{"id":2261,"date":"2022-03-18T12:00:15","date_gmt":"2022-03-18T12:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2022\/03\/18\/a-start-up-investigates-public-health-systems-and-how-they-affect-people\/"},"modified":"2024-10-29T20:34:01","modified_gmt":"2024-10-29T20:34:01","slug":"a-start-up-investigates-public-health-systems-and-how-they-affect-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2022\/03\/18\/a-start-up-investigates-public-health-systems-and-how-they-affect-people\/","title":{"rendered":"A successful investigative career and a vision led Jim Morris to take a risk"},"content":{"rendered":" \n
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Jim Morris was four decades into a successful investigative journalism career spotlighting environmental and labor issues. His storytelling \u2014 in newspapers, magazines and broadcast \u2014 was intimate and girded with data. He had more than 80 awards to his name, including the George Polk, the Sidney Hillman and two Edward R. Murrows. He helped edit a Pulitzer winner.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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But he was feeling restless.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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He began to think about starting a nonprofit news operation, one that focused exclusively on weaknesses and injustices in the nation\u2019s public health infrastructure, exposing inequities and highlighting solutions. He met with advisors and was in discussions with a major university about his idea when the pandemic struck.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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\"Investigative
Jim Morris Courtesy of Jim Morris<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div> \n
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Morris worked as a senior reporter, project manager, managing and, in 2019, acting executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, the D.C. based non-profit started by former \u201c60 Minutes\u201d producer Charles Lewis. The organization\u2019s mission was to \u201cexpos[e] abuses of power by government and corporate interests.\u201d As part of that, in 2010 Morris built a team to cover environmental issues and workers\u2019 rights. It soon became a self-sustaining, Pulitzer-winning unit known for its investigations into toxic air pollution, unsafe workplaces and industry influence on science.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Former CPI reporter, Kristen Lombardi, who worked closely with Morris, described his \u201cknack\u201d for finding stories that fit the mission, and filled a vacuum in labor reporting. Morris\u2019s abiding concern for social justice, especially for workers, she said, is because \u201cthey\u2019re forgotten as a population,\u201d yet suffer harms \u201cin so many different ways, at so many different levels.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Part poet, part guardian, Morris\u2019 stories turned statistics into people, as he did with a 2017 profile of Jim Spencer, a Nebraska plumber who died in a trench cave-in<\/a> at a construction site. The 4,900-word story demonstrated the broad social costs of preventable tragedies:<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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When a worker dies of traumatic injury, gloom spreads like a webbed crack on an ice-covered pond, reaching far beyond the immediate family to touch former colleagues, lifelong friends and \u2013 in Jim Spencer\u2019s case \u2013 waitresses, convenience-store clerks and other strangers he routinely engaged in conversation in this western Nebraska railroad town of 9,000 people.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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But if conveying humanity is the means for Morris, accountability is the end. When \u201cCarbon Wars,\u201d which Morris led and edited, won the 2017 Society of Environmental Journalists\u2019 prize for explanatory reporting, judges praised the series for \u201cgripping\u2026 storytelling throughout,\u201d calling it \u201can alluring mix of analytical and deeply human; reporters push[ed] the conversation forward, offering new thoroughly reported examples of regulatory weaknesses and cases of damaging pollution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The story about Spencer, the Nebraska plumber, spurred a change in state law, and gave families of accident victims access to law enforcement information they\u2019d been denied. Another project that Morris edited, \u201cBreathless and Burdened<\/a>,\u201d exposed how miners with black lung disease were denied benefits; it won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting and led to significant policy changes within the Department of Labor.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The Pivot<\/h2>\n\n
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Journalists talk about surviving career disruption and chasing dreams. Find out\u00a0what happened to Chris Jones<\/a>, former senior writer for Esquire, how a\u00a0young journalist was cut out of newsrooms then found her way back,<\/a>\u00a0and why a\u00a0top editor at Linked In left to start a podcast<\/a>,<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n\t\n<\/div> \n

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Yet Morris sensed his vision and CPI\u2019s were beginning to diverge. \u201cI wanted to keep doing in-depth public health journalism and felt I was ready to run my own organization,\u201d he told Nieman Storyboard.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I\u2019ve always been attracted to complicated stories that many other journalists won\u2019t touch because of the time commitment and storytelling challenges involved. <\/p>\u2014Jim Morris<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Despite setbacks brought on by COVID, Morris forged ahead. Public Health Watch<\/a><\/strong> went live in August 2021 with a promise to \u201cinform, inspire and, when necessary, enrage, leading to impact in its many forms.\u201d The site\u2019s longform print and radio stories emphasize accountability, expose injustices, and aim to \u201cpress elected officials, regulators and corporate executives to explain why [for example] people who live within a few miles of an oil refinery or a petrochemical plant \u2014 most often, people of color \u2014 are still forced to breathe poisons known to cause cancer and other maladies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Morris told Storyboard about the why and how of his late-career pivot.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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What was your biggest challenge in making the leap from a known news organization to a start-up?
<\/strong>Starting a nonprofit news site during a pandemic might seem ill-advised, and it certainly presented challenges. No face-to-face meetings with prospective funders, and people\u2019s personal lives in varying degrees of upheaval. Fortunately, I didn\u2019t listen. Given that the topic would be public health, I felt it was exactly<\/em> the right time to launch.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Oddly, it worked in our favor. If people didn\u2019t understand how important public health was before COVID-19 appeared, they certainly did after. Our message was that America\u2019s public health infrastructure was in bad shape before the pandemic took off two years ago, and then got even worse. We reminded people that non-communicable diseases such as cancer and diabetes are responsible for seven in 10 deaths in this country. That will still be the case when the current crisis fades. The message seemed to sink in. We got our first significant foundation grant in the fall of 2020. I saw this as an endorsement of the idea. Other grants followed in the winter and spring of 2021, and I made the decision to launch.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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What surprised you most, and what have you learned from it?
<\/strong>I was pleasantly surprised that eight foundations and several individuals were willing to take a chance on a journalism start-up at an extremely fraught time. I was also gratified by the high-quality writers, editors and advisory board members we were able to attract.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Who or what helped you most during the transition?
<\/strong>Our outstanding advisory board \u2014 a mix of journalists, academics and public health professionals \u2014 and our enthusiastic team of contributing editors and writers, only one of whom I knew well when we started out.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I leaned heavily on people like Chuck Lewis, founder of CPI., for whom I never worked but with whom I became friends, and Mike Kanin, then publisher of the Texas Observer. Its parent, the Texas Democracy Foundation, became the fiscal sponsor of Public Health Watch. I talked to other leaders of news nonprofits as well as  foundation officials and journalists with whom I\u2019d collaborated over the years. Most were encouraging.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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And, frankly, basing Public Health Watch in my home state of Texas, which ranks at or near the bottom among the states by almost every public health measure. The need here is acute for investigative reporting on topics such as environmental health, occupational health and safety, and women\u2019s and children\u2019s health.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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What elements of your journalistic craft\/values have you been able to hold onto, and which did you find you could let go of?
<\/strong>Public Health Watch is a product of my 44 years in journalism. Its mission aligns with my belief that journalism should be original, compelling and fact-based. I\u2019ve always been attracted to complicated stories that many other journalists won\u2019t touch because of the time commitment and storytelling challenges involved. Those are the kinds of stories we\u2019ve done, and will keep doing, at Public Health Watch. Sometimes it can be hard to resist jumping onto the breaking-news bandwagon, but my feeling is that there\u2019s plenty of excellent daily health coverage. We need to go in a different direction.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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What are your priorities going forward?
<\/strong>As we begin our first full year of operation, my goal is to keep expanding our already-strong network of media and university collaborators and raise enough money to make Public Health Watch sustainable for the long haul. We\u2019re off to a good start, having just received funding from a ninth foundation and started discussions with several more. We also hope to grow our individual giving. We have some great projects in the works this year, including a collaboration with more than a dozen outlets from around the country that will enable us to share content and amplify a health-access issue that badly needs more attention.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Some of our biggest and most complex stories have yet to come out \u2014 they should be published over the next month or so \u2014 but this piece, about a chronic air polluter in a low-income Texas community<\/a>, is a good example of what we aspire to: A strong narrative backed by data, with an accountability angle.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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There\u2019s plenty of good journalism in this country on our imperfect health care system and on the pandemic. Public Health Watch fills a particular void: Deep coverage of subjects such as environmental and workplace hazards. Public health is about preventing illness and injury, as opposed to treating people who are sick or hurt.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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***<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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EDITOR\u2019S NOTE: Public Health Watch wants to reach as wide an audience as possible. You can send news tips or questions at tips@publichealthwatch.org or info@publichealthwatch.org. Follow their work and comment on Twitter<\/a>, Facebook<\/a> and LinkedIn<\/a>, and sign up now<\/a> for their newsletter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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***<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Julia Shipley<\/strong> is a freelance writer and a TYPE Investigative Fellow. As a  former Columbia Journalism Investigations Fellow, she was on a team that covered the rise in worker deaths due to heat,<\/a> which was published in partnership with National Public Radio , Texas Newsroom, California Newsroom and Public Health Watch.<\/em><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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