KLSoc

kl7:

Meet Devin Browne and Kara Mears. The two self-proclaimed white reporters—“maybe the whitest people we know,” as they say—have embedded themselves with a family of eight undocumented Mexican residents to, in part, “learn Spanish so that we can better report our native city.”

The project’s name, The Entryway, not only reflects their current living situation of a mattress set up in the front room of the rented Westlake home, but also as an entry into their hosts’ world and viewpoints. “It’s our entry point into their world,” Browne explained over the phone. “Our project is mainly about access: how do we go about accessing a totally different L.A., another America? It’s quite a secret—they don’t have their papers and there are very few people living in the light. They are secretly selling tamales and fake ID’s. How do we access that and how do they access us?”

LAist has a great rundown of this project called The Entryway which features reporters embedded with a Mexican family in MacArthur Park. The project was partially funded by a site called Spot.us, which is kind of like a Kickstarter for journalists.

I would love to do something like this someday.