GBO NEWS: 1 Week to Fellowship Deadline; Robots; Black Retirees’ Reverse Migration; Financial Elder Abuse; Gray Climate Change Advocates; & MORE
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations — Beginning Our 24th Year.
April 21, 2017 — Volume 17, Number 5
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: Will O’Reilly Sue for Age Bias, Claims in Firing Fox Condemns Him to Lonely Retirement Knowing Women Won’t Come Near Him. (Next Book: The Killing of My Retirement.)
1. EYES ON THE PRIZE: *** One Week Left–Journalists in Aging Fellowship Application Deadline April 28; *** Diane Joy Schmidt’s SPJ Double Win in the Rockies.
2. GEN BEATLES NEWS: *** Freelancer Liz Seegert’s new monthly blog titled “Health experts are talking about…” from arthritis to hep C testing;
3. THE STORY BOARD: *** “How to Help Alzheimer’s Patients Enjoy Life, Not Just ‘Fade Away,’” by Judith Graham,” Kaiser Health News; *** “At Intel, A Retirement Perk That Can Kick Off A New Career As A Paid Fellow,” by Ina Jaffe; ***“Wash. Post’s Reporting On Social Security Disability Insurance [SDI] Is Hopelessly Flawed” by Craig Harrington, Media Matters; *** “Black Retirees: North Carolina’s ‘Reverse’ Migration,” WUNC/New America Media , Leoneda Inge; *** “Older, Wiser and Fighting Climate Change,” California Health Report/New America Media Matt Perry; *** “Some hospitals in Kentucky can’t find enough nurses,” by Melissa Patrick, Kentucky Health News;
4. IN DEPTH: Check out these recent series:
*** “SENIOR CLASS: Part 1 — Back to School at 50+ for Income, Family, Community,” KSFR Public Radio/New America Media, Deborah Martinez; Part 2 –“Life Experience Enhances Back to School.”
*** AI (AGING INTELLIGENCE): “How Will Artificial Intelligence Help Aging Boomers?” Part 1–Smithsonian.com/New America Media , News Feature, Randy Rieland,(March 30). Part 2 — “How ‘Connected’ Will Your Aging Be in the Robotic Age?” Smithsonian.com/New America Media .
*** FINANCIAL ELDER ABUSE: Part 1–“Financial Exploitation: When Taking Money Amounts to Elder Abuse,” U.S. News & World Report/New America Media , Michael O. Schroeder. Part 2 — “The Mental and Physical Cost of Elder Financial Abuse,” US News & World Report/New America Media ; Part 3 – “Recovering From Trauma of Financial Elder Abuse—What to Do,” U.S. News & World Report/New America Media , (March 20).
1. EYES ON THE PRIZE
*** One Week Left for Journalists in Aging Fellowships: April 28 is the final deadline to apply for Year 8 of this great opportunity. It provides a $1,500 stipend plus expenses to attend the World Congress of Gerontology & Geriatrics in San Francisco, July 23-27. The fellowship is open to reporters in any medium from mainstream or ethnic media news organizations serving communities in the United States. This program is a collaboration between New America Media (NAM) and the Gerontological Society of America (GSA), in cooperation with GBONews publisher, the Journalists Network on Generations.
This year, GSA will be the United States host for the World Congress – meeting of the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics, which only comes to this country every 32 years. On hand will be about 6,000 experts and professionals in aging, including those from throughout the U.S. and 75 countries.
The fellowship program will bring the eight-year total of participants in the program to 136 journalists, including both staff reporters and freelancers. To date, the fellows have posted about 450 stories in English, with many in their original Spanish, Chinese, Korean and other languages. Funding for the new program so far has been granted by the Silver Century Foundation, AARP, Retirement Research Foundation, and the John A. Hartford Foundation.
Interested reporters can see details about the fellowship at the fellowship program’s website. GBONews and NAM editor Paul Kleyman is available for questions at pkleyman@newamericamedia.org or 415-503-4170, ext. 133. Or contact GSA’s Todd Kluss can answer questions at tkluss@geron.org; (202) 587-2839.
*** Diane Joy Schmidt’s SPJ Double Win: The four-state regional Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) “Top of the Rockies” awards gave Diane Joy Schmidt First Place for her “truly memorable profile” of an older metal sculptor with a dynamite technique—literally. The Arts & Entertainment-category story, “Evelyn Rosenberg and Her Explosive Art,” featured the widely collected artist, who learned to use explosives in creating remarkably delicate images. Besides this piece—a first-ever win for New Mexico Jewish Link (under-10,000 circulation category)—Schmidt also picked up Second Place for her “Personal/Humor” category column, for “The First Shall be Last; There Once Was a Woman Who Was Apologetic; Beneath the Surface,” published by the Gallup Independent (under 30,000 circ. Category). The latter story is an allegory that incorporates parts of her interview with Gary Rosenberg, MD, who directs the University of New Mexico Memory and Aging Center.
Schmidt wrote the “Explosive Art” story with support of the Journalist in Aging Fellowship from NAM and GSA, with sponsorship from the Retirement Research Foundation. The article also ran on the NAM website. She e-mailed that without the fellowship “this piece would not have even happened, and the time spent on it would not have been possible.”
2. GEN BEATLES NEWS
*** Freelancer Liz Seegert, editor of the “Aging” core-topics section of the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ) recently started a monthly blog for the newsy site of the Silver Century Foundation. The column carries the standing header, “Health experts are talking about…” followed by the monthly subject, as it does for April: “…more arthritis diagnoses among working-age adults.”
The piece continues, “Not only are more Americans developing arthritis, they’re doing so at younger ages, states a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Between 2013 and 2015, 54.4 million (22.7 percent, or more than one in five) American adults were diagnosed with this condition, a leading cause of disability. Fifty-nine percent of those diagnosed were younger than 65.”
Earlier subjects included, ““Health experts are talking about…early detection of age-related macular degeneration” and “… hepatitis C testing.”
3. THE STORY BOARD
*** “How to Help Alzheimer’s Patients Enjoy Life, Not Just ‘Fade Away,’” by Judith Graham,” Kaiser Health News (April 20): Alzheimer’s disease has an unusual distinction: It’s the illness that Americans fear most— more than cancer, stroke or heart disease.”
She adds, “Yet, a sizable body of research suggests this Alzheimer’s narrative is mistaken. It finds that people with Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia retain a sense of self and have a positive quality of life, overall, until the illness’s final stages. They appreciate relationships They’re energized by meaningful activities and value opportunities to express themselves. And they enjoy feeling at home in their surroundings.”
Graham quotes Peter Rabins, MD, a psychiatrist and co-author with Nancy Mace of the groundbreaking guide, The 36-Hour Day, (Johns Hopkins, 6th edition, 2017). According to Rabins, “Overall, about one-quarter of people with dementia report a negative quality of life, although that number is higher in people with severe disease.”
Remarkably, Rabins, a professor at the University of Maryland, admits, “I’ve learned something from this. I’m among the people who would have thought, ‘If anything happens to my memory, my ability to think, I can’t imagine anything worse.’ But I’ve seen that you can be a wonderful grandparent and not remember the name of the grandchild you adore. You can be with people you love and enjoy them, even if you’re not following the whole conversation.”
*** “At Intel, A Retirement Perk That Can Kick Off A New Career As A Paid Fellow,” by Ina Jaffe, NPR News (April 17): Jaffe reports that “tech giant Intel pays longtime employees a stipend while they try out new careers at nonprofit organizations.” One of them, former project manager Gail Dougherty, 61, was placed at a local Oregon health center, where she’s been “crunching patient data with input from doctors and nurses to figure out better ways of delivering care to the health center’s high number of patients with diabetes.
“Out of my own non-medical, non-health-care … head, [I] proposed a workflow that seemed like, from what I was hearing might be the most helpful thing for our patients,” Dougherty says. Those patients are migrant workers and others who have no health insurance or who qualify for Medicaid. Dougherty says the skills from her old job fit in with her new one, even though the two jobs couldn’t be more different.” You can hear the piece or read the written version at the link shown above.
*** “Wash. Post’s Reporting On Social Security Disability Insurance [SSDI] Is Hopelessly Flawed” by Craig Harrington, Media Matters (April 20): With the subhead, “A Longform Foray Into SSDI Echoed Conservative Misinformation, Was Replete With Data Errors,” the blogger takes WaPo to task for its March 30 article titled, “Disabled, or just desperate?” and the WaPo Editorial Board’s subsequent citation of the article in its call for tighter restrictions on SSDI.
Media Matters analyzed the initial story criticizing it, says Harrington, as being “filled with tropes, gimmicks and dog whistles frequently promoted by right-wing opponents of SSDI. Disability advocates questioned the portrayal of a single anecdotal account as representative of millions of Americans, and Rebecca Vallas of the Center for American Progress (CAP) slammed the Post for creating a ‘dystopian portrait’ of an SSDI system ‘riddled with rampant abuse.’”
The April 8 judgment of the Post’s editorial board cites its original article, Harrington writes, favoring “unnecessary ‘reforms’ of the disability insurance system” and “mischaracterizing the program” and peddling myths about the social safety net common in conservative media. Economist Dean Baker also browbeats the editorial for targeting a program that helps provide basic living standards at a time of rampant economic inequality.”
Harrington explains, “The core argument forwarded by the initial Post report was that as many as one-third of working-age adults in rural communities are reliant on SSDI for most or all of their monthly income.” However, he reports, the Center for American Progress (CAP) discovered that the Post’s numbers overcounted the number of children and working-age adults receiving SSDI, and failed to correct for the double-counting of roughly 1.3 million people. CAP even uncovered that the paper was missing data entirely for nearly 100 of the ‘rural counties’ the article was supposed to be analyzing. In response to these revelations, the editors responsible for the Post’s report issued a lengthy correction to the article. Even then, CAP said on April 18, “that the fixes still didn’t go far enough since more accurate data actually disproved the Post’s core argument,” according to Harrington.
*** “Black Retirees: North Carolina’s ‘Reverse’ Migration,” WUNC/New America Media , Leoneda Inge (April 19): Nearly 6 million African Americans left the South in the Great Migration, but today many are going back making North Carolina a leading retirement destination in the country.
*** “Older, Wiser and Fighting Climate Change,” California Health Report/New America Media Matt Perry (April 17): A common misconception is that elders don’t care about climate change. But gerontologist and grandfather Mick Smyer is among those proving this to be wrong.
*** “Some hospitals in Kentucky can’t find enough nurses,” by Melissa Patrick, Kentucky Health News (April 4): “Studies show Kentucky will have a surplus of registered nurses in the next decade, but many of the state’s hospitals are struggling to hire enough nurses to care for patients. ‘We are feeling it in our facilities,’ Susan Ellis, the vice president of patient care services at Highlands Regional Medical Center in Prestonsburg. ‘You really can’t run your facility without your registered nurses; they are at the patients’ bedsides.’ Most of the state’s critical-access hospitals, which usually have fewer than 20 patients at a time, haven’t been hit by the shortage. But at any given time larger Kentucky hospitals may have between a 10 percent and 40 percent vacancy rate, Ellis said.”
Patrick produced this article – and a longer version also posted on the site – as part of the Health Care Workforce Media Fellowship of the Center for Health, Media & Policy, New York, N.Y. The fellowship is supported by a grant from the Johnson & Johnson Foundation. Kentucky Health News is an independent news service of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, in the University of Kentucky’s School of Journalism and Media, with support from the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky.
4. IN DEPTH
Check out these recent series:
*** “SENIOR CLASS: Part 1 — Back to School at 50+ for Income, Family, Community,” KSFR Public Radio/New America Media, Deborah Martinez, (April 7). Over a third of students at Santa Fe Community College are back to school at age 50+, some to keep learning, others to retool to support their families. Part 2 –“Life Experience Enhances Back to School,” KSFR Public Radio/New America Media (April 9). More 50+ workers are retraining in college for jobs or careers in the “new trades.” Some were laid off, others’ pensions were hit by the recession.
*** AI (AGING INTELLIGENCE): “How Will Artificial Intelligence Help Aging Boomers?” Part 1 —Smithsonian.com/New America Media , News Feature, Randy Rieland (March 30). As more Americans age alone, will robotics replace the human touch for them? The key, researchers say, is finding the right roles for machines.
Part 2 — “How ‘Connected’ Will Your Aging Be in the Robotic Age?” Smithsonian.com/New America Media (March 31). Will you or your parent be part of the “connected aging” future. Will home sensors be friendly visitors or tiny Big Brothers? Will robots bring companionship, or spy on you?
*** FINANCIAL ELDER ABUSE: Part 1–“Financial Exploitation: When Taking Money Amounts to Elder Abuse,” U.S. News & World Report/New America Media , News Feature, Michael O. Schroeder (March 8). Financial elder abuse is increasing and can jeopardize a senior’s well-being. Those affected are robbed of more than money and shouldn’t hesitate to seek help; Part 2 — “The Mental and Physical Cost of Elder Financial Abuse,” US News & World Report/New America Media , (March 16). Financial exploitation has far-reaching consequences beyond money stolen; Part 3 – “Recovering From Trauma of Financial Elder Abuse—What to Do,” U.S. News & World Report/New America Media , (March 20). For victims of financial elder abuse, although recovering money and assets is difficult, steps can be taken to get life back on track.
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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 2017, JNG. For more information contact GBO Editor Paul Kleyman.
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