our final speaker for widening 2024's first
virtual session reports for an Innovative media platform that was founded in 2018 and it asks
this provocative question how can science look more like us Shrea agrawal is a climate journalist
and Communicator who reports on the environment Health politics and so social issues she's The
Newsroom fellow for the xyum an award-winning online science publication tra is also the
engagement coordinator for the USC annenburg Center of climate journalism a
nd communication and
she is a news reporting cohort fellow for sourer magazine among many other roles her work has
been published in several outlets including the LA Times Cal matters and she's been interviewed
on the list KCBS and KQED radio stations to talk about her reporting you can read Sha's full bio
on our website at National press.org but tra thank you so much for joining us today well thank you
for having me here so I know you've prepared uh a great uh presentation for us and so I'
m just
going to turn it over to you and let you take it away so thank you everybody for being here um just
wanted to quickly chat about my work my background um a little bit about investigative reporting
what I've learned um you know during my short short career and we'll open it up to questions at
the end um and see what you guys have to say so um I'll just give you a quick trip down my memory
lane um I was born in India near the Himalayas um but I also spent a bunch of my time in the the
Bay Area growing up so I feel like I grew up in both countries in India and the United States
um which has really helped me a lot with just my reporting just like being someone from two
different places um has I guess made me more empathetic to people's lived experiences and you
know just what people have gone through um well why I decided to become a climate Communicator
I had my first existential crisis about climate change when I was 5 years old I was reading an
encyclopedia about you k
now sea level rising and the sun's going to swallow up the Earth in like
two billion years and my little brain could not understand what two billion years meant like I I
would die by that but I didn't understand and I was like what's going to happen to my parents if
all of that happens and so that kind of started my journey into environmentalism I got into USC
studied geology and English at first and then I was like how do I connect these two ended up
going to journalism School and then eve
rything made sense because I wanted to I realized I
wanted to be a climate journalist I wanted to talk about climate change I wanted to communicate
climate change and you know all of the different intersections that it has with you know with race
with social issues with politics um so I had that aha moment in 2022 and I founded my own climate
reporting desk at USC called anenberg media Earth and that's kind of been the start of my J J into
journalism um so what did we really do at the xylm
which like I I report at the xylm I'm one of
their I'm actually their first Newsroom fellow we you know as all as we hear about newsrooms
firing people the asylums kind of taking the opposite direction be like no we we need to hire
more people we need to hire like staff members we need to give people job security and so I got very
lucky to be picked as like the first news room fellow and basically what we do is you know we
support student voices um and as you can read the community is influ
encing and shaped by science but
what does that really mean and I think it means a lot of different things at Asylum and we try to
take an Innovative approach to it um if you look at our website most of our stories are written by
people of color and they report on people of color and we just don't report on stories in the United
States we usually report on stories in Nigeria India all of these different countries around the
world because we know that you know not only the climate crisis but
so many of our issues they are
rooted in global like you know they are connected in a global sense like even though you know The
Newsroom is based here in the United States a lot of people I mean you know United States is made
of immigrants right so a lot of people bring in their culture they bring in their experiences from
all around the world and so we need to report on International stories and we need to include all
of these different perspectives that have not been featured in the med
ia for such a long time and so
we also try to bring in hard to talk about topics like endometriosis is something that we've done a
lot of reporting on um greenwashing is something we talk a lot about especially in terms of you
know um oil companies and all of these major corporations spreading messages saying hey we are
doing the right thing but when you take a look at it they're actually just trying to like further
their agenda and it really puts people of color at risk it really puts poor
communities at risk
and so we try to report on those kind of stories so when we say we want to report um when we say
we focus on communities influenced by science and communities that participate in science that's
what we mean because science is everywhere I mean all of these companies are using different parts
of science to um you know make their products and so we want to make sure that we are holding them
accountable that when they say things things um like you know shell has been sayin
g they're trying
to do better with you know not putting as much methane in the air but really when you remove oil
from the ground you are emitting some amount of methane right so we try to hold them accountable
and we also focus on community building because that's the only way we can get forward um you
know and deal with things like climate change with racism with all of these different issues that
we were dealing with today only communities when they come together can you know fix problem
s and
so I'll just show a couple of stories that we've done before like this was a story on menstruation
from someone in India she wrote an article for us basically talking about how um you know in Indian
Society uh menstruation is considered something um like you know disgusting usually words like
disgust show up or it's considered Unholy it's considered dirty and so a lot of women are
pressured to play with their Cycles you know um stop their menstruation just because um people
don't wan
t to hear about it or people think it's something that's impure but it's such I mean for
women and for um apab folks I mean that's like an integral part of your body I mean you know
it's a natural part of your body and so we try to Center all of these different perspectives in
when we're trying to recruit writers when we're trying to get more stories um and you know a lot
of newsrooms talk about Dei and they don't always meet the Dei perspectives but you know um I mean
I'm a woman of color
Alex my editor um he is from Hong Kong so we like all of the staff I guess at
the Asylum we are you know people of color and we truly believe in bringing in more perspectives
and lifting people up like you know we got these opportunities I got my opportunity because of Alex
Alex got his opportunities because of other people and now we want to make sure that we can get more
people like us H um there's another story that we did on glass uh glass uh sorry gas flaring in the
Niger Delta and aga
in you know even the story was done by someone who didn't have much experience in
journalism but just because someone doesn't didn't go to journalism school doesn't have too much
experience in journalism doesn't mean that they can't be a writer that they can do journalism and
so at the zyl we really try to bring in writers from all different kinds of perspectives all kinds
of skill backgrounds because we really believe that um you know even if you aren't trained in
journalism you can tell a
good story I mean I personally really feel um very strongly about
people you know from non the journalism field coming in and telling their stories um just
because my personal background I wanted to be a scientist before I decided to be a jour Jal
and it's only because people in journalism pushed me they were like you know you can do it you can
learn how to be a journalist that's why I am here and so I really believe that if someone wants
to tell a story we can make sure um you get to tell
the story so we at Asylum like um encourage
writers from all different kinds of backgrounds to come and write for us and our job is to basically
train them and how to be a better journalist how to be a better Communicator teach them the skills
they need and we make sure the stories get better by the end of that um so as um Rachel mentioned
I also work for several other Publications at the moment including um the USC anenberg Center
for climate journalism and communication where I basically
train other journalists and students and
how to be a better climate journalist and a better climate Communicator um and Rachel mentioned that
previously written for all of these Publications so what do I really do with Asylum um it kind of
feels like everything because I write stories for them I edit for them I fact check there's all
these different kinds of things um I've been working on a few investigative stories that I will
mention um later in my presentation but I also do like a bunch
of community reporting I've been
doing a bunch of editing and factchecking like the previous two articles that I mentioned those
are pieces that I have edited and fact checked um I'm also working on a podcast about redlining and
um environmental justice here in LA and with my role at USC I do a lot of like you know planning
journalism and comms events we actually have Jane Fonda coming to USC to talk about her climate
activism work which is like super exciting one of the highlights of Eart
h month for us um and I
work on a bunch of climate communication surveys and reports um one that I'm working on right now
basically looks at what climate journalists and communicators feel like they're lacking because
often times we just don't have enough resources to provide especially to local journalists um on
how they can report on climate change better and again I'm talking about climate because that's my
beat but at the same time I feel that's true for so many journalism skills right
I mean local
journalists just don't get as many resources and they have to cover all the stories in their
community so how can we support them better we just need to provide them more funding but also
provide them more training resources so they can cover inest investigative stories in their area
so they can cover um things like climate which might be a bit um um you know hard to cover
just because there's so much jargon involved just because you need so much background to get
into it um a
nd the last one being a rain maker I recently heard this term um someone told me it's
a Native American term used for people who bring other people together who connect other people
together and that's one of my favorite things to do um you know making sure the people around
me are connected So like um anytime I talk to a journalist and I'm like oh you would be great
friends with this other person who I know I try to connect people together because I really believe
in community building and
I really believe that's the only way we can get any work done that's
meaningful um so why am I here mostly to tell you you got this um just because I don't think
you know people hear this often in journalism you know you get into a story and sometimes it
just feels like when you're starting from zero it really feels like what am I doing here do
I even know what I'm talking about and I want to tell you you do or if you don't you're going
to learn it on the way and you'll make mistakes you'l
l get there you've got this um but let's
talk about investigations for a second just because that's the topic of today um and these
are just I'm going to give you some like tips advice just some stuff that I learned along the
way um as I've done like the few investigative stories that I've worked on so one thing that
I think you should know investigations although it sounds like such a big word it's like so it
sounds so complex and you're like oh my God that's something that only like real
journalists do but
honestly they're not that different from any other kind of reporting except you just get a lot of
time to work on those stories and that's what turns a story into an investigation when you're
spending a lot of your time on it when you're just you know given a lot of resources to make
sure you can go as deep as possible into those stories and usually there's an accountability
and harm aspect associated with investigations but really when you really dig into something
you
can always find that accountability angle and so you know all the stories that you've done
in the past those could turn into investigative stories if you had the amount of time so there's
nothing special about investigative reporting in that sense like it's not an entirely new class
of Journalism you know it's just the same thing except you get more time um so if you're thinking
about where I can find investigative stories you probably already have a few right under your nose
because these
are usually stories that you worked on before things that you are passionate about
so something that I really care about personally is looking at you know um what oil companies
have been doing especially with all of their new regulations and you know they've been buying
into a lot of Renewables or like trying to say we are not releasing as much methane into the
atmosphere as we were doing before like we've been really careful with it but if you just look
at the surface that's what you can r
eport on but as you get to go deeper into it you'll find
that sometimes people are lying and so you can think about the stories that you've done in the
past how can you expand on them that's a really great way to make sure that you know you can find
investigative stories like it doesn't feel like oh this is so un unapproachable no it's something
that you can totally do with the stories that you've done before with the topics that you've
dealt in the past there's always an investigative stor
y happening so just look at what's happening
in your bead who's getting harmed who needs to be held accountable those are really good questions
to ask because when you start looking into them and you like develop your sources you um look
at documents stuff like that you can usually find something that no one else has reported on
and something that you feel is like oh that's an Enterprise story that's like breaking news
I need to you know report on this no one's heard about this um so usuall
y you can like also
find stories by building good relationships with your sources like sometimes I will just you know
I become kind of friends with a few of my sources like we get on calls like every now and then and
they'll like just you know send me a photo being like oh this you know this place is saying they
recycled Synthetic Turf but that's not actually happening so they'll send me a photo and I'm like
that's an incredible angle to a new story so just I guess you know build good relat
ionships with
your sources Beyond The Daily Grind by which I mean you know again your sources are people I mean
you know at the end of the day they're people like they just want to be heard they just want to tell
their own stor so um I try not to treat them as sources all the time I mean yes where when you're
on a story you need to you know keep boundaries but you can still continue to have relationships
with them after you're done with the story and that's how some of my best stories have
come um
just you know by like talking to my sources a few months after the story was done and they were
like hey have you heard about this and I was like whoa that's exciting so um that's like a tip
that has worked for me in the past um so how can you get started and I know all of you probably
have really busy schedules and you're like how do I get into an investigative story when I'm
saddled with so many other stories I've so many other commitments like what do I do to actually
produce an
investigative story and honestly it is possible it will just take some amount of time and
probably some amount of commitment on your part to make sure um you can achieve it but it's totally
possible and as I mentioned it's really easy to do when you can find investigative stories on your
own because that means that you can continue to pursue all these other stories and still make
sure you can get your investigative story done so again as I said cultivate your sources but also
become an aut
hority on your be like know what's happening in and around your being because that
will really help you understand your own story better and maybe dig deeper into a story that
normally you won't have enough time for um think about what are the big questions on my beat what
are the questions that people haven't answered what what isn't happening um and if you can do a
big project because sometimes editors don't want to give you all that time to do a certain project
investigative stories just
require so much time right if you can do that then just do incremental
stories um you can do like short pieces and build up to it so um you you guys have probably heard
of Bob Woodward and um Carl Bernstein working on the Watergate stories they never produced a huge
investigative story on the Watergate um Scandal what happened was a series of incremental stories
over time that they built upon and that turned into a huge investigative project by the end of
it but they didn't know what they
were doing and so that's totally an option if your Eder feels
more comfortable um with giving you like you know a small chance like okay maybe take maybe do
like a thousand word story maybe do a 1500 word story and not an investigative story take that
get started I think that's the best way to like you know see if your story even has viability
to become an investigated story um and really try to find data and documents because really
data and documents they are your best friends especially
when it comes to an investigative
story um because sometimes you can even find stories hidden in the fine print like even data
that's saying one thing if you really look close into it you might find it saying another thing
and data can really help you um make your story stronger because especially with investigative
stories you really have to be careful about um making sure that the harm you're talking about is
really happening so really data and your documents they are your best friends um
and so I have some
more tips and helpful resources just to get you started um what's helped me in the past is talking
to other investigative reporters and just learning from their process um one of my professors at
USC he always told me so he went to India for a story this one time and he was like I just bought
them pizza and beer just to make them talk to me because those workers just did not want to talk
to me um until I did that and I'm not saying you have to do the same thing but it's
really helpful
to know what people have done in the past to make sure they get their sources to make sure they get
their stories um it just helps you on your journey like let's say if your stuck you can be like oh
I I know this guy who did that let me try that you know um so if you know other reporters that
you admire or investigative journalists um just set up coffee chats with them just get to know
them um learn from their process ask questions I mean we are journalists just just ask as m
any
questions as you can um learn from other people I recently attended the IDW Society boot camp
on investigative reporting it was a two-day boot camp and a bunch of speakers came from like
Pro publica um AP Washington Post all of these different organizations and they talked about
their process which um I actually borrowed some of what they taught me to put into this presentation
here so definitely check that out um I think um it's a great resource and the IW Society is really
supportive
of journalists of color um especially when it comes to investigations um because as you
know you know we don't see many people of color in investigative newsrooms and I really believe we
need to change that and you know I think you try to get as many resources as possible just to make
sure you get there um and as I said in my next point if I and night car seem to intimidate it go
to other Society conferences where you feel seen just because those are not the only places where
you can find
investigative reporters even though those are traditionally the investigative
conferences um I've heard so many great you know panels and I've been to so many other um you
know great talks and stuff at conferences like sej where they've talked about their investigative
processes for you know environmental stories and so I don't think think Irene nikar should be your
only source for you know investigations or you know getting tips about investigative journalism
you should go to all of these
other Society conferences um where you meet people who you know
look like you because sometimes that's important when you walk into a room and no one looks like
you when you know your culture or your background isn't appreciated sometimes that can feel like a
let and I definitely felt that at times but you know it really shouldn't have to feel like that
and you know so I I really hope things change in the future but another thing that you should do is
read investigative stories and try to b
reak them down like understand the process understand how
they report on these stories like what was their start what was their finish how did they get from
you know ground like how did they get from point A to point B to point C and how did they report
them because that will really help you understand what you need for your own investigative stories
in the future um and the most important tip that I wanted to give all of you please redefine what
investigative journalism means for you and b
y this I mean is when sometimes you hear about someone
else's investigative process and it doesn't feel like something you would do that doesn't mean you
can't make it as an investigative journalist it just means that your process into investigative
journalism is probably just going to be different and that doesn't make you any less of an
investigate journalist um because every for every person journalism looks different um some people
like asking a lot of questions and there are other peop
le who are just you know happy to sit back
and let the sources talk to them be involved in the whole thing without asking questions um I
met this journalist um at a conference last year her name is Valerie vanan and she is a Native
American journalist and uh you know reports on different indigenous um communities and what she
told me was she doesn't ask them any questions at all she just sits back and let's lets them talk um
she says you know I don't want to be disrespectful sometimes they'
ll tell me stuff and then maybe
I'll ask a few follow-up questions but that's her process even when she does investigations
that's her process she doesn't ask a lot of questions but then there are other people who ask
a lot of questions and that's what works for them so I I think you need to figure out what works
best for you and the only way you're going to do it is R trial and error so don't be afraid to
make mistakes just take as many risks as you can um you know and just just try it jus
t try what
works for you try different kinds of processes um go to these different investigative reporters
set up coffee chats talk to them maybe try a few things out that they tell you and if it doesn't
work for you then you know that it doesn't work for you try something else um but really you know
if someone makes you feel like you can't be an investigative reporter which I've personally heard
in the past two I've had a few professors who were like oh you you can't really be an investiga
tive
journalist if you're not like brave enough to go out there and try and there are some things that
don't work for me but that's fine I am not the journalist that they are um their process is
different doesn't mean that I'm not any good you know so you just need to believe in yourself
and just go forward and trust your profes so some of the investigative stories that I'm working on
for the zyo one is on the impact of lithium mining in Imperial Valley so I don't know if you guys
have hea
rd but uh the Biden Administration has contracted this huge area to build a lithium mine
in Imperial Valley just because there's a huge deposit but that means a lot of communities get
displaced and what really happens after the mine runs out is my question because you know until
the min's there yes there's economic prosperity in the area but as happened with Appalachia in
you know um in the 60s and 70s you know when the mine started running out when the iron business
started you know collap
sing the community started to collapse and there was no economic growth in
these areas and I feared that something similar is going to happen with you know Imperial Valley
and so that's something that I'm looking into I'm also looking into fire insurance in California and
Oregon because um insurance companies have started to pull out which means a lot of people are either
going uninsured or have to pay extremely huge premiums just to make sure that they can stay
safe um and the last story t
hat I'm working on is recycling of Synthetic Turf so if you've ever
heard of Synthetic Turf it's like artificial grass um and a lot of companies say it's eco-friendly
because um you don't have to water it but it can also be recycled but again it can be recycled
but we we know better um there there's like one company that says if recycled Synthetic Turf
but actually it sends all the Synthetic Turf from California to Texas and then it burds it
there because Texas laws are different around um
what can be termed as recycling California
doesn't accept ination as recycling Texas does so anyway we are trying to uncover that story um
a few other stories that I'm working on I'm doing a podcast in redlining and environmental justice
in La um and then there's this community story that I'm looking at which is about eoch chapy
and has you know we can use religion to help fight climate anxiety that's something I'm very
passionate about and I'm working on several other climate communication
projects um at the same
time so as I said journalism is hard but you're here for a reason so trust your gut it's hard but
you can make it I mean I'm pretty sure all of you have your own origin stories with how you got into
journalism why you wanted to be a writer and trust those stories even if they don't sound like the
stories you've heard from me or from other people I think all of those stories are valid because
everyone has a different career path and you know it's not that if your p's
different from somebody
else's that you can't make it you're going to make it all of you in this room are going to make it
so like really trust your own process um and one thing that I've learned over time people love
giving advice like I'm doing that with you guys today giving you so much advice um you can listen
to all of it but you don't have to follow all of it just because you know everyone's process is
different so experiment try do what feels best for you and really just trust your
God so now is
the time for any questions if you guys have any um please feel free to jump in um I have to say um
just thinking about little five-year-old Shrea uh literally becoming a climate journalist in that
moment when you worried about what the future held was was a very powerful image um I want to
ask you a question shre before I open it up to the the journalists I wanted to ask you is um you
know we are living in a time when there's so much push back to inclusion and equity and so mu
ch of
investigative journalism RIT large is about who's getting what and who's not getting what and who's
getting access to resources etc etc so in your reporting how much of that are you encountering
and how do you deal with it when you do um it depends on The Newsroom that I'm a part of
generally um like the xyum we are a small Newsroom and we really don't have as many resources as like
some of the other newsrooms that I worked at like LA Times and count matters there I have access to
so
so much more than I have access to here at the syum and so I spend a lot of my time applying to
Grants just to make sure I can cover the stories that I want to um and that really I mean hurts me
in a sense that you know I could be spending all my time reporting on the story instead of applying
for GRS to report on the story and I mean I'm not saying that I have it bad like it's it's not
bad it's a great place to work and I'm really happy that I'm getting all these experiences but
at the sa
me time I really feel like there needs to be some sort of like balance especially for you
know these small nonprofit newsrooms or like local newsrooms local newsrooms suffer so much because
of lack of resources I mean um I worked at a newsroom in Oregon for a couple of months during
last summer and basically we were covering like three or four stories a week which meant we had
no time to do bigger stories like investigative stories and that's pretty much because a local
newsrooms don't have
enough money to pay their reporters and so you know you can only hire so
much people and they have to cover everything in the area which means we have no resources
for investigated stories but on the other hand sometimes you know these stories also just
never see the light of day just because you know there's so many other priorities that you have
even like when I was in Oregon I heard about so many investigative stories that I could have done
and that I wanted to do but it's just there's
so many other pressing stories that you need to cover
that it just like never gets done um and I don't have an answer to how make how to make it better
you know I I just want um local newsrooms to just get more resources over time um I really hope the
press forward initiative that was launched by the American journalism project I mean I I really
hope that happens and I really hope they give money to more bipo news rooms and local news rooms
let's take a question from Caroline uh introduce y
ourself please oh yes hi my name is Caroline
kovin I'm a Dei reporter for HR dive um heard you definitely on the idea of like a push back
Rachel um especially with like Dei but my question is about climate reporting so I actually recently
started um a substack about climate Justice and like sustainability and I think something that
I'm wrestling with is how do you get like Buy in from readers who aren't necessarily interested
in climate Justice specifically like people in the EJ field and I
think something that I've been
thinking about a lot is um you mentioned like Eco anxiety and I feel like there's like two camps
of people right people who are like constantly like dulling out stats that show like the dire
state of our Earth and how everything is going to be bad soon but then there's also people who
are like on the climate optimism side of things so I think I'm just kind of wrestling with like
how I don't know if I'm asking what's the best approach but what do you feel like
is the most
effective approach when it comes to like climate reporting I try to okay I I do have so many
thoughts about that because that's a question that I ask myself all the time because you
don't want to be too optimistic but you also don't want to be too pessimistic um I think
there exists something in the middle that I like to call informed optimism and so again
it's more about like not or I guess realistic optimism which suggests that you don't have to
go towards the end of greenwa
shing like do not support greenwashing do not be like oh the world's
going to become a better place just because all of these companies say so but at the same time you
can you know promote communities and like I I love telling stories about communities that are
making a difference because I really feel that's one of the best ways to be optimistic but at the
same time you are taking a more realistic step sense that okay these communities are limited it's
just you know you have to spread that
message of Hope just so that you don't push people into the
cycle of doing Gloom but at the same time tell them what's happening like hey this is a crisis
I mean don't be too optimistic we still need to fight it and just remind them that there are so
many people who are fighting it and so we you just have to be one of them um I guess I that's what I
try to do but I I don't think there's like a best approach to it just because um at the end of the
day I think for every reader they feel diff
erently about every story right so you just have to do
what feels best for you and for me I just like to give people the information that I think they
need but at the same time remind them that hey there's still help people are doing something
about the crisis um you asked one more question and I totally forgot what that was oh I feel like
you answered my question really well just about like striking the right balance um I think I also
asked a little bit about getting Buy in from um people
who aren't just in the the environmental
justice space right um yeah I've struggled a lot with that I started a newslet on climate change
when I was um back in grad school and basically what I did was I tried to merge in all of their
other interests Into Climate journalism so like you know one great example that my boss that USC
always gives is how can we connect climate change to things like skiing or outdoor Sports because
that's something that's like really um you know if if you tell peo
ple that hey you can't ski
anymore alarm belts are going to rise right so you know you just have to like connect all of
these different climate change topics to things that people actually care about like people care
about job security how is climate change going to impact their job security um you can talk about
pocketbook issues like people care about their electricity bills right they care about their
energy bills their water bills so you can bring in climate change through those angles
and be
you know I guess Market your newsletter or your substack in a way and I would love to know what
your sub's called by the way love to subscribe um but you can Market it in a way that basically
tells people that hey if you're worried about these different issues then this is the perfect
newsletter to subscribe to because I will be talking about all of them and how climate change
affects them and that's just one idea I mean like you should go for what you feel is right thank
you let's
go to Julian now hey Shrea I'm Julian srau I'm a fellow at the Boston Globe um I want to
ask you a little bit about like the international reporting that y'all do like how do y'all find
people in those places to do those stories for one you know how do you stay connected what's
that kind of like logistically and also with a lot of people who might not have done journalism
before how do y'all go about you know training them up quickly and also like supporting them in
their journey of like fi
guring out out how to do it right of course um so a lot of international
folks they just show up like they just like pitch stories to us um we don't really go about finding
them anymore because I think the asylums kind of made a reputation for being a safe haven for
international journalists to report on report for you know um so at this point journalists just
come to us and we try to take as many stories as we can just because we want to make sure give them
a voice because I I mean I know
how hard it is to pitch stories to different places personally I've
written so many pitches and nothing ever comes out of it right and sometimes for new writers it can
be really tough to write a convincing pitch um that makes you know actually get somewhere and so
we try to take as many pictures as we can from new journalists just because we want to make sure you
know they get a space to start writing stuff um logistically it can be really difficult especially
when working with Internationa
l journalists just because of time zones um it can be kind of tough
so some of these stories end up having a longer time than we actually wanted to give them like
you know um the turnover time can be much much longer than um we would actually like but that's
okay as long as we get the work accomplished um I feel like we've accomplished what we wanted
to um in terms of training um I just sometimes you know like to you know let the writers ask me
questions about what works best or you know as
k them questions about what works best for them um
during the editing process is usually when a lot of learning happens um I'm the kind of editor
that likes to rewrite the piece entirely and so I'll like you know leave comments on their
original version but then I also like go back and rewrite it and I'm like you know you can just
take whatever you want to you can reject whatever you don't want in there and I feel like that
works really well for a bunch of writers but I also try to be sympa
thetic to you know what the
writer wants how the writer wants to be edited because I know that doesn't make everyone happy
the first time when you like see someone rewriting your entire piece sometimes that's not really
encouraging um but that's how I've learned from my editors when like they would rewrite the entire
top of my story and then I was like wow this is so much better than what I had before um but I really
feel for every single person it works differently right so I just try to g
ive them as resources that
I can um I try to help them report when I can I try to help with like factchecking or like finding
more data just like literally whatever they need mahare oh I think that you answered my question I
was just going to ask you about freelance pitches um and whether there are any pitches that you guys
have ever turned down um and I was also curious the international story that you showed us earlier
whether that was a freelance pitch um um that was a freelance pitch an
d we do turn down a lot of
stories just because um I mean we can't actually take all of the stories right we do operate on a
pretty small budget and Alex and I are the only editors in the room so it can get pretty hard you
know just managing a lot of stories but we really try very hard to give voice to new journalists
um as much as we can sometimes we take pictures obviously we think certain pictures are better
than others but really as much as we can we do try to give voice to new journali
sts y should know
that um one of the covering rare diseases fellows for npf uh for 2023 wrote her her project for the
Asylum it as Crystal Chow from Hong Kong and so that's how I learned about the publication and
that's how I I came up with you so so funny the way those things work I'm going to jump in and
if there are any other questions please ceue up so that we can know who has a question but I W to
do some some real talk here and and I don't want you to take this as patronizing or anyth
ing other
than the way it's intended but when I started out God 40 years ago um and I would walk into The
Newsroom or in or in to let's say the mayor's office of the small town in Florida where I was
working I would be immediately if not greeted with what the heck are you doing here uh you I
did not give you permission to speak to me there was a lot of sort of barriers to me doing my job
based on how I looked and you know 40 pounds ago I and 30 years years ago I looked young and so there
w
as a way that people sort of automatically didn't think that I was there to do business similarly
when I wound up at uh the national public radio working at NPR and N DC on the science desk uh I
was met with a sort of you're a science reporter uh how what do you know about this topic or you
know wanting calling experts and then having them come into the studio and they'd spoken to me on
the phone but meeting me in person it's like oh you're black so I what I want to ask you about is
in this
realm uh how are you coming across those same kinds of interactions or has things gotten
better since I started out you know things have gotten a bit better because I think people are
more afraid to be called racist in today's times and I'm not saying like people have become less
racist over time I think people are just more afraid that you know being a journal I think
they realize how much power journalists have um and you know they they know if I like you
know call them racist or if I sa
y you know I met with this person and they did not treat
me the way that they should have with a lot of respect um they're going to called out for it
and so I feel that way things have gotten better but I still do experience at times like um when I
lived in Rural Oregon there were a few times when I W walked into a room trying to do a story and
you know I'm kind of like I'm 53 and I'm skinny so I look small too and they just like sometimes
talk to me in a patronizing tone um just because I
I look young and I sound young and they're like
oh she's just a young woman of color like you know she doesn't know what she's talking talking about
and so they talk to me in a patronizing way um personally I just try not to take it personally
because I know it's nothing about me it's about them you know it's they I mean if they think
I have no power then they are the ones who are wrong and I just try to like go ahead with as
many questions um and one thing I realized like being a journalis
t it's it's fun because like
you can pretend to be dumb even when you're not like sometimes you know I just like want to get
my story and get out of there and I will just like let them talk to me the way they want to and
get my story and get out of there but I really do wish things were better I mean like I wish I
didn't have to go through that I wish people did treat me with more respect um sometimes it
will bring up the fact that I do have a science degree to you know get the point across
and being
like hey I I know you're talking to me this way but I don't understand what you're talking
about like the jargon is getting through so you don't have to do that but um I mean it really
depends on the kind of person I'm talking to like some some old white folks sometimes I just like
you know I I don't want to get into trouble I I I don't want to make a scene and so sometimes I
just like let them talk to me um in the way they want to but yeah I don't know if that's answering
your
question in one sense yes I'm very pleased to hear you say that you feel that uh things are
better certainly not as openly hostile as as some of the things that I've experienced but I guess
what reason I asked is because of there's so much backlash now and there's so much and as you you
stated that people are afraid to be called racist but you know I I have my doubts even about that
given the the what we're facing this year in the election cycle and the sort of overall mood in
the country b
ut um I I'm going to start skewing towards the positive uh based on what you've said
I I feel like young people who are prepared and empowered and and kind of uh are pragmatic about
it they could probably deal with it a lot better than I did I'm going to let aity jump in I just
want to say one more thing to that oh I'm so sorry I'm just going to add one more thing to that
um I've learned that being fired with people and like standing your own ground really helps
like especially in situation
s that can become a bit worse than what I talked about um because
I do have like a few friends like uh one of my friends Maya Vette she's a reporter for USA Today
and she has been covering the elections recently going to all of these different places in the
South and she is from the South but she's black and so she understands like she's you know faced a
lot of racism just not only as a journalist but as a black woman growing up in the South and the way
she does it is she just like stands t
o ground when someone you know doesn't treat her the way she
deserves to be treated she'll just kind of she won't outwardly call them racist but she's just
going to be firm and like stand her ground and she's someone that I learn a lot from personally
um and how to deal with you know um these kind of sticky situations but um that just wanted to
wrp that that really helps sometimes thanks hi Shrea thank you for doing this I am a writer for
CNN uh I wanted to ask you uh something that you men
tioned uh earlier in your Pres presentation um
when you're accepting pitches or you know reading through pitches for xylm uh do you take the same
approach where you would rather work with a writer on like uh The Brick by Brick building a story
instead of like a big investigation like blowing a story wide open do you like what what how would
you uh you know approach a new relationship with a new writer like are you thinking hey let us get
him or her to do this one small story first and then
get a second version or are you like open
to the full thing from the go start um that's the benefit of working with the sylm if someone
pitches us an investigative story and you know it sounds like a good pitch we'll take it um
usually when we're working with a new writer um we are a bit more skeptical just because we
don't know if they'll end up producing the stuff that they promise but you know we don't pay
people a lot I mean because we were a small News Room unfortunately like we would
love to
pay people more but we can't um because we do operate on a limited budget and so we just try
to give people opportunities as much as they can um usually when like people pitch a story to us
and we accept it we'll like sign a whole contract and it's not a lot of money that we can offer even
for a longer story like um we usually offer people have written for us before a bit more money just
because you know we we know that they're going to turn in something that um I mean and it depend
s
on like the length of the piece too but like if you've written for us before and it's a longer
piece then we might be able to offer you more money just because you have credibility behind
you but again if it's a new writer we will still offer like if it's a good story that they've
pitched we will still you know offer them a contract and everything um it just may come with
less benefits but again we do try um to take in as many stories as we can and even if it's an
investigative Story by
a new writer we try to take it um if it sounds like a good pitch um they
might they might need more handholding than other people and you know that's like where we come in
um we are willing to give you know give them all the chances and give them as many resources as
they need because um I mean Alex and I we both really believe in that message just because um I
needed a doll of hand handholding when I started my career Alex got the same from other people
and so we really believe that we wan
t to be you know a support system for new writers are there
any other questions if not I'm going to to jump right in and and wrap this up [Music] um I sort of
have the feeling that the issue of climate change is uh ultimately almost the sort of generational
centerpiece for so many different conversations as you said and as I started out by saying that you
know thinking of you as that 5-year-old girl but when we think of adults and and parents in this
moment right now who are bringing childr
en into this world into a world where 30 years from now
who knows what we're talking about so again to sort of get back to the earlier question about
how do you frame them in ways that don't come across as you know panic and let's run into the
streets but when it comes to people of color and poor people and who are are dealing with the the
the biggest impacts of climate change any advice on how to to frame those stories in ways that
help lessen the sort of otherness of this topic that it it
it's too bad if you live in the ninth
ward or it's too bad if you live in in Bundi or whatever how what advice do you have on helping us
do that um talk about communities honestly that's kind of been my approach to reporting on you know
disadvantaged communities just because even within those disadvantaged communities they're always
there's always like a few Community leaders who are trying to make things better for other
people and they don't operate alone I mean they have a whole Army be
hind them usually um
I mean when they're starting out sometimes they operate alone but like you know everyone needs
support to make sure um things get better like to make things better um the podcast series that
I've been working on um one of the podcasts talks about basement flooding in New York especially
as a lot of immigrants live in these basement apartments um there was this one guy I mean
he's been just like you know going out there you know um lobbying for Change and like trying
to
make sure people have a better life but like at the same time he's connected to all of these
different organizations who are trying to help him get there and so when you talk about disadvantaged
communities in like different parts of the world I mean there are so many people who you know
may not have heard of those places but there are Community leaders who want like within those
communities who want to make things better and usually you can kind of be you know the rain maker
for them like
connect them to other people either through a story or just like for me I guess like
journalism is not just about publishing stories I think it's about like really trying to you know
make people's lives better and so even when I'm doing a story sometimes like someone will tell me
oh I'm going through all of this and I'll just be like hey I've heard of this organization that like
does this do you want me to connect to connect you to them and even though that's not part of my job
I will do t
hat just because I I mean that's why I became a journalist to help them right and even
if I don't help them through the journalism at least I can help them with like a connection or
something um but I guess yeah I I totally lost my train of thought but I guess I what I was trying
to say is you know I think it's really important to Center those disadvantaged people in terms ter
of communities just so they realize they're not alone and they aren't alone it's just like if
people haven't heard
about what's happening to them they can feel alone but that's where we come
in and we make the difference well that's really what it boils down to I I think sometimes people
are intimidated by the the term science journalism or science reporters or think you have to get
into the weeds and get technical but it really boils down to telling stories and often these are
stories that that have been ignored and neglected is that would you agree with that absolutely
absolutely and I really think th
at science reporting doesn't have to be all about data and
facts because like the communities that do get shaped by science they they don't know about the
data or the facts they just know about their own personal experiences and I think that's what's the
most important when it comes to you know telling these stories and like making sure these stories
connect to other people and you share experiences um like I mean that's how you know I mean with
my friends like I don't talk about the data w
hen it comes to climate change I talk about how I'm
feeling or this like new thing I heard about that might make people's lives better and so really I
think about it like like like making new friends through sharing stories you know what a terrific
way to end uh this conversation and this whole day of conversations about investigative reporting and
what is the role or what is the need for people who look like us to be involved in the process
so I want to take this opportunity Shrea agal of
the xylm and so many other organizations
to thank you so much for joining widening the [Music] pipeline
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