In June, investigative journalist Lila Hassan co-won the Livingston Award for national reporting honoring her work on season 4 of Bodies, a documentary-style podcast that explores medical mysteries. Lila's reporting covered topics that are steeped in shame: the growing trend of early-onset puberty, the little-known mental illness called postpartum psychosis, and the fight for abortion training in a Post-Roe America. Lila gives us a peek at how she navigated sensitive topics, feelings of shame, vulnerability, and anonymity along the way.

How did you get people, especially children, to open up to you about these intimate parts of their lives?

It was a joint effort with the other producer and host, Allison Behringer, to identify people who have had the related experiences of the issues we were looking into. I say that because it often takes a team to make great journalism and I hope that collaborative reporting is a part of our collective future as storytellers. We both acknowledged from the outset our biases and our strengths of diverse perspectives in finding people. 

Having said that, it was all about following breadcrumbs and trails and often what other producers who work in longer-form storytelling do. We looked at advocacy and research groups on these issues, spoke with people mentioned in articles or academic journals, scoured social media for posts or groups, and - at every turn - put out feelers, whether that was through the Bodies Facebook group or creating TikToks (this was to find kids to talk to, because that’s where they are every day! Funny enough, we found a mom instead).

Much of the success of getting them to open up was the nature of the podcast. It was already one that was eager for marginalized voices and looked to offer understanding, empathy, and context for what could otherwise be embarrassing or even traumatizing issues. We both had a very human-first approach and emphasized consent and awareness. This sincere approach builds trust, which is what makes conversations more rich and vulnerable without exploiting someone’s sadness or conditions for soundbites. 

What roadblocks did you face while reporting these episodes? 

Finding people was the hardest part, and, on a personal level, interviewing someone and not being able to promise that I’d use their story after they’ve already opened up to me. I’m a multimedia journalist but I would say the majority of my work is traditional reporting or investigative work - even when in documentaries - and radio is so different. I found it so difficult to conduct pre-interviews because both myself and the interviewee would have an exchange with genuine care but ultimately later in post and editing have to make hard decisions about who is good to champion the information for the podcast, instead of being satisfied with their story alone. 

Other roadblocks were the issues themselves. With early puberty, all the science and medical literature had the tone of “issues” and “problems” but without concrete information about why this trend was ongoing - all the while freaking out kids and problems. It’s a condition that affects Black and Hispanic girls disproportionately, and children end up being subjected to early sexualization and treatment. All the while, they’re just kids. So even though we had an issue and the people to speak to it, finding an angle that was fair to them was challenging.

And in the medical training episode - balancing anonymity and getting residents on the record was so tough. They could be expelled for being found out, and they’re the lowest totem on the pole of hierarchy in medicine, so they don’t have a lot of protection despite the prestige and necessity of their careers. Talking to us was putting that on the line, and we knew we had to be super careful about sharing enough information to outline the stages - particularly in rural and Southern areas -  without exposing them to backlash. 

What do you hope the impact is of visibilizing these undertold stories? 

I don’t know that our stories would change laws or effect mass change or impact in the traditional investigative sense, but I don’t think they need to. These stories, and the podcast more generally, just humanizes what are often shared experiences of shame, hurt, mysteries, and more. There’s no reason to be embarrassed about being human, and there’s no reason why any medical-related anything, especially those out of our control, should be stigmatized. There’s no progress without knowledge and shared understanding, and I think that’s what this kind of storytelling does. Even if the only gain is making the participant feel heard and understood for the first time, I’d say that’s impact enough.  

Alicia Kismet Eler wears many hats. Based in the Twin Cities, they're an arts journalist, critic, culture writer, and comedian. Much of their writing resides at the intersection of culture and technology, probing the impact of digital phenomena like selfies and memes. In this Q&A, Alicia reflects on the different genres they find themselves blending together in their work.

Your book The Selfie Generation delves into the millennial phenomenon of the selfie and its cultural implications. Can you talk about your decision to focus on the selfie and what it can illuminate?

Certainly! It was 2012, and selfie was all the rage. At that time, I was curious about the selfie and its broader cultural implications particularly because of the way it was being covered in mainstream media. One article would opine about the selfie as the end of culture/society because it was being seen as narcissistic, and then I’d find an article that suggested the selfie wasn’t all bad. So, I really wanted to unpack the selfie. 

In 2013, I started writing the selfie column for the Brooklyn-based art magazine Hyperallergic. My editor Hrag Vartanian greenlit the project and offered amazingly insightful guidance, and most of all he supported the vision I had for the column. I wanted to understand the selfie. I wanted to know why people felt upset when they saw other peoples’ selfies posted to social media. After all, artists had been making self-portraits since the beginning of art history! Why couldn’t everyday people take photos of themselves with their smartphones’ front-facing cameras and do what artists have always done? 

The weekly column included selfie submissions from readers, along with a paragraph or two about why they shot the selfie and what it meant to them. As the self-appointed selfie expert/critic, I also wrote a roundup and analysis of that week’s selfie news. I was most excited about readers’ submissions because I felt like that would help explain the disconnect between how people saw the selfie (usually in a negative light) and what the person who posted the selfie meant to express (usually something meant to communicate or express an idea or feeling).

After about a year of the column, it just made sense to spin this topic off into the full-length non-fiction book, The Selfie Generation. I wanted more space to try and extrapolate the deeper meaning of the selfie. I wanted to illuminate the selfie as a misunderstood phenomena, in fact. How could a single image of one’s face mean so many different things to so many different people, only just depending on who saw it and what mood they were in and how they saw the subject of the image? About the selfie, I wanted to tell people: Hey, it’s complicated. 

I also wanted to illuminate the ways that the selfie could have some sort of positive effect on culture. I did see potential for the selfie as a way to bring visibility to underrepresented cultural groups or minorities because with their own self-image in their hands, they could tell their own stories.

I wanted to also acknowledge the ways that selfie was further complicating issues of personal life versus public life, since it was clear that anyone could become a celebrity or just visible via their social media and, most of all, their selfies. I was struck by articles documenting the negative effects of the selfie, such as people being addicted to their phones, taking selfies in inappropriate places such as Chernobyl and the Holocaust Memorial, etc., and the impact of smartphones on communication and mental health.

In addition to being a culture writer, you are an arts journalist, essayist, and comedian. How do you balance these roles and forms of writing?

Thanks for acknowledging the many hats I wear! Yes, I do a lot of different types of writing. I would say that all of these types of writing feed one another and overlap. 

I was really excited about this reported story that I wrote a couple years ago for Hyperallergic, titled  “What Makes Medieval Art So Meme-able?” It did come out of my fascination with art meme accounts and the hilariousness of Medieval art becoming memes, and I wanted to write about it but as something between culture writing, arts journalism and an essay. At the same time, it was also funny but it’s not stand-up comedy. I think often I just go with the flow, and let the type of writing define itself. 

Like this piece “Beautiful Ghosts, or We’ll Always Have Istanbul” for The Markaz Review came from an intense sadness I was feeling about trying to figure out my connection to Istanbul, the place my father left in his early 20s, but always longs for. For me, Turkey and Istanbul specifically feel like a place that I have some sort of karmic relationship with. 

Growing up in America, Turkey was a place I kept trying to understand but through short vignettes, like these family visits for reunions or my cousin’s wedding. “Beautiful Ghosts” ended up being an essay, but I think I went about it in a journalistic type way of gathering information and doing some of my own reporting — but this time the subject was me, and the audience was other diaspora folks. 

I have been on-and-off doing stand-up comedy for 10 years, but I reactivated my interest about two years ago. This time, I decided to be consistent and stick with it, join the Minneapolis comedy community even. 

When I got back into stand-up, I initially used it as a way to take a mental break from the semi-autobiographical novel I was working on, A Tourist of Memories, which has some of the same elements as the aforementioned essay. In comedy, I found a more immediately gratifying way to talk about my journey with Turkishness, my confusing queer dating life, and the Jewish (non-Turkish) side of my family. I wanted immediate reactions, not this slogging away at a novel in the privacy of my home and with too many of my own thoughts, demons, nightmares, and fantasies. At least with comedy, everyone there is trying to feel a little bit better in that moment. 

Of course, these are all types of writing that sporadically earn me money. The foundation of my writing practice is my day job at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where I work as the Visual Art Critic/Reporter! In this role I get to cover the thriving visual art community in Minnesota. I’ve been an art journalist and critic for over 15 years, and I’m proud to have this role. 

So, I think I don’t purposely balance any of these types of writing. Rather, I let the writing balance itself. 

What upcoming projects are you excited about? 

I’m really most excited about the stand-up I’ve got going on. I had a very busy June with I think nine shows, including two Pride shows. I am slowing down this month to give myself some time to breathe and live! In August I have two shows in Chicago, and I’m excited to go down there and do them, and take a road trip there with my girlfriend! Comedy helps me feel more present and in the moment, kind of the opposite of fiction.

That said, I’m also excited to one day finish my book, A Tourist of Memories, about a young queer Turkish-American screenwriter struggling to understand why her father left Turkey. In the process, she falls in love with someone online in Istanbul and secretly goes to meet her. I haven’t been able to work on this book really in almost two years, but that’s OK. 

When I get discouraged about not having finished the book yet, I think about something I read in an interview that writer Akil Kumarasamy did with author Michael Deagler, whose debut novel Early Sobrieties came out in May. In the interview, he said: “If you still feel compelled to work on a book in year five or six or seven, that’s probably a positive sign. It means there’s something there.” I’m only in year four of this book. I guess it’s just a baby. I think there’s still something there, but I’m letting it be for now.

What pieces of media are you currently drawing inspiration from?

I feel pretty hooked on just watching stand-up comedy clips on Instagram. I watched a funny one today by Turkish comedian Eda Kibar talking about the HPV vaccine, which is expensive in Turkey if you’re not a married woman (trust me, it was funny), and another one from Laura Laham about Arab Heritage Month and Pride month and the way many in the Middle Eastern people deny the existence of queerness. (I did send that last one to my girlfriend who is also Middle Eastern. :)) I also watched some clips by Mo Welch about the ridiculous politics in Alabama, where a court ruled that a frozen embryo can be considered a child.

Right now I’m reading The Fear of Large and Small Nations by Nancy Agabian, which is about Armenian diaspora, a dangerous romance, displacement and the Armenian Genocide. Although I am always reading a book, I think I spend too much time on Instagram. I recently wrote a joke about being on my phone too much.

As protests roiled campuses nationwide this year, John Klopotowski launched an AMEJA chapter at the University of California, Berkeley. The campus has a long history of protests and touts its legacy as the home of the Free Speech Movement, which began in 1964. The chapter president and journalism graduate student reflects on the last two tumultuous semesters and explains what motivated him to establish an AMEJA presence at Berkeley.

What was it like studying journalism on a campus also involved in a major international story?

The past year has been a strange one to spend at journalism school. It's often been disorienting. My j-school's administration did not hold any meeting or forum for students until about a month into Israel's attack on Gaza following October 7. In early November, the school held a forum with a well-known opinion columnist who often writes about Israel. Perhaps out of curiosity, or perhaps in an act of reporting, she asked our class about our experience on a college campus during such a “divisive” time. 

I stood up and told the writer about my and my fellow students’ frustration, citing the fact that our journalism school hadn’t held any discussion about Gaza until November 2—and the discussion that had been held was only about verifying open-source information (OSINT), not about the historical, political, or economic context of what we were witnessing. 

There was a moment in late October when it looked like such an event might happen. In fact, I had been in touch with the Dean’s office about coverage of the military campaign and how to talk about it honestly. At one point, I made a comment pointing out common word differences between media coverage in Arabic compared to that in English. “We’re not going to discuss word choice,” is what I was told by an administrator. This event eventually turned into the OSINT discussion, a helpful but tepid conversation. 

After my comment at the November forum with the writer, an administrator who was on stage with the columnist responded to my statement, claiming that there is an inherent problem in discussing topics that sit at the heart of a person’s very identity, or humanity. In other words, as journalists report and write/produce, they should not put others in a position to defend their very nature as a human being. I am hoping that a piece I’m working on about this bizarre experience will be coming out soon in The Markaz Review. 

I became a journalist because I’ve seen people—often my family and friends—who have been forced to defend their humanity. Indeed, those who have been systematically stripped of their humanity for whatever political reasons are constantly required to argue that they are, indeed, human. If journalists neglected stories with characters who are being dehumanized, we would fail to do our jobs. And is what I mean that the past year being disorienting—one of the most consequential and important stories of not just the year, but our careers/lives, has been so thoroughly eschewed by a prominent journalism school. If not for some wonderful students and professors, I would have spent no more than a month in the profession before becoming fully disheartened.

How did you cover the protests at Berkeley and what challenges did you encounter? 

The atmosphere at the school was a major hurdle for students interested in covering the protests, either for class or freelancing; it didn’t give us encouragement to pitch our pieces to various outlets. Nonetheless, some students covered the encampments and general protests. Specifically, my friend and fellow student, Hussain Khan, reported on the encampment for KQED and had a story about Palestinian students on KALX. Another student, Coral Murphy Marcos, had pieces run in the New York Times and The Guardian. I had a piece run in a local outlet about Oakland, CA’s Yemeni population, the idea for which started as the US began bombing Yemen after the Houthi blockade in the Red Sea. Other students and AMEJA members, Zane Karram and Isabella Marzban, each produced short films about protests in the fall of last year. They were both wonderful and gave a sense of the personalities in the Bay Area dedicated to the Palestinian cause, and how they go about organizing themselves. Unfortunately, the films aren’t currently available for the public, but if they are published online, I’ll send around links. 

AMEJA Berkeley Chapter President John Klopotowski speaking at a conference on Armenian rugs.

Why did you feel it imperative to launch an AMEJA chapter at Berkeley?

Given everything I mentioned above, it quickly became apparent to me and my fellow students with Middle Eastern roots that Berkeley’s j-school needed an AMEJA chapter; we organized ourselves as the administration failed to meet basic requests to have public meetings/events about Gaza. We all felt that we needed an open space, whether it be to brainstorm story ideas, talk about current events, and complain about/appreciate coverage of the destruction of Gaza. In the fall, we’re hoping to hold more events for the general student body, and potentially organize a class about responsible reporting on the Middle East that would be offered for future students. One benefit of Berkeley’s 2-year program is that we can take time to grow the chapter and make sure it is healthy before we graduate in 2025.

Beyond the protests, what issues and happenings on campus do you think warrant coverage and fascinate you?

Berkeley is a fascinating place and there are stories cropping up everyday. One important story, also covered by Isabella, Zane, and a number of other students, is People’s Park—a park over which there have been numerous protests; the University has long been planning to build housing on top of the land, despite its status as an historical and cultural landmark. Additionally, graduate students are routinely being underpaid and overworked, so their plight is ripe for more coverage. The University’s Chancellor, Carol Christ, is retiring at the end of this month. She was the first female chancellor of the University. Her tenure has been full of infrastructural development. Finally, perhaps my favorite story is that the University’s clock tower is home to a family of falcons, which welcomed some babies this spring. There’s a live webcam for those interested.

Last month, Reem Akkad was promoted to senior editor on The Washington Post’s international desk, a step that "recognizes her formidable leadership on the desk and across departments in driving innovative, transcendent storytelling."

She is described as a “pioneer” with a “visual-first” approach to journalism that marries, text, photos, video, graphics and audio. Since she joined The Post in 2015, Reem has made an imprint by becoming its first visual enterprise editor, crafting bold multilayered stories and leading with an award-winning collaborative approach.

International news has consistently been the top story in a country often accused of not caring enough about news beyond its borders. Why do you think Americans are so engaged right now, especially with the war in Gaza?

Younger audiences appear to be very engaged with the war in Gaza. I believe that's because they are seeing videos and photos in real time all over social media. Though that kind of engagement does not always transfer to other platforms, and it certainly doesn't always transfer to other global news events. So the way we try to get people to pay attention is by approaching stories in less traditional ways, by making them more visual and more integrated, and by helping people feel like they've been transported to another place they can discover through our work. 

I would be happy to share our work because I'm so proud of what my team does. Here are a few examples:

Gaza is Going Hungry

Palestinian Paramedics Die Trying to Save Girl

The Maestro

Front Line Between Ukrainian & Russian Forces

Your promotion comes at a time of ongoing economic constraints across the industry and a general malaise about the erosion of the public’s respect for the profession of journalism. How do you help boost the morale of your team?

We are lucky to be doing work that we love, and we are always open to innovating, trying new storytelling formats, and expanding our reach on social media. We are all very aware of the challenges our industry is facing, but we always turn back to the spine of journalism, which is to deliver the best information we know in the most engaging way possible and hope it somehow has an impact.

What or who is inspiring you right now?

I am also inspired by my own colleagues who are brilliant, creative, tenacious, journalists. The Washington Post is full of incredibly talented reporters and editors. I am honored to be in the room with them. 

AMEJA co-founder and board member Mona Iskander and AMEJA member Yasmeen Qureshi are part of a team that won the 84th Annual Peabody Award for Public Service for their short documentary, The Post Roe Baby Boom: Inside Mississippi's Maternal Health Crisis. 

Upon their return from the ceremony in Los Angeles, they shared their insights about tackling this underreported issue and amplifying the voices of women in the Mississippi Delta.

What did you learn and what surprised you while working on this documentary?

Yasmeen: Through our reporting we understood what it means to be pregnant in rural Mississippi, which has one of the highest rates of maternal and infant mortality and where access to quality healthcare is a challenge. We also learned that Black women in Mississippi are four times more likely to die from pregnancy complications than white women, and that 80% of maternal deaths in Mississippi are preventable. Deep anxiety was present in almost all of the pregnant women who we spoke with on the ground, and it seemed that everyone knew someone who’d experienced a serious complication in pregnancy or while giving birth. It was normalized. We also learned that maternal mortality is high in Mississippi because of a confluence of factors that include poverty, lack of access and lack of insurance for a population that suffers from many chronic health conditions. 

Credit: Corentin Soibinet

What were the challenges you faced getting people to discuss such a painful and controversial subject? How did you overcome them?

Mona:  The topic of abortion is a cultural taboo in Mississippi and even mentioning the word in our conversations could sometimes make people feel uncomfortable. We spent weeks working the phones - reaching out to doctors all over Mississippi. Most did not want to go near a camera. We finally made contact with Dr. Lakeisha Richardson, an OBGYN who works in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. She felt passionately about giving a voice to the women she sees every day. She also felt comfortable talking about how the abortion ban had changed her work. After several conversations, she gave us full access to her clinical practice and the hospital. 

Trying to find women who had had an abortion was even more challenging. While we were on our first trip to Mississippi, we received a call from one of our sources who introduced us to Shirley, a woman who had been undergoing cancer treatment when she found out she was pregnant. She had to leave the state to have an abortion. She felt compelled to speak publicly so people around the country could understand how these laws affect women like her. We wanted to make sure that Shirley would be protected if she spoke out.  We agreed not to use her last name or the town where she lives, as her safety was the most important thing to us.

Credit: Corentin Soibinet

What  impact do you hope your documentary has?

Yasmeen: We hope that this documentary helped our audience in the rest of the country understand what it feels like to be a pregnant woman in Mississippi amid strict abortion bans and where lack of access to healthcare and poverty are already major challenges. Our hope was to give women like the ones we spoke with, who are rarely featured in the media, a chance to be heard by lawmakers whose decisions have an impact on their lives. 

Credit: Corentin Soibinet

Are there any plans to follow-up on this issue or any updates to provide on the situation in the Mississippi Delta?

Mona: We are looking into producing a film that follows up on the rapidly changing landscape for abortion access in this country. It will likely take us to other parts of the country with a focus on how people who live in states that have banned abortions are managing their new reality.

Yasmeen: A number of states, including New York, have passed bills known as shield laws, that would legally protect doctors who prescribe and mail abortion pills to women in states where abortion is banned. It’s hard to know the impact of these laws on women in Mississippi, but it’s something we’re hoping to explore. 

Credit: Andrea Kramar

Winning a Peabody Award is a career milestone.  What has it meant to you? 

Mona: I am so honored that we won this prestigious award. The team that made this film is very special; I feel very lucky to have worked with such talented filmmakers and journalists. We dedicate this award to all the people who spoke to us for this film. It reminds us how valuable this work is - to give voice to people who are most directly affected by decisions made at the top.  

Yasmeen: It is a true honor to receive this award among such a talented group of storytellers, and with such a special team. Stories like these don’t often make the front page or get the most views on YouTube, but we believe they are deeply important especially at a time when our country is increasingly polarized on topics like these. We dedicate this award to the women and doctors who spoke with us, as it takes immense bravery to speak publicly about a topic that is so personal. They did so with the best intentions, hoping that by speaking out they could improve the experience for someone else.