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Philly’s Made in America Festival is coming up; Tioga neighborhood deals with aftermath of police shooting | Morning Newsletter

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Tierra Whack, in her Germantown studio, is a rapper musician with a quirky style for her music videos that blends color and surrealism that is catching viewers' attention.
Tierra Whack, in her Germantown studio, is a rapper musician with a quirky style for her music videos that blends color and surrealism that is catching viewers' attention.Read moreGENEVA HEFFERNAN / Staff Photographer

    The Morning Newsletter

    Start your day with the Philly news you need and the stories you want all in one easy-to-read newsletter

Good morning. The big Made in America Festival is in just a few days’ time, and it’ll feature Philly locals Lil Uzi Vert and Tierra Whack. Further down in today’s newsletter, we talk to two of our Inquirer colleagues about how they covered the aftermath of the police shooting in Tioga by heading back into the neighborhood to get a sense of what locals were dealing with after the tense period of uncertainty and fear. Many people who spoke with our colleagues expressed frustrations with the police as much as the suspect himself.

Tauhid Chappell (morningnewsletter@inquirer.com)

The week ahead

  1. Philly is hosting two major events this week: Hamilton, arguably the show of the summer, and the Made in America festival, which will feature Cardi B and Travis Scott as headliners.

  2. The U.S. women’s soccer team’s World Cup victory tour match against Portugal at Lincoln Financial Field happens this Thursday. It has officially broken the program’s ticket-sales record for a stand-alone friendly match.

  3. Look for a story tomorrow that focuses on a free summer camp that helps children and teenagers cope with the loss of a family member or primary caregiver.

This week’s most popular stories

Behind the story with

Each week we go behind the scenes with one of our reporters or editors to discuss their work and the challenges they face along the way. This week we chatted with editor Dan Rubin and reporter Samantha Melamed to learn about the critical process of following up on stories well after the gaze of national media shifts elsewhere. Below they recount how they worked with a team of reporters to tell the story of the aftermath of the police shooting and 7½-hour standoff that captured the attention of the country.

For the both of you: In any breaking news situation of this magnitude there are plenty of follow-up questions and stories that can arise. How did this approach, from the eyes of the affected community members, come into play as you discussed next steps in coverage?

Our team began reporting a story on the neighborhood the morning after the standoff. Several reporters pitched in, assembling a portrait of the place under siege from neighborhood interviews, clippings, and public records. But this was done fast and in the heat of the moment. We wanted to return to the place several days later to show what the place was like nearly a week after the shootings with an eye toward residents’ attitudes about police. What were they before? Had they changed? What was the history there?

For the both of you: As national media turns its attention elsewhere, why should community members continue to stick with The Inquirer on these “next day” stories?

We went back when others had packed up, and we went back repeatedly and in force — four reporters knocking on doors and talking with residents who might have been fed up with media presence by now. They did strong and sensitive work.

What should readers expect next in our coverage?

That we will seek to tell as many sides to this story as possible.

Dan, multiple bylines were shared on this story. How did you handle delegating tasks with so many reporters?

It was important to pick a team and dispatch them in waves — so we wouldn’t trip over ourselves and so we would find people at different times of the day: getting ready for work, midday, after supper. We used [an instant messaging platform called] Slack to communicate as a team and file what we’d found and what we wondered in group messages that all could read. From the beginning we picked Samantha to write and the rest fed to her. A key to making it work was trusting the reporters and letting them do their thing while continuing to ask some overarching questions about how what was happening on the street reflected their history of encounters with police.

This story appears to have more possible updates to it. As an editor how do you determine the length and frequency of following up on these kinds of story lines?

We let the news dictate a lot of that. As there are developments, we talk about what makes sense for us to chase and put into context for our readers. And we’ll keep talking to the residents, many of whom we’ve established relationships with.

Samantha, how did you approach your part of the story?

The first thing I did was visit the block to get a sense for myself of what it’s like there now, a week after the shoot-out. I walked the length of it, got a feel for the place, and talked to anyone who was around about the lingering impact. My own conversations there helped me get a sense of the mood and the scope of the fallout. After that, I was able to draw on fantastic, in-depth reporting by Anna Orso, Jesenia de Moya Correa, and Valerie Russ, who got residents to really open up about their experiences and included telling, important details.

What was the most difficult part in reporting this story? Were community members open to discussing their trauma in the aftermath?

Some people were sick of talking to reporters, and others seemed to feel it could be dangerous. But many people wanted this story told. For me, the most difficult part was presenting a nuanced, balanced and responsible portrait of a community whose attitudes about law enforcement are rooted in very real lived experiences — and whose concerns are too often overlooked.

You can follow Dan Rubin on Twitter at @danielrubin or email at drubin@inquirer.com, and you can follow Samantha Melamed on Twitter at @samanthamelamed or email her at smelamed@inquirer.com.

Through Your Eyes | #OurPhilly

Have you checked out Parks on Tap? There’s still time! Thanks @raspontap for capturing the fun!

Tag your Instagram posts or tweets with #OurPhilly and we’ll pick our favorite each day to feature in this newsletter and give you a shout-out!

#CuriousPhilly: Have a question about your community? Ask us!

Have you submitted a question to Curious Philly yet? Try us. We’re listening to our readers and doing our best to find answers to the things you’re curious about.

Our readers’ latest question: Why does the Wells Fargo Building have its own zip code?

The answer: We developed a theory based on inquiries posed to U.S. Postal Service historians, and we think the building has its own zip code because it once contained a post office that handled deliveries.

What we’re…

  1. Eating: The “Stack” at Cotoletta. It’s a “multi-layered Mount Cutlet of chicken,” writes our food critic Craig LaBan. It has eggplant and sausage-stuffed long hot chilies laced with molten provolone and tangy red gravy. If you’re a fan of the chicken cutlet, this meal is for you.

  2. Drinking: A frosty, lavender-colored frozen mojito at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society Pop-Up Garden. The drink gets its purple hue thanks to the butterfly pea flower, a trendy ingredient that’s being used to make food and drinks blue and purple.

  3. Watching: Honeyland, a documentary about a Macedonian woman whose life as a harvester of honey inspired our film critic Gary Thompson to improve his green thumb.

  4. Listening to: Lover, by Taylor Swift. It has the singer putting pettiness in the rearview mirror over a whopping 18 tracks, the most on any of her seven albums.

Comment of the week

First class move from a first class guy. There will be other games. How many times does a man get to be with his wife to be there for the birth of their child ? I’m all in with Bryce through thick & thin. Congratulations to the Harper Family! — Zenoracledba, on Phillies’ Bryce Harper placed on paternity leave list ahead of birth of first child