{"id":2040,"date":"2020-09-02T12:00:48","date_gmt":"2020-09-02T12:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2020\/09\/02\/economic-hardship-reporting-project-seeks-story-pitches-that-personalize-poverty\/"},"modified":"2025-01-07T19:01:16","modified_gmt":"2025-01-07T19:01:16","slug":"economic-hardship-reporting-project-seeks-story-pitches-that-personalize-poverty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2020\/09\/02\/economic-hardship-reporting-project-seeks-story-pitches-that-personalize-poverty\/","title":{"rendered":"Economic Hardship Reporting Project seeks story pitches that personalize poverty"},"content":{"rendered":" \n
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The Economic Hardship Reporting Project (EHRP)<\/a> was born from a situation of precisely that: financial insecurity. Barbara Ehrenreich<\/a>, author of the seminal 1996 work, \u201cNickel and Dimed,\u201d co-founded the journalism non-profit in 2012, as Americans were trudging through the wreckage of the Great Recession. Nearly a decade later, the coronavirus pandemic has cast even sharper light on the Hardship Reporting Project’s through-line: how widening income inequality between the wealthy, middle class and working poor is defining the American story.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The project’s mission is not only to develop immersive stories that humanize inequality, but also to support the freelancers producing this work \u2014 the same people who are often struggling themselves to get by in a contracting industry getting further walloped by the pandemic. \u201cMy job is to put band-aids on gushing wounds,\u201d says David Wallis, managing director of EHRP. (His email signature includes this quippy tagline: \u2018Saving an endangered species: Journalists.\u2019)<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The project\u2019s ethos hearkens back to Works Progress Administration<\/a> programs of the New Deal-era,  which employed journalists to elevate underreported narratives across America. Today, EHRP is outright in its quest to change attitudes about poverty: \u201cThere\u2019s this public perception that low-income people are to blame for their plight,\u201d says Wallis, \u201cwhen in fact there are systems in place \u2014 a plethora of reasons \u2014 why people are stuck in reverse in this country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Wallis\u2019 organization has earned a slew of national awards for the essays, reported features, podcasts, documentary films and photo essays it funds. This year alone, EHRP-supported stories won prizes at the Society for Features Journalism\u2019s 2020 Excellence in Features Award, a Mirror Award for best commentary and a Best of the West award for video storytelling.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The New York-based nonprofit funds stories across the U.S. and partners with a range of outlets for co-publication, including California Sunday Magazine, The Guardian and The New York Times. Across platforms and mediums, though, EHRP\u2019s sweet spot is intimate human stories that advance a more nuanced view on financial precarity: the idea that an eviction, or job disruption, could happen to anybody. And unlike some in the industry, Wallis urges journalists to draw on their personal experiences.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I talked with Wallis, who has worked at the Forward and the New York Observer, freelanced and founded Featurewell.com, about how to make a story pitch sing. We also analyzed a pitch by writer Debbie Weingarten for her 2018 story about farmer suicide<\/a>, which was co-published by EHRP and The Guardian. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Which ingredients in a pitch convince you that a story is a good fit for the Economic Hardship Reporting Project?
<\/strong>A pitch should be three or four paragraphs, and explain why you are the person to do that story. You don\u2019t have to be published in the New Yorker, but you should be able to tell me why you are an expert in this topic. It might be that you\u2019ve done a tremendous amount of research. It might be, for instance, that you\u2019ve been the victim of domestic abuse or there\u2019s college debt you can\u2019t shake. Everyone is an expert in something. Think about what you\u2019re an expert in, and be able to share that story.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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It\u2019s important to have a really good look at our website to see if we\u2019ve done it before. That\u2019s a rule that too many people who are pitching forget: go to the publication\u2019s archive and read it carefully. Read what we\u2019ve done in the past; it’s a predictor of our future.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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What are some common red flags in pitches?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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