Will JamesKonto zweryfikowane

If I have a method for covering poverty, it’s just to talk to a lot of people for a long time I want a picture of how life looks to them and the systems at play in their lives that I can try to share with listeners But the subjects get trapped in the stories like in amber 2/

We meet them at a certain point in their lives - the beginning of something, or the middle, or the end - and that’s how we (and the audience) know them forever But lives are complicated Happy endings become sad ones. Sad ones become happy, and then maybe sad again 3/

I had want I needed: A picture of what it takes a caseworker to gain someone’s trust and set them on a path Jayson seemed to have momentum. He told me he saw hope. He told me he finally had space to stop thinking about survival and start thinking about his life... 5/

…But if the story had ended there it would have failed to capture reality 6/

I followed up with Jayson a year later to find out what happened to him We met at his new apartment, in the middle of one of those snowstorms last month, and he told me what it took to get there At one point, he looked out the window and marveled at the fact he was inside 7/

Since we met, he had gone through a grueling detox in jail, navigated the labyrinths of criminal justice, had his jacket cut off him by EMTs, got passed over by two housing programs, kicked out of the tent city twice 8/

When I left him last year, I thought it was the end of the story but it was actually the beginning And the full story was quite a bit darker and more complicated than the beginning suggested it might be 9/

People’s lives don’t end when we’re done interviewing them When we report on how systems interact with people, the real story plays out over months and years. It can take a long time for the picture to become clear, and that full(er) picture is worth sharing with audiences 10/

Stay in touch with the folks you profile or use as an example of X or Y issue. Make a note to check in on them in six months, a year The narratives will get more complicated. Which is good. We should be chasing that, now more than ever Plus, you’ll get good stories 11/

Here’s one of my favorite recent-ish things written about journalism. It's about the virtue of complicating narratives. It’s only vaguely related, but I look for excuses to share it 12/ https://thewholestory.solutionsjournalism.org/complicating-the-narratives-b91ea06ddf63 …

Let me tag a thought or two to the bottom here... Following up means building a relationship, and a relationship with a subject often means a more honest, unvarnished, complicated picture of their life. That is the good stuff. It's hard to get in a one-off interview 14/