On the Beat: Covering Divorce

A divorce class plays the "string game," which demonstrates how everyone in a family is affected when one person pulls away.

Q&A with Minnesota Public Radio reporter Sasha Aslanian about her new documentary, "Divorced Kid: Stories from the 1970s divorce revolution."

With the number of blended families today, it's easy to forget that 30 years ago, America was in the middle of its "divorce revolution" as the divorce rate soared. In this documentary, children of parents who divorced in the 1970s look back at the experience and talk about how it shaped them as adults. Reporter Sasha Aslanian shares her own experience as a "divorced kid" and explores how the '70s offered lessons on how to improve divorce for children today. Aslanian talked with JCCF Public Media Editor Jennifer Dorroh about creating the documentary and how journalists can cover divorce.

How did you get the idea for the documentary?    
Back in about 2003, it popped into my head. I thought it was an interesting, recent slice of social history that I had lived through, and I didn't think it had gotten a good treatment in radio. I wanted from the beginning to tell this in the first person, after coming across an audio tape of my parents' wedding. After hearing their reaction to the tape, I knew it would make good radio, and I knew that would form the guts of my story.

What were the challenges to telling this story in the first person?
I first wondered, "Does it advance the story, or is it self-indulgent to do this in first person? Why am I interesting enough to be in the story? I could just find somebody who matches my age and story and report on them." But my story was connected enough to the time of the divorce revolution that it made sense to include it.

To do this, I had to make myself vulnerable. We ask our sources to be brave and tell us their stories, so I think it's important for us to put ourselves out there and be vulnerable sometimes.

You mentioned that you worked on the documentary for five years. Could you talk about that process?
I worked on it off and on. The idea popped into my head almost fully formed. I knew which voices I wanted to include, so I set about gathering little bits of string. When I was going to San Francisco [for another story], I made sure to interview [psychologist and divorce researcher] Judith Wallerstein. It felt like a stealth project in a way. Then, in March, I really felt I had the goods, and I pushed to get it done.

What did you learn from reporting this story?
This was a labor of love for me that I was really consumed by, but it was the kind of project that I didn't expect everybody to get excited about. But even the hardboiled news guy in our newsroom got excited. So I learned you can be rewarded for taking risks. I learned that if there is a story you really believe in, do it.

What advice do you have for other reporters covering divorce?
You're pretty much catching people on the worst day of their lives. Many don't want to talk. I tried to follow seven families, and only one let me in. I didn't use last names of children. Some news organizations have much stricter rules about identity, but if you're trying to get people to tell you intimate details about this experience, you have to be flexible. They don't want it "Google-able" in the future, so finding a way to tell the story without baring their full identity was a really important compromise that my editors were willing to make.

Our audiences really care about these stories, so don't be scared off. It's not just a story you present to make everyone cry. If you are reporting on real families, and also fleshing it out with policy and research, you can make a legitimate news story out of it.

STORY LEADS
Aslanian has these tips for journalists who want to report on divorce in their communities:

• Use divorce as a lens for looking at the recession. Aslanian reported on how the recession was increasing the load in family court as more people went back to get child support adjusted. 
• What is the court system doing to make divorce easier for kids? In many states, courts are working to make divorce faster, less contentious and cheaper, in order to lessen the impact on children. 
• What is your community doing to make divorce easier for kids? Some communities offer program such as Banana Splits, a school-based children's group program for students who have experienced parental divorce or death. 
• What kinds of efforts are underway to make sure people are better equipped for marriage in the first place?
  
• Look at the state legislature. Usually there is some aspect of divorce laws in play. For example, Aslanian says, the Minnesota legislature is considering requiring parent education before parents can even file for divorce.
  
• Revisit your sources a couple of years down the road. Ask, " 'How did things work out?' If you did a good job once, they'll probably let you come back, and you'll get a richer story," Aslanian says.
   

For more resources on covering marriage and divorce, see JCCF's Parenting Sources.