Chicago video journalist Noreen Nasir, Minneapolis enterprise correspondent Tim Sullivan and New York enterprise photographer Maye-E Wong vividly reported one couple’s story of what love looks like in the time of coronavirus. But in a twist, they also looked at divisions of race, and how white and black residents in Mississippi see the virus quite differently.
Sensitively told with intimate attention to detail, the story humanized the trauma caused by the virus with the universal and age-old appeal of a love story. But it also skillfully wove in the numbers about race and the virus in Mississippi – showing how the coronavirus disproportionately impacted the Black community, and how that community has largely been more focused on prevention than their white neighbors.
The story engaged readers and viewers, and it received more than 1,100 retweets, from a New York Times editor to the Montgomery Advertiser to Mike Barnicle, the famously crusty Boston newspaperman and NBC correspondent.