By Olivia Barrell
This story is a part of the Cincinnati’s Storytelling of Journalism project, which represents a collaboration between Northern Kentucky University (NKU) journalism students, the NKU Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Greater Cincinnati Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Students interviewed seven professional journalist winners and finalists from the Greater Cincinnati SPJ Chapter’s 2021 Excellence in Journalism Awards to create these Nieman Storyboard Annotations-inspired Q&As and story annotations that analyze and celebrate our region’s award-winning works of journalism.
2021 Excellence in Journalism Award: Camilla Warrick Award
Winning Journalist: Sarah Haselhorst, The Cincinnati Enquirer
Winning Story: “Employment was already hard for some in recovery; the pandemic makes it harder”
Sarah Haselhorst thought she had her story in the bag. Her editor at The Cincinnati Enquirer proposed a story about opioid use in hospitals during the pandemic, but since they were so difficult to access during the time of COVID-19, the focus shifted to another story: people in addiction recovery finding employment during this time.
Haselhorst, an intern at the daily news publication, and her editor thought this story was going to be a horrific account of those dealing with recovery and employment during a pandemic, but over the course of reporting they both learned that wasn’t true.
She initially thought she would follow a few people through her time in Cincinnati: go to job interviews with them and hear their struggles. She started with officials and then wanted to talk to people who were living and going through recovery themselves. Haselhorst met a group of volunteers who were going through recovery. She talked to them and then kept asking for the next person. She did much more reporting work and ended up throwing her expectations in the trash.
Over the course of working on this story during her 10-week internship, Haselhorst interviewed over 50 people in the Cincinnati area. Ultimately, Haselhorst won the Greater Cincinnati SPJ Chapter’s 2021 Excellence in Journalism Awards’ Camilla Warrick Award for journalists who make an impact in the community with her story, “Employment was already hard for some in recovery; the pandemic makes it harder.”
Sarah Haselhorst
In a question and answer session with Sarah Haselhorst, NKU students Olivia Barrell, Bailey Cooper, and Aaron Magee asked Haselhorst about her award-winning story, her experience finding her way around in an unknown story, and strategies she follows for interviewing people in addiction recovery. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity and will be followed by the annotated story.
To start, how did you find people to interview for this story?
It's kind of funny because I had this notion that I was going to follow a few people the entire time I was in Cincinnati. I was going to go to job interviews with them, I was going to hang out with them on their time off, and listen to their struggles. It's very hard when you’re convicted of anything and have to go apply for jobs. I had these grand ideas. I started off with a lot of official-type people because that was super easy to Google. You know, who runs this, who has a nonprofit, etc., and so I started with those people and then wanted someone to talk about the human aspect of this, what it actually means to live this. People were really willing to give it to me.
I spent a lot of time talking to people. This is a super strange thread, but I lived on a city farm when I was there, and they were doing a program during the pandemic where they would give food to whomever wanted to come and get food. A few people who were volunteering for them were in or knew people in addiction recovery, and they connected me strangely to a lot of folks because I built my trust with the people I was living with, and then they're like, “Oh, this girl's fine, come talk to her.” Not all those people panned for the story, but I just asked “Who else can I talk to?” I just kept asking and asking and built trust with peop le and listened to stories. I probably talked to 50 or 60 people for that story, and I think we used maybe seven people in the actual story. I thought it was important not to draw conclusions about what the reality was with people in addiction recovery during a pandemic looking for employment or for those who were employed. It was a lot of groundwork. People did not hand me sources, but I learned a lot that way.
Out of the 50-60 people you interviewed for the story, how did you decide which people to include?
Good question. This is my fatal flaw in journalism. I don't stop talking to people, and I don't stop interviewing people. It's a real problem I have, and I feel very guilty for chopping people out of stories. And then you get an email saying “Where am I?” I’m like, “Oh no, sorry.” But everyone has helped in their own way, and I decided it was important to have a few voices of the actual people [in recovery], and then I needed people who are going to explain numbers to me, and then I needed people who are really doing the groundwork in a way and helping these people. I wanted a cluster of voices. There were people who I interviewed, and most were off the record, but it gave me a lot of background information, and they were very helpful in that way. It was a process to take out people, but if people overlapped and said the same things, there was no need to put two people in there at all. I took the most compelling one, and that's how I went about it. I do find that very difficult when so many people have said really interesting things. I have a story right now I'm working on like that, and it's still gut-wrenching to just chop people out with whom you had really nice conversations.
Since addiction is a sensitive subject, did you need a mantra to tell your interviewees to keep them on board?
I strangely found a lot of people who wanted to talk about addiction recovery. Whether they wanted to go on the record or not, that's a different story. Some people were more hesitant to do that. But people really wanted to talk about it. It's sort of like when people want to talk at funerals or people want to talk about the really hard parts of their life because maybe no one's ever listened and here's, you know, a nice reporter who's going to do a nice job and who feels an obligation to write these stories. Maybe other people haven't given them that and I think it's a very nice thing you can do for people. For people who were on the fence, I didn't have many, sometimes it was like, you know, “I'm not ready to share” and you have to be okay with that and find someone else who is ready to share. And I think that's more than fine, but again, you know I never really forced or coerced anybody into that because that's hard to talk about. I would try harder if it were an official who didn't want to talk or something—I would be very willing to be annoying.
What unexpected challenges did you face in producing this story?
Oh gosh, everything basically. When I was in school, I worked at a paper, kind of a weird quasi paper, and I produced a lot of journalism there. I court reported, I health reported, I did cops, I wrote narratives, I covered gymnastics. I saw it as “Okay, I have this in the bag. This can't be that hard.” It's important to talk about how some people will go into a story framing it and thinking they know what it is. My editor and a reporter, who really supported me through this, we really thought that this was going to be horrific for people in addiction recovery and that the pandemic was going to wipe out any success they had. And that wasn't true. When I learned that wasn't true I realized that I had to do so much more reporting work because that work didn’t exist. That was really difficult for me, and that was a huge barrier.
My other barrier was that I was warned about how a lot of people in addiction recovery, for a plethora of reasons, don't return phone calls, and they're very difficult to find. Sometimes you'll get one call, but then they'll never call you back or they'll never answer your call if you have a follow-up question. Some don't email, and some don't text. They say they'll meet you somewhere, they don't meet you, and that was really hard for me. I was very used to people being consistent, and it was really about learning to take a lot of my expectations and throw them in the trash, and really go with the flow.
Employment was already hard for some in addiction recovery. The pandemic made it even harder
By Sarah Haselhorst, The Cincinnati Enquirer
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| Grace Pritchett / The Enquirer |
Amanda Roberts was almost never without employment. Dependable, she repeats. She worked for an honest wage during a 17-year stint as a Kroger assistant manager. She bore the signature royal blue polo shirt and clocked in on time.
Even during her five-year fentanyl addiction, Roberts supported herself. Her children. Her lifestyle. Where she spent her days chasing a high.
"I worked for it," she says, "Never relied on a man. Never stole."
But three years ago, Roberts walked out of Kroger's doors. Last summer, she stopped using.
She's still out of work.
But Roberts prays now. She's grateful.
Question: You said this story is the “perfect example” of not framing a story before you go into it. How did you have it framed at the beginning?
Haselhorst: Right, yes, so basically not framing it because we thought that this was going to be some awful thing and we found some people actually had a lot of success.
She avoids conflict and abides by the rules of the sober living house where she resides. It’s her sanctuary. She doesn’t skip meetings and attends 24 hours of mental health and addiction classes each week. Her life is consumed by her recovery. But when a grant expired in July, one that funded her rent payments, it threw Roberts.
She sounds hurried over the phone. A certain strain in her gravely tone.
“I don't want to be homeless,” she says. “I don't have nowhere to go. I don't want to go to a shelter.”
A $370 monthly rent payment dangles over her head. If she can't make the rent, she’ll be back on the street. It is a new reality that’s hard for Roberts to swallow. The pandemic is gripping the very workforce she needs to enter.
For many in addiction recovery, finding work was already hard. A stigma still looms. Tarnished criminal records often go hand in hand with drug use. And the time commitments of mandatory groups and meetings can collide with a 9-to-5 work schedule.
For people in addiction recovery, work is more than a paycheck. It’s a distraction. A way to feel worthwhile.
And, sometimes, it’s a lifeline.
Question: How did you decide to write this first section and blend it into a wider issue?
Haselhorst: We realized we needed to because we knew we had to talk about Cincinnati, obviously, but especially during the pandemic, it was really hard not to talk about how America was doing. I think that's why we chose that, and I don't think we looked entirely at all of the national numbers because it got really muddied up. I was told I couldn't use a ton of data, which I understand because I think the story would have gotten bogged down. When you've talked to enough people, you can make claims. When you've read the research, you can claim things. It was true that millions of Americans did lose their jobs, thousands of people were out of work, businesses did go under, I mean many of them never came back up. That took talking to other reporters, it took reading a lot, it took looking at national data. We knew we had to add some statistics to it. For some people, it’s valuable.
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But it isn't just Roberts’ reality, she isn't the only person scrambling to pay rent. Addiction recovery or not.
Millions of Americans have lost their jobs. Thousands of local people are out of work. Businesses are going under, hanging on by a thread.
Cincinnati's May unemployment rate more than tripled from 2019 to 11.1%. Stacking up last year to the 2020 pandemic-ridden job market, Mark Kylander, Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce regional data and policy manager, says there are 105,000 fewer jobs in total than in summer of last year.
It’s not only a Cincinnati problem. It mirrors the nation. The pandemic shuttered jobs in hospitality, retail and food service.
For some in stable recovery, it's the first time in over a decade that they have had to start over in the labor market. Long gone were the days of rehashing their criminal past to a prospective employer.
“Don’t put them on the back of your list,” Trina Jackson, Hamilton County reentry director, tells employers. “They were good employees before, they’ll be good employees again.”
But the safety net isn’t the same.
Narcotics Anonymous groups have gone virtual. Group therapy is conducted over Zoom. Internet access is quelled for those who can't afford it at home, because public spaces like libraries have shut their doors. Children have been forced out of schools to learn remotely, and many parents can't afford help.
The combination has left many in addiction recovery overwhelmed. They are detached from access – computers, internet access, guidance – to help in their employment search.
And for those in addiction recovery who are eligible to receive unemployment benefits, it isn't as straightforward as a check in the mail. A large sum of money can be a trigger to use for a person who isn't in stable recovery, Amy Parker, BrightView peer recovery supporter and outreach coordinator, says.
There’s also heightened emotional stress with isolation. There’s worry of financial strain. What if the benefits run out? When will they run out? There are questions that can cause someone with substance use disorder to spiral.
The thinking is: “If I can't get a job but I know I can hustle drugs, then I have to do what I have to do to survive,” Parker explains.
Jackson, Parker and the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce know the positive trickle-down effect stable work has on people in addiction recovery. It can lead to housing. Regaining custody of children. Often, it keeps people out of jail and off the streets.
But jobs for people in recovery, who already are fighting the odds, have become scarce. And the pandemic has convoluted the job search for them. But it hasn't been entirely immobilizing, the three agree.
And for a handful of people who've stopped using, work’s been busier than ever.
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On a Wednesday night after a long workday in mid-July Christina and William Fields are still smiling.
Question: How much time did you spend with Christina and William Fields?
Haselhorst: Christina and William, I think we had an hour with them. I went with the photographer, and we didn’t do any reporting about them before. They just said, “We have a couple that's great.” I said, “Fabulous, I’ll show up.” I did not know a lot, but it was really important to me that we get all these tiny sweet details. He's like, “Oh, I just operate a forklift.” And she was like, “No, no, you have this great supervisor position!” It's important. They talked, and we asked them questions, but I really watched how they work together, I thought that was important. There was still this love in their life, and they were really human. There was not a lot of time there with them, and I never called them back. Amanda Roberts in the very beginning was maybe a 20 minute phone call. She was someone who never got back to me. After that, I wanted to meet up with her. She kept pushing it off, telling me she’d show up, and she wouldn't be there, which was okay. You have to understand that it happens, and that was all right. I just wanted to make sure I was representing her accurately, so things she told me, if I felt like I couldn't contextualize them, I did not put them in there.
Christina spent the day preparing shipping labels at UBUY. It’s the Amazon for overseas, she jokes. Her husband, William Fields, is by her side after a shift at Camco Chemical. “I operate a forklift,” he offers. Christina chimes in to clarify, “He just got a supervisor position.”
The two glance at one another as if they don’t need words. And maybe they don’t. They share three children. A marriage. And a harrowing past.
Question: How did you reconstruct this scene about Christina and William Fields and verify that it was accurate?
Haselhorst: I record everything I ask people, so I knew. If somebody wanted to object, we would go back to the recording. A lot of the other things, whether they were right, it was a lot of observations that I knew were true. They did smile at each other like they loved each other, and we all know what that looks like. He did prepare the shipping labels because I asked him three times. I said, “What is UBUY? I've never heard of that.” They joked about this being the Amazon overseas, which I thought was very funny. They talked about their kids, how long they’ve been married, how long they struggled with addiction, and you ask those questions over and over. Sometimes you don't have the answer. They lost custody of their children. There’s no date, so it does kind of hang, but it is true. Should I have asked for a date? Probably. Was he in and out of jail? Yeah. That's what he said, and we looked through court records, and that was true. So there are other ways you can check what people say because sometimes people have foggy memories, but you can also retract detail when it bogs things down.
Both spent over 10 years in the grips of opioid addiction. They lost custody of their children. Spattered their records with criminal charges. William was in and out of jail.
“All the horror stories weren’t enough. Losing our kids wasn’t enough. Losing freedom wasn’t enough,” William says.
Christina got help first and graduated from the Lifelong Learning Center in Covington – a 12-week recovery program last year Her husband followed months later And since then for the couple, finding employment hasn't been an issue.
“She has a killer resume,” Denise Govan, the center’s managing director, said. William laughed, that’s why she bounces from job to job. People are always calling me to work for them, Christina says.
When the pandemic swallowed Northern Kentucky, William’s hours skyrocketed from 38 to 60 hours a week. He's considered an essential worker. The business he works for makes laundry detergent, bleach and disinfectants. Necessary commodities especially during the spread of COVID-19.
For the Fieldses, they've found hope in a time of devastation. They've remained employed. Sober. And the pandemic has brought them closer to their three children. It's the first time they'd seen them and their foster parents in a while, albeit virtually.
But the couple’s stable employment hasn’t kept them in a bubble.
They’ve seen their friends relapse since the pandemic arrived in Northern Kentucky and killed jobs. With eyes downturned, William says one of his friends recently died of an overdose.
Question: Were there parts of the interviewing process that got emotional? Was there anything you did to get your interviewees to open up?
Haselhorst: It was interesting, he was very stoic. What was really hard for them was when they talked about their kids. And I'm very much of the belief you give people space and you give them time, if you want to cry, cry as long as you need and also you don't have to say anything. If you want to call me back, you can call me back. So they got emotional about it, but they were okay, you know, they had done a lot of hard work to get where they were. And I mean they were seeing their kids again, which was great. But that was hard, but I think you can pull people back in and say, “thank you so much for sharing, but I'm wondering about this?” and so you still give them credit but so you're not just like “Uh okay man that sucks” You know? Yeah, you can still show up for them, but you can direct it.
And, strangely enough, staying employed isn't always the problem. For some, it comes down to a lack of accountability. They know they don't have to come to the center for class that month. A drug screen urine sample isn’t collected another.
When no one is checking, it's a way that people in recovery can slip through the cracks.
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There isn’t a definitive answer to the question of whether the pandemic is obliterating the workforce for people in addiction recovery. Parker says it's more personal than that.
It’s past work experience. Educational attainment. A criminal record. Even the drugs taken to stay healthy. Some people who are prescribed Suboxone to treat their addiction, for example, have a difficult time finding work because the medication is traced in their urine screen.
And there's a mental health aspect. Substance use disorder often coincides with anxiety and depression, rendering it hard to apply for jobs and hold ambition. And mandated isolation doesn't help.
Question: How did you decide to include this detail about other medications and then move into a detail about mental health?
Haselhorst: This is something I do a lot of which is not always the most attractive way to report. It’s very listy, but it goes back to the health aspect. What we were trying to say was that no one was checking them, and so they were always just screwed. Even when they had suboxone, it was in their urine and you may not get a job because of that. You can have a criminal record, you can have educational attainment because your mental health is so bad, and you don't have the ambition so that's I think that's how I thought about it in my head, but I can see where it's weird.
Question: I loved seeing a touch of mental health. What made you decide to mention it here?
Haselhorst: This is what people want to know. People with addiction are normal people trying to solve problems that everyday people have. There’s a big stigma around substance abuse. We could all go down that road.
Opioid addiction doesn’t discriminate in the workplace. Blue-collar workers use drugs in the same way white collar workers use drugs White collar workers more often are being allowed to work from home but that doesn't mean they go unscathed by the new circumstances.
By April, the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce recorded around 4,000 job openings in the region. But the unemployment rate was more cause for concern. It has quadrupled since spring of last year to 13.4%.
Manufacturing in Northern Kentucky has stayed strong, Tara Johnson-Noem, Northern Kentucky Workforce Investment Board, says. A factor that may bode well for those in active recovery. And then there’s work in logistics, which has remained stable.
“Amazon’s always hiring,” is a sentiment that’s been echoed by many throughout the past few months.
But these types of jobs didn’t fall into either of the Fields’ hands. They fought for their recovery. To stay clean. Chasing employment opportunities rather than a high.
They had support from the center. Access to resume building. Job skills. People surrounding them who told them they were capable and kept them motivated. And others who honed interview techniques and helped them dress accordingly.
That's the kind of support that’s been harder to come by during the pandemic.
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The center that saved William and Christina Fields last summer shut its doors from March 18 to May 18. Toward the end of June, Parker says, BrightView reopened its facilities after months of being closed. However, attendance at groups is lower. The Lifelong Learning Center was near silent in late-July.
On a Wednesday in late July, only the Fieldses and Govan walk the long stretch of burnt orange hallway that's filled with photos of people who graduated the program.
Question: How did you decide on what scenes to detail and incorporate into your story?
Haselhorst: I wanted to explain this in a way to people that it wasn't this really clinical space and that there were people who had graduated and this is how they were. You know, sort of honoring them in a way that they could go back and look at the stretch hallway, but I think it also gives a sense of place. So it was near silent, you know, literally no one was there, except for me, this woman and the Fieldses. But it's, you know, burnt orange. It's fun, it was peaceful, it was not this – I mean there were so many parts to that Center and I thought it was so interesting there could be a whole story on it. But I mean they were like feeding people in this little kitchen, they were clothing people on the second floor, they had the gym. They had all this stuff and it was like okay sure, but I'm not trying to sell something. So it was just enough that I thought it was a sweet image that wasn't me selling this fabulous program.
Christina and William wait for their co-led evening group. One woman shows up. Lately, it’s been six or seven people. Other times, no one comes.
“I think people are scared because of the pandemic,” Govan explains behind a blue surgical mask.
Question: The addition of the mask here was interesting when they haven’t been mentioned before. What made you decide to mention it now?
Haselhorst: Of all the people I talked to, these were the first people I talked to in person. You couldn’t talk to people (in-person), get into places. We know a lot of people’s voices but not their faces during the pandemic.
But addiction recovery is tricky. It's hard to parse whether the trepidation is about personal safety or the push for accountability.
The coronavirus hasn't quelled efforts of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky-based addiction recovery centers. Instead, they have switched gears. Some staff are on the ground. Parker still cruises through neighborhoods and drives to hotels to deliver hot meals to people.
Others keep more distance. They work from behind illuminated computer screens. They hold meetings and check in on clients. In a pandemic, it’s more important than ever.
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When people in addiction recovery lose jobs, recovery is on rocky ground. Housing and health care are at the forefront for what Jackson calls a "vulnerable population."
Roberts, whose bed at the sober living is in peril, feels the pressure Jackson talks about. It tightens its vice-like grip the closer the month comes to an end and rent is due.
Question: Can you tell me about your writing process in which you started with talking about Roberts struggles, then going into the Fieldses then looping back to conclude with Roberts’ job prospects?
Haselhorst: Yeah I think it started with Roberts because she was probably what made sense to the audience. It was going to pull people in faster than talking about a center that saves these people and they thought people would be like,.”Yeah okay, whatever, nice” um and I thought she was a little more compelling. I mean, she was really honest. So honest and open, and I really liked that about her. And she was easy and straightforward and I thought people would just like her better. I did have a woman after the story published asked if she could pay her rent so maybe it was a good choice.
She can't talk on the phone for long. She says she has to make another call to make sure she can pay her July rent. "I fell behind," she says.
Weeks ago, Roberts sent out resumes.
She sighs into the crackling phone when she's asked if she'd heard back. Only one place. The rest, she's still waiting on.
Nehemiah Manufacturing interviewed Roberts in early July. Then, she was one out of eight other people to go through an orientation. She's anxiously awaiting their call back.
But even if she gets the job, it isn't guaranteed to last.
That job is funneled through an organization called Root Staffing and its contract to hire service, one that places clients in temporary positions to gauge fitness. The job can last from three to four months, but it can take up to six months to gain permanency.
It is based upon productivity. Clocking in and out, honestly. And being on time. It isn't easy. She'll have to juggle catching a bus and arranging a schedule to fit groups and classes in support of addiction recovery.
Question: How did you decide where to cut off the action and move into the ending?
Haselhorst: I was always taught you can do these short lists, and then you can bring it back in. l think when I wrote that, I was thinking a lot about sentence structure and how to keep people reading. People can't just read long sentences forever. It’s balanced. It gave people enough of an idea of what she had to do to even get in the door.
She's hopeful about Nehemiah Manufacturing. But the place she's called home for more than seven months, she isn't too sure will still be hers for long.
"They can throw me out at any time," Roberts says. "It's time for me to really get on my feet and get work."
