Poynter covers disabilities

Two recent posts on Poynter about writing about people with disabilites caught my attention recently: [1] [2]

I think most of us have gotten past the poor high school girl’s quandary in #2:”I wanted to write a good story about overcoming obstacles,” she said. It’s important to write what happened, not try to fit notes into a preconceived pattern. But there’s a lot of ground to cover between that girl’s reporting and the New York Times articles mentioned in #1.

This has been on my mind recently because of my story about Becca Hart. And now of course I realize that I did use the word “obstacles” quite a few times, but–I believe–not in a bad way. And Hart, when I spoke to her, was humble and had a great sense of humor–not “cranky, dismissive, angry, horny, obnoxious.”

So, good things to think about either way. What’s certain is that Poynter’s pieces couldn’t have come at a better time.