GBO NEWS: 18 Get Age Journalism Fellowships; Playboy Hits Ageism; “Daily Show’s” Noah Blows Christie Interview on Social Security; New Books & More
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations
Oct. 6, 2015 — Volume 15, Number 13
Editor’s Note: GBO News, e-news of the Journalists Network on Generation publishes alerts for journalists, producers and authors covering generational issues. Send your news of important stories or books (by you and others), fellowships, awards or pertinent kvetches to GBO News Editor Paul Kleyman. You can subscribe to GBONews.org at no charge simply by sending a request to Paul with your name, address, phone number and editorial affiliation or note that you freelance. You’ll receive the table of contents as e-mail, just click through to the full issue at www.gbonews.org.
IN THIS ISSUE: Trump is Right, Say Native Americans! Wall Him Out on Oct. 12.
1. EYES ON THE PRIZE: ***18 Receive 2016 Journalists in Aging Fellowships; ***National Press Foundation’s New Journalism Awards: Oct. 15 Deadline; ***Hunter College’s Center for Health, Media & Policy in New York Selects First Media Fellow; ***California Health Data Journalism Fellowship, Oct. 16 Deadline
2. GEN BEATLES NEWS: *** Dallas News Personal Finance Columnist Pamela Yip Dies; ***Sue Campbell Moves From PBS Next Avenue to Star-Tribune
3. GOOD OLD BOOKS: *** Spirituality of Age hits #1 on Amazon’s New Releases in Aging; *** Bengtson’s Families named Best Book by American Sociological Association
4. THE STORYBOARD: *** “Senior Villages Struggle With Call to Diversity,” by April Dembosky, KQED-FM’s “California Report”; *** “The Cancer Show,” On the Media with host Brooke Gladstone
5. ANNALS OF AGEISM: *** “Why Jerry Brown Can’t Be President,” by Ashton Applewhite, Playboy (Sept. 2015); Daily Show’s Trevor Noah Blows Chris Christie Interview on Social Security; *** But So Does CNN’s Dana Bash, Reports Slate’s Helaine Olen; Noah, Bash Should Read; *** “The Myth Behind America’s Deficit,” by Brookings Institution’s Henry J. Aaron (Fortune Magazine, Sept. 10) and “The Art of the Tough Interview,” by Gerald Eskenazi, Columbia Journalism Review (Oct. 1)
1. EYES ON THE PRIZE
***18 Reporters Receive 2016 Journalists in Aging Fellowships
2016 Journalists in Aging Fellows Selected: A group of 18 reporters proposing in-depth projects from the plight of migrant farmworkers in California and Washington State to food deserts impacting isolated elders in Florida have been tapped for the 2016 Journalists in Aging Fellows Program.
These 18 new Fellows, who are listed below, increase the number of reporters who have received the fellowships over the program’s six years to 102.
The fellows program, a collaboration between New America Media (NAM) and the Gerontological Society of America, will bring the group to GSA’s 68th Annual Scientific Meeting in Orlando, Fla., Nov. 18-22. Besides the expenses-paid trip to Orlando, each fellow will receive a $1,500 stipend.
The total number of fellowship reporters attending will be 30, including 12 previous Fellows, who will receive a travel stipend to return to the conference.
The program’s first five years have yielded over 300 articles on a spectrum of issues in aging and in a wide range of cultural traditions and languages. Stories first appear in each reporter’s new medium and are then cross-posted on the NAM “Elders” website in English with links to the original language when appropriate.
Half of the reporters were chosen from ethnic media outlets, and half from general-audience media from around the country. Selecting the reporters was a panel of journalists and experts in aging select the Fellows.
Major sponsors this year are the Silver Century Foundation, and The SCAN Foundation, with substantial support from the Archstone Foundation, the Commonwealth Fund and the Retirement Research Foundation, plus funding from the John A. Hartford Foundation.
Following is the Journalists in Aging Fellows class of 2016:
David Bacon, Contributor, Capitol & Main (project of Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy): “Surviving a Life in the Fields: The Lived Experience of Older Indigenous Farm Workers” will report in words and photographs on those aging and unable to work, many mainly speaking Mixteco, Triqui and Zapoteco with only limited Spanish.
Marcela Paulina Cartagena, Editor/Reporter, La Raza Newspaper: Proposed a three-part series on Spanish-language Chicago’s Latino elders being abandoned, abused and depressed.
Lotus Chau, Chief Reporter, Sing Tao Daily (New York): Her series promises a comprehensive picture of Alzheimer disease among Asian Americans who suffer from dementia in New York City.
Kar F. “Geoff” Chin, Senior Writer, Media Central, Inc./America Commercial News: Plans a three-part series on the work of the Tzu Chi Foundation (an official NGO with Special Consultative Status at the UN’s ECOSOC) in multiethnic areas of Los Angeles County aimed at integrating Buddhist philosophy and spiritual elements in psychotherapy for ethnic elders.
Julian Do, Contributor, Al Enteshar (Arab-American media), proposed a two-part series on status of Arab elders and the role of Arab American community centers in helping them access healthcare and services.
Lisa Esposito, Health Reporter, U.S. News & World Report, Washington, D.C.: Will do an in-depth series on when an older adult’s desire to live independently crosses into isolation, potentially leading to physical and mental health hazards, particularly those in rural or unsafe areas.
Anna Gorman, Senior Correspondent, Kaiser Health News: Plans three stories on how hospitals are treating frail elders with emphasis on medication management, weakened mobility on discharge due to hospital care practices, and excessive emergency-room admissions by ER doctors under-trained to treat seniors.
Carolyn Guniss, Executive Editor, Miami Times: Will produce two-part series, “Aging in Prison: A Life Never Lived,” profiling largely African American inmates held for 20 or more years, and “Aging and Free: Life after Years in Prison,” on reentry programs for elderly ex-offenders.
Emily A. Gurnon, Senior Editor for Health and Caregiving, PBS Next Avenue: She will generate a three-part series on abuses in the adult guardianship system.
Diane Lade, Aging Issues Writer, South Florida Sun Sentinel: Will investigate seniors’ food insecurity in the region’s massive retirement communities.
Nell Lake, Freelance Contributor, Boston Globe: Her project will examine immigrant women and how the U.S. will treat its army of foreign-born direct-care workers.
Sarah Macareg, Contributor, Truthout: Her series will scrutinize how the health of Chicago’s Chinese elders is interconnected with the health of its service providers, especially the Chinese American Service League (CASL).
Karen Michel, Freelance Contributor, America Abroad Media (Public Radio International): She proposed radio documentary (with photographs) on the Tibetan Buddhist way of dying and death. In the United States.
Robert A. “Bob” Rosenblatt, Freelance Contributor, Los Angeles Times: Will explore how Medicare, Medicaid, doctors, insurers and patients will handle the expense and use of wonder drugs, with a focus on the affordability of drugs to cure Hepatitis C.
Diane Joy Schmidt, Freelance Contributor, New Mexico Jewish eLink: Will produce four monthly articles with profiles of Jews 65 or older who moved to New Mexico over 20 years ago seeking deeper meaning in their lives, and finding a greater sense of connection through exposure to Native American and Sephardic cultures.
Sheri Stuart, Freelance Contributor, Inland Valley News (Southern California): Plans a three-part series on the economic downturn’s impact on African American wealth loss with many African American (and Latino) families losing their savings and homes.
Tyler Tjomsland, Staff Photographer, Spokesman-Review: This photo-documentary series will center on the hardships of aging, largely Hispanic migrant workers in Eastern Washington State and Idaho.
Linda Valdez, Editorial Writer/Columnist, The Arizona Republic: Her exploration of creativity in aging will investigate state-of-the-art neurological research regarding physical changes in the brain.
***Deadline for Two New National Press Foundation (NPF) Awards, Oct. 15: Two new journalism awards will recognize the contributions of technology and innovation in news coverage and reporting. Each carries a $5,000 prize.
The Innovation in Journalism Award will honor news organizations that are “transforming journalism while maintaining the integrity and standards that make journalism an essential part of a free society,” says the NPF release. It cites recent examples, such as the New York Times’ multimedia chronicle of the Tunnel Creek avalanche, “Snowfall,” and NPR’s true-crime podcast, “Serial.”
The Best Use of Technology In Journalism Award “recognizes individuals or organizations that use groundbreaking tools and technology to change the news media landscape as we know it … The competition is open to anyone at a news organization. Judges will take into consideration both the quality of the journalistic work and the innovative use of technology.”
For questions about the awards contact Jenny Ash-Maher, jenny@nationalpress.org or call her at 202-663-7285.
***The First Media Fellow at the Center for Health, Media & Policy (CHMP) at Hunter College, City University of New York, is Yael Maxwell, who is the senior associate news editor at TCTMD.com. (The online service is a website, is produced and administered by the Cardiovascular Research Foundation.) Maxwell’s eight-month fellowship “was designed to help an early-career health journalist improve understanding and coverage of healthcare workforce issues, with particular attention to the factors that affect existing and new roles of nurses and other health care providers within the evolving healthcare delivery system,” according to CHMO.
Maxwell will produce both long and short-form print and multimedia projects for the TCTMD.com website with the stories republished on HealthCetera, CHMP’s blog and New America Media. She will also contribute additional blog posts and to HealthCetera Radio (WBAI-FM/Pacifica Radio). Her long-form project is a three-part print and video series which addresses the history and changing health professional roles within a cardiology heart team. The fellowship is supported by a grant from the Johnson & Johnson Foundation.
*** 2015 California Health Data Journalism Fellowship: The application deadline for the USC Annenberg School of Journalism’s California Health Data Journalism Fellowship is Oct. 16. They will select 10 California journalists for the all-expenses-paid program. It includes a $1,000 reporting stipend. “The Fellowship is designed for reporters who want to learn how to harness and analyze data that can shape health care decision-making, policy and legislation across California and beyond.” The program aims to help reporters mine healthcare data “to reveal key insights essential to high impact journalism,” according to their website.
Fellows get a crash course in California health data about procedures, providers, costs, conditions and demographics, and the program will also bring in each Fellow’s editor to participate in a half-day project brainstorming session with other Fellows and editors. The Fellowship will be held Dec. 2-5 in Los Angeles.
Before applying, reporters are required to talk with one of their staff members or Senior Fellows to discuss their idea for a Fellowship project. Please contact Martha Shirk at CAHealth@usc.edu. The Fellowship is underwritten by the California Health Care Foundation and The California Endowment.
2. GEN BEATLES NEWS
*** Dallas News Personal Finance Columnist Pamela Yip Dies: The ties that bind many members of the generations newsbeat in a sense of community often come with a neighborhood of activity, births, weddings–and sadly now and then, as in today’s news, a death. Sunday’s Dallas Morning News (Oct. 4) reported Pamela Mary Yip has succumbed to brain cancer.
Noting that she had been at the newspaper for 16 years, the obituary says, “Her columns covered all of life’s economic stages, including planning for college expenses and saving for retirement. And she handled all of the topics with professional care and a personal touch.” It quoted Yip’s partner of nearly 20 years, Maria Abad, saying Pam “lived for her work.”
Yip, only 59, was honored with a 2015 Journalist in Aging Fellow. One the stories she produced was “Dementia Puts Elders at Risk of Financial Abuse,” for The News and also distributed by New America Media (June 28). The article alerted readers to the rising vulnerability of Alzheimer’s patients to scam or theft by those they trust.
Mike Wilson, editor of The News, said Yip wrote with the authority and the reassuring voice of a good friend.”
Born in Hong Kong, Yip’s parents brought her to San Francisco at age two, then to Sacramento five years late. In journalism, she wrote for United Press International, USA Today and the Houston Chronicle before she joined The News in 1999.
She served on the Society of American Business Editors and Writers’ (SABEW) board of governors since 2007. The News reports that Kathleen Graham, executive director of SABEW said the group will recognize Yip with its President’s Award, to be presented this Friday by SABEW President and Bloomberg News editor Joanna Ossinger on Friday at their fall conference in New York.
In addition, the Financial Planning Association of Dallas-Fort Worth is honoring Yip by donating the proceeds from its annual honors dinner this Thursday in her memory. The money will go to the Pamela Yip Scholarship Fund for CPA students. Memorials may made to the Pamela Yip Fund, FPA DFW, P.O. Box 261750, Plano, Texas 75026.
***Sue Campbell Moves From PBS Next Avenue to Star-Tribune: It took a “dream job” overseeing all features content at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune (aka the Strib) for Sue Campbell to depart her tasks as editorial and content director for PBS’ Next Avenue website, she e-mailed GBONews. She will manage arts and entertainment, variety, food, homes, books, travel, etc., but added, she wants “to deepen a vague beat that’s supposed to be about generations.”
Campbell, who was previously across the Mississippi River at the St. Paul Pioneer Press editing feature and managing Metro teams, said her new gig “should be the most fun job in the Twin Cities.” She stressed that she is “sad to leave” her “sweet, sweet gig here at Next Ave.”
3. GOOD OLD BOOKS
*** Author Carol Orsborn Has Been in High Spirits since her new book, The Spirituality of Age: A Seeker’s Guide to Growing Older hit #1 on Amazon’s New Releases in Aging list even before it’s October 1 pub date. She e-mailed, “We stayed there several days until the book sold out on launch day! Everybody’s scrambling so they’ll be new books in the pipeline for delivery by Oct. 4.”
The Spirituality of Age sets out to address “how to make the transition from fears about aging into a fuller, richer appreciation of the next phase of our lives.” The volume has garnered a nifty batch of endorsements from leading experts in aging and spirituality, such as Robert Atchley, Rabbi Dayle Friedman, Mary Catherine Bateson, Wendy Lustbader and W. Andrew Achenbaum, and also scribes Connie Goldman and Gail Sheehy. Sheehy, author of Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life and Daring: My Passages, about her cancer-care journey with her late husband, legendary editor Clay Felker, called the new volume, “Best book I have ever read on this most significant passage . . . Beautifully written, both from deep research and even deeper personal experience by the authors, a former Jesuit and a Jewish woman and Ph.D.”
The book is the latest of more than 20 Orsborn has penned on the lives and markets of boomers. She coauthored this one with Robert L. Weber, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology, part timer at Harvard Medical School and a former Jesuit. He also serves as a faculty member of Massachusetts General Hospital’s Department of Psychiatry. Orsborn, who is Jewish, is a prolific blogger for Huffington Post, PBS’s NextAvenue.net, and BeliefNet.com.
For information or media review copies, contact: Manzanita Carpenter, manzanitac@innertraditions.com; phone: 802.767.3174 x135.
***More Spirited Book News comes from USC Emeritus Professor Vern Bengtson. His 2013 tome, Families and Faith–How Religion is (and Isn’t) Passed Down Across Generations (Oxford University Press) just won the Best Book Award from the American Sociological Association’s section on religion. Written with Norella Putney and Susan Harris, the book is based on quantitative data from the Longitudinal Study of Generations, which Bengtson pioneered and directed for 35 years staring in 1970.
Families and Faith includes qualitative data from interviews conducted from 2005-2008, with 156 members of 25 families about generations and their transmission of beliefs. Bengtson said he is “so pleased that my book received recognition! It took me too many years to write.” Among his lengthy list of honors, Bengtson is a past president of the Gerontological Society of America.
4. THE STORYBOARD
“The Storyboard is a regular feature linking to selected articles on aging by GBONews journalists and friends. Please send your latest stories with an online link to Editor Paul Kleyman for possible inclusion in a forthcoming issue.
*** “Senior Villages Struggle With Call to Diversity,” by April Dembosky, KQED-FM “California Report,” Oct. 3. Dembosky, a Journalists in Aging Fellow, describes how the country’s 100-plus Senior Villages, which are neighborhood caring and sharing networks to help elders age at home, have been largely white and middle class. But some are trying to become more inclusive with a prompt from agencies that tie funding to having more diverse memberships. You can also listen to the radio broadcast on the KQED website.
*** “The Cancer Show,” On the Media (Week beginning Oct. 2, followed next week by Part 2). Host Brooke Gladstone conducts interviews with experts examining and questioning “the way we talk about cancer in the news, in the hospital, and in our private lives.” Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies describes the disease’s 2,500 year history. In the “Perception vs. Reality” segment of the hourlong program (with individual interviews posted as podcasts), University of Utah health communication researchers Jake Jensen explains how skewed media depictions of cancer may impact what cancers get funded.
In the “Speaking in Tongues” piece, literary theorist and memoirist Susan Gubar explains why she came to resent, as a patient, the default language of war—fights and battles with cancer. She says a cancer diagnosis places one in a “foreign land where you don’t speak the language.” She reflects on the interminable and often alienating vocabulary associated with cancer (metastasis, cachexia). And Gubar, who was inspired by Susan Sontag’s 1978 book, Cancer as Metaphor, also disagrees with the late writer. While Songtag advocated for eliminating all metaphors about the illness. Gubar discusses how patients are creating new words that more aptly capture cancer’s idiosyncrasies (scanxiety, chemoflage). She calls for many more inventive comparison’s to help individualize the language of cancer and empower people to talk about it openly.
5. ANNALS OF AGEISM
*** “Why Jerry Brown Can’t Be President: America is More Progressive Than Ever. Will Ageism Be The Next Prejuduce to Fall?” by Ashton Applewhite, Playboy (Sept. 2015). Applewhite, creator of the “This Chair Rocks” and “Yo, Is This Ageist” blogs, riffs eloquently on last year’s remark by comedian Bill Maher. Applewhite wrote, “’Ageism is the last socially sanctioned prejudice in America—well, that and Asian drivers.’ That’s not my line, although I wish it were. It’s … in a rant about 77-year-old Jerry Brown being ruled out as a presidential candidate despite his obvious competence.”
She adds, “But thanks to celebrities like Maher and Madonna, 2016 may mark the year ageism finally lands on our cultural radar.” Applewhite quotes the Queen of Pop’s recent comment to Access Hollywood, “I feel like it is a form of discrimination that still has not been dealt with, and it should be. I think it should be as verboten as making racist remarks or making homophobic remarks.”
Applewhite stresses at one point, “When stereotypes go unchallenged, they become part of our identity and influence how our brains and bodies function.” She alludes to numerous studies showing, for example, that people are happiest at the beginning and ends of their lives (no footnotes in Playboy, of course, but know that this research was headed by a number of scholars, among them Stanford’s Laura Carstensen). Also, Applewhite’s piece cites the stunning but verifiable finding that people who have a positive attitude toward their later year “live longer—an average of seven and a half years.” That’s the benchmark 2002 study by Yale’s Becca Levy, if you’re keeping score.
An yet, U.S. culture and politics persist in self-destructive stereotyping. Applewhite asks readers to “wonder whether something you see or hear is ageist? See if a similar comment on the basis of race or sex would trigger an alarm. Take the reasoning that always crops up around health-care rationing, for example: Why spend money on older people instead of on kids? Can you imagine saying that we can only afford to care for straight people, or white people . . . ?”
Impossible to change America’s youth obsession? Think again, Applewhite observes, “If gay pride has gone mainstream, and millions of Americans now proudly identify as disabled, why not age pride?”
Here’s Applewhite’s crucial punchline: “Most of what we know about aging process is wrong–and staying in the dark serves powerful commercial and political interests that don’t serve ours.” Why crucial? Because any bias is only as destructive as the money and power behind it.
By the way, on the recurring canard that the U.S. spends more on seniors than on kids, there’s a screwy truth to the claim. It wasn’t like that only a decade or so ago, however. First, realized that most youth spending is at the state level for education, and most senior spending is federal – Medicare and Medicaid. Even on the basis of combined government spending, did elders become greedier? Think instead: rampant U.S. health care spending unlike other nations. Think: medical-industrial greed in our system using seniors as human shields when older Americans get impugned as Greedy Geezers and the like. Are elders gobbling up more than they deserve by needing cancer drugs priced with the threat, your money or your life?
Applewhite’s got it right – follow the money (and power) – perhaps to say-anything candidates, Gov. Chris Christie, for instance.
*** Chris Christie on the Daily Show With Trevor Noah: The program’s new host won’t soon replace the irreplaceable, Jon Stewart’s agile command of facts and policy perspectives in interviews, but GBO’s satire-addicted viewer was pleasantly surprised for the most part last week with Noah’s bright style and easy wit—mostly. Then there was his jovial sit down with his first political guest, Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., on Wed., Sept. 30.
While Noah pitched the obligatory softballs, such as about Christie’s controversial immigration stance. He wants to use Fed Ex-type tracking technology to ID those who have overstayed their visas and then deport them. Clogging a bridge to taint a political opponent was news to old to bring come.
And then there were Christie’s unchallenged statements about reforms on what the governor said was his No. 1 issue — changing Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs.
Christie stated, “We have to reform entitlements in this country. . . . My plan is to increase the retirement age for a couple years, phase it in over 25 years, so it’s really only going up one month a year for 25 years.” Those making $200,000 or better a year, he added, “don’t really need a Social Security check. They’re fine. A Social Security check is needed for people who that is going to make the difference between rent and heat and food.” He went on, “The alternative of course is just to bring more money into the government, but here’s the thing: Why would we trust the government? They’ve already lied to us and stolen from the trust fund for Social Security, that’s why we got a problem now.”
GBONews readers will recognized these contentions as highly politicized conservative arguments contested by a long list of respected progressive policy experts. Noah’s production staff wouldn’t have had to look past the Sept. 17 review of the GOP candidates’ debate by Slate’s Helaine Olen. Her blog, “Chris Christie Said Social Security Is Going Insolvent. Oh, Come On,” pinioned participants (was there more than one, really?) in the previous day’s debate.
Olen called for a fact check, instructing CNN’s Dana Bash and Republican presidential candidates: “Repeat after me: Social Security is not in danger of running out of money, leaving people, to paraphrase Chris Christie slightly from Wednesday’s Republican debate, to choose ‘between heat and rent and food.’”
As for Noah and his research crew, they might try downloading “The Myth Behind America’s Deficit,” in that bastion of leftist commentary, Fortune Magazine (September 10). The essay, by Henry J. Aaron, Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution, is tagged, “Medicare Hospital Insurance and Social Security would not add to deficits because they can’t spend money they don’t have.”
Aaron is regarded by many as the dean of liberal social-insurance policy authorities in Washington, and he’s a pretty clear writer. Even a smart talk-median like Trevor Noah could glean some sharp questions that might catch-up slick politicians arguing to cut the nation’s primary safety net to save it for the fiscal fog of tomorrow.
Meanwhile, Noah might benefit from reading “The Art of the Tough Interview” by author and former New York Times reporter Gerald Eskenazi in the Columbia Journalism Review (Oct. 1), who has interviewed hundreds of characters from Donald Trump to Mike Tyson.
If you have technical problems receiving issues of GBO News or if you’d like to be removed from the list, simply auto-reply to this e-mail of GBO News, or phone me at 415-503-4170 ext. 133 (e-mail: pkleyman@newamericamedia.org). GBO News especially thanks Sandy Close of New America Media, and our cyber-guru, Kevin Chan.
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 News 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 2015, JNG. For more information contact GBO Editor Paul Kleyman.
To subscribe of unsubscribe, or if you have technical problems receiving issues of GBO or if you’d like to be removed from the list, e-mail me at pkleyman@newamericamedia.org or phone me at 415-503-4170 ext. 133.