When it came to finding truly surprising patterns or stories within the Alabama data, I hit wall after wall. Here's what I learned along the way.
"You can’t just waltz into a community of people who are marginalized and under threat, stick a microphone in their faces and start asking them questions," writes reporter Judith Mernit, a 2018 Impact Fund recipient.
"One of the first lessons we learned was the need for patience with survivors. We were often asking people to relive their trauma when we interviewed them and that carried a high emotional cost for families."
How a reporting team overcame countless hurdles to tell a new story of how children are affected by the family violence they experience, from the time they are in utero through childhood and after.
One consistent memory I have from reporting on California’s mental health system for low-income children is repeatedly asking myself, “Why is this so hard?”
Ruben Castaneda of U.S. News and Cristina Londoño of Telemundo reported very different series on immigrant health. But both reporters had to win the trust of undocumented families for their projects.
As a journalist, both homelessness and mental illness are uniquely challenging topics to report on. When combined, the reporting challenges double, but so do the potential insights. Claudia Boyd-Barrett shares lessons from her experience reporting on the issue in California's Ventura County.
A growing body of evidence suggests that a child’s exposure to trauma and stress can have profound mental and physical health consequences later in life. Arielle Levin Becker recently set out to explore that link and collected some key reporting lessons along the way.
Pretending that people only should consume cookie-cutter content is detrimental for our audience, our profession and our democracy.
Looking for fresh story ideas? We hope these accounts of how reporters across the country got the stories, sources and subjects give you fodder for covering your own communities in a new way.
