Welcome!

03.03.08
FROM PROF. WASSERMAN:
Welcome to OnPoverty.org, the online meeting place for journalists who cover issues of poverty and class in the United States.

As you can see, it’s a news-driven web site, which finds and links to print, broadcast and online coverage that journalists in the field need to know about.

But it’s meant to be more than that.

We want to create a place where professionals can talk with one another about covering poverty — the obstacles and opportunities.

And by doing that, we want to help kick-start a movement toward professionalizing poverty journalism, conferring on coverage of the poor the recognition it deserves as a specialized journalism demanding customized expertise and skill.

OnPoverty.org is committed to:

- keeping practitioners up to date about developments they need to know about to do their work

- highlighting promising ways to cover the disadvantaged and illuminate the realities of deprivation and poverty

- enabling journalists to talk to each other about the work they’re doing and the work they think ought to be done

- linking to resources that can keep journalists abreast of discoveries and insights that can be harvested and turned into engaging, vital journalism

OnPoverty.org is the child of a team of students at Washington and Lee University, the 259-year-old Virginia institution that created the nation’s first journalism education program in 1870. The idea for the site arose from a course I teach on the Journalism of Poverty, which features distinguished coverage of the poor in Britain and the United States over the past century and a half.

One of the concerns raised in the course was whether that powerful tradition of principled advocacy and compassion is being upheld by journalists today, or whether our market-savvy news business systematically ignores the plight of the poor in favor of topics likelier to appeal to more desirable demographics.

Our response has been to recognize poverty coverage as a challenge to journalism’s imagination and professionalism. OnPoverty.org is an attempt to use Internet technology to inform, prod, extol, deplore and, we hope, mobilize.

We hope you’ll tell us what you think of what we’re doing and how you think we can do it better. We urge you to post your comments in response to content we present here, to keep the conversation on the site vital and timely.

And tell your friends.