"The Beekeepers," Louise Kiernan's series on an experimental felon rehabilitation program was a finalist for an ASNE feature writing award in 2008. She wrote this essay about her reporting challenges for Best Newspaper Writing 2008-2009
.Gerald Whitehead and I sat on a stoop as the afternoon unfolded. We talked as kids drifted by on their way home from school and we talked as the people who worked at the building behind us let themselves out the chain-link gate and went home.
In the year I followed Gerald and two other men through a workplace training program that teaches ex-felons how to care for bees and make products from honey, we had many conversations, hard and easy. But I think most often about this discussion because it captured an essential dilemma in writing about ordinary people: the exhilaration that comes with unearthing a chunk of the truth, at getting closer to the heart of their story, and at the same time, the painful awareness of what telling that truth might mean for them.
I had learned that Gerald had been in jail on drug charges one day when he called in sick to work. I already suspected that despite his repeated denials, Gerald, a long-time addict, was still using.
We talked for more than two hours that day. At first Gerald denied using drugs, but I kept asking. Eventually, he confessed that he been snorting heroin on and off for months. He understood I would include that information in my story, but when I told him I'd have to bring it up in my close-out interview with the head of the agency, he asked me for a favor: He wanted to tell her first. I agreed.
I'm used to writing about people who don't have experience with reporters. Those are the people who interest me. Over the years, I have worked hard to treat them with honesty, sensitivity and respect, and to make sure they understand what they're getting into when they agree to be written about. But this project proved challenging in ways I didn't expect.
The story began simply enough. When I proposed to the North Lawndale Employment Network's chief executive officer, Brenda Palms Barber, that I follow three trainees through the Sweet Beginnings program, she immediately signed on. "The good, the bad and the ugly," she told me more than once, and she kept her word.
Two of the three trainees, Tony Smith and Shelby Gallion, made it clear that they would cooperate with the photographer and me only while they were at work. Fortunately, Gerald, the most reflective and charismatic of the three men, soon emerged as our main character and he didn't mind where we followed him.
Sweet Beginnings had received some news coverage and would continue to attract attention while I worked on my story, but those articles were very different from what I wanted to do. Typically, a reporter would come out for a few hours, interview the men, spend some time in the apiary and write a quick feature. I realized the men were used to interviews; they weren't used to reporting.
I explained that I would check out what they told me, talk to their friends and family and read through their court records. What concerned them most was what I would learn -- and write -- about their criminal backgrounds. I gave them the simplest and best reason I could: We had to know where they had been to understand how far they had come.
I also told them that anytime I was with them, I was reporting my story and recording what they said and did. But if they wanted to go off the record, they only had to ask. That happened just once, when one of the men wanted to complain about the day's work.
Throughout the reporting, I made sure to keep my notebook and tape recorder visible so everyone was aware of what I was doing. I trusted that over time they would become comfortable enough with me that it wouldn't matter. Sooner or later, people can't help being themselves.
In fact, the biggest ethical struggle week in and week out was making sure everyone did remember I was there as a reporter, not a friend. Brenda wanted my opinion on the scents for the products. Gerald asked me for money. Many times I had to explain that I couldn't do anything that might affect the course of the story or make me part of it, no matter how trivial that action might seem. Sometimes, that meant fighting my impulses to intervene or comment upon what was happening around me.
Other issues surfaced as well. The men didn't always tell me the truth. Gerald neglected to mention his sexual assault conviction. Tony told me he didn't have any children, but he has a teenage daughter. In both instances, I had to talk with them about what I had learned and how I was going to handle it in the story.
When the series was almost ready to run, I met separately and privately with Tony and Gerald to run through my final questions and go over exactly, point by point, what the articles would say. I didn't want them to be surprised by anything that would appear in print. By that time, Shelby had been fired and dropped out of touch with the agency and me. Despite my best efforts, I couldn't track him down.
The day after the series started, I met Gerald at his new job to find out what he thought about the stories. He flashed that grin of his. "It's cool," he told me.
I wish this essay could conclude with that moment, but the complicated realities of stories like this one don't always allow for happy endings.
The next time I saw Gerald, a few weeks later, I gave him some extra copies of the stories. He talked proudly about the attention they had brought him. But his tentative grip on success was already slipping. He had gotten into trouble on the job. A month or so later, he accused the agency and his employer of abandoning him. They said they were doing what they could to help him but were hampered by his self-destructive behavior.
I wrote a follow-up story examining Gerald's claims and what had happened to him and the two other men, who recently had been arrested together on drug possession charges. Tony ultimately managed to get back his job at the agency. But Gerald was angry and out of work. He stopped returning my calls. I don't know what he's doing now or how he feels about the stories that once made him grin with pride, but I know I treated him fairly and honestly.
The last time we talked, he told me, "I'm just trying to do what I got to do to survive."
I hope he will.
Before becoming a senior editor at the Chicago Tribune
, Louise Kiernan worked for the paper's projects team. She wrote the lead article in a series that won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism and was a Pulitzer finalist in the same category that year for an individual project. She has worked at small papers in Oklahoma, Texas and Tennessee. 
