Results and Interpretation: Part III – What Is Said of the Work?
This section reviews and interprets the work done by the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service that others have particularly validated by way of awards or sharing with others, what residents and others have said in its coverage about community and neighborhoods, and what the informants have gained from their NNS experience. All this attempts to provide answers to three of this study’s research questions: 1) How does NNS imagine its work (in this case, when applying for award recognition)? 3) How have others in the community and elsewhere discussed or endorsed its work? 4) Who is doing the work and what have they learned about journalism and community?
VALIDATION: "AN AWARD-WINNING ONLINE SOURCE"
Human nature holds that people and individuals who strive to do their best work – and do it better than anyone else – also seek validation from others who matter. This is particularly true for journalists anywhere and small news organizations such as the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service that are striving for additional audience and funding. So it is not surprising that the first sentence of the first of five paragraphs on the “About Us” page of NNS’ website notes that it is “an award-winning online source.”
Indeed, the news service has earned awards from two professional journalism organizations. In March 2012, it received a prestigious regional Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence from the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA). According to the RTDNA website, NNS’ work and those by other awardees represented “exceptional news coverage and journalistic skill,” and the judges also considered “creativity, clarity, storytelling techniques and use of audio, video or other Internet technologies.” In April 2013, the Milwaukee Press Club awarded “Sharon McGowan and Staff” a silver medal for “best local news or feature website.” The Press Club recently announced they are finalists in the same category this year – after McGowan nominated five stories, including Waxman’s story about a nonprofit that helps men with criminal backgrounds to overcome their violent and traumatic histories; O’Brien’s report about how proposed changes to a state Medicaid program could adversely affect domestic abuse victims who are poor; and Brown’s article about how mounting fines for minor infractions hit low-income drivers hardest.
NNS has entered 19 of its hundreds of articles into awards contests. McGowan told me that “we hit the minimum on every story,” but these reports match her aspirations for NNS. Her nominating letters reveal what she thinks of the work and her staff’s efforts. For example, in nominating four related stories by Mendez and Meyers for a contest sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), she wrote “there is no question that NNS’ reporting put a spotlight” on the struggles many people in low-income communities face in securing a GED certificate. Referring to another article by Waxman, she told SPJ that “Milwaukee residents can now get accurate information about the crime in their neighborhoods.” And of Ronaldson’s report, “Law Fails to Help Black-Owned Contractors Get ‘Foot in the Door,’” McGowan told the Hearst Journalism Awards Program, arguably the most prestigious competition for college students, that it “received no more than the standard editing” for any other NNS story.
Eleven of the nominated stories are also special reports, which means NNS does not always give its best work that stamp. Just two nominated stories – the before-mentioned ones about family day care providers and thousands having to retake GED exams – rank among the 20 most popular based on page views; remember, news agencies must accept that their best or most important work is not the most read. Still, winning awards is inspiring. “We are delighted and honored,” McGowan said in an NNS article announcing the RTDNA citation, about the “tribute to the hard work” of the staff, interns and volunteers, and the “people and organizations whose stories we tell.” In a March 31 story by Mendez about being one of three finalists for the Press Club’s 2013 honor, she said, “We are proud to be in the company of these fine news organizations.”
SOURCES: "I DEAL WITH THE ORGANIZATIONS"
Turning to from whom and where the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service most often draws its content, it is necessary to return quickly to Gillis and Moore and the Pew Foundation, and the five basic categories of sources: official, quasi-official, third places, incidental places and private places. Remember, the problem is, the critics say, that most often journalists get their stories from the first and last groups.
But not the journalists working for NNS – as this study’s sample showed that about 40 of the 229 articles, or fewer than 20 percent, involved those people who are part of the political system or recognized leaders of institutions in society. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett was mentioned in a story and or seen in a related photo 26 times, including one about a middle school becoming a senior living center; the grand opening of a park in the Menomonee Valley; and a debate about whether to redevelop the Forest Home library on its current site. City aldermen and alderwomen were mentioned in 15 stories. Given the propensity and need for elected officials to attend community events and tend to neighborhood concerns, NNS might be forgiven if these numbers were not higher.
Mendez told me in his interview that “most of the stories I do I deal with the organizations,” or as the researchers call them, quasi-official sources, which also include people involved in the community who are not necessarily government representatives. Besides telling him “what’s going on” in the neighborhoods and providing “context for a broader story” he is reporting, Mendez said organizations “really hold the key” to helping NNS expand its audience and reach the people who “really need this information.”
Mendez is not alone among his colleagues as quasi-official is the dominant source category for NNS overall. One hundred and one stories involved a neighborhood organization or institution led by someone residents trust, respect or otherwise depend on. They would include, for example, articles about educators and nonprofits working to raise academic achievement, the opening of a medical clinic for the underserved, and a block club finding that building community takes patience and hard work. Within those 101 stories is another subset of 74 about a program or project that one or more of these quasi-official organizations are shepherding in their communities. Another subset of 30 involved groups or organizations collaborating to make one of the programs or projects happen. (Remember the aforementioned editor’s note about NNS regretting that it had failed to name an organization that had helped to bring about an initiative.)
Another significant subset of stories – 85 – involved reporting done at events, forums, meetings or rallies held at third places, or where people congregate or gather informally, such as churches, community events, schools, etc. These include articles about churches checking IDs to ensure that parishioners can vote, 200 people combining their art and energy at an anti-violence parade, and volunteers cleaning a river in advance of a trail’s grand opening. In many ways, it appears that the news service would struggle to publish stories if not for quasi-official groups partnering on programs and projects and bringing people together at events, meetings or rallies. To be fair, all newsrooms depend upon such groups doing such things, to help “fill the paper” as print journalists used to say. NNS aims to be different, though, by purposely spending more time covering neighborhood activities than do mainstream media.
There seemed to be few examples of NNS reporting from incidental places, or where people talk informally with one another, such as on the sidewalk, at the market or at a coffee shop; or from private places, that is, in the privacy of one’s home, or in someone’s own private lives. Examples of the former could include Mendez’ special report about new streetscaping altering a business district’s look and feel, and Evans’ story about a popular deli opening a second location; while the latter could include the aforementioned profiles of community residents and leaders produced by my students and the video and story of the Team Dun Dit Dat mothers by Waxman. One imagines that a typical community newspaper would have many such stories, or that NNS’ staff could better mine incidental and private places for stories. Then again, there is the matter of its limited resources (particularly reporters) – and the notion of journalists spending hours shooting the breeze with patrons at barber shops and diners seemed outdated even during my early career as a reporter. People are just too busy. Part-time journalists, too.
Besides, NNS aspires to a more ambitious brand of community journalism. Which could explain an additional subset from the study sample, one unanticipated and perhaps uncommon among most community journalism initiatives. Thirty-five stories seemed borne of a study or research by a reputable national or local nonprofit about a vital issue or concern – or otherwise have statistics from such work embedded to help substantiate the reporting. Story examples range from “Study Analyzes Quality of Milwaukee After-School Programs” to “Two-Thirds of Recreational Facilities at County Public Schools Sub-Par, Study Finds” to “Candy-Flavored Tobacco Products Lure Underage Smokers, Report Warns.” The study results are sufficiently translated for NNS’ audience and, while it may seem a slightly different version of official sourcing, quoting well-established professional researchers, the quality of journalism presented is certainly enhanced.
COMMUNITY VOICES: "EVERYONE WANTS A BETTER LIFE"
(Quoted material in this section is taken from a variety of NNS stories included in the overall sample as outlined in the methodology chapter – and all of which are listed in Appendix 5.)
Given that the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and its supporters wish to create a greater sense of community among those living and working in the 17 targeted areas – and to present their efforts toward a better quality of life to a wider audience – it is appropriate to determine what the people and groups chronicled get to say about community in NNS’ articles. Harkening to Tichenor, Donahue and Olien, the evidence indicates an effort to present a reality that is upbeat and positive, stressing opportunities for improvement much more so than focusing on the problems and conflicts that, according to NNS and its supporters, dominate mainstream media coverage.
From the beginning, there was talk of “optimism and resilience” and not letting others “water down the vision,” as a public school principal said in “Long Journey Culminates in New Center for Longfellow, Journey House,” published the day NNS launched; rewarding patience, as in “Hopkins Lloyd Community School Moving Forward One Year After Merger,” more than a year later; and enabling teenagers to “stay in Milwaukee and become positive contributors to our communities” instead of faraway jails, as in “Healing Families Key to Saving At-Risk Youth” the day after that.
“Everyone wants a better life” and “something tangible for the community” and a “sense of empowerment that they can actually make a difference” as they work to “change the community and change the culture,” according to organization and program leaders quoted in two other stories. Keeping with the quality of life theme, an executive director talks of having “good-working, salt-of-the-earth people in this community” and “that’s the message we would like to get out.” Though an organization leader says that “neighborhood work can be isolating,” bringing people together is another common theme. “We believe in giving back,” one mother says, while a city aldermen adds that “people here don’t mind coming out to help each other” and a member of a resident-led organization states that “we want to come together as a community and take it back.”
Public safety also is a key concern. “We start with community, because that is our purpose, to create strong communities,” Police Chief Edward Flynn said, while a block watch coordinator counters that “if you don’t report a crime, as far as the city’s concerned, it never happened” and a mother watching a parade in honor of children who have died because of violence says “we need to really look at what’s happening.” Another focal point is housing. “We deserve something better than this,” a wife recalls telling her husband about living at the mercy of a slum landlord. Another woman, speaking to community leaders, policy makers and politicians during a bus tour in Harambee, said “I wish I didn’t have to move, but safety [comes] first.”
Other NNS stories account for what “we can accomplish as a community when we speak with one voice” and, despite daunting but “not insurmountable” hurdles, wanting “our community to be healthy and vibrant and strong and economically stable.” In the end, the stories unquestionably are giving a voice to residents and advocates who, when all is said and done, mostly desire encouragement and opportunities, from each other and from those charged with helping them.
LESSONS: "THEY DESERVE TO HAVE IT"
Finally, given that apprentices generally hold dear to the lessons learned early in their careers, what have our five informants learned about journalism and community because of the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service? McGowan, of course, has had years of experience with both concepts dating to her time at The Chicago Reporter. But she enjoys teaching college students from Marquette and elsewhere – many of whom come from comfortable backgrounds – that “there’s more than one way” to define a community, and no matter one’s economic situation or race, people have the “same basic desires for a certain quality of life and that they deserve to have it.”
He has traveled the South Side more than most students, but Mendez has learned that not only are “a lot of people ... proud of their work” in their neighborhoods – they “want their stories told.” Many programs and services are “underutilized,” he said, because “people don’t know about” them and organizations and institutions “really want people to know what they’re doing in these neighborhoods.” Mendez regrets not having more time or experience to tell more or better stories; sometimes, he said, after not doing one that then appears in the Journal Sentinel, “I think, ‘Oh, I should have brought it to Sharon,’ but I didn’t because I thought it was too complicated.”
Waxman said “I have thought a lot” – as a reporter at The Jewish Chronicle and at NNS – about how community journalism not only informs people about what happens in a neighborhood, but also “reflects their image back to themselves of who they are.” With media coverage otherwise “overwhelmingly about crime,” it must have a “debilitating effect to never see your community portrayed in any other light,” she said. “You know there are all kinds of other things going on.” Thus, Waxman said, “I think about that when I’m doing stories and choosing stories” for the news service.
Slattery, the former broadcast journalist turned journalism educator, had an awakening of sorts while doing a story about a man and his family from the near-North Side after he lost his job as a local radio talk-show host. They moved into the neighborhood in the 1960s, but left when poverty descended on it after the A.O. Smith Co. factory closed in 2006. Slattery also talked with the “family that lives in the house now” and is trying to make it “in the face of this desolation and impoverished neighborhood.” She learned that people of varied means have “different ideas about community,” that it is important to find such stories, that people “make assumptions” about one another, and that “I have had to negotiate those in these neighborhoods.”
Hailing from suburban Chicago, Ronaldson said her NNS experience helped cause her to stay in Milwaukee after graduating from Marquette in May 2013. “These burrowed neighborhoods ... care a lot about themselves” and there is “a lot of community development happening” because many organizations are working together to improve “disenfranchised areas,” she said. So it “excites the community” and people are “a lot more forthcoming” when, for example, “someone’s taking” photos at a neighborhood clean-up. Ronaldson added: "People want to talk to journalists in that way. I think people feel very heard and validated, and even though maybe not everyone read about my article on breast cancer, but for that moment I was able to be in Cynthia Hooker’s apartment and she was crying, saying 'No one’s asked me these kinds of questions before' – and that was a real moment for me. In the same way, though, the community has to inform the journalism, so if no one’s doing anything, if no one cares, there’s nothing for us to write about."
VALIDATION: "AN AWARD-WINNING ONLINE SOURCE"
Human nature holds that people and individuals who strive to do their best work – and do it better than anyone else – also seek validation from others who matter. This is particularly true for journalists anywhere and small news organizations such as the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service that are striving for additional audience and funding. So it is not surprising that the first sentence of the first of five paragraphs on the “About Us” page of NNS’ website notes that it is “an award-winning online source.”
Indeed, the news service has earned awards from two professional journalism organizations. In March 2012, it received a prestigious regional Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence from the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA). According to the RTDNA website, NNS’ work and those by other awardees represented “exceptional news coverage and journalistic skill,” and the judges also considered “creativity, clarity, storytelling techniques and use of audio, video or other Internet technologies.” In April 2013, the Milwaukee Press Club awarded “Sharon McGowan and Staff” a silver medal for “best local news or feature website.” The Press Club recently announced they are finalists in the same category this year – after McGowan nominated five stories, including Waxman’s story about a nonprofit that helps men with criminal backgrounds to overcome their violent and traumatic histories; O’Brien’s report about how proposed changes to a state Medicaid program could adversely affect domestic abuse victims who are poor; and Brown’s article about how mounting fines for minor infractions hit low-income drivers hardest.
NNS has entered 19 of its hundreds of articles into awards contests. McGowan told me that “we hit the minimum on every story,” but these reports match her aspirations for NNS. Her nominating letters reveal what she thinks of the work and her staff’s efforts. For example, in nominating four related stories by Mendez and Meyers for a contest sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), she wrote “there is no question that NNS’ reporting put a spotlight” on the struggles many people in low-income communities face in securing a GED certificate. Referring to another article by Waxman, she told SPJ that “Milwaukee residents can now get accurate information about the crime in their neighborhoods.” And of Ronaldson’s report, “Law Fails to Help Black-Owned Contractors Get ‘Foot in the Door,’” McGowan told the Hearst Journalism Awards Program, arguably the most prestigious competition for college students, that it “received no more than the standard editing” for any other NNS story.
Eleven of the nominated stories are also special reports, which means NNS does not always give its best work that stamp. Just two nominated stories – the before-mentioned ones about family day care providers and thousands having to retake GED exams – rank among the 20 most popular based on page views; remember, news agencies must accept that their best or most important work is not the most read. Still, winning awards is inspiring. “We are delighted and honored,” McGowan said in an NNS article announcing the RTDNA citation, about the “tribute to the hard work” of the staff, interns and volunteers, and the “people and organizations whose stories we tell.” In a March 31 story by Mendez about being one of three finalists for the Press Club’s 2013 honor, she said, “We are proud to be in the company of these fine news organizations.”
SOURCES: "I DEAL WITH THE ORGANIZATIONS"
Turning to from whom and where the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service most often draws its content, it is necessary to return quickly to Gillis and Moore and the Pew Foundation, and the five basic categories of sources: official, quasi-official, third places, incidental places and private places. Remember, the problem is, the critics say, that most often journalists get their stories from the first and last groups.
But not the journalists working for NNS – as this study’s sample showed that about 40 of the 229 articles, or fewer than 20 percent, involved those people who are part of the political system or recognized leaders of institutions in society. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett was mentioned in a story and or seen in a related photo 26 times, including one about a middle school becoming a senior living center; the grand opening of a park in the Menomonee Valley; and a debate about whether to redevelop the Forest Home library on its current site. City aldermen and alderwomen were mentioned in 15 stories. Given the propensity and need for elected officials to attend community events and tend to neighborhood concerns, NNS might be forgiven if these numbers were not higher.
Mendez told me in his interview that “most of the stories I do I deal with the organizations,” or as the researchers call them, quasi-official sources, which also include people involved in the community who are not necessarily government representatives. Besides telling him “what’s going on” in the neighborhoods and providing “context for a broader story” he is reporting, Mendez said organizations “really hold the key” to helping NNS expand its audience and reach the people who “really need this information.”
Mendez is not alone among his colleagues as quasi-official is the dominant source category for NNS overall. One hundred and one stories involved a neighborhood organization or institution led by someone residents trust, respect or otherwise depend on. They would include, for example, articles about educators and nonprofits working to raise academic achievement, the opening of a medical clinic for the underserved, and a block club finding that building community takes patience and hard work. Within those 101 stories is another subset of 74 about a program or project that one or more of these quasi-official organizations are shepherding in their communities. Another subset of 30 involved groups or organizations collaborating to make one of the programs or projects happen. (Remember the aforementioned editor’s note about NNS regretting that it had failed to name an organization that had helped to bring about an initiative.)
Another significant subset of stories – 85 – involved reporting done at events, forums, meetings or rallies held at third places, or where people congregate or gather informally, such as churches, community events, schools, etc. These include articles about churches checking IDs to ensure that parishioners can vote, 200 people combining their art and energy at an anti-violence parade, and volunteers cleaning a river in advance of a trail’s grand opening. In many ways, it appears that the news service would struggle to publish stories if not for quasi-official groups partnering on programs and projects and bringing people together at events, meetings or rallies. To be fair, all newsrooms depend upon such groups doing such things, to help “fill the paper” as print journalists used to say. NNS aims to be different, though, by purposely spending more time covering neighborhood activities than do mainstream media.
There seemed to be few examples of NNS reporting from incidental places, or where people talk informally with one another, such as on the sidewalk, at the market or at a coffee shop; or from private places, that is, in the privacy of one’s home, or in someone’s own private lives. Examples of the former could include Mendez’ special report about new streetscaping altering a business district’s look and feel, and Evans’ story about a popular deli opening a second location; while the latter could include the aforementioned profiles of community residents and leaders produced by my students and the video and story of the Team Dun Dit Dat mothers by Waxman. One imagines that a typical community newspaper would have many such stories, or that NNS’ staff could better mine incidental and private places for stories. Then again, there is the matter of its limited resources (particularly reporters) – and the notion of journalists spending hours shooting the breeze with patrons at barber shops and diners seemed outdated even during my early career as a reporter. People are just too busy. Part-time journalists, too.
Besides, NNS aspires to a more ambitious brand of community journalism. Which could explain an additional subset from the study sample, one unanticipated and perhaps uncommon among most community journalism initiatives. Thirty-five stories seemed borne of a study or research by a reputable national or local nonprofit about a vital issue or concern – or otherwise have statistics from such work embedded to help substantiate the reporting. Story examples range from “Study Analyzes Quality of Milwaukee After-School Programs” to “Two-Thirds of Recreational Facilities at County Public Schools Sub-Par, Study Finds” to “Candy-Flavored Tobacco Products Lure Underage Smokers, Report Warns.” The study results are sufficiently translated for NNS’ audience and, while it may seem a slightly different version of official sourcing, quoting well-established professional researchers, the quality of journalism presented is certainly enhanced.
COMMUNITY VOICES: "EVERYONE WANTS A BETTER LIFE"
(Quoted material in this section is taken from a variety of NNS stories included in the overall sample as outlined in the methodology chapter – and all of which are listed in Appendix 5.)
Given that the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and its supporters wish to create a greater sense of community among those living and working in the 17 targeted areas – and to present their efforts toward a better quality of life to a wider audience – it is appropriate to determine what the people and groups chronicled get to say about community in NNS’ articles. Harkening to Tichenor, Donahue and Olien, the evidence indicates an effort to present a reality that is upbeat and positive, stressing opportunities for improvement much more so than focusing on the problems and conflicts that, according to NNS and its supporters, dominate mainstream media coverage.
From the beginning, there was talk of “optimism and resilience” and not letting others “water down the vision,” as a public school principal said in “Long Journey Culminates in New Center for Longfellow, Journey House,” published the day NNS launched; rewarding patience, as in “Hopkins Lloyd Community School Moving Forward One Year After Merger,” more than a year later; and enabling teenagers to “stay in Milwaukee and become positive contributors to our communities” instead of faraway jails, as in “Healing Families Key to Saving At-Risk Youth” the day after that.
“Everyone wants a better life” and “something tangible for the community” and a “sense of empowerment that they can actually make a difference” as they work to “change the community and change the culture,” according to organization and program leaders quoted in two other stories. Keeping with the quality of life theme, an executive director talks of having “good-working, salt-of-the-earth people in this community” and “that’s the message we would like to get out.” Though an organization leader says that “neighborhood work can be isolating,” bringing people together is another common theme. “We believe in giving back,” one mother says, while a city aldermen adds that “people here don’t mind coming out to help each other” and a member of a resident-led organization states that “we want to come together as a community and take it back.”
Public safety also is a key concern. “We start with community, because that is our purpose, to create strong communities,” Police Chief Edward Flynn said, while a block watch coordinator counters that “if you don’t report a crime, as far as the city’s concerned, it never happened” and a mother watching a parade in honor of children who have died because of violence says “we need to really look at what’s happening.” Another focal point is housing. “We deserve something better than this,” a wife recalls telling her husband about living at the mercy of a slum landlord. Another woman, speaking to community leaders, policy makers and politicians during a bus tour in Harambee, said “I wish I didn’t have to move, but safety [comes] first.”
Other NNS stories account for what “we can accomplish as a community when we speak with one voice” and, despite daunting but “not insurmountable” hurdles, wanting “our community to be healthy and vibrant and strong and economically stable.” In the end, the stories unquestionably are giving a voice to residents and advocates who, when all is said and done, mostly desire encouragement and opportunities, from each other and from those charged with helping them.
LESSONS: "THEY DESERVE TO HAVE IT"
Finally, given that apprentices generally hold dear to the lessons learned early in their careers, what have our five informants learned about journalism and community because of the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service? McGowan, of course, has had years of experience with both concepts dating to her time at The Chicago Reporter. But she enjoys teaching college students from Marquette and elsewhere – many of whom come from comfortable backgrounds – that “there’s more than one way” to define a community, and no matter one’s economic situation or race, people have the “same basic desires for a certain quality of life and that they deserve to have it.”
He has traveled the South Side more than most students, but Mendez has learned that not only are “a lot of people ... proud of their work” in their neighborhoods – they “want their stories told.” Many programs and services are “underutilized,” he said, because “people don’t know about” them and organizations and institutions “really want people to know what they’re doing in these neighborhoods.” Mendez regrets not having more time or experience to tell more or better stories; sometimes, he said, after not doing one that then appears in the Journal Sentinel, “I think, ‘Oh, I should have brought it to Sharon,’ but I didn’t because I thought it was too complicated.”
Waxman said “I have thought a lot” – as a reporter at The Jewish Chronicle and at NNS – about how community journalism not only informs people about what happens in a neighborhood, but also “reflects their image back to themselves of who they are.” With media coverage otherwise “overwhelmingly about crime,” it must have a “debilitating effect to never see your community portrayed in any other light,” she said. “You know there are all kinds of other things going on.” Thus, Waxman said, “I think about that when I’m doing stories and choosing stories” for the news service.
Slattery, the former broadcast journalist turned journalism educator, had an awakening of sorts while doing a story about a man and his family from the near-North Side after he lost his job as a local radio talk-show host. They moved into the neighborhood in the 1960s, but left when poverty descended on it after the A.O. Smith Co. factory closed in 2006. Slattery also talked with the “family that lives in the house now” and is trying to make it “in the face of this desolation and impoverished neighborhood.” She learned that people of varied means have “different ideas about community,” that it is important to find such stories, that people “make assumptions” about one another, and that “I have had to negotiate those in these neighborhoods.”
Hailing from suburban Chicago, Ronaldson said her NNS experience helped cause her to stay in Milwaukee after graduating from Marquette in May 2013. “These burrowed neighborhoods ... care a lot about themselves” and there is “a lot of community development happening” because many organizations are working together to improve “disenfranchised areas,” she said. So it “excites the community” and people are “a lot more forthcoming” when, for example, “someone’s taking” photos at a neighborhood clean-up. Ronaldson added: "People want to talk to journalists in that way. I think people feel very heard and validated, and even though maybe not everyone read about my article on breast cancer, but for that moment I was able to be in Cynthia Hooker’s apartment and she was crying, saying 'No one’s asked me these kinds of questions before' – and that was a real moment for me. In the same way, though, the community has to inform the journalism, so if no one’s doing anything, if no one cares, there’s nothing for us to write about."