Community Sourcing in Solutions Journalism: Emmet White in Conversation with Oscar Perry Abello
By Emmet White
Photo of Oscar Perry Abello by Kriston Jae Bethel, Published by Next City
Although his beat spans the entire United States, Oscar Perry Abello only had to ride the subway a few stops this time. Instead of flying to the Bay Area or taking a train to Philadelphia, Perry Abello’s July 2020 story for Yes! Magazine “Reclaiming Neighborhood Power” took him one neighborhood north of his own, from Washington Heights to Inwood.
Yes! Magazine, a solutions journalism-focused magazine, dedicated their July issue to immigration and migration, specifically detailing immigrant-led solutions. Perry Abello pitched a story about immigrant communities fighting back against detrimental development through rezoning proposals, as opposed to their vote or representatives. Perry Abello is the senior economic correspondent at Next City, a non-profit urban affairs magazine also dedicated to solutions-based reporting. We chatted about the process that led to this story and how his reporting played out.
I saw in your Twitter bio that you also live off of 168th Street. How was it reporting on a neighborhood that you were somewhat close to? And did you find that advantageous or maybe more difficult to report the story?
Both. I have all the background knowledge, like hearing from local news, or getting newsletters or following local politicians on social media, just watching the local news every night, and also just being able to see and know and describe the neighborhood. It wasn't hard to get to on a Saturday. That was just a quick ride uptown, and that's advantageous.
But again, Yes! Magazine isn't a local publication. If you're writing for a national publication and you're writing about your neighborhood, one of the challenges is drawing the line on what part of this is really only relevant to people from Inwood, or New York City, and what part of this story is really relevant to the broader audience? Who doesn't live here, but is concerned about the issue at play in the story? You have to rely a lot on your editor. The story was maybe 3000 or 2500 words when it was published. I'm filing 4000, almost 5000 words all together. A lot of what got cut out of that story was about New York City building code and the history [there].
To your point, in writing a solutions story, you have to also choose on framing it between a New York City solution or making it a more national solution.
That really just comes from the overall framing of the story. The story was a part of a whole issue that focused on issues of immigration and migration. And I pitched it within that framework: some people can't vote or don't vote, and these zoning battles affect their daily lives anyway. Who is taking on those risks to bring out those voices into the public policy process? That's why the story has a national claim. If it was more of a New York story, then it would be a lot more focused on the zoning code and where it came from. I would probably talk to a lot more lawyers, as opposed to a community organizer, about the local legal issues that are also worth noting. I talked about the zoning code and I definitely also need to talk more with the city and get some more folks on record about the city perspective on its own zoning. I didn't really get that into this story. Because, for this particular magazine, it wasn't really about the power of the zoning code. The story was more about the fact that historically, excluded immigrant communities are able to use the zoning code as a way to voice their concerns and their wishes and their vision for a city.
I think my favorite part of your story was the kicker and how you wrote about how these groups are not claiming to have all the answers because in some senses, they're also grappling with not just these rezoning issues, but a number of other ones. And that was really helpful for me too. It was nice to see that, you don't have to finish a story with some proclamation about what exactly is going to happen. Things are in the works and the community shouldn't have to shoulder the weight all on its own.
I wasn't trying to write a story necessarily about what should happen in the neighborhood. That's what the residents are fighting for. And the cities, and developers are all fighting about it. It’s about the problem of: How do people who live in neighborhoods get involved in the policies that are deeply affecting the way they live and their continued ability to live in those neighborhoods? Are they involved or not? And why is it important for them in for some of these residents, especially to be involved in this part of the policymaking process?
So the framing of the story is: Here's the way these communities are making their voices heard. And, fortunately, the magazine agreed that that's an important point to make. We don't actually know what the end results will be about the land use processes.
After the story came out, it turned out that the group lost. They appealed at the next level and then the city appealed. And now the city won in the second stage. So now they're figuring out what we have to do next.