Lessons Learned From Talking to Jennifer Berry Hawes, Reporter for ProPublica
Our conversation with the Pulitzer Prize winner was both a career narrative and highly instructive.
Let's try a slightly different approach to recapping our latest interview, this one with Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Jennifer Berry Hawes of ProPublica and a former longtime reporter on the watchdog team for the Charleston Post and Courier.
As I interviewed Jennifer, I realized that this episode abounded with good lessons for current and aspiring journalists and decided to release it today rather than Friday. Hope this write-up will inspire you to listen to the episode.
Keep an open mind if you're not sure about journalism as a career
Journalism was not originally in Jennifer's plans when she went to college in Chicago, but then …
" I was a psychology major because I loved getting into people's minds and hearing people's stories. One day I went to a party and I met this guy. He and I've been married for 30 years now. He was already working as a freelance photographer for a number of outlets. As I hung out with him more, I got to know the journalists that he worked with.
I never in a million years would've thought of myself as someone who had become a journalist because I had this idea that reporters are hard-charging, aggressive, super uber-confident. I certainly didn't see myself in that stereotype. But as I met actual journalists, I thought, maybe I could do this."
Sometimes a long series can start with one story
Jennifer's yearlong work on segregation academies (private schools created after Brown v Board of Education that didn't represent the racial makeup of the community they were in and were intended to separate white students from other races) was not intended at first to be an eight-story (and counting) series …
"We began with one story, the first one (about how Camden, Alabama deals with a divided school district). Then I met a woman in Macon, Georgia. She'd been one of the first black children to desegregate the schools there, and her great-granddaughter now attends a segregation Academy, or at the time did.
I thought that was so fascinating that we decided, let's break that out into its own story. Then somebody said, we should do a short documentary about that family, which we did. And then as we reported, we said we should see how much in voucher money is going to segregation academies that are still creating segregating forces in their communities. So then we did that story.
It's one of those where it's just like a snowball and you keep seeing different paths to go down and explore."
Importance of teamwork
Collaborative efforts, like the Pulitzer Prize-winning series with The Charleston Post and Courier on how South Carolina handles instances of domestic violence and her work on a series about segregation academies in the south for ProPublica, demonstrate the power of working effectively within a team.
"In my early days of journalism, it was sort of like the reporter is head of the show. And then there's the photographer and whoever else, and that is such a wrong way to approach it. I was sensitive to that because my husband was a newspaper photographer for half of his career.
I have learned over the years that there is nothing that's going to draw people into your story better than excellent art and good photography.
It's so important to think of yourself as part of a team that is bringing different storytelling eyes and different storytelling techniques to the table, because, if you have five creative people around, why not tap all of them? They're all great. They're all trying to do the same thing and tell the story in a fantastic way. And you alone don't have all the answers. And I certainly don't think that I have all the answers.
ProPublica, for instance, they have all these different teams, data teams and research teams. And these are all people who bring incredible ideas to the table. When you mentioned the team, I try to think about it that way. That it's just everybody putting forth their best storytelling and reporting chops."
Maintain emotional boundaries
I always like to ask reporters how they manage their mental health when covering heartbreaking tragedies. The answers I get have been highly customized to the person. I've spoken to some reporters who found it extremely challenging because they were overly familiar with trauma within their family and friend group and couldn't stop thinking that such a tragedy could happen to them (some reporters left beats because of it).
Jennifer has tried to find a way to deal with it.
" I certainly don't profess to have some sort of expertise in that. I'm not sure how great I am at it.
I was writing a story about these two little boys who both had the same terminal brain tumor, and one of them died and he was nine years old, and he was the same age as my son at the time.
And I remember when he died, I was sitting in my bedroom talking to someone. My son and my husband were in my backyard throwing a baseball. And I was just overwhelmed with this sadness for this family who'd lost this child and thinking about my own son and my own family. I had this realization that this is so sad. But it's not my story. This is their story.
And when I was working on the book about the church shooting, I really had to employ that a lot. As a journalist, I want to be sensitive and accurate and in-depth. But ultimately the loss that people have suffered is not my loss. And if I try to carry with me their loss as if it's mine, there's no way I'm going to put one foot in front of the other, not doing story after story like this."
Void to fill: data journalism
When I asked Jennifer what industry voids a young journalist could look to fill, this is how she responded.
"One of the key areas I would focus on is data, is having a good understanding of using data sets. That has become so important, and there's so much data out there, and as we're moving into a world of data analytics more and more and more, I think having an understanding of how to do that journalism is going to be more and more valuable. I know for the kind of work, especially that I do and at ProPublica that we do, data is so important and being able to work with those big data sets puts you a little ahead of everybody else."
There were many other lessons shared throughout this interview, including the value of following up after the initial story has settled, the importance of continually opening doors when interviewing, and several others that would be helpful to aspiring journalists. Please listen, subscribe, and reach out!
