Addie Costello here, Wisconsin Watch reporter and WPR investigative reporting fellow. Most of my reporting focuses on issues related to health care, and my editor asked me to write a bit about how tips have shaped my stories.
First, you have to know that I have an unbreakable phone pacing habit. My family mocks the little circles I make — in and out of the kitchen and up and down the living room — when I get a call. Sometimes I spend hours a week pacing across our newsroom.
While walking back and forth in our office hallway as many as 20 times a day can get tiring, the reason I’m doing it always gets me excited, particularly when I’m calling people who filled out our tip form.
Almost all of my stories are from tips, including my latest look at how residents in several counties are organizing to resist efforts to privatize public nursing homes. Tips introduce me to people facing challenges across the state. They virtually guarantee my stories will resonate since the public inspired them.
Still, many of the people I talk to don’t end up in my stories, at least not immediately.
That’s not because their stories aren’t interesting or important. Usually it’s just a timing issue. Sometimes my plate is already full with other stories, or another newsroom may have covered something similar. We strive to focus on stories other newsrooms haven’t told. But the conversations always prove helpful. Hearing about the same issue again and again helps us better understand it and realize how many people it affects.
Since reporting on instances in which assisted living homes rejected Medicaid and therefore oust lower-income residents who have few other options, I’ve heard from more than a dozen people about long-term care challenges in Wisconsin. Some of those tips resulted in stories, like one that examined a trend of privatizing county nursing homes. Most helped me recognize that our state’s long-term care system needed broader, more sustained coverage. They led me to stories about people who lost Medicaid access, assisted living closures and state budget battles affecting long-term care.
So, if you’ve ever talked to me as I paced around the Wisconsin Watch office, thank you. And if you think you might have a story, send us a tip. It will do more than help me reach my step goals for the day.
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