WELCOME TO CONVERSATIONS ON POVERTY
This newsletter will feature conversations about how the media covers poverty — and discuss the urgent task of doing it better.
Six months out from decisive elections in the US and UK, we need reporters who document chronic poverty, homelessness and workplace exploitation more than ever. But we also need journalists to be aware of the inherent risks and complexities of doing this type of coverage. Far too often, the work of illuminating poverty can fall into extractive or exploitative relationships between the reporter and the subject. As Janet Malcolm wrote, in The Journalist and the Murderer, ‘all journalists feel, or should feel, some compunction about the exploitative character of the journalist-subject relationship’.
This newsletter is an opportunity to think through these questions — about craft and agency, ethics and representation — with leading writers. Hopefully these conversations spark further discussion. Season 1 of Conversations on Poverty, which will land in inboxes on Wednesdays, runs from 15 May to 24 July. It features conversations with Squeezed author Alissa Quart, New Yorker staff writer Sarah Stillman, the Guardian’s John Harris, photographer Kirsty Mackay, Independent Food Aid Network director Sabine Goodwin, as well as my own sources, who have featured in my coverage of poverty in the UK in Broke: Fixing Britain’s Poverty Crisis.
You can find out more about me here: www.jembartholomew.com
The newsletter will always be free to subscribe. Site artwork is by the brilliant Daniel Norman. Thanks for reading!
