News is a peculiar business: The reporter’s ideal is something akin to a professional stranger, a perpetual sideline observer who doesn’t (and shouldn’t) have a direct stake in what they’re reporting.
At the same time, it’s impossible to get the full scope of things without developing relationships with the community. As such, the empty-vessel ideal, divested of all bias, emotion and preconception, can become impractical, even if good reporting methodology and editing processes can mitigate any slant that might eventually be written.
Moreover, it’s naive to think that our presence in a situation doesn’t affect how things play out. That’s not to say that the ideal should be discarded, but rather to say that reporters need to be aware of the tension that can arise between their principles and the realities of reporting on events as they occur.
Here are four stories (or series of stories) in no particular order from 2024 that stick out most in my mind. They aren’t necessarily the stories that drew the most readership, or that were the most enjoyable to write, or the most important, whatever that means. Instead, they’re stories that either made me think critically about my role in the community, challenged me to consider how I write, or typified what journalism does well compared to other genres of communication.
Gaza ceasefire resolution
A Palestinian-American Covington resident, Mohammad Ahmad, came before the Covington City Commission late last year to ask them to support a resolution advocating for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Things started civilly enough at first, but the good faith between the pro-resolution activists and city officials gradually deteriorated as the situation progressed into 2024. By the end, the city commission instituted new policies on speech allowed at city meetings in direct response to the activists’ tactics. At the final meeting of the city commission this year, two arrests were even made. I bore witness to all of this.
I had a lot of conflicting emotions and thoughts about these events. Still, I knew that I had a responsibility to report on it as it revolved around one of the defining international issues of our time, plus it encapsulated so many aspects of American politics: freedom of speech, political assembly and conflict resolution, the role of local government in U.S. foreign policy, various biases and preconceptions as well as media’s effect on these phenomena.
There are multiple stories in this series, but I’ve picked four that I think are most emblematic of the events and linked them below:
- Gaza ceasefire demonstrators march in Covington
- What a debate over a ceasefire in Gaza says about local politics
- Covington reforms public comment regulations in split vote
- Meyer’s final commission meeting begins with accolades, ends with arrests
NKY’s geographic challenges
Northern Kentucky’s proximity to the Ohio River and its tributaries, as well as its hilly geography, poses a unique challenge to public infrastructure and development, one that’s a frequent topic of discussion at public meetings.
The stories in this series came from reports of land slippages at a still-under-construction housing development in Ludlow and concerns about flooding that may arise in conjunction with a large Drees Homes development in Kenton County.
These stories required me to employ numerous journalistic tools – interviewing, historical investigation and data analysis. And, wouldn’t you know it, a lot of people actually read them! This was vindicating as it reminded me that, in spite of all the changes the profession has gone through, there’s still a market for the kind of in-depth analysis and investigation that only a full-time news team can provide.
- Land slippages in Northern Kentucky highlight unique geological challenges, economic risks
- Water, water everywhere: flooding, development and housing in NKY
What to do about the Klan
These stories started after getting reports of racist literature distribution in Covington, other parts of Kenton County, and Florence.
I reported on both the initial distributions and local residents’ response to them. What was perturbing about these stories – besides the racist nature of the literature itself – is that the Klan seemingly responded to one of my articles with fresh distributions that pulled a quote from Covington Mayor Joe Meyer. I was the only reporter in the room when said quote was uttered, so it wasn’t unreasonable to think the Klan got the quote from my reporting.
This sparked a discussion in the newsroom. We knew that literature distributions like this weren’t new and designed to get a rise out of people. As such, I was worried that my reporting might double as PR for white supremacists. There’s no such thing as bad press, after all. In the end, after some discussion with community members, LINK nky’s internal leadership, and some veteran reporters who’d dealt with similar situations, we decided to put those worries aside and do our jobs for both modern readers and posterity.
- Racist notes distributed in NKY concern residents, prompt calls to action
- Covington residents respond to KKK flyers: ‘This is our town’
- ‘The KKK is simply not welcome in Covington’
- New KKK flyers found in Covington after mayor’s statement
Gun violence in Covington
I didn’t want to write this story.
Two Covington children had died from gun violence in January, one on Monday, Jan. 22, and the other only a day later. This prompted news media from all over Greater Cincinnati to suddenly flock to Covington to cover the stories, which (without casting aspersions on my compatriots across the river) was unusual. There’s an old adage among journalists that ‘if it bleeds, it leads,’ and it was hard not to think about that as reporters (including me) and camera crews packed themselves into that week’s board of education meeting.
The TV stations broke the story of the children’s deaths. LINK nky lacks the kind of quick response capability of large corporations like ABC or Scripps, so that in itself wasn’t unusual. But if you’ve consumed news at all in the last twenty years or so, you’ll notice a pattern in how violence like this gets covered. There’s an initial story, usually pulled from statements from police, that lays out the available facts of the crime.
Then come the interviews with loved ones. Then comes a story about how people begin to move on, so to speak. This cycle has a quasi-ritualistic, almost purgative quality to it, almost as if the news cycle is shuttling its audience through the process of grief at an accelerated rate. On top of that, reporters will sometimes decamp outside of churches and other communal sites in hopes of getting photos and interviews, even as the people involved are still grieving.
As I struggled to keep up, it was hard not to feel like I was exploiting the suffering of the community I was charged with covering. Additionally, there wasn’t any new information I could put out that hadn’t already been covered by other outlets. I had to ask myself what I could offer to readers that the other outlets couldn’t. So, I leaned into the contradictory emotions people seemed to be feeling about the incidents themselves, the school district, and the issue of guns generally, hoping to capture that emotional dissonance and let the readers sit with it, rather than shriving it away with contrivance and cliche.
I don’t know if I accomplished this, but readers are free to make their own judgments (as always).
See you in 2025!