Thread by @ReportingHealth

KEYNOTE: We're excited to hear from Pulitzer-prize winning @nytimes investigative reporter @andreafelliott, who will share with our Fellows the story behind how she reported "INVISIBLE CHILD: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City."

@nytimes @andreafelliott For more than a decade, @andreafelliott has been in Dasani Coates' life. She followed her and her family for 8 yrs. "It upended and changed my life. I would witness the most outrageous forms of systemic oppression and the most remarkable acts of family resilience, love, courage."

It's an example of immersive reporting. She began this style of journalism at the Miami Herald: "I just worked unpaid hours weekends and nights to do stories I knew they wouldn't assign me, but they loved it because they knew nobody was doing these stories," @andreafelliott said.

"The kind of journalism I most admire has depth, it has nuance, it is complex, there are no easy answers, and it's as close to reality as possible, and you don't get there unless you have intimate knowledge." -@andreafelliott #USCHealthJournalism

The US ranks near the bottom for childhood poverty rates among developed nations. "It was the pitch I made to the Times to get the greenlight for a project that was ambitious about child poverty." Public discourse about the poor was so focused on adults, @andreafelliott said.

There's two mindsets on those who are impoverished. The "worthy poor" and "unworthy poor," @andreafelliott said. The modern discourse is about personal responsibility and self reliance, and never a focus on the system that fails us. #USCHealthJournalism

Early discussions with editors often center around "how it will play" in terms of public discourse. @andreafelliott says that reporters shouldn't be as concerned with that. "Just go out and commit journalism."

"In order to immerse, especially in the lives of very poor people whose lives are often interrupted, to not be local is just too great a risk," @andreafelliott says, praising the power of local journalism.

The population of children living in poverty in New York City when @andreafelliott began reporting on Dasani was so large that it would overflow Madison Square Garden.

Dasani isn't the perfect example of who experts told @andreafelliott was representative of childhood poverty. She isn't hispanic; her parents aren't divorced; she wasn't who Andrea was seeking as a central figure in her story on childhood poverty.

"I'm always looking for ways to make a story come alive. I fill my notebooks with those 'aha' moments," @andreafelliott said. Her first 'aha' moment was meeting Dasani and her mother Chanel and learning their names. "Both names are symbols of different childhoods and contexts."

"We shared a common enemy, that enemy being poverty," @andreafelliott said, noting the squalid conditions of the overcrowded shelter where Dasani and her family lived maintained by a public agency with millions in funding. She gave the family cameras to document the conditions.

Andrea stood in welfare lines with Dasani's family; she slept on their floor; she looked up the genealogy of their family that was enslaved; she immersed herself in their experience. "Dasani's current plight of poverty was connected to history," @andreafelliott said.

Young fiction writers are often told to "write what you know." If you're a jounalist, "be there enough to write it like you know it," @andreafelliott says. "Show, don't tell" requires you to be there. The story shows itself to you.

Every time a major event happened in the lives of Dasani and her family, @andreafelliott color-coded it and logged it on a "Master Timeline," before papering it on her office wall. This is eight years of organization.

"It's crazy not to do this, you can't carry it all around. You have to put it somewhere, otherwise it's in your head," @andreafelliott said. Anytime you start a new story, start a timeline, start plugging things in.

Andrea filled 90 notebooks while reporting Dasani's family story. "It's crazy-making," @andreafelliott said. She created notebook logs to keep things organized. #USCHealthJournalism

"I go through it twice when I'm faced with a mountain of records," @andreafelliott said. "I keep it in the order it came, go page by page and take notes." She takes the records in on first pass, then on second pass takes notes of her notes for highlights.

"Records are people," @andreafelliott said. They're written about people; they're written by people; they're documenting people.

Immerse yourself in the life of somebody who is impoverished, then look at the records documenting their lives by state agencies. You'll find how misunderstood they are, @andreafelliott says. #USCHealthJournalism

"Tell the reader what you don't know," @andreafelliott says. It helps build trust and shows transparency.

"If you want it and you go for it, you never know what you're gong to get and you have to just believe that it's possible and carve out the time," @andreafelliott advises reporters. "I kept going back until I felt I was able to bring it to life."

"When you're in a story - listen to your gut and write down the big things - the aha moments when they occur to you," @andreafelliott says. Everyday, dump everything that occurs to you in a notebook - questions, observations, highlights. "1st impressions are so important."

"When you come home and describe your story to somebody, how are you summarizing it?" Don't get lost in the woods and lose the big plot points. Learn the big arc and fill it in. You can't replace "the moments of revelation" as they happen, @andreafelliott says.

How do you immerse yourself while maintaining objective distance? "Reporting becomes the way you get access. When you find yourself doing something that puts you in the scene, you just square with the reader," @andreafelliott said. "Sometimes it gets complicated and messy."

Thank you to @andreafelliott, who has delivered an awe-inspiring talk on immersive narrative journalism. #USCHealthJournalism