Screen shot, Street Sense Media

When she first started as a reporter covering her beat at Street Sense Media, it took Annemarie Cuccia a few months to make sense of the language and the complexities of homelessness.

Now, she’s made a concrete guide to help others catch up quickly. 

The glossary of 26 terms and definitions helps journalists navigate programs, acronyms and terms they need to understand when covering housing and homelessness.

Street Sense is a newsroom that also works directly with artists and vendors experiencing homelessness. That connection offers staff insights into what journalists often get wrong. 

“Working with those partners and reading news about homelessness in general, we realized we had access to experts and a level of specialized knowledge that might help other newsrooms report on the issue with more accuracy and complexity,” said Cuccia, now Street Sense’s editor-in-chief.

In 2016, Street Sense Media started working with other newsrooms in Washington, D.C., to create and share stories about homelessness for World Homeless Day each October. This year, the Homeless Crisis Reporting Project includes coverage from Street Sense, Washington Blade, City Cast DC, The 51st and more.

In 2022, Street Sense created a guide for journalists. (It was originally pitched as a project by a journalist and fellow in the Poynter-Koch Media and Journalism Fellowship. Cuccia was a 2023-2024 fellow.)

This newest offering is “a centralized resource to double-check your understanding of concepts like fair market rent and rental discrimination, and to get some tips about how to handle complex topics,” Cuccia said. “For instance, we, along with many outlets, often report on the yearly Point-in-Time Count, but it's widely considered an undercount. In the definition of the PIT, and several others, we included reporting and writing tips, such as making it clear the PIT represents the number of people experiencing homelessness on one night rather than across the year.”

Some other resources she recommends: 

• Find and support your nearest street paper.

• Get tips on how to share people’s stories with respect from the Housing Narrative Lab.

• And find people with lived experiences, “whether that is through an organization like Invisible People, your local advocacy and community organizations, (including the Interagency Council on Homelessness - there's a term we can define for you!), or just talking to your sources and the people you meet out reporting about what they think the media gets right and wrong about homelessness.” She’s also happy to be a resource. Reach out to Cuccia at [email protected].

From a 2022 edition of this newsletter, here’s a list of several style guides to help you better cover your communities. 

While you’re here:

• Read about the $10 million Open AI/Lenfest Institute AI Collaborative and Fellowship Program that will give funding to Chicago Public Media, Newsday, The Minnesota Star Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Seattle Times “to hire a two-year AI fellow to pursue projects that focus largely on improving business sustainability and implementing AI technologies within their organizations,” according to a press release. “The fellowship will also provide OpenAI and Microsoft Azure credits to help these publications experiment and develop tools to assist with local news. As part of the program, the news organizations will work collaboratively with each other and the broader news industry to share leanings, product developments, case studies, and technical information needed to help replicate their work in other newsrooms. An additional three organizations will be awarded fellows in a second round of grants.”

• Last week, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that Robert Telles was sentenced for murdering reporter Jeff German. And from my colleague Amaris Castillo last year, “After the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Jeff German was killed, a Washington Post reporter picked up his last story.
  
  
  That's it for me, thanks for reading!