By David Gordon, Associate Editor
Reporting on poverty can take many forms and requires trust but, done right, it will help dispel some myths and stereotypes and succeed in “giving voice to the voiceless.”
These were some of the takeaways from Thursday evening’s public forum that dealt with poverty and news media coverage of it. The program, which began with an audience of close to 100 people, was the final public event in Eau Claire’s month-long “Beyond the Headlines” (BTH) series.
Audience could have been larger
The audience would have been larger if the policies of the Pablo Center at the Confluence had allowed a significant number of people who had not reserved a free ticket in advance to fill the 40 or so empty chairs that were set up in the Riverfront Room.
Derek Brehm, front house manager for the Center, said after the event that the rigid ticketing policy is in place because of fire regulations limiting the number of people who can be in any room at one time. Asked why the ticket-takers didn’t consider the number of empty seats in the room before turning away the would-be attendees, he said admitting them could have caused problems if people with tickets arrived later.
Thursday evening’s program featured a pair of reporters whose series on the human faces of poverty in Chattanooga, TN was a 2017 Pulitzer Prize finalist in the Explanatory Reporting category. Joan Garrett McClane and Joy Lukachick Smith were joined on the panel by Sarah Ferber, an organizer for Chippewa Valley EXPO (Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing), and Dominique Brossard, co-director of the Science, Media and the Public research group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Eau Claire Leader-Telegram reporter Julian Emerson moderated the panel’s discussion, which was followed by small-group discussions among audience members. A final session put questions from those discussions to the panel members.
Need to ‘get beyond the labels’
McClane said she and Smith tried to “get beyond the labels” in writing the stories for their series, because the people they interviewed “had something (valuable) to say” about their circumstances. She said the stories produced an outpouring of emails and calls from people reacting positively to them and, often, expressing surprise that their community had the level of poverty that was being reported.
Getting people to talk candidly with them required empathy and a respect for their sources’ sensitivity, McLane said. She noted that building trust from the ground up was essential, and that this could lead to a strengthened and changed community. Smith added that the different segments of the community need to be involved in any problem-solving efforts.
Brossard said there are a lot of solutions to poverty issues and journalists can give different people a voice in discussing them. This would let the community choose from a range of possible solutions, she added, while noting that establishing trust is essential to fitting together the various pieces of the puzzle.
She said that data is important in explaining issues such as poverty but journalists must keep statistics simple and avoid “making people into numbers.”
Poverty has many aspects
Ferber said that poverty has many inter-related aspects, including homelessness, and noted that it is less expensive in the long run for a community to invest in affordable housing than it is to deal with homeless individuals. She said that working together on these issues requires people to listen, which is something that journalists can help with.
Ferber stressed that “labels are dangerous in a story” and said that “journalists, on the whole, are getting better” at avoiding stereotypes their reporting.
“People on the street are smart people who need platforms to speak,” she added.
Jan Larson, chair of the Communication and Journalism department at UW-Eau Claire and chair of the BTH planning committee, said that “journalism as a forum for the public to have discourse.” It should provide the information that’s needed for people to make informed decisions, and praised McClane and Smith for demonstrating that people will read 2,000-word stories if journalists make those stories compelling.
To access an interview with Jan Larson on various aspects of poverty in the Chippewa Valley, click the player below.
The BTH series is part of the Wisconsin Humanities Council’s statewide effort to promote discussions that explore journalism’s role in creating an informed citizenry. Similar programs are running in Wausau, Madison, Superior and Milwaukee. The project is funded in part by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in partnership with the Pulitzer Prizes.
Note: the CVPost is among the local news organizations participating in “Beyond the Headlines” and its Board chair, David Gordon, is a member of the project’s steering committee.
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