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Why would the Democrat and Chronicle spend a month on a climate crisis podcast? Why is it hiring a weather and climate reporter? What about global warming is changing the way we experience summer warmth and humidity in Rochester?
I called the executive editor of the Democrat and Chronicle, Mike Kilian, to find out his thoughts about the enterprise journalism project and what people can expect from the newsroom going forward. He is also the New York State editor for USA TODAY Network. (This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)
Why do you encourage journalists like Rob Bell to go out in the community and spend time investigating this intersection between climate science and lived experience?
Answer: Successful news organizations that serve communities and readers are news organizations that get past the what happened every day to get under the hood and look more at the how and the why? ... There are all these factors that are driving issues in our community, whether it be crime or economic change or housing prices or whatever it might be — healthcare costs. And we are the ones because of the expertise of our reporters and our photographers and our editors who have the leverage and the knowledge to ask the questions, to look at data, to be in communities listening to what people having to say, observing, and piece the puzzle together so that people can understand.
What does it take to do this kind of tough work?
You have to be immersed, in some ways like a researcher at a college. You know, almost like being a student. Sometimes like being an investigator. We are blessed in Gannett and the Democrat and Chronicle with journalists who do that and do that well. And the key is that we support them and encourage them in that quest.
You have assembled a lot of talent in the D&C newsroom, and Rob Bell and others are representative of people with multidisciplinary talents. How do you connect that to Rochesterians getting the information and the understanding that they’re looking for?
Every journalist brings their lived experience, their heritage, their upbringing, their neighborhood, their education, and their identity with them to the job.
And when you have a diverse group of journalists, you can get lots of understanding and perspective about the issues in Greater Rochester or anywhere else.
Journalists are listening to each other and they can challenge each other. They can ask good questions of each other that then become questions that get asked out in the community or of those in power or experts at nonprofits and universities.
Every reporter starts somewhere, but ultimately it’s all those building blocks of who, what, when, where and why that help people do more significant and more impactful work over time. Gary Craig on our staff, he has been doing this for 30 some odd years, and you know he co-wrote a book about the Attica prison violence in 1971 and did all sorts of enterprise work on that and it was built on all sorts of court hearings and other types of stories he was doing back as a cub reporter and now could see the bigger picture based on that experience.
And so now a Robert Bell, who has worked on “City on Fire,” is an early career journalist. But he’s going down very similar path.
The Democrat and Chronicle has had a recent history of bringing a lot of nuance and information to the public safety discussion. I won’t push you for a lot of details today, but in the future what can we expect from this kind of rich and fair approach to public safety that that might not be the bar set in every town in America, but certainly is one that you’ve set in Rochester?
You have crime, which is obviously when bad things happen.
But also you have public safety, right? — which is people’s perceptions and realities of how well they and their families are protected and and can navigate their lives.
And then you have community safety, in which our communities come together to really try to make sure that people are safe and that there’s responses to issues that might be going on, whether it’s bicycle thefts in one neighborhood or or something more serious like gang violence in another neighborhood.
And so there’s layers to this.
On one level the public needs to know that this thing happened and why and that a court case might determine the guilt or innocence of somebody. But we have to include more than the “what happened?”
● There are data that can help people ascertain their the level of risk in their community, based on the prevalence of crime.
● There is context. Is this type of crime occurring more often or less often?
● You know, does it affect me or or was it just a bar fight between two friends, and then what are the community voices and perspectives?
We have done a better job but still have a ways to go of including the voices of people who live in the neighborhoods most affected by crime and to understand that they do have a sense of agency and often do a lot of things to help young people be on the best possible path, to protect themselves, to lobby people for safer or lower speed limits on a street where a 6-year-old has been killed by a passing car.
So there are opportunities for us to help readers connect the dots. It’s not just that crime is some random force that nobody can control.
It comes from certain places, it is managed in certain ways and it has different layers of impact including trauma to people who might be close to it.
And there’s the accountability issue with police. Right? Police, our government agencies, the mayor’s office.
● How well is it doing its job?
● How well is it closing out homicide cases and how well are they treating people in the communities that they serve?
● What racial disparities might exist?
● Are they understaffed or are they overworked?
We will return another time to the question of trauma’s role in the community, because we want to speak to you about it in the future. But was there anything else that you wanted to add today?
Only that, you know, I’m thrilled that “City on Fire” is coming to the public. Rob Bell and and those supporting him just put a massive amount of work into it and it’s gritty. It’s compelling.
It’s concerning, in places. It really gives a sense of what’s really going on in Rochester neighborhoods and how climate change and higher temperatures are influencing what’s occurring.