Investigative reporter Jennifer Brown of The Denver Post was reporting a series on child abuse when one of her sources happened to mention that the number of homeless children in Colorado had soared in recent years.
When she dug up the numbers, they confirmed it. “In a 10-year period, the number of homeless students in Colorado had gone from 7,000 to 23,000,” Brown told fellows at the 2015 National Health Journalism Fellowship in Los Angeles this week. The Great Recession and local housing shortages were fueling the trend.
It would’ve been an easy story to push out in that Sunday’s edition, but instead Brown kept the story under wraps — even from her editors at first — and embarked on a six-month reporting odyssey that culminated last August with the three-part series, “Trying to Live, Trying to Learn.” To produce the powerful stories, Brown and videographer Mahala Gaylord immersed themselves in the daily lives of two families, showing in vivid detail what it’s like for young kids to grow up and go to school in a chaotic, unstable world of seedy motels, reflexive punishment and chronic poverty.
[For more of this story, written by Ryan White, go to http://www.reportingonhealth.o...0%99s-jennifer-brown]
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