Qualitative research about poverty has the unique potential to inform educational practitioners who work with poor youth and their families. According to Van Maanen's (2011) classification of different audiences that engage with ethnography, however, most educators are "general readers" unfamiliar with such inquiry. To consider the significance of this distinction, we explore how educators determined the credibility of ideas they encountered in the particular professional development training of Ruby Payne. Payne's work on poverty has prompted both substantive and methodological criticism from academics, but her influence as perhaps the most visible contemporary authority on the topic has persisted amongst practitioners in the United States and expanded abroad. Through our study, we find that educators deem Payne's ideas as credible because they (1) defer to the judgment of others, (2) identify with her perspective as fellow practitioners, and (3) accept storytelling as just a different type of research. The implications of these results are especially relevant for qualitative researchers seeking to affect educational practice because Payne characterizes the foundation for her controversial ideas in explicitly ethnographic terms.