By Kali Villarosa

Poverty is universal. No matter where in the world, there are always discussions and debates surrounding the poor: individuals who are struggling economically and unable to maintain a comfortable livelihood. But the issue with the term “poverty” itself is that it remains an umbrella term; it moves the conversation away from the specific groups (whether defined by race, religion, ethnicity, or some other category) that make up an “impoverished” population and instead lumps them all together under the general category of “poverty.” This is a problem because different groups have different needs, yet most methods and discussions of poverty alleviation rarely take these distinguishing circumstances into account. In Part IV of her Covering the Margins series, Kali Villarosa investigates how this plays out in news coverage of urban marginalization in Ahmedabad, Indian.

By Kali Villarosa

In the third installment of her Covering the Margins project, supported by a fellowship from the NY6 Upstate-Global Collective, Kali Villarosa takes a close look at news coverage of problems affecting African American communities on Buffalo's East Side. She finds a significant difference between the coverage provided by the city's two most influential news outlets (WBFO and The Buffalo News, respectively), on the one hand, and the city's African American newspaper (The Challenger Community News), on the other. The latter outlet, she argues, "stands as the guide for what should be incorporated into the more mainstream outlets and also points us toward the realization that individuals themselves must question their news sources, their content, and the impact of these coverage patterns on their city."

By Kali Villarosa

In a period of increasing political contention and global displacement, the conversation around refugees, immigration status and documentation/legality has become more prominent within the news media. In the second installment of her Covering the Margins series exploring news coverage of marginalized populations in Buffalo, NY and Ahmedabad, India, Kali Villarosa examines how three news outlets in Buffalo have framed the story of refugee/immigrant populations in order to tell an especially celebratory story about the city itself.

By Kali Villarosa

In the first of her series comparing news coverage of urban marginalization, Kali Villarosa introduces us to two cities on opposite sides of the world that share important patterns in how marginalized communities are represented: Buffalo (NY) and Ahmedabad (India).