GBO NEWS: New Journalism Fellowships; Sequestered Seniors; Sharper Brains
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations
May 2, 2013 — Volume 13, Number 8
EDITOR’S NOTE: The new GBO News marks the 20th year of the Journalists Network on Generations. Click through this brief table of contents to the full GBO News on WordPress. This format is “scaleable” for computer, e-pad or mobile device. Let us know what you think of the new format.
IN THIS ISSUE: No sequestration on the news.
1. JOURNALISM FELLOWSHIP NEWS: ***MetLife Foundation Approves Year 4 of Journalists in Aging Fellowships; ***AHCJ Regional Health Journalism Fellow Deadline
2. FISCAL REFORM SCHOOL: ***Seniors Suffering Sequestration (Orlando Sentinel); ***Good Weeks for Economics Grad Students, Bad for Harvard Economists; ***“Aging Undocumented Immigrants — A Burden or a Boon?”; ***“LGBT Families and Social Security—Living Outside the Safety Net”
3. GEN BEATLES NEWS: ***ASA to Reinstate Pressroom; ***Ellen Eichelbaum’s Arresting Talk (on Alzheimer’s Wanderers); ***Gov. Jerry Brown Names Stuart Greenbaum to California Commission on Aging
4. RESOURCES: ***Alzheimer’s and Hispanic Communities Briefing on Capitol Hill, May 7; ***New SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness; ***National Press Foundation (NPF) Posts Audio, Print Files from Retirement Conference
1. JOURNALISM FELLOWSHIP NEWS
***MetLife Foundation Approves Year 4 of Journalists in Aging Fellowships: The Prize Patrol could be pulling up to your door soon. GBO received the happy news that the MetLife Foundation has approved fourth-year funding of $100,000 for the Journalists in Aging Fellows Program. It’s a collaboration of New America Media (NAM) and the Gerontological Society of America (GSA), in cooperation with the GBO News publisher, the Journalists Network on Generations. The application deadline is July 1.
Journalists, selected based on their proposals for an in-depth story or series (in any medium), are chosen from both ethnic-media organizations in the United States and generations-beat reporters from the general-audience media. To research their projects, Fellows will receive expenses-paid travel to GSA’s 66th Annual Scientific Meeting in New Orleans next November, where they will have access to 3,000 gerontology experts and over 500 presentations in all aspects of aging. Each Fellow will also receive a stipend of $1,500 – although we advice not leaving it at Harrah’s Casino while in the Big Easy.
The deadline for applications will be July 1, 2013. For details and to apply online, visit the fellowship website. Once again 17 Fellows will be chosen. That includes 16 MetLife Foundation Fellows, half each from ethnic-community media published in the United States and general-press organizations. And for the second year, one reporter will be tapped for a special John A. Hartford/MetLife Foundation Journalism in Aging & Health Fellowship.
All resulting stories, which may originate in any language, may also be cross-posted on the NAM website in English after first being published by a Fellow’s news organization. (Stories may also receive wider dissemination through NAM, GSA, MetLife Foundation or Hartford.)
**And stay tuned to upcoming issue of GBO News for exciting new fellowship announcements for journalists on aging.
By the way, the first three years have already yielded over 150 articles on a wide range of topics. You can see a full list with links at GSA’s website. Some recent examples cross-posted by NAM include:
** “Filipino Vets’ Tale Tells Immigration Reformers Never Give Up,” Filipino-American Bulletin / New America Media, News Analysis, Sluggo Rigor, Posted: Apr 24, 2013. Filipino WWII vets and their widows waited decades for U.S. citizenship—denied to family members—and a paltry pension.
** “Aging Between Two Worlds (Part 1) — Hispanic, Old and Poor on the Texas Border,” New America Media/HuffVoces, News Report, Yolanda Gonzalez Gomez, Posted: Mar 18, 2013. Or en Español. Part 2 — “Aging Between Two Worlds: Hispanic Elders Thrive on Faith, Optimism, Tradition,” Posted: Mar 20, 2013. (Go to article for link to Spanish version.)
** “The Case for Mandatory Full-Time Nursing Home Doctors,” Psychology Today/New America Media, News Analysis, Rita Watson, Posted: Mar 08, 2013.
** “Aging Boomers with HIV Teaching Doctors to Keep Them Independent,” WHYY/New America Media, News Feature, Carolyn Beeler, Posted: Feb 01, 2013.
** “Detroit’s Caldo de Pollo for the Soul—Feeds Latino Seniors’ Needs,” WDET News/New America Media , News Feature, Martina Guzmán, Posted: Jan 08, 2013.
** “U.S.-Japan Study: Japanese Elders May Be Happier,” Rafu Shimpo/New America Media, News Report, Ellen Endo, Posted: Jan 02, 2013.
For further details about fellowship requirements and potential stories, contact NAM Ethnic Elders Editor Paul Kleyman at pkleyman@newamericamedia.org or (415) 503-4170, ext. 133. For further details about how to submit an application, contact GSA Communications Manager Todd Kluss at tkluss@geron.org or (202) 587-2839.
***AHCJ Regional Health Journalism Fellowship – West: The Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ) selects 10-12 journalists from a different region each year for its specialized intensive fellowship-training program. The 2013-2014 fellows will come from Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. The application deadline is June 3.
The aim of the program, with support from the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, according to AHCJ, “is to provide established journalists with the tools needed to improve the depth and amount of coverage focused on localizing critical health issues.”
The fellowship kicks off with a program in San Francisco, July 18-19. Fellows will also attend an intense one-week health reporting boot camp at the Missouri School of Journalism (where AHCJ is located) in August; a three-days session at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta, in December; four days at Health Journalism 2014, AHCJ’s annual conference to be in Denver next spring – and more. The program will cover training expenses, travel and lodging costs, registration and membership fees and most food costs. Click here for more information–and here to apply online. If you have any questions, contact Ev Ruch-Graham at ev@healthjournalism.org or 573-884-8103.
2. FISCAL REFORM SCHOOL
***Seniors Suffering Sequestration: Of course there’s an easy solution to all of the fuss this week about the mandatory federal budget cuts (the “sequestration”) hitting vital service, such as meals programs for elderly and others serving low-income Americans. Just load those meals on airline food carts and Congress will come up with more money before lunch.
Meanwhile, reporters are doing a good job of localizing the impact of this story. For instance, it’s great to see long-time generation-beat reporter Jeff Kunerth exposing the issue in the Orlando Sentinel. His piece, “Senior Services Suffer Sequestration Funding Cuts”, reports that seniors at the Winter Park Community Center have been told the funding reduction means the center will be one of five in Florida’s Orange County where the lunches will now be more sparse than one of those airline snack boxes.
Kunerth writes, “Senior-services agencies throughout the Orlando area are having to cut back on programs aimed at the poorest, oldest and most frail. In Orange County, Seniors First [the meals provider] lost more than $156,500 in federal funding. ‘This is a tough, tough thing to have to do,’ said Marsha Lorenz, Seniors First president. ‘It’s meals and people.’” Meals and people—not just political budget “savings” – indeed.
*** It’s Been a Good Couple of Weeks for Economics Grad Students: First, one discovered a major calculating error in a highly influential Harvard-generated paper supporting government austerity measures. That study was eagerly cited by people like former VP candidate Paul Ryan. The infamous Excel-spreadsheet error was discovered by University of Massachusetts-Amherst grad student Thomas Herndon.
This week Mark Gongloff reports in Huffington Post that two doctoral students at the University of Missouri-Kansas City found other flaws in the same Reinhart-Rogoff paper. The students argue that the Harvard economists “leaned too heavily on data from one country, Japan, leading to all sorts of bad conclusions about the relationship between government debt and economic growth.”
The Missouri students, Matthew Berg and Brian Hartley contend that their analysis correcting for the excessive influence of the long sour Japanese economy shows no evidence that high debt causes slow growth, as Harvard’s Reinhart and Rogoff strongly suggested in their original paper and in subsequent influential op-ed pieces. Spend-and-grow liberals couldn’t be happier, but the House is pretty well dug in for now.
*** New Report — Obama’s Proposed Social Security Cuts “Would Be Devastating to African Americans”: President Obama’s proposal to base the cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) for Social Security, civil service retirement and other benefit programs on the so-called “chained” consumer price index (chained-CPI) would deepen income and wealth inequality among African Americans, according to the Center for Global Policy Solutions. Using the chained-CPI to trim back the growth of Social Security benefits may sound minor, says the center’s president and CEO Maya Rockeymoore, but blacks and other ethnic groups would feel the long-term erosion of their economic security as the grow older.
According to Rockeymoore’s report, “Almost half of African-American seniors rely on Social Security for more than 90 percent of income in retirement due to lower levels of educational attainment, employment, earnings, and ownership of family assets, such as homes, investments, savings accounts, businesses and other opportunities to build assets over time that ensure financial security in post-working years.
“With precious few other assets to help meet expenses, African Americans will experience deeper economic pain as a result of the chained CPI,” Rockeymoore said.
She noted that the median wealth of white households is 20 times greater than African American households.
Rockeymoore, former research and policy director of the Congressional Black Caucus, added in a statement, “Rather than achieving deficit reduction on the backs of middle and working class households using the chained CPI, the president and Congress should identify reforms—like lifting Social Security’s cap on taxable wages—that strengthen the program’s solvency while providing a basis for ensuring that benefits work for those who need them most.” said Rockeymoore.
She also co-authored the 2011 report, Plan for a New Future: Impact of Social Security Reform on People of Color, as co-chair of the Commission to Modernize Social Security.
*** “Aging Undocumented Immigrants — A Burden or a Boon?” (April 29, 2013) is a piece that GBO’s editor did for New America Media on a new briefing papers showing that elderly immigrants are being increasingly pilloried by opponents of immigration reform, even as their most basic needs are being ignored. Even under President Obama’s current plan, lower-income seniors and those with disabilities, many of whom have worked and paid taxes in the U.S. for years, would get a “path to citizenship” that would deny them healthcare and income security for a decade or more.
Now, that’s just for the undocumented. We have to wonder what the plan is for the unindicted, the ones on Wall Street who got the country into this mess. Why aren’t they punished as “illegal” yet, Mr. President?
*** “LGBT Families and Social Security—Living Outside the Safety Net” is the title of a policy briefing to be held at the University of California, San Francisco’s Laurel Heights Conference Center, Monday, June 3, 1– 2:30 p.m. Pacific. The session – expected to happen about the same time the U.S. Supreme Court will announce it’s decisions on the federal Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8 — will follow up on this February’s release in Washington, D.C., of a report with the same name by the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.
Moderating the national panel of experts in San Francisco will be Emmy-winning journalist Belva Davis. They will discuss the disparities and real life consequences of present Social Security law for same-sex couples and their children.
For interested journalists not in San Francisco, the organizers say they will provide materials and speaker contacts. To reach them e-mail Elizabeth Fernandez, efernandez@pubaff.ucsf.edu, or Pamela Causey, causeyp@ncpssm.org.
A good interview contact would be one of the panelist sand organizes of the briefing, Carroll Estes, Emeritus Professor and first director of UCSF’s Institute for Health & Aging. Her e-mail is carroll.estes@gmail.com.
3. GEN BEATLES NEWS
***ASA to Reinstate Pressroom: Even journalists can take up the cry of Joe Hill, “Don’t Mourn, Organize.” As former Minneapolis Star-Tribune gen-beat reporter Warren Wolfe explained in the last GBO News, journalists attending the American Society on Aging (ASA) conference in Chicago a few weeks ago petitioned the organization to reinstate its pressroom. The group stopped offering the press operation four years ago. Wolfe sent a petition to ASA with signatures of reporters attending this year’s meeting. He received a reply via ASA editor Alison Hood saying, ASA intends to provide a press room at its 2014 annual conference in San Diego, and that logistics are being worked out. She said she would keep everyone informed as details emerge.” (Full disclosure for those who don’t know already, your GBO News editor, Paul Kleyman, ran the ASA conference pressroom program for 20 years until 2008.) Having at least a room, if not a cuppa java, will enable conference reporters to compare notes, schmooze and maybe do some more organizing — well, purposeful jawing.
*** Ellen Eichelbaum Gave an Arresting Talk for the Nassau County Police Department in April. The department invited the writer/speaker/gerontologist-professional care manager to discuss its R.E.A.C.H. (Return Every Adult and Child Home) Program for residents of the suburban New York City area. The program keeps a registry of photographs and pertinent information for individuals who suffer from a cognitive disorder, such as Alzheimer’s and other dementias or autism, should they go missing. While on patrol, officers can review a database of photos and information. If officers spot a registrant far from home, who is looking confused or lost, they can return them safely. R.E.A.C.H. Identification Cards, lanyards and wristbands are being provided to each registrant so that officers can identify registered people. Also, caregivers can immediately disseminate the information to every precinct, patrol car, village and Silver Alert program for lost elders, to the media. Eichelbaum discussed the program with local residents and fielded questions.
Also, Eichelbaum developed a series of 11 articles that Newsday commissioned for a webinar on caregiving. One piece, for instance “Long Distance Caregiving and the Good Child” included family vignettes and news-you-can-use tips.
*** Gov. Jerry Brown Named Stuart Greenbaum, editor of the 2010 book, Longevity Rules, to the California Commission on Aging recently. Greenbaum, the PR VP at the Eskaton senior living developments based in the Sacramento area, is a spry 59.
4. RESOURCES
***Alzheimer’s and Hispanic Communities Briefing, May 7: The National Hispanic Council on Aging (NHCOA) is holding a Capitol Hill briefing on Alzheimer’s disease in Hispanic communities next Tuesday, 9:30-11:00 a.m. Eastern, for those who can get to 122 Cannon House Office Building in Washington, D.C. (Be sure to confirm your participation with Jason Coates at jcoates@nhcoa.org or at 202-347-9733.) But for the rest of us out in the hustings, NCHOA will be able to provide information from the briefing along with speaker connections. Contact Gabriella Landeros, at 202-347-9733; e-mail: media@nhcoa.org.
The briefing will highlight the results of focus-group research NCHOA has conduced in recent months. Experts will also discuss the latest treatments, research and best practices as they relate to the Latino community. Those who can get there in person will benefits from that ever-enticing promise: “Refreshments will be provided.”
*** The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness was just published in the wake of President Obama’s announcement on the White House initiative on brain mapping. Brainy co-author Alvaro Fernandez, CEO of the San Francisco-based SharpBrains, has spent the last few years doing books and blogs providing an independent, analysis of scientific studies and the many attempts by commercial and nonprofit interest to apply findings.
The new book, titled the SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness: How to Optimize Brain Health and Performance at Any Age, aims to show readers “how to become smarter consumers of both media and clinical research reports.” The guide explores key research over the last decade and the thinking of dozens of leading neuroscientists, “who often question conventional wisdom and prevailing brain health care.”
Fernandez, who as named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum last year, said the book is designed to help readers navigate the media’s sound bites. It includes a foreword by Misha Pavel, program director at the National
Science Foundation. Journalists can request a review copy in paperback or e-book form, by contacting Kellie Connors, SS|PR, +1-609-750-1027, kconnors@sspr.com.
Check out their website, and you can contact Fernandez at: afernandez@sharpbrains.com.
*** The National Press Foundation (NPF) is making a range of materials available online from its recent 9th Annual Retirement Issues Program in Washington, D.C. Posted online from the program, which was underwritten by Prudential Financial, Inc., and the NPF Programs Fund, are various audio presentations, PDFs, Power Points and maybe even an informative Post-It Note of three.
Seriously, gang, there’s some good stuff here. Some of the 20 or so offerings by this all-star cast are “Can We Afford Public Pensions,” by Diane Oakley, executive director, National Institute on Retirement Security; “Overview of Retirement in the Private Sector,” by Dallas Salisbury, president and CEO, Employee Benefit Research Institute; “Rethinking Retirement,” by Mary Beth Franklin, Contributing Editor, Crain’s Investment News; Demographics of Aging: Why is Our Population Aging? How Will This Aging Affect Us? by Stephen C. Goss, chief actuary, Social Security Administration; “The Color of Wealth: Obstacles to Retirement for People of Color,” by Maya M. Rockeymoore, president and CEO, Global Policy Solutions; “A Prescription to Pay Retiree Health Costs,” Susan Garland, editor, Kiplinger’s Retirement Report; and “The Future of Social Security,” Debra Whitman, executive vice president, AARP.
Selected to attend this year’s NPF Retirement Seminar were: Lisa Selin Davis, Freelance; Cheryl Smith, I Messenger Enterprises; Richard Eisenberg, PBS Nextavenue.org; Dianne Hardisty, Kern Business Journal/Bakersfield Californian; Craig Schneider, Atlanta Journal-Constitution; Jim Gallagher, St. Louis Post-Dispatch; Melanie Hicken, CNN Money; Tim Landis, Springfield, Ill., State Journal-Register; Susan Reimer, Baltimore Sun; Matt Sedensky, Associated Press; Karen Michel, NPR-freelance; MaryJo Webster, St. Paul Pioneer Press; Joe Haney, AARP Bulletin; Mary Perez, South Mississippi Sun Herald; Brent Hunsberger, The Oregonian; Wooty Sixel, Houston Chronicle; Matt Purdy, WYPR, Baltimore; Gail Marks Jarvis, Chicago Tribune.
The Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), founded in 1993, publishes Generations Beat Online with in-kind support from New America Media (NAM). JNG provides information and networking opportunities for journalists covering generational issues, but not those representing services, products or lobbying agendas. NAM is an online, nonprofit news service reaching 3,000 ethnic media outlets in the United States. GBO readers are invited to visit the NAM website, and click on the Ethnic Elders section logo on the right side. Opinions expressed in GBO do not represent those of NAM. Copyright 2013, JNG. For more information contact GBO Editor Paul Kleyman.
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