?
To submit your music or band, please email us a link to your Bandcamp, Soundcloud, Facebook page, or attach the song to an email with info about the music and its originator.

Detroitisit Detroit Bike Life and the culture that makes It

Detroitisit Panel Series with took place at Linkedin Detroit HQ, in partnership with Morgan Stanley.
Moderated by Ivana Kalafatic, Founder of Detroitisit.
Panelists included Jennifer Presley of Focus Hope, Elisa Malile of City of Detroit, April Boyle of Build Institute, Shelley Danner of Challenge Detroit.

July 18th Grand Opening of the Art Park in Eastern Market

Detroit hosted the June Sustainable Brands 2019 conference. Detroitisit hosted a leadership panel on the topic of Water with Parjana Distribution, Cleveland Water Alliance, Lonely Whale, FINN partners.

Detroit artist Ellen Rutt tells stories her way

Drone Flyover of Market Lofts Detroit

Details and interview during the opening of Art Park Eastern Market

An edited view into an an all female, senior executive panel held during the NAIAS 2019 by Detroitisit in partnership with Deloitte. Discussion focused on the The Sustainable Future of Transportation. Taking place at the Foundation Hotel Detroit.

Detroitisit's CV Henriette interviews the Detroit Schvitz Health Club's Paddy Lynch on his home turf - in the bathhouse
Interview: CV Henriette
Video: Katai