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Some seven years after the housing bubble burst, the story is still unfolding in many American cities: damaged neighborhoods, broken tax systems, and blighted homes; a search for justice and an accounting of blame; uneven progress toward recovery.
In swathes of the country, capturing this story in all its continuing complexity is among the most pressing items on the public-affairs agenda—especially since much of the press, both local and national, failed to see the crisis coming. “It goes without saying that the media missed this story on the front end,” said John Gallagher, a business reporter for the Detroit Free Press. “I don’t think anyone believed that a recession of that depth was even possible in the modern age.”
Yet the reporting challenges are undeniable. The work of untangling what happened and scrutinizing the ongoing response effectively demands the expertise of five beats in one: finance, real estate, City Hall, community development, and environment. Things are changing quickly on the ground, from new policies attempting to foster recovery to the rising influence of land banks. And translating issues like “zombie” properties into clear prose that doesn’t alienate readers is an added challenge.
It’s also immensely difficult to get accurate data. Reporters that I spoke with in Detroit, Cleveland, and Philadelphia all bemoaned archaic record-keeping. “A lot of it is still on paper, and it will be at a lot of different departments—the department of revenue, the department of law, the department of public works,” said Claudia Vargas, a reporter with The Philadelphia Inquirer. “I’ll put in a right-to-know request for the data I wanted and wait a month or month-and-a-half to get it. … And then when it comes, it’s sometimes not even accurate. There are so many mistakes, it’s no wonder the city’s having issues in not being able to collect money” from taxes.
Another challenge for local reporters, especially those in distressed cities: striking a balance that is vigilant about the continuing fallout but steers clear of easy tropes. We’ve had enough “ruin porn.” At the same time, a narrative template that focuses on gentrification concerns might make sense for high-market coastal cities like San Francisco or Boston, but in cities like Detroit or Cleveland it “risks masking, or not giving enough attention to, the many more miles of neighborhoods where people are still leaving in droves, where foreclosures are still common, where people feel left behind in the housing recovery,” said Chelsea Allinger, communications director for the Center for Community Progress, or CCP, a national nonprofit that works to turn around systemic blight.
Why we need to keep covering the foreclosure crisis - Columbia Journalism Review
One of the most interesting items in the above article is Drissel's series which it mentions. That is located here:
Hard time in Cleveland Fraud ruin and redemption in Slavic Village Cleveland.com
In swathes of the country, capturing this story in all its continuing complexity is among the most pressing items on the public-affairs agenda—especially since much of the press, both local and national, failed to see the crisis coming. “It goes without saying that the media missed this story on the front end,” said John Gallagher, a business reporter for the Detroit Free Press. “I don’t think anyone believed that a recession of that depth was even possible in the modern age.”
Yet the reporting challenges are undeniable. The work of untangling what happened and scrutinizing the ongoing response effectively demands the expertise of five beats in one: finance, real estate, City Hall, community development, and environment. Things are changing quickly on the ground, from new policies attempting to foster recovery to the rising influence of land banks. And translating issues like “zombie” properties into clear prose that doesn’t alienate readers is an added challenge.
It’s also immensely difficult to get accurate data. Reporters that I spoke with in Detroit, Cleveland, and Philadelphia all bemoaned archaic record-keeping. “A lot of it is still on paper, and it will be at a lot of different departments—the department of revenue, the department of law, the department of public works,” said Claudia Vargas, a reporter with The Philadelphia Inquirer. “I’ll put in a right-to-know request for the data I wanted and wait a month or month-and-a-half to get it. … And then when it comes, it’s sometimes not even accurate. There are so many mistakes, it’s no wonder the city’s having issues in not being able to collect money” from taxes.
Another challenge for local reporters, especially those in distressed cities: striking a balance that is vigilant about the continuing fallout but steers clear of easy tropes. We’ve had enough “ruin porn.” At the same time, a narrative template that focuses on gentrification concerns might make sense for high-market coastal cities like San Francisco or Boston, but in cities like Detroit or Cleveland it “risks masking, or not giving enough attention to, the many more miles of neighborhoods where people are still leaving in droves, where foreclosures are still common, where people feel left behind in the housing recovery,” said Chelsea Allinger, communications director for the Center for Community Progress, or CCP, a national nonprofit that works to turn around systemic blight.
Why we need to keep covering the foreclosure crisis - Columbia Journalism Review
One of the most interesting items in the above article is Drissel's series which it mentions. That is located here:
Hard time in Cleveland Fraud ruin and redemption in Slavic Village Cleveland.com
