Homelessness Project | Images

*Note: If you are interested in reading all the stories in their entirety, check out the Web edition here. All the stories and photo galleries should be linked to one another.

Now. As for the print edition...

A1 teasers for the week leading up to the special section's publication. I only saved three of the papers from that week, evidently.


Rack card, which went in our newsstands for the week leading up to publication.


A1 the day of publication. With an explanatory column about why and how we did the project.


D1: A special presentation by...


D2-D3




D5


D6

The greatest lessons...

aren't the ones we expect we'll learn. They are unexpected, hiding in the shadows of all the great things we try to accomplish.

From October through December 2009, I tackled what grew into the largest and most ambitious project of my young journalism career.

It all sprang from a seemingly small idea: to write a profile of a homeless person. The profile would give a little more meaning to some statistical data released by the Homelessness Coalition in our coverage area.

Then I learned a close friend of mine from college had ended up living on the streets of Minneapolis for a while. Although she retained her job, she couldn't afford to make rent for several weeks.

It shifted the angle of my homelessness project from just a profile to a project geared toward addressing the stereotypes we have of those who end up homeless: are the stereotypes true, and if not, how are they wrong?

I knew grappling with a subject that big and involved would take more than one story. It would take a series. Or, as my editors later advised, a special section.

So began my journey to the shelters, alleyways, vacant homes and hand-built camp sites where I learned the personal stories of countless displaced individuals. Getting them to talk frankly was never the challenge; getting them to go on record was the difficult part.

Photos, video and audio were also a sensitive issue with many. One subject demanded her entire story be removed from the special section, because she feared her photo being published.

With a team of seven from our newsroom — two reporters, two photographers, a Web producer, a graphic designer and an associate editor — we completed a six-page special section: "When Homelessness Hits Home."

I learned countless things in the process of producing my first special section, but here are some highlights:

• When embarking on a large project, first pitch it thoroughly to all your colleagues and superiors. Test their receptivity and interest.
• Find out who is on your team before you begin.
• Ask questions, and keep your managers/editors in the loop.
• If you need a bodyguard, don't be afraid to ask.
  
• Be specific when delegating responsibilities. Who needs to do what when?
• Give yourself plenty of time to complete the task. Don't rush it, and don't rush your sources. If you want to get to know them, spend time with them while they're going about their daily tasks.
  
• Give yourself and your team early incremental deadlines. Be flexible with them, but don't ignore them or you will regret it.
• Multi-task. If you're a reporter and you have a camera, keep it with you in case you get the rare chance to capture those moments that are so hard to recreate.
• Have meetings. Everyone hates meetings, but a well-run meeting can keep everybody running in the same direction and relieve a lot of stress for you as project manager.
• If possible, have the project put together well in advance of its publication date, to give you time to decompress before seeing it in print.
• Promote it!
  

Public Records: Use Them

Cross-check names against public records. Not just names, but everything. Document-based journalism is the context we need for meaningful stories. News without context is just noise, as one of my mentors pointed out.

In Series...

A few things I'm learning as I work on an ambitious series to run at the end of the year:

1. Plan, plan, plan. Try to map out ahead of time what stories you will have and in what order; when you want to run them and how.
   
2. If you are working with someone else, be sure to delegate and let the other people pull their own weight.
3. Communicate. Bring the other reporters, photographers, editors and Web producers inside your head so they can know where the project is going and can offer help in their areas of expertise.
4. Make and meet self-imposed deadlines. Any series is going to require a lot of interview and writing time, so be sure to do interviews early and keep up with your notes and transcriptions. Give yourself early deadlines for each story so you don't try to cram all your information through a bottleneck of time near the publication date.
5. Pace yourself. Don't do all your interviews in one night. Try to seize on your free moments in the regular workday to make progress, instead of waiting to block off an entire day to work on the project.
   
6. Don't overdo it. It might sound awesome to have photos, graphics, video AND audio slideshows to go with all your text stories, but sometimes attempts at complementing can turn into redundancy. Determine the most effective way to tell each element of the story, and don't overtell it.
   
7. ASK for help when you need it. If you're beginning to feel in over your head, remember there are others in the newsroom who might enjoy a piece of your action.
8. Have fun. Remember why on earth you decided to take on this project in the first place, and love every minute of it.
   

Grand juries: what they didn't teach me in civics

Nothing will show you how much you don't know about government and the justice system as effectively as splashing into local news coverage as a cub reporter.

You will find yourself asking what the difference is between a regular jury and a grand jury, the difference between civil and criminal lawsuits, what role the municipal councils have with relation to the county commission, why there are county schools in cities that have school systems and so forth.

And you will learn the hard way. The answers to some of these questions will depend on where you work. Each city, county and state has its own unique operational characteristics.

The answer to the grand jury question, by the way, is here, from uscourts.gov:

''A grand jury decides if there is a probable cause to indict (accuse) individuals or corporations on criminal charges based upon the evidence presented. Grand jury sessions are held in a private room with only the grand jury, which consists of 23 individuals, government lawyers, court reporters, an interpreter if needed, and the witnesses to be heard, all under oath."

The U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment requires a grand jury indictment for federal criminal charges. According to the American Bar Association, every federal jurisdiction has one, and it usually sits for about five or six consecutive days per month. Some states don't use them, however; other states in the subset that do use them require their indictment for only certain crimes.