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Strategies & case studies to transform your newsroom
Tia Mitchell started covering Washington, D.C., for The Atlanta Journal constitution in October 2019. She’s not sure what normal there feels like.
“It’s pretty much been a whirlwind.”
Photojournalist Dee Dwyer, who covers Wards 7 and 8 for DCist and is a freelancer, said normally this time of year she’s covering Martin Luther King Jr. Day parades and staying inside during D.C.’s bitter cold.
“Now I feel like we are definitely in the middle of a war zone.”
WUSA9’s Lorenzo Hall grew up in D.C. and moved back two and a half years ago. He’s thinking about people trying to get to work or doctor’s appointments through the heavy security following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capital.
And Alejandro Alvarez, with WTOP, isn’t sure he can remember living through anything normal in the nation’s capital. D.C. doesn’t feel like a war zone to him, he said, but it’s still shocking.
Every time a local story becomes national, I reach out to local journalists to see how they’re covering it. One message I hear is always the same — we’ll be here when the spotlight moves on. That must be true, too, in D.C., where we just saw the start of a new presidential administration, right?
Right.
I spoke with Mitchell, Dwyer, Hall and Alvarez about their work
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in the last few weeks and what they’ll cover when the fences in D.C. come down.
Alvarez said something I think a lot of local journalists can relate to.
“It’s one thing to observe these massive earth-shattering events from a distance, and another thing to live in the middle of it.”
FROM OUR SPONSOR:
As journalists, we’re used to holding the powerful accountable. But, it’s also important to do the same for ourselves: do we reflect the community we serve? This Better News guide to diversity
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gives your newsroom a primer, a plan and actionable steps to creating a diversity strategy. Learn more
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.
While you’re here:
Read "An Anti-Racist Future: A Vision and Plan for the Transformation of Public Media."
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Listen to how the Seattle Times used Slack
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to build a space for cultural conversations in the newsroom.
This is a good resource from my colleague, Al Tompkins, with story ideas for covering economics, the pandemic and race
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.
Last week in L.A., Crosscut launched 110 neighborhood newsletters.
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And read my colleague Angela Fu on this new local true crime podcast from Lee newsrooms.
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That’s it for me. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next week.
Kristen
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