Someone tells you a story you know you will never publish. Do you keep listening?
Investigative journalist Dyan Neary does. Her work covers public health, child welfare, and incarceration, and she brings the difficult decisions inside that work into her journalism classrooms at West Chester University. She's also the host of The Preventionist, from Serial Productions and The New York Times.
We talk about what sits behind a reported story: the documents that support an interview, the sentence-by-sentence fact-checking, and the judgment involved when someone shares more than they realize. Dyan describes teaching students to interview each other and a storytelling class where incarcerated students and university students write and learn together at Chester County Prison.
The conversation keeps returning to what journalism asks of a person. How do you hear difficult stories without losing your humanity? How do students learn the difference between reporting and commentary? And what gives a working investigative journalist hope?
Afterward, we sit with what her answers ask of us as researchers and teachers, including the tension between listening openly and deciding what can responsibly become public.
Links:
https://seanisdwelling.substack.com
https://matthewkr.substack.com
Dyan Neary at WCU — https://www.wcupa.edu/arts-humanities/english/dneary.aspx
The Preventionist — https://open.spotify.com/show/66znSHlm37F2kYl9MgfnGK
Blindsided by Breast Cancer — https://www.thecut.com/article/breast-cancer-mammograms-early-detection-screenings.html
The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program — https://www.insideoutcenter.org/
Prison Journalism Project — https://prisonjournalismproject.org/
Amy Collini, In Which I Imagine a Different Ending for Uncle Jimmy — https://dsc.duq.edu/creativenonfiction-sunday-short-reads/157/
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