You Don’t Just Take, You Give
In this past year my classmates and I’ve been rethinking journalism.
As someone who’s had previous experience as a journalist — both as a reporter and a producer, the thing that most struck me was the clinical approach of it all. I was always chasing, looking for the story and the next, the most exclusive, if you’re not there first, you practically weren’t there at all. You seldom had time and space for follow-up unless it was breaking breathtakingly new ground. The tradeoff was treating humans like commodities, missing nuance, and missing consistent follow-up. It was also an opportunity missed in being able to create tangible change on the ground for the communities being reported on.
Over the past year though I’ve managed to do better. All thanks to the amazing masters program I am/was part of — social journalism at the Newmark j-school.
Here journalism as we know it is turned on its head. It’s broken down into bite-sized, manageable chunks which also implies real change on the ground. For one, you don’t pick beats, you pick communities AKA people over subject matter. It means reporting with empathy and giving people a chance to speak. And instead of picking the vast environment beat and covering the even vaster subject of climate change — I had to narrow down my focus.
Easier said than done.
This project included 70% listening and engaging, 20% developing a solution and 10% actually building the product.
Tl;dr version:
- Climate change and everything associated with it are big picture issues. But, its effects are felt at a local scale. So let’s make climate news local. Give communities the tools to help develop local climate journalism.
- The Rockaways in Queens, New York faced the brunt of Hurricane Sandy. My colleague and I engaged with this community as a local scale to report on stories and give back to the community.
- We developed therockawayproject.org is a recovery platform that seeks to centralize post-disaster recovery information in the Rockaways. The community and journalists have access to this data. Let’s hope this reduces climate change induced environmental justice issues.
- Consistently engaging with communities at the Rockaways showed that tracking disaster-recovery information after Sandy is a mammoth task. Billions are pumped into post-disaster recovery and rebuilding world over, but there is no transparency and accountability in government led recovery efforts.
THE METHOD
Listening: Round 1
It all began in March 2019. A group of 20 protestors had gathered outside Governor Andrew Cuomo’s office in New York City to protest the Williams fracked gas pipeline. It’s a 23 mile long fracked gas pipeline that will run from Pennsylvania to New Jersey and end in New York — beneath the Rockaways.
This was not the first time I was seeing them. Protestors and activist groups had been congregating about this issue several times previously. What interested me was the consistency with which some people participated. In this instance, it was a small group of residents from the Rockaways. They’d been traveling nearly 22 miles from their home just to make a point — they did not want this pipeline in their backyard.
[The Rockaway peninsula is in the borough of Queens and lies about 22 miles from midtown Manhattan. The map shows where the Newmark J-school is, where the JFK airport is, and the arrows point to the Rockaway peninsula]
There were two primary concerns for not wanting the Williams pipeline. One concern is the dredging work required to install the pipelines. This would involve removing sand and digging through the seabed to clear it. Not only will this change the existing composition of the soil but it will also destroy marine habitats. The other concern is the safety of communities living along the shore.
The Williams Transco company, which owns the pipeline also has a poor safety record. Multiple gas leaks, pipeline explosions and consequent injuries have been reported with previous pipelines that the company owns.
But there was a more human and trauma related aspect that prodded me to conduct interviews with the residents. Unlike what I would have done in my pre-social journalism days, where I’d asked pointed questions based on my research, I conducted these interviews differently. It was more ethnographic. I wanted to embed myself in this community.
What’s an ethnographic interview? It essentially involves observing participants down to what they’re wearing and the environment they’re in to capture the nuance of what they’re saying. A couple of us have written medium posts about it as part of our community engagement class. Here’s the one I’d written based on the work of Dr. Lisbeth Berbary.
After an email was sent out by Jeremy Jones, the Vice President of the Rockaway Beach Civic Association, over 14 residents got in touch with me to share their stories. I only had a weekend to spend over there and managed to interview five of them. In the limited time, I tried my best to understand the community.
I interviewed people in their homes, spending at least an hour and change with most of them. One resident was kind enough to give me a tour of the Rockaways so I got a feel for the community.
While the story I had gone originally gone after was the Williams Pipeline, I discovered that the real story was Hurricane Sandy. Resident after resident shared emotional interviews about the trauma after Sandy. The Williams Pipeline was just a tipping point in that saga.
“The thing that makes me so disheartened about humanity is that Sandy was an act of nature — that was totally out of anyone’s control. Ok we have to deal with it.” shared resident Saylor Pochan at the time.
“This pipeline is about people you could walk up to, look in the eyes, they’re sitting in a conference room somewhere saying — how can we push this through so we can make money?” they added.
Residents spoke about the existing Rockaway Lateral Pipeline that lies three miles off the Rockaway peninsula to which the Williams’s new fracked gas pipeline will connect. The Rockaway Lateral, also owned by Williams Transco, is a 26-inch diameter pipeline that brings in natural gas from the Marcellus Shale to the city to meet energy demands.
National Grid and Williams want to use the new pipeline to “boost supply” and meet “gas shortages” in New York City, particularly in Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island.
The Rockaway Lateral was pushed through by lawmakers in less than a month after Sandy had struck the community when people were still dealing with the aftermath of the disaster. Residents said that while they were unable to protest then, they didn’t want a repeat of the situation this time around.
“They realized that we were unable to do anything like protest. And so I feel like they snuck that in when we were down,” said Beth Perkins another resident.
“I felt like a slap in the face that they did this work right after and during the cleanup of Sandy. At the point we were mold remediating our house and pretty much dealing with the insurance and everything.” added her husband, Keonie.
From this initial round of listening to residents two things were clear to me. One, here is a story of climate change that was being felt at a local scale. Two, there was more to what went awry in the recovery process after Sandy.
Listening & Engaging: Round 2
Beginning in May, my colleague and marine scientist, Diara J. Townes and I noticed our work on environment and climate change overlapping. We decided to team up and work on the Rockaway project. The initial set of interviews had not included people of color.
We wanted to make sure we had their accounts as well. So we went back and focused our sights on the Eastern part of the Rockaways where 67% of residents are either black or hispanic*.
We spoke to residents in Edgemere, Arverne and others on the bayside of the peninsula about their experiences before and after Sandy.
Many like Sonia Moise shared what rebuilding efforts were like for them post-hurricane. Sonia is among hundreds of Rockaways residents who had trouble with the city’s Build-It-Back program.
The program, from the Mayor’s Office of Housing Recovery Operations and partially funded through the New York State, aimed to rebuild areas damaged by Sandy, and return residents to their homes.
It also helped make vulnerable neighborhoods, such as the Rockaways, more resilient to future storms and flooding by elevating “substantially damaged” homes, or homes where more than 50% of the pre-storm value was lost as a result of the hurricane.
“Initially with Build It Back, they told me I didn’t qualify because my house didn’t suffer enough damage to their standards,” said Sonia.
Sonia has elderly parents and a daughter that rely on her for shelter and stability. Because she was told she didn’t qualify, she had no choice but to move forward with construction.
“I started doing some of the work myself. I knew a contractor, I knew an electrician, I knew a plumber.”
Build-it-Back’s contractors started working on Sonia’s house in 2017. She received the keys to her elevated, renovated home in March 2019, only to find it botched on many fronts. She had mold under her kitchen sink, faulty electrical wiring that left her stove and refrigerator working improperly, insulation falling from her cellar ceiling, even mismatched doorbells, she told us.
Lisa George, another resident, spoke about slow or stalled resiliency projects.
“You have some areas in the Rockaways, if I were to take you in my car right now, you would think Sandy just hit here yesterday. It looks desolate. They have buildings that still need to be torn down and that haven’t been touched.” she said.
Crafting Engagement Strategies
But this round of listening did not end with interviews. To get a more comprehensive picture, we employed deeper engagement strategies.
- We created an online survey hosted at therockawayproject.org which would also go on to be part of our finished product
- We created an offline survey that asked for pre and post-storm experience from residents
- We distributed these surveys at community events like the dune planting event conducted by RISE, and resident meetings run by community organizations like the Rockaway Beach Civic Association (RBCA) and The Heart of Rockaway Civic (THOR)
- We taped up fliers across various locations including in Broad Channel
- We distributed fliers at the Peninsula library and the Broad Channel
- We got the liaisons at State Senator James Sanders’ Jr.’s office to send out the surveys in an email blast to all the constituents
In all, over the course of three months, we reached out to a total of 52 residents. 47 in person and five online. 35 wanted to share more about their stories after Sandy, particularly with Build It Back. It’s important to keep in mind how a community accesses information while crafting these engagement strategies. We found that while certain parts of the peninsula were internet savvy, the other parts did not have access to the internet. Paper surveys and door-to-door communication worked best here.
Patterns that Emerged after Engaging with the Community
After engaging with the residents Diara and I had a more comprehensive picture of the issues at the Rockaways. It was different for the East and the West.
- Immediately after Sandy, there was confusion regarding recovery efforts. Residents especially in the areas of Edgemere, Arverne and other parts on the Eastern side of the Rockaways received help slower than the Western side.
- Residents did not know which organizations to reach out for aid. Grassroots organizations like Occupy Sandy and church groups had mobilized to help.
- They weren’t sufficiently educated about how city programs like Rapid Repair and Build It Back work. They also weren’t aware of the various deadlines and procedural requirements for programs like Build It Back which led to many residents on the Eastern side dropping out of the program altogether.
- People on the Eastern side are STILL waiting for their homes to be handed over after Build It Back. The city had botched on many fronts particularly on elevations while moving from phase 1 to the current phase.
What We Gave the Community
These patterns made one thing clear — the biggest issue the peninsula faced was a lack of transparency and accountability when it came to government led recovery and rebuilding efforts. There was no singular place that people on the peninsula can go to after a weather disaster to track progress.
As I prefaced in the headline, this type of journalism is as much about giving back to the community as it was about gathering information from the community for stories. We clearly had leads for several stories. But, we still needed to give back.
Given the patterns, the way to do so was clear. We proposed to create a centralized location for residents to access this information.
We went back to the community organizations we had initially been in touch with to see if this was a solution they would use. We received overwhelmingly positive responses.
This led to the creation of therockawayproject.org — a website where residents can access all the data relating to recovery and climate resiliency projects in one place. They can also share their stories and access a resource guide that we created which helps them prepare for the next storm. In the future, it will also host a space for them to upload their progress updates.
We are in touch with resident organizations and community organizations to see who can continue the work and update the data as new data emerges.
The idea behind the website was to make things more transparent for the community and to help them keep their elected officials accountable. But, it’s also to help newsrooms with consistent follow-up. Capacity concerns usually mean that newsrooms don’t have the bandwidth to send reporters out for consistent follow-up. But, a solution like this brings the information and patterns to them.
What We Gathered from the Community
Diara and I are now working on two investigative stories that have emerged from our engagement reporting. We have more knowledge about the disparities at the Rockaways than we did before.
We’ve also discovered that the city is not willing to give us data especially with Build It Back. We’ve filed five FOILs since September for access and the agencies have already asked for extensions twice. More to come on this.
We’ve Just Scratched the Surface
With this project in the Rockaways, we’ve only just scratched the surface. We’ve discovered micro-communities who have had a host of issues specific to them. They also form the base for our future engagement opportunities on the peninsula. We’re yet to reach out to
- NYCHA residents
- the Jewish and Hispanic communities on the peninsula
- senior living centers
- non-English speaking residents/immigrants
- people living in shelter homes
Lessons
Show up: Often and consistently
The biggest part, that’s the most obvious, but not done as much, is just showing up and showing up often and consistently. Diara and I made the trip to the Rockaways, sometimes from Washington Heights where we both live, at least 2 to 4 times a month. It also means showing up for events that don’t necessarily have to yield you anything.
Show up: To gain trust and networks
One time, this even meant showing up on a stormy night to a meeting that four residents and two liaisons from the State Senators office showed up to. It may not mean much, but it does to the community. Of the 6 people present, we met 3 again at another meeting and they approached us and helped us create a bigger network of people we could reach out to.
Show up: So they know you are committed to helping them
My heart warmed when I saw Matt Johnson, one of my initial interviewees from March, sitting among the 30 odd residents at the RBCA meeting where we pitched our post-disaster recovery website. He approached Diara and I after and said, “Glad you’re still working on this and haven’t forgotten us.”
“You two are really out here getting your hands dirty. I like that. I’m going to tell you my story. I’ll call you this weekend,” another resident Caroll Carty said to us.
In media deserts and otherwise, people want to be more than just source material for journalists and newsrooms. Through our engagement reporting at the Rockaways, I hope we managed to show our sources that they were indeed more than just that.
I’m taking this last part to give a shoutout to my amazing, amazing #socialj19 class. I’m so lucky to have the opportunity to work alongside some of the most talented and supportive engagement journalists out there. And a huge shoutout to Newmark J professors and our revolutionary leaders — Carrie Brown, Jeff Jarvis, Terry Parris Jr., Kelsey Arendt, Jeremy Caplan and Bob Sacha without whose vision and fearless belief in this type of journalism we’d all still be stuck in the stone age. Super proud #socialj alum!
