The Stories Behind the Big Stories of 2023
Elmwood Community Center
West Hartford
Feb. 8, 2024
Until about two weeks ago, I didn’t consider myself a journalist. I’ve never even taken a journalism class, much less majored in it and learned all of the techniques and nuances that journalists have to deploy in their field. I was a writer who wrote opinions, which is not close to the same thing as journalism.
I recently started practicing real journalism though, so the panel discussion The Stories Behind the Big Stories of 2023 couldn’t have come at a better time. What better way to begin learning how to be a journalist than to listen to some of the very best that Connecticut has to offer share their expertise?
The event was hosted by the CT Foundation for Open Government (CFOG), and moderated by Leslie Mayes. The panel had the distinction of being the first all-women panel in the eight years that CFOG has hosted it. The panelists were:
- Jaqueline Rabe Thomas of Hearst Media, who discussed her work with Bridgeport’s noncompliance with Freedom of Information requests and the state police ticketing scandal;
- Camila Vallejo, formerly of Connecticut Public, who discussed a story in which she covered the challenges of a woman and her family facing eviction;
- Caitlin Burchill of NBC Connecticut, who discussed a hidden camera story about vehicle safety at parking garages near Bradley Airport;
- Alison Cross of the Hartford Courant, who discussed her story about the resignation of the Suffield Library’s director and the culture wars that brought it about; and
- Ginny Monk of the Connecticut Mirror, who discussed her story about the tragic death of a 3‑year-old in Hartford.
As the panel went on, one thing that became clear is the amount of dedication and tenacity that each of the panelists displayed in doing their work. These stories took months to put together, with multiple follow-up calls and interviews. They had to deal with uncooperative state bureaucracies. They had to dig through thousands of documents.
Most strikingly, they had to bear the emotional weight of the stories they were telling. Journalism is often about uncovering and addressing problems, and sometimes it gets downright sad. The finished stories they presented to the public represented untold hours of hard work by them and their teams.
One of the themes of the evening was the desire for the panelists to demystify journalism, and listening to the panelists reveal their methodologies was truly enlightening. I took more notes than I can share here, but Burchill said something that I will keep at the front of my mind: You have to push your own story. Vallejo also spoke about the need to let people be heard in their own voices, even if that voice isn’t speaking English.
My biggest takeaway from the evening though is an obvious one, but it wasn’t apparent to me until last night. Every one of the stories the panelists talked about last night began with one person.
Whether it was someone looking for answers about a loved one, a person seeking help to fight an eviction, a grieving mother forced to defend herself, or someone asking why their car was vandalized, the journalists were responding to the needs of an individual.
As an opinion writer, I often tried to situate my writing in grand historical sweeps or present day context, and while that might have worked for that style, it’s not what journalism is.
Everyone assumes that journalists have an agenda, and they’re right. But that agenda isn’t to push a corporate narrative (believe me, we would ALL love to be getting big corporate dollars right now) or spin the news into favorable coverage for our preferred politician. The agenda is to help people. I saw that firsthand as each panelist described the lengths they went to for the people whose stories they were telling. It’s the most important lesson I’ve learned as a journalist so far.
NEXT
Jamil is taking the weekend off. See you next week!
