The Sidney Hillman Foundation talks to the monthly Sidney winners about the impact of their work, and the stories left untold.

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MAY: Mac McClelland discusses her story about the wives of fishermen who have been affected by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

1.Why did you decide to look into fishermen's wives?

Originally, I was just looking into counseling for everyone in the area; I'd heard, from living here the last couple months, that clinics still providing services for Katrina victims were having to retool and ramp up their efforts for locals newly traumatized by the oil disaster. But no sooner had I talked to any of the counselors than I realized that most of these services were going to women, whose husbands are more reluctant to seek psychological assistance.

2. What surprised you as you did your research?

I got emotionally overwhelmed faster than I would have guessed. I lived in New Orleans during Katrina, and am well aware of what it's like when that deep hopelessness sets in, but I hadn't expected it to be so much worse this time around. The scope of this disaster and the scale and duration of the impact it's going to have on affected people has just slammed the whole coast with despair. I had to sit on the notes for the story for two weeks, because every time I tried to write it, my own Katrina trauma issues rushed in, and I got too upset.

3. What has the response been since you published it?

One of the counseling organizations thanked me for portraying the situation so frankly and honestly, which meant a lot. Also, one of my readers sent a giant shipment of toilet paper to one of the clinics, in response to my reporting that these hard-on-cash families couldn't procure it with the grocery vouchers they get from charity.

4. Is there something you wish you had room to include in the piece but could not?

My editors were great about letting me include as much detail and information as I wanted, no matter how long I went on or how depressing it got. But I'd love to spend more time with the women involved; I could've followed any one of them for weeks.

5. If you went back to this story in another year, what would you want to follow-up on?

I definitely want to keep an eye on these clinics' financial situations. As it is, they're woefully underfunded, and now - in the midst of the media coverage of the spill - should be the easiest time to get grants and donations. It's very possible their funding needs will continue to be unmet, and budget constraints on these crucial mental-health services could be devastating for the region's survival and recovery.

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 MAY: Michael Powell discusses his story about the effects of the recession on the African American community in Memphis.

1.Why did you decide to look into the effects of the recession on African American communities in Memphis?

A year ago, I wrote a piece with a colleague, Janet Roberts, on the foreclosure epidemic in New York City and its devastating effect on African Americans homeowners; banks have given blacks sub-prime loans at rates far greater than for white homeowners. Then I wrote of the City of Baltimore and its lawsuit against Wells Fargo, in which city officials charged that the bank’s discriminatory practices deepened Baltimore’s foreclosure problems.

The subject, race & foreclosure, came to haunt me. Given our nation’s terrible historical legacy with race, I was struck that we – policy makers in Washington, bank and mortgage officials and so on – had unleashed a whirlwind once more, to devastating effect.

I saw in Memphis a lens through which to examine this problem. Memphis now had an African American majority, and it was a place where blacks had made real economic strides in the past two decades, particularly in building wealth through their homes. That’s all gone now. The tale of that fall—and the role that banks played in it—had a power to it.

2. What surprised you as you did your research?

I had worked as a tenant organizer in a black and West Indian neighborhood in Brooklyn long ago, and so I was aware of the toll taken by block-busting, redlining and workaday discrimination. Still, the way in which the Great Recession has vaporized black wealth, the statistical totality of that destruction, surprised and frankly angered me. Because blacks came late to home ownership, much more of their wealth is wrapped up in their homes than for white families.

Beyond that, blacks in Memphis often were the first to get laid off, and often lacked retirement and health plans. It’s useful to be reminded that sometimes our ‘post-racial’ age is not quite so post-racial as we might like to imagine.

3. What has the response been since you published it?

I was surprised, frankly, by the depth and breadth of the response. I received dozens and dozens of emails, and the piece apparently sat atop the most-emailed list (our own Neilsen meter, God help us) for a few days. Some of the readers were angry and some blamed the homeowners, preferring to see a exclusive narrative of individual irresponsibility rather than systemic defrauding. But many more readers seemed genuinely moved, and a number of congressman promised to investigate this.

I’ll believe that when I see it.

4. Is there something you wish you had room to include in the piece but could not?

Oh, you always have themes you’d like to expand on, characters you’d love to flesh out. I would have liked to take a single homeowner and a single house and drilled down, walking a reader through the numbers and explaining how a hard-working, bright homeowner could sign mortgage papers that wound up destroying him. The process is not quite so mysterious as some readers suggested in their emails; rather few of us, I'd bet, read the fine print in that mound of closing papers. And I’d like to expand a bit on the role of the banks, Wells Fargo for sure, but also some of the other banks.

5. If you went back to this story in another year, what would you want to follow-up on?

I hope to get back there in the next six months. I’d like to follow a few homeowners, or former homeowners, as they attempt to rebuild their lives. And I’d like to follow that lawsuit.

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APRIL: Doug Struck discusses his Sidney winning investigation into carbon offsets fraud and new models for investigative journalism.

1.Why did you decide to look into carbon offsets fraud?

Several years ago, while I was reporting for The Washington Post, I went to a conference at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The scientists there were in a tizzy over a scheme by a California company to fertilize the ocean with iron, estimate the carbon sucked up by the blooming algae, and sell that carbon as an "offset." I did not write about it then, but as I kept hearing about offsets offered to counterbalance one's "carbon footprint," I wondered whether other offset projects were as far-fetched and controversial as that idea. After I left The Post, I happened to mention my musings to Joe Bergantino at the New England Center for Investigative Reporting, and he seized on it. "Great story," he said, "Now go find some funding to do it."

That was the start of a real experiment in "new models" of journalism. We eventually got financing from a philanthropical foundation, the Deer Creek Foundation, for reporting by the non-profit new England Center for Investigative Reporting. We approached and teamed up with the Christian Science Monitor, one of a dwindling number of news organizations that still have a highly respected foreign staff. The Monitor, which has moved on-line daily but has a weekly print magazine, was commendably open to the idea. Editor John Yemma was willing to work with our non-profit, and we further involved both my students at Emerson College and students at Boston University. So the "model" was foundation-nonprofit-mainstream media-academic, and the resulting story was in print, video, on-line and even radio. It was a hybrid that worked, but involved hundreds of emails among the parties. It undoubtedly could have been done more efficiently by a sole news organization, but they are not doing projects like this as they did before newsrooms were hit with layoffs.

2. What surprised you as you did your research?

I got into the story thinking the theory of voluntary carbon offsets was good, but expecting to find a few bad apples. As we got further into the research, I was surprised to find the theoretical underpinnings of these offsets are as slithery and elusive as financial derivatives. That has lured a wide cast of financial prospectors seeking gold in the wallets of consumers. There are, undoubtedly, some well-intentioned players in the offset market. But I came out of the research skeptical that very many of these offsets really do what buyers think they do. Most don't immediately counterbalance one's carbon footprint by creating a new reduction in greenhouse gases. Too often, buyers are paying for offsets that won't happen, won't happen for years, or already has happened for some other purpose.

3. What has the response been since you published it?

With the widely dispersed audience of our digital age, it's unclear. I do know the package has been trumpeted by some who deny climate change or man's contribution to it. If their reasoning is that the flaws in voluntary offsets are argument that we should do nothing to reduce greenhouse gases, I find that wrongheaded and unfortunate.

4. If you went back to this story in another year, what would you want to follow-up on?

Climate change legislation before Congress could create a cap-and-trade for even more offsets, although ones subject to much more regulation and scrutiny. I would be curious to see if that has passed, has been implemented, and is working with a lot more legitimacy than voluntary offsets.

 

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MARCH: Alex Halperin discusses his Sidney winning story about the perils of natural gas drilling.

1.Why did you decide to look into natural gas drilling?

I like stories where environmental ideals bump into economic realities. Initially I wanted to learn more about how fracking [hydraulic fracturing] would affect New York City's water supply, which turned out not to be a big part of the piece. When I started talking to people who'd leased their land for thousands of dollars and still felt ripped off it was pretty clear there was a good story.

2. What surprised you as you did your research?

I was surprised by how divided opinion is. New Yorkers are looking at the drilling situation in Pennsylvania and drawing wildly different conclusions. Some people see an environmental disaster while others perceive an economic miracle. This sounds like a familiar story. But as Sarah Laskow shows in her terrific companion piece An Unnatural Alliance, natural gas, as an abundant and clean burning fossil fuel, is attractive to many pragmatic liberals. Like most of reality, elements of the natural gas story don't fit the usual red state/blue state narrative.

3. Is there something you wish you had room to include in the piece but could not?

I'd go deeper into the differences between the contracts signed by individual lessors and those signed by members of landowner coalitions. Bruce Murray sat down at his kitchen table and thought of a few things he'd like the gas companies to do. The landowner coalitions have produced heavily-lawyered, incredibly detailed contracts with more environmental protections and even a more favorable way to quantify the amount of gas produced. Despite the environmental degradation it's very hard to tell someone not to lease their land for $5,500 per acre plus 20% royalties. They're taking a calculated risk in tough times. But it's important to stress that these companies have more information and more resources than the lessors. They drive a hard bargain whether or not a potential lessor is prepared.

 4. If you went back to this story in another year, what would you want to follow-up on?

Most people think fracking is inevitable. I'd love to follow up a few months after it began. 

 

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FEBRUARY: New York Times reporter David Barstow talks about covering the Tea Party movement for his Sidney award winning story.

1. Why did you decide to look into the Tea Party Movement?

When the Tea Party movement exploded last summer, it became clear to me and my editors that we needed to take a deep look at this phenomenon and its ideology, members, organization and goals. I set out to do this last fall, travelling the country and attending Tea Party rallies in more than a dozen states.
 
2. What surprised you as you did your research?

 I think what surprised me most was the extent to which the Tea Party movement was drawing in droves of political newcomers, people who had never been activists and had no experience protesting. The other big surprise was the extent to which the Tea Party movement was helping to transform these newcomers in terms of their political thinking. Although typically conservative, Tea Party supporters were flocking to a political ideology intensely hostile to both major parties. They were embracing in particular the ideology of the Patriot movement, a political framework historically associated with militia groups, anti-immigration groups, libertarians and those who have long cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Federal Reserve and the federal income tax.

3. What has the response been since you published it?

The story seemed to touch a nerve. We had more than 1,500 written responses from readers to the piece in less than 24 hours. It quickly exploded in the blogosphere, touching off passionate debate at both ends of the political spectrum. Clearly many Americans are struggling to make sense of the Tea Party movement and its potential implications for our politics.
 
4. If you went back to this story in another year, what would you want to follow-up on?

This is an interesting question. I would be looking for several things in the next year. First is the question of how the Tea Party movement resolves its relationship with the Republican Party. Will it be absorbed by the GOP, or will it retain its independence? If Tea Party candidates emerge in Republican primaries, how will they fare? To what extent will Tea Party supporters back third party candidates? There are two other big questions ahead. The first is which politician captures the energy of the Tea Party movement heading into 2012. The second is the extent to which the Tea Party reshapes policy and government in Washington.    

 

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JANUARY: Anderson Cooper, host of "Anderson Cooper 360°," talks about his Sidney Winning coverage of Haiti.

1. Why have you committed yourself  to this story of human tragedy and government failure with so much more energy than most of the rest of American media?

I think all of us still covering this story wish there were more reporters from other networks still on the ground. Thankfully, CNN is committed to reporting on what is still unfolding. My producer, Charlie Moore, my cameraman, Neil Hallsworth and I, and all the other CNN teams in Haiti, feel that what the Haitian people continue to face everyday is extraordinary, and the least we can do is to bear witness to their struggle. Unless the world continues to pay attention to what is happening in Haiti, there is a good chance that the needs of the Haitian people will once again be forgotten.

2. What has been the response to your work?

The response among Haitians and Haitian-Americans has been very positive. I think they want the story told, and appreciate the lengths to which we have gone to do that.

3. What should Americans know?

That the tragedy is ongoing. There is a lot more happening in Haiti than the 10 American missionaries in jail. Hundreds of thousands are homeless sleeping on the streets or in parks. People are hungry, and schools are closed, and the Haitian government has shown little ability to meet the needs of its people.

4. Do you see any hope for fundamental change for Haiti through the recovery process?

I don't think it is my job to be hopeful or to be pessimistic. I just try to report what I see. I can tell you most of the Haitians I've talked to want more from their own government, and I do think unless there is strong leadership on the ground in Haiti, it will be very difficult to truly bring about lasting change.

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DECEMBER - Tony Judt, professor of history and frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, talks about his Sidney-winning essay and his thoughts on social justice journalism.

1. How did you decide to write this?

I had been thinking about these matters for some time, as you can see from some of my earlier essays. But I decided to use the occasion of a public lecture I was due to give in October to pull my thoughts together and try to say something of broader consequence. And of course I was moved to do so by what I see as the sadly diminished condition of radical political conversation – in this country and abroad – as well as by the profound inequities and injustices which seem to me to have resurfaced in the course of the past generation.

2. What was the response to this work?

Remarkable and very favorable. I’ve been especially pleased at the number of young people who responded to the lecture or the essay by asking that I elaborate on a number of themes – in part because they had never heard anyone address them before (!). I’ve also had some very interesting and serious responses from people in Europe, actively interested in social policy and efforts to revive the energies of the social democratic left. It’s been most gratifying to know i) that so many people care and ii) that I appear to have struck a chord in my approach.

3. What is your opinion on the state of social justice journalism and writing in the US?

I can’t pretend to be familiar with every journal and journalist at work in this field. But I will say this: over the past three decades, I think we have seen a steady decline in the quality and courage of social justice journalism and writing, here in the US as in the UK (where I came from). To some extent this has been compensated by the admirable American tradition of muckraking journalism, especially those writers who have addressed issues related to war, financial misbehavior, the social condition of the underclass and so forth. But what is lacking, it seems to me, is the sort of intellectual or political overview which helps readers make sense of the bad news that they read. Without that sort of synoptic writing, you simply end up with a depressed and resigned citizenry – aware of what is wrong but adrift when it comes to imagining what to do about it.

 

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NOVEMBER - Dave Jamieson, a freelance writer based in Washington D.C. and winner of the November Sidney, talks about what frequent 911 callers taught him about the health care system in "The Treatment of Kenny Farnsworth."

1. When did you first hear about this story and why did you decide to look into it?

As is often the case, I knew the kind of profile I wanted to write long before I knew who exactly my subject would be. When I was a beat reporter in Washington I used to do ride-alongs with firefighters and paramedics. I was surprised to see how many of the same patients these first responders handled day in and day out—the so-called “frequent fliers”—and how the medics developed such emotionally complicated relationships with them. I found it all fascinating. So for years I wanted to write about someone who was essentially a ward of the city’s ambulances and emergency rooms and to look at all the economic questions such a person raises.

I first heard about Kenny Farnsworth in 2007; it seemed whenever I dropped his name to a firefighter or paramedic I got some kind of amusing story in return. Once I got serious about tracking him down I started leaving my card at some of his usual haunts—a firehouse, a tow lot, etc. He gave me a ring one day back in the spring and we started hanging out.

2. What surprised you most as you began following Farnsworth?

What surprised me the most was how the context of the story changed while I was working on it. Initially, we didn’t intend to do a health care story, per se. I was just interested in frequent fliers and how some cities are changing how they handle them, taking more of a social worker’s approach than a paramedic’s. But then this whole health care debate started raging. My wise editor at the Post, David Rowell, said we should take a closer look at where frequent fliers fit into the health care crisis. As it turns out, we do waste a lot of money handling problems in the emergency room when we could be treating them much more cheaply through primary care. And I felt like Kenny’s own story did a nice job of illustrating those larger problems and inefficiencies.

3. What has the response been since you published it?

Kenny tends to provoke a lot of passion in people. Paramedics and nurses have devoted so much time to him over the years that many of them see him as a scourge. And yet he’s nice enough and colorful enough to stir a lot of sympathy in others. It’s been more or less the same with those who’ve read his story—a frothy brew of compassion and outrage. As one woman wrote me, “I was torn between feeling sympathy for Mr. Farnsworth and latent anger at how his actions will indirectly affect my health care bills.”

4. Is there something you wish you had room to include in the piece but could not?

Privacy laws can make it very difficult to report stories dealing with health care. It would have been nice to delve more into Kenny’s particular health problems, but some of the physicians I reached out to were understandably cagey about discussing an individual patient in print. Same for paramedics and hospital workers. It also would’ve been nice to spend some time in emergency rooms talking to people, but again you run into privacy laws there. I really came to sympathize with full-time health reporters—there are more legal hurdles in that niche than in most others.

5. If you went back to this story in another year, what would you want to follow-up on?

I’d be curious to see if more cities have started targeting frequent fliers for treatment outside of the ambulance and the emergency room. There have been some great successes in places like San Francisco and Washington in that regard, and though it’s hard to calculate it looks like those programs are saving cities and hospitals real money, as well as changing quite a few lives for the better.

And of course, I’d like to see how Kenny is doing in another year. Whether he’s still visiting the hospital routinely, whether he’s got a fresh stack of medical bills, and whether he finds himself in a stable living arrangement or out on the street. It certainly would be nice to see him in a better place.

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OCTOBER -Katy Bolger, graduate student at the school of journalism at New York University and winner of the October Sidney, talks about reporting on the Navajo Nation for her piece in the series, "The Forgotten Navajo: People In Need."

What surprised you most as you began to look into the Navajo Nation?

Going in, I knew little to nothing about the Navajo Nation, its people or its issues; coming out, I was overwhelmed by the task: how to write a story of such magnitude, to hit on the big picture, while focusing on the specific stories, to do justice to the Nation's history while relaying the immediacy of the problems. The answer, of course, was in the voices of the people, but not just the victims, rather all the people: those who are underserved, as well as those who hold out a hand to the Navajos: their own politicians, coal company representatives, academics, and government bureaucrats. The story speaks for itself.

What has the response been since you published it?

The response to the story of the travails of the Navajo people has been sympathy, of course, but also incredulity. Well-educated, well informed people have a hard time accepting the stories I tell them about the things I have learned: it just doesn't seem possible in this day and age....

If you went back to this story in another year, what would you want to follow-up on?

There are two additional stories I would like to write about: The first is about the Bennett Freeze and its lasting effects in the Nation. The second story is about the two governments: the United States and the Navajo Nation and how the very nature of two sovereign governments with jurisdiction make strange and undemocratic bedfellows.

Have you done any social justice journalism before? Do you plan to continue with this type of work?

I had a conversation with a colleague today who talked about the conflict between the right to do something and the responsibility to not do it. This seems like an interesting theme to keep in mind as I continue to investigate social injustices.

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