GBO NEWS: AP’s Gen-Beat Reporter Goes National; Pulitzer Winner Takes Buyout; Reporting Fellowships; & More
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations
Oct. 27, 2015 — Volume 15, Number 14
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: Dante’s 9th Circle of Buyouts (Featuring the Haunted Bureau–Boo!).
1. GEN BEATLES NEWS: *** AP Moves Generations-Beat Reporter Matt Sedensky to National Team; ***AP Announces Two Fellows on Economics of Aging and Long-Term Care; *** Pulitzer Winner Michael Vitez Takes Buyout” from Philadelphia Inquirer.
2. THE MEET-UP BEAT: *** Media Events & Registration for Gerontological Society of America Meeting in Orlando (Plus GSA Sources for Reporters Not Able to Attend); *** GSA-NAM Name 12 Journalists in Aging Continuing Fellows; ***AHCJ Reporting Fellowship Deadline Next Monday, Nov. 2.
*** “Should Older Americans Live in Places Segregated From the Young?” by Stephen M. Golant, (on The Conversation and Huffington Post);
*** “Where Should You Live As You Age” by Howard Gleckman, Forbes (commenting on Prof. Golant’s New Book);
*** “The Lonely Death of George Bell” by N.L. Kleinfield, and *** “Jonas Mekas Refuses to Fade” by John Leland, both in New York Times, Oct. 18.
*** “Losing Sleep for Fear of Becoming a Bag Lady” by Liz Seegert, Silver Century Foundation;
*** “Exceeding Expectations: One Year. One City. 20 Lives” spearheaded by the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center, [http://tinyurl.com/pc54bwg] Columbia University.
*** “A History of Ageism Since 1969” [http://tinyurl.com/p4ku76d] by W. Andrew Achenbaum, Generations (Oct. 19)
4. GOOD LIT: “What Old Age Is Really Like,” novelist Ceridwen Dovey’s survey in The New Yorker of fiction and poetry by writer in very old age.
1. GEN BEATLES NEWS
*** AP Moves Generations-Beat Reporter Matt Sedensky to National Team: The Associated Press announced Oct. 14, that it will move Matt Sedensky, who has covered issues in aging from South Florida for the past decade, to New York.
Sedensky e-mailed GBONews, “I’m leaving Florida (though my departure date is still undetermined) to join AP’s team of ‘national writers.’ I’ll be based in New York. I think it might actually be a positive development in terms of the amount of time I can devote to the age beat.”
Currently, Sedensky, an award-winning writer and multimedia reporters, is AP’s West Palm Beach correspondent. The AP Media Editors (APME) honored him with the 2015 feature-writing award for his narrative, “One Death Too Many,” about Los Angeles-based hospice nurse and educator G. Jay Westbrook, who found himself having to apply his skills at comfort care for his wife, Nancy, as she died from cancer. (Another result was that Westbrook spoke at last spring’s national Association of Health Care Journalists conference.) The APME judges said, “The writer takes you on a journey that is inspiring and haunting.”
Among the many stories Sedensky has covered have been the Gulf oil spill, the Virginia Tech shootings, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and what the AP announcement says were “groundbreaking reports investigating the Vatican’s handling of sex abuse cases and their ties to Pope Benedict XVI.”
As a knowledgeable data journalist, he served as the inaugural Fellow on the Economics of Aging and Work at the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research in Chicago, where he spent 10 months (2013-14) studying social science and data analysis at the University of Chicago. (Alert to generation’s-beat vets — this NORC has nothing to do with “Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities. And it has even less to do with the AP Stylebook, which says to spell it any acronym on first use. The “NORC” website fails show what it stands for.)
While we’d hoped to see him at the Gerontological Society of America conference in Orlando next month, Sedensky e-mailed, “I would love to go, but my bosses forced me to schedule some vacation time that has me in Bali during the conference.” Excuses, excuses. When our Journalists in Aging group meets up, we’ll raise a glass in congratulations to Matt, and maybe sing a few envious bars of “Bali Hai.”
***AP Announces Two Fellows on Age Economics and Long-Term Care: Succeeding Matt Sedensky as the second AP-NORC Fellow on the Economics of Aging and Work is radio producer Adam Allington of American Public Media’s Marketplace. He was selected in a national competition open to journalists with at least five years’ experience.
According to the AP-NORC release, the fellowship will enable Allington “to spend the next year in Chicago working with world-class research scientists, economists, and other experts to develop the economic and analytical skills needed to produce research-based enterprise journalism focused on the economics of aging and work in the United States.”
Sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the AP-NORC Center is a joint venture of the AP and the independent research organization NORC at the University of Chicago.
Allington will participate in original AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research projects and also report a series of in-depth stories on issues related to the economic and financial issues confronting the aging U.S. workforce. His stories will run on the media platforms of the AP.
Previously, Allington was a reporter for St. Louis Public Radio for six years, and as an economic media specialist with the Federal Reserve. In 2011, he received Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellowship at the University of Michigan.
*** Also this month, the AP-NORC Center chose Alejandra Cancino for its first Fellowship on Long-Term Care in America. Formerly with the Chicago Tribune journalist, she has worked a range of newsbeats, such as labor and manufacturing. The fellowship will provide her with training in health policy, health care issues and research methods.
*** Pulitzer Prize-Winner Michael Vitez “Took a Buyout” from the Philadelphia Inquirer in September after 30 years. He e-told GBONews, “Not sure what I’ll be doing next. Talking to folks in journalism and out, and also thinking seriously about working for myself. Doing a combination of freelance, editing, teaching, consulting and speaking. Have another book I want to do.”
His 1997 Pulitzer Prize (Explanatory Journalism) was for his weeklong series on end of life care and was the last Pulitzer given for a primarily generations-beat project. The following year, Vitez wrote Final Choices, a book based on the series.
In 2006, Vitez published Rocky Stories, a collection of stories about people who came to Philadelphia to run up the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum, huffing and puffing triumphantly like Rocky. The book, with photos by Tom Gralish (also anointed once with a Pulitzer), took them a year to write and produce. It includes an introduction by — yup – none other than Sylvester Stallone. Mike also appears (uncredited) at the end of the 2006 movie, Rocky Balboa.
2. THE MEET-UP BEAT
*** Media Events for GSA Scientific Meeting: Reporters can still sign up for complimentary press registrations to cover the Gerontological Society of America’s 68th Annual Scientific Meeting, Nov. 18-22, at the Disney World Resort Swan & Dolphin Hotel (next to Epcot Center) in Orlando, Fla. But even if you’re not planning to be on the sunshine waves with Flipper, read on to see how you can find sources among the hundreds of conference presenters and sessions.
For reporters able to attend, registration is easy online. Be sure to include the registration code, PRESS2015, in order to avoid being charged. If you have any questions, contact Todd Kluss at GSA, (202) 587-2839; tkluss@geron.org.
Other can tap into new research being presented at the conference by using the searchable online conference program. First, you’ll see a box enabling you to set up a conference itinerary. But you can also simply click “Continue as a Guest” to get into the program.
The page for the Online Program is pretty well set up. You can click on the Plus (+) button for each date for the conference, such as Thursday, Nov. 19, 2015, to scan over all of the sessions for that day. Just click on “View Session Details” for any you’d like more information about. When you get into topic listings, you’ll also see “View Presentation” to read its abstract description and info on the speakers.
Unlike search engines you may be used to, though, this one doesn’t anticipate alternative terms well. But it does materialize sessions in which the term appears not in the title, but in the body of the description. So, for example, if you type in “Hispanic,” you’ll see some sessions lined up by date and time slot. If you enter “Latino,” you’ll see many more. Similarly, “Native American” yields no listings, but “American Indian” brings up a number of issues. Or you’ll need to compare listings for “Palliative Care,” “Hospice” and “End of Life,” to make sure you don’t miss a session. You can also search by city or state, to locate regional subjects and speakers’ names.
Reporters onsite can attend press lunches, such as on malnutrition among seniors (Nov. 19), and re-framing the public perception of aging (Nov. 20).
GSA is sponsoring a Journalists’ Wine and Cheese Reception and Meet-Up, in the Swan & Dolphin’s “Dolphin” building, in Oceanic 8, Friday, Nov. 20, 5 p.m. It will be a schmooze for reporters to find out who else is there. Afterward, those who want to continue the conversation can join a “no-host” outing to a casual restaurant in the vicinity.
*** Journalists in Aging Continuing Fellows: Our last GBONews issue listed the 18 new 2016 Journalists in Aging Fellows. It’s a collaboration between GSA and New America Media, aided and abetted by the Journalists Network on Generations (publisher of GBONews). But the program has also tapped a dozen past fellows to return on Continuing Fellowship travel grants.
They include: Matthew S. Bajko, Assistant Editor, Bay Area Reporter, awarded last year for his 2014 fellowship series by the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (Bay Area chapter); Jennifer L. Boen, Health Columnist and Writer, Fort Wayne (Ind.) News-Sentinel; Hanah Cho, freelance, Dallas, Texas; Erica Curless, Features and Age Beat Reporter, Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Wash.); Peter McDermott, Reporter, The Irish Echo, New York; Frederick H. Lowe, founder/editor, NorthStar News & Analysis, Chicago; Lisa Wong Macabasco, contributor, Hyphen Magazine, assistant social media editor, Slate; Encarnacion Pyle, Human-Services Reporter (on aging and immigrants/refugees), The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch; Liz Seegert, “Aging” blog editor, Association of Health Care Journalists, freelance writer/producer, “HealthStyles” on WBAI-FM, New York and “HealthCetera”; Mark Taylor, freelance contributor, Chicago Tribune and others; Vanessa White, contributor, Philadelphia Tribune and Viet Tide Magazine; and Sunita Sohrabji, India West.
*** AHCJ Reporting Fellowship Deadline Next Monday: Next Monday, Nov.2, is the application deadline for the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ) yearlong Reporting Fellowships on Health Care Performance. The program will allow U.S.-based journalists to pursue a significant reporting project related to the U.S. health care system, from a local focus to national scope. Fellows can be staff or freelance. Although the website doesn’t specify, the program has given five fellowships per year since 2013.
The fellowship covers the cost of attending the seminars and AHCJ conferences. A $4,000 project allowance is available to defray the cost of field reporting, health data analysis and other project-related research. In addition, each fellow will receive a $2,500 fellowship award upon the successful completion of the project. The fellowship program is supported by The Commonwealth Fund.
If you have questions, contact Ev Ruch-Graham, ev@healthjournalism.org or 573-884-8103.
3. THE STORYBOARD
*** “Should Older Americans Live in Places Segregated From the Young?” by Stephen M. Golant, The Conversation and Huffington Post (Sept. 30) notes, “From 2010 to 2040, we expect that the age-65-and-over population will more than double in size from about 40 to 82 million,” and ”over 55 percent of this older group will be at least in their mid-70s.”
Golant, an environmental gerontologist and social geographer at the University of Florida, Gainesville, and author of Aging in the Right Place (Health Professions Press, 2015), argues for a more open-minded approach among gerontologists to retirement living. He asserts that the positive notion of “aging in place” should not become an ideological meme that prejudices academics, service providers and policy makers from considering many alternatives to remaining at home, where many end up in isolation.
In this blog, Golant, scheduled to speak to the Journalists in Aging Fellows at next month’s Gerontolocial Society of America meeting in Orlando, writes on behalf of the much-maligned and often gated senior-living communities.
He states, “Ageist values and practices are indeed deplorable. However, we should not view the residential separation of the old from the young as necessarily harmful and discriminatory, but rather as celebrating the preferences of older Americans . . . Living with their age-peers helps these older occupants compensate for other downsides in their places of residence and in particular presents opportunities for both private and public sector solutions.”
*** Howard Gleckman, blogging in Forbes (Oct. 16) states, “Golant is no shill for senior communities.” Gleckman, author Caring for Our Parents (St. Martin’s Press, 2009) and a former senior correspondent for Business Week, is currently a resident fellow at The Urban Institute. (He’ll also be speaking at the GSA conference.) Commenting on Golant’s book, Gleckman says, “He notes that many older adults end up in age-segregated communities through simple inertia . . . .” Too often, they find themselves living “next to what they sometimes feel are noisy babies, obnoxious adolescents, indifferent younger adults or insensitive career professionals.”
In his blog “Where Should You Live As You Age: At Home Or In A Senior Community?” Gleckman observes, “Without supports, living at home can be difficult for older adults, especially for those in suburban subdivisions or rural communities. If they cannot drive, they are often trapped. Without sidewalks, they can’t exercise. Delivering services to them can be costly and time-consuming.”
He adds, “Golant’s argument may be controversial but it is worth considering. There is no perfect answer to the “where should I live” question. And your answer may be very different from mine. But as we confront the question, we should keep the trade-offs in mind.”
*** Two Cases in Point – New York Times (Oct. 18): “The Lonely Death of George Bell” by N.L. Kleinfield is a dim tome starting on page one and spreading over four interior Sunday pages. It should be required reading for journalism students learning about potential forensic pathways in piecing together the lives of the deceased. Kleinfield begins, “Each year around 50,000 people die in New York, some alone and unseen. Yet death even in such forlorn form can cause a surprising amount of activity. Sometimes, along the way, a life’s secrets are revealed.”
In “Jonas Mekas Refuses to Fade,” John Leland continues his yearlong series on six New Yorkers, age 85 or older. This profile of the buoyant filmmaker and intellectual force has Mekas, 92, showing “no sign of slowing down.” Leland explores, “Why do people like him flourish in old age?” unlike others in his platoon of very old people. His lede signals Mekas’ challenging beginnings and fascinating life ahead: “Jonas Mekas took his first photograph at age 17, when Soviet tanks rolled into his village in Lithuania.” He would be held in Nazi forced labor camps and spent five post-war years in German displaced-person camps.
Mekas told Leland, “People say, ‘Oh, it’s so sad through what you had to go.’ No, I’m happy that I was uprooted, because I was dropped in New York in the most exciting period, when all the classical arts had reached culmination, like Balanchine and Martha Graham, and something else was coming in. I caught Marlon Brando and Tennessee Williams and [Arthur] Miller; I saw the end of the old when I came in ’49, and I saw the beginning of the new, John Cage and Buckminster Fuller and the Living Theater and the Beat Generation. And I was a sponge for all of it.” Another day, he said, “I trace everything to my childhood on a farm.”
Leland writes that Mekas, “Has avoided what Dr. [Karl] Pillemer of Cornell identifies as the debilitating factors of old age: physical or mental disability, extreme poverty and low levels of happiness or well-being earlier in life.”
Like many in the minority of elders like him, Leland continues, “Mr. Mekas surrounds himself with younger people and new art. On an October day, he enthused about having just seen a digital exhibition that was so new, he could not say whether it was good or bad, art or not art, but he knew he could never master the technology. It did not upset him; it excited him. ‘We’re at the beginning of many things,’ he said.”
Others in Leland’s series so far sketch the contours of very old age, including its darker shadings for some. GBONews recommends searching the NYT site for other pieces that have appeared to date.
*** “Losing Sleep for Fear of Becoming a Bag Lady,” by Liz Seegert, Silver Century Foundation website. She writes, “Bag lady syndrome affects women regardless of net worth or financial savvy, according to clinical psychologist Nancy Molitor, PhD. The 2014 American Psychological Association (APA) survey Stress in America found that “women at all points along the financial spectrum say they lie awake in bed at night and ruminate about finances,” said Molitor, who is also a coordinator for the APA’s public education campaign. Even celebrities like Katie Couric and Oprah Winfrey have candidly admitted that they lose sleep for fear of becoming destitute.”
*** “Exceeding Expectations: One Year. One City. 20 Lives,” a multimedia project – spearheaded by the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center at Columbia University, conceived by the Center’s distinguished associate director Ruth Finkelstein and directed/edited by Dorian Block, with senior writer-photographer Heather Clayton Colangelo and a multicultural media crew of eight.
The editorial team spent 10 months following 20 New Yorkers as they navigate their 80s “in neighborhoods throughout New York, from many countries and backgrounds, in a variety of living situations and family structures, of different religions and colors,” says their website. The center has posted five of their stories so far and is adding one weekly, with continuing reports on the elders’ progress.
The profiles range from Sandy Robbins, 81, founder and director of the Shadow Box children’s theater, to Maria Soledad, 87, to the “loud rumblings of passing MetroNorth trains . . . a soundtrack she no longer notices,” as to get the day started for her Her son, granddaughter and great-grandson.
According to the Center, “Almost everyone takes care of someone else –a spouse, children, grandchildren, or great grandchildren. Many are, in turn, sometimes cared for by others. Some are alone.”
*** “A History of Ageism Since 1969” by W. Andrew Achenbaum, Generations (Oct. 19), explains that the term was coined that year by Robert N. Butler, MD. Butler, the first director of the National Institute on Aging winner of the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for his book, Why Survive?: Being Old in America.
Achenbaum, a leading gerontologist who teaches at the University of Houston is also author of a recent biography of Butler. Achenbaum reviews the state of anti-aging bias and concludes, “The gift of extra years should afford time and opportunities to grow, to cherish bonds, to review life’s meaning. Instead, older people often find themselves marginalized, which diminishes their capacities to contribute—and to matter.”
4. GOOD LIT
“What Old Age Is Really Like” by Ceridwen Dovey, The New Yorker (Oct. 1): The thirtysomething novelist asks, “What does it feel like to be old? Not middle-aged, or late-middle-aged, but one of the members of the fastest-growing demographic: the ‘oldest old,’ those aged 85 and above?” She reviews the writings on very old age by contemporary authors who are themselves of superannuated vintage. Dovey admits to having scrapped a manuscript she found wanting in her attempt to write a novel from the perspective of a man in his late 80s.
“The aging population is on our collective minds,” she explains, “a statistic that intrigued me is that the average life expectancy in the U.K.—and, by extension, most of the rich West—is increasing by more than five hours a day, every day. I’m in my mid-30s, but felt confident that I could imagine my way into old age. How hard could it be, really? Somewhere along the way, though, things went wrong. My protagonist became Generic Old Man: crabby, computer illiterate, grieving for his dementia-addled wife. Not satisfied to leave him to his misery, I forced on him a new love interest, Eccentric Old Woman …. In other words, I modeled my characters on the two dominant cultural constructions of old age . . . .“
Dovey continues, “Stereotypes of old age, whether positive or negative, do real harm in the real world, argues Lynne Segal, the author of Out of Time: The Pleasures and the Perils of Ageing (2013). She says that the biggest problem for many older people is ‘ageism, rather than the process of aging itself.’ There is no possibility of diversified, personal approaches to aging if we are all reductively ‘aged by culture,’ to use the age critic Margaret Morganroth Gullette’s iconic phrase, from her 2004 book, Aged by Culture. Gullette highlights the limitations of having only two socially accepted narratives of aging: stories of progress or stories of decline.”
After extensive reading and conducting interviews with three living authors of advanced age, Dovey writes, “Everywhere I look now, I seem to stumble upon new writing about old age by those who are themselves old, personal and creative accounts of the many subcultures and subjectivities of old age, and I feel increasingly ashamed of my earlier ignorance of this blossoming body of work. My to-read list now includes stories by the ninety-six-year-old Emyr Humphreys; late work by Doris Lessing, Chinua Achebe, and Seamus Heaney; poetry by Elaine Feinstein, Dannie Abse, Maureen Duffy, and Ruth Fainlight; a new novel by the 73-year-old Erica Jong, Fear of Dying; fiction by William Trevor, David Lodge, Kent Haruf, Toni Morrison, and Kenzaburo Oe; memoirs by Vivian Gornick, Roger Angell, and Diana Athill. It’s an exciting time, to have a brand-new feature of human experience—living longer—described by people as they live it, by people who have learned with age, as the late poet Adrienne Rich said, the year she turned eighty, to balance ‘dread and beauty.’” (This editor would add the poet and conservationists W.S. Merwin, and, of course, Wendell Berry.)
Among those Dovey interviewed was New Zealand-born British poet Fleur Adcock, 81. In her 2013 collection Glass Wings, a speaker in her poem “Alumnae Notes,” laments old school friends who have died or been lost to dementia, but then reasserts her connection to the present:
The class photos fade. But Marie and I,
face to face on Skype in full colour
and still far too animated to die,
can see we’ve not yet turned to sepia.
Dovey also spoke with novelist Penelope Lively, 82, who she says “has also chosen to share her view from old age in a memoir, Ammonites and Leaping Fish: A Life in Time, from 2013.” Dovey adds, “Most surprisingly, she insists that old age is not a ‘pallid sort of place,’ that she is still capable of ‘an almost luxurious appreciation of the world.’”
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