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Washington and Lee University

Washington and Lee University
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Poverty Journalism

OnPoverty.org, a website staffed by a team of W&L students, is the online meeting place for professional journalists throughout the country who cover issues related to poverty and class. It provides:

  • links to current news from the country's national and local press, TV stations and online sources,
  • discussion forums where journalists can talk about coverage opportunities and challenges,
  • summaries of significant new research from universities, think tanks and government agencies
  • original reporting on the state of poverty journalism.

The website was started in 2005 as an outgrowth of an undergraduate course, The Journalism of Poverty, taught by Prof. Edward Wasserman, which examined distinguished coverage of social justice issues historically and in the present day.

OnPoverty.org is a student operation, staffed largely by volunteers from the Department of Journalism and Mass Communications, many of them also active in the university's Shepherd Program for the Interdisciplinary Study of Poverty and Human Capability.

Please visit the site and let us know what you think. http://onpoverty.org