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The issues affecting rural Washington are complex, multifaceted, and often overlooked in mainstream media.

A reporter in Spokane with the state funded WSU Murrow Fellowship program tells Cascade PBS how she connects with immigrant communities and other underrepresented groups to find the often neglected stories from a rural perspective.

Reporter Monica Carillo-Casas focuses on covering rural issues in Spokane for The Spokesman-Review and Spokane Public Radio.

Often, that means covering stories on immigrant farmworkers in the region, like a recent story about the impact of long Covid on those who continued to work through lockdown during the pandemic.

Carillo-Casas says on stories like these, and the fact that she is Latina herself, helps her sources to trust her to tell their stories.

They look at me and they see, okay, this is somebody that maybe understands what we're going through, or maybe has a personal story that I can relate to.

And I think oftentimes they get some sort of hesitancy when they're trying to ask them questions about immigration, because, again, a lot of these Latinos don't have reporters going into their communities asking why something matters.

Carillo-Casas says building those relationships can lead to better coverage, like when a source she known for a year alerted her to a ten year old and her father being detained by ICE agents after he was stopped on his way home from dropping her off at school in Spokane.

And because it got nationwide traction, someone from Texas who once was a Gonzaga student, saw the story and was able to help out and get them released.

I'm Paris Jackson.

Thank you for watching the Newsfeed, your destination for nonprofit Northwest news.

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