A reporter's efforts to make locals aware of air pollution from a nearby landfill show that community journalism doesn't have to be published online or in a newspaper, Karen Maniraho writes for Columbia Journalism Review.
Sarah Wade began working at the Bristol Herald Courier in 2020. The city, which straddles the Tennessee-Virginia border, has a landfill that smells terrible and has allegedly caused many locals to experience headaches, eye and nose irritation and nausea. Wade published several stories and stayed on the topic after becoming a freelancer. In August she published a 3,000-word treatment in the nonprofit digital news outlet Southerly. It detailed repeated delays to fix the problem, including "recordkeeping failures and poor communication between city staff and consultants," Maniraho reports.
After the piece was published, a Southerly community listening session revealed that many in Bristol, especially elderly, low-income, and Black residents, didn't have internet access or weren't on social media, Maniraho reports. So Wade and Southerly turned to what is has been called America's first social media: pamphlets. They boiled down the essence of the article into a pamphlet and distributed copies around Bristol. Even now, locals are still passing it around and keeping the heat on local officials.
Wade found the project revelatory. "You know, reporting can look like a big long investigative feature," she told Maniharo. "And it can also look like the kind of pamphlet you normally associate with, like, the YMCA."
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