Reporters can move child welfare coverage beyond tragedy
Morning light, five years ago, I sat down with a coffee and a shiny new assignment: a year to cover the foster care system. One subject. No fixed deadlines. What could possibly go wrong?
By afternoon, my chest tightened. My yearlong project was doomed. Every article I read struck the same note: tragedy. Academic journals, on the other hand, burst at the seams with topics we ought to be covering: parsing poverty from neglect, illuminating racial disparities, perpetual workforce crisis and much more.
How, I wondered, had we missed all of this?
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