My latest piece is about the shitshow that went down in Bethel, Ohio — but it's also about the stories that white residents of very white towns tell themselves about the existence of racism in those towns: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/bethel-ohio-black-lives-matter-protest

This piece also deals with a problem that a lot of journalists increasingly have in the time of "fake news": there's no such thing as balanced, but how do you get people on both sides to talk, and if they won't, how important is it?

If Lonnie Meade broadcast himself for hours on Facebook Live, and I quote from that broadcast, how important is it that he refused my requests for an interview? How much of his reasoning is necessary or needed in the piece, as opposed to, say, Ray?

I work through these questions every piece, but one thing for non-journalists to know is that in a piece like this, we try to interview everyone and their 3 dogs

This didn't make it into the piece, but I keep thinking about the Bethel in relation to the idea of "Holy Appalachia," as referenced in Elizabeth Catte's excellent WHAT YOU'RE GETTING WRONG ABOUT APPALACHIA