I couldn’t be happier to join the Street Roots editorial team as a staff reporter after serving as an intern this summer and then the Zuhl Fellow through the fall.
In a city where many view homelessness as the most pressing issue, I can’t think of a better place to work, highlighting people who experience life outside a tattered social safety net.
In my work at Street Roots, challenging dominant, often harmful narratives about vulnerable people in our community continues to be important to me. It is impossible to understand or address the homelessness crisis in Portland without including the stories of those most affected.
After graduating from Portland State University as a nontraditional student with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing earlier this year, I interned at Street Roots through the University of Oregon’s Charles Snowden Excellence in Journalism program. The first story I wrote was about the city of Portland’s updated ordinance looking to ban sleeping in public spaces. I quickly realized in reporting that story that many ideas, subsequent policies and communications from local officials lacked input from the people most impacted or from those who work with vulnerable populations every day, often for decades.
The importance of including these perspectives frames much of how I think about our world and informs my reporting regardless of the assignment.
In journalism, one of the most basic writing structures is the “inverted pyramid,” which puts the most important information at the top of the story and trails off into the least important information. “Most important” and “least important” are subjective terms in an industry that historically considers itself objective. (It’s not.) How stories are structured decides who we hear from first and most often.
Without a conscious effort to find and include other perspectives, officials with communications teams frame the public’s understanding of the story, leaving the most impacted people as a footnote, lost to our short attention spans.
The Snowden internship allowed me to get my feet wet in the real world, but I couldn’t help but jump in head first. After 10 weeks as an intern, Street Roots offered me the third-ever Zuhl Fellowship — following Zuhl Fellows turned staff, editor in chief K. Rambo and Indigenous affairs reporter Melanie Henshaw, two colleagues who constantly inspire me with their work. Digital producer Kanani Cortez and illustrator/designer Etta O’Donnell King provide consistent support in lending visual and digital expertise in presenting my stories. The fellowship allowed me to continue my work through the end of 2023, ultimately moving into this staff reporter position starting Dec. 25.
You may wonder why such an elderly gentleman went through college and an internship so late in life. I dropped out of Portland Community College in 2004 to play music (drums) and tour the country with my friends. We were impassioned and broke and met a million people along the way. We started a small record label to release the music we were making in our home, printed up a bunch of vinyl records and caused a scene wherever we went. It lasted for the better part of my youth, and music is still a big part of my world. My spouse and I have played music together the entire time we’ve known each other.
I grew up in Oregon and have lived in Portland since 2001. The city has gone through many changes in 23 years, but for all its twists and turns, I love this city. I am honored to be a part of telling the ongoing story of our beautiful city, the people who make it great and the opportunities that come along to make Portland more unique than ever.
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly investigative publication covering economic, environmental and social inequity. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
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