This was my first year as a full-time professional reporter, and I’m happy to say that I’ve had a chance to work on a variety of meaningful stories with a great team of people.
Here are five stories that were most meaningful to me. They’re stories that gave me a chance to report on something I cared about, stories that gave me insight into the communities I cover and stories that revealed the realities of working as a local journalist in 2023.
Moms for Liberty
This is actually two stories about the same topic, and they’re my least favorite on this list, even if I learned a lot in the process of reporting them.
The first is some reporting I did on events hosted by Moms for Liberty, a right-wing group that has spearheaded efforts to make it easier to remove certain books from public school library shelves not only in Kentucky but nationwide. I had a grim fascination with the group from the beginning, and I volunteered to cover them, even though their meetings were taking place outside of my beat.
My thought was that if I let Mirna Eads, the previous public face of the group’s Campbell County chapter, speak plainly, everyone could see what the group was actually about, rather than letting their policy positions get lost in the patina of wholesomeness they had tried to cultivate. Many readers thought that in doing so, I was platforming the group or even tacitly endorsing them, which was never my goal.
I don’t agree with all of the criticisms I received, but it’s clear to me now that I made mistakes in my initial coverage. Firstly, the stories were outside my beat, so I was not familiar with all the ill will Moms for Liberty had built up with much of the community. Moreover, I made the mistake of not bringing in outside, critical voices to the story who could have painted a more complete picture of the group’s actions.
My second story was an attempt at rectifying these issues. To be clear, I stand by my original reporting: It’s got my name on it, and I’m not going to take it down. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t things I could have done better, and I’ve tried to take what I learned from these stories and apply it to the rest of my writing.
Here are the stories in the order they appeared:
- Moms for Liberty holds events in Campbell County, chair shares views
- Critics respond to Moms for Liberty events in NKY: ‘It is well-funded by right, extremist politicians’
Organized sports in Erlanger Parks
This story recounts the conflict between the Blessed Sacrament Cross Country team and some residents in Erlanger’s Deer Chase and Lakemont neighborhoods. The team had been using Erlanger’s Flagship Park to practice, but, unbeknownst to the team’s coaching staff, the city had actually banned organized sports in the park in 2010. Now, the neighbors were making it very clear that they expected the ordinance to be enforced.
This was among the first feature-length stories I wrote for LINK, and it presented an opportunity to examine a messy moral (and political) quandary, where conflicting ideas about what it is just and good butt up against each other.
It was also the first time I had managed to successfully cultivate ongoing relationships with people in the community. One source even freely invited me into his home so we could talk, which I think showed that people were willing to take a chance on us as a news organization.
This isn’t in the story: The laws did eventually change to allow groups like Blessed Sacrament in the park, but it was too late. By the time the changes went into effect, the season had already started, and the team moved its practices to Taylor Mill.
Readers are free to make their own judgements on whether or not that’s a good thing.
Senate Bill 150’s effects on schools
Mark Payne, LINK’s former politics reporter, and I collaborated on this story about the effects of Senate Bill 150, which bans gender-affirming care for minors in the state, on Kentucky’s schools. More than anything, this story showed me the importance of collaboration–Mark had been following the bill at the state-level, and I had been reporting on how local districts were confronting the mandates the law created. The result is, I hope, a more complete picture of how the region was and is dealing with the legislation than if we had remained cloistered in our respective silos.
More than anything, I hope readers find this story helpful, whatever one’s political inclinations are. The issue of transgender medical treatment is very emotionally charged, and we tried to create as complete a picture as possible of the bill’s passage and the effects of its passage.
Shout out to Emma Balcom, who also contributed reporting to this story.
Priced out of the river cities
Alecia Ricker, one of Link’s contributors and the paper’s previous Kenton County reporter, had done some initial reporting on the displacement of tenants at the Woodford apartment building in Covington early in the year. I used what she had written–much of which, I’m glad to say, appears in the story’s final version–as a jumping off point to explore broader issues of how pressures of the housing market as well as housing law in the commonwealth affected people’s lives.
On a practical level, this story gave me the opportunity to employ more data journalism and public records analysis than in previous stories, which I’m now much more comfortable in employing.
Furthermore, in terms of numbers, this story’s topic probably affects more people than anything else I’ve written.
Homelessness in NKY
I worked harder on this story than anything else. It’s long, so I’ll keep this brief: It’s about homelessness and the broader issues that surround it.
If you are going to read this one, I ask that you set aside some time to read the whole thing before passing any judgement on the people and policies involved. I think the only thing a writer is entitled to ask of his readers is that they read something in its entirety before leveling judgement. Like I said before, you’re free to draw your own conclusions from there.
See you next year!