I very much enjoyed reading the Invisible Child piece.

I don’t think it mattered that Dasani’s last name was omitted; I can’t see how it would have made a difference to the story’s quality to include it. I think that it was better to omit it since she’s very young and already getting a lot of media exposure. Leaving out her last name was one way she could have some privacy.

The story was really long, it’s true, but I think the length was necessary in order to show the full depths of Dasani’s situation. A shorter piece wouldn’t have had time to fully explore how complex Dasani and her family’s lives were and paint an accurate picture of them as human beings doing the best they can to get by–even when “the best” isn’t something legal.

I’m not sure it mattered that the Times didn’t disclose how long the reporting took. I can’t think of any of the code of ethics that would require disclosing the time frame. I felt that reading the story made it clear or at least apparent that Andrea Elliott had followed Dasani for several months, since there’s a pretty obvious progression of time–for example, toward the beginning of the story, we see Dasani start school, and a little later on, a Christmas celebration is described. To me that implies that Elliott was with her for a long time.

I do agree that more time could have been devoted to the treatment of homeless people in New York City, but I also think that the story worked without it. It’s a profile of a girl and her family; had it been a series of profiles of several families or people, it would have been more imperative to include more information about homelessness.

I’m not so sure that Invisible Child was a caricature. I think that had it focused on child homelessness, relying on a single story wouldn’t have been a good idea. However, it was a story devoted to this one child, in this one situation. Certainly, it could be an example that speaks to a larger issue, but since it focused primarily on Dasani’s Homeless Life, it avoided being a caricature.