GBO NEWS: 36 Gen-Beat Reporters to Boston This Week; A Brave Exit, A Sad Exit & Exit Polls; That Same Ol’ Ageism; Journalism Fellowship Deadlines
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations– Celebrating 25 Years.
November 12, 2018 — Volume 18, Number 11
EDITOR’S NOTE: GBONews, e-news of the Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), 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. To subscribe to GBONews.org at no charge, simply sending a request to Paul with your name, address, phone number and editorial affiliation or note that you freelance. For each issue, you’ll receive the table of contents in an e-mail, so just click through to the full issue at www.gbonews.org. GBONews does not provide its list to other entities.
In This Issue: Baby Boomers—”Duck and cover”; Gen-X—”Safe sex” (or death); Millennials—”The terrorists are coming, the terrorists are coming”; the i-Generation —#seesomethingsaysomething. Boomers—“When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn?”
1. 36 JOURNALISTS IN AGING BOSTON BOUND: GSA’s Annual Scientific Meeting; 16 Continuing Fellows Named with 20 New Reporting Fellows.
2. THEY CRAMMED FOR THE MIDTERMS: *** “Midterm Elections: What’s the Verdict for Aging Policies?” by Bob Blancato, PBS Next Avenue; *** “How older first-time candidates fared in the midterm elections,”by Sandra Fish, Considerable.com.
3. GEN BEATLES NEWS: ***Author, Forbes Columnist John Wasik Bumps GOP Incumbent from Chicago-Area County Board; ***Ronnie Bennet’s “Being Terminally Ill” ***Investigative Reporter Wally Roberts, 77, Dies.
4. EYES ON THE PRIZE: *** Big Win for NPR’s “Abused & Betrayed Series onSexual Assaults Against People with Intellectual Disabilities; ***Dec. 12 Deadline for American Association for Cancer Research 2019 Biedler Prize for Cancer Journalism; *** Harvard’s Nieman Fellowship Application Deadlines.
5. THAT SAME OL’ AGEISM: *** “65 or Older? Here’s What We Owe Our Kids,” by Glenn Kramon, New York TimesOp-Ed; *** “Are Baby Boomers Being Selfish?” NYT Letters Answering Kramon; *** “Silver Is the New Gold,” by Lisa Napoli, Marketplace
1. 36 JOURNALISTS IN AGING BOSTON BOUND
GBONews.org heads to Boston this coming week with 36 Journalists in Aging Fellows for the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) Annual Scientific Meeting. It’s the program GBONews and its parent org, the Journalists Network on Generations, co-sponsors with GSA. GBO’s last issue listed the record 20 New Fellows selected from both mainstream and ethnic media.
As always, we’ve also tapped a group of past fellows to return to the program as Continuing Fellows. This year’s group of 16 will receive a modest travel grant to spend at least a couple of days schmoozing with experts and perusing research from among the 400 sessions and hundreds more research posters shown by many or the almost 4,000 gerontologists from the United States and many other countries.
The 2018-19 Continuing Fellows include: Arthur Allen, Politico; Matthew Bajko, Bay Area Reporter, San Francisco; Jacqueline Garcia, La Opinion, Los Angeles; Leoneda Inge, WUNC North Carolina; Susan Jaffe, Kaiser Health News, Lancet, others, Washington, D.C.; Julia Kassem, Freelance, Detroit Journalism Cooperative; Deborah Krol, Jolon Indian Media,Phoenix area; Yanick Rice Lamb, The Root and others, and Howard University School of Journalism, Washington, D.C.; Sandra Larson, Bay Street Banner, Boston; Peter McDermott, Irish Echo, New York; Kevin McNeir, Washington (D.C.) Informer; Michael Schroeder, U.S. News & World Report; Liz Seegert, WBAI Health Etcetera and others, Association of Health Care Journalists; Rochelle Sharpe, Freelance Investigative Journalist; Barbara Peters Smith, Sarasota Herald-Tribune; and Ke “April” Xu, Sing Tao Daily (NYC).
The fellowship program will start with an all-day workshop only for the reporters on Wednesday, Nov. 14, Keynoting the program in a lunchtime conversation about the lived experience of old-old age will be GSA’s Opening President’s Session keynoter Thomas R. Cole, author of A Country for Old Men, due out in 2019 by Oxford University Press, and New York Times bestselling author John Leland (Happiness is a Choice You Make: Lessons from a Year Among the Oldest Old (Sarah Crichton Books/FSG, 2018).
Cole’s new book explores the lives, ideas and identities of a dozen highly accomplished male elders, from retired Fed chairman Paul Volcker,to broadscaster Hugh Downs, to sage Ram Dass, along with other less well known subjects. Cole, who chairs the program in Medical Humanities at the University of Texas, Houston, had his 1992 book, The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of Aging in America,nominated for aPulitzer Prize.
Meanwhile, Leland’s tome was just released en Español, titled, Ser feliz es una decision: Lecciones de vida de nuestros mayores.
Reporters will also learn about the diversifying demographics of older Americans and hear authoritative analysis of looming policy concerns for the coming year. Rich Eisenberg, managing editor of PBS Next Avenue, will join gerontologists on the panel to provide an overview of the midterm elections. And authoritative voices from the Commonwealth Fund will explore the ramifications of their recent survey on serious illness in America. (See: “Health Care in America: The Experience of People with Serious Illness,” which they produced along with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the New York Times. (One finding: Evidence that increasingly unaffordable care is making much harder for lower-income people to cope severe illness.)
An afternoon panel will examine how ageism insinuates its way into multiple issues such employment, climate change and immigration, and where to look for elder-friendly model programs.
Also, The Boston Globe’s full-time reporter on the baby boom, Rob Weisman, will also participate in the program—and lead a Saturday tour of the Globe.
The fellowship program is supported by grants from AARP, The Silver Century Foundation, Retirement Research Foundation, Commonwealth Fund, and John A. Hartford Foundation.
2. THEY CRAMMED FOR THE MIDTERMS
*** “Midterm Elections: What’s the Verdict for Aging Policies?” by Bob Blancato, PBS Next Avenue (Nov. 7): Subtitled, “An analyst’s takeaways on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, drug prices and more,” the pundit at hand is among a small cadre of veteran political operatives on the D.C. scene for decades.
Among distinguished “influencers” in aging, Blancato was, along with many accomplishments, almost singlehandedly responsible for getting the Elder Justice Act drafted and passed by Congress as part of the Affordable Care Act, although getting the elder-abuse prevention law actually funded has been own Sisyphusian challenge. Reporters wanting a source truly in the know about Washington politics of aging, Blancato just about tops the list. (You can reach him at rblancato@matzblancato.com.)
So, what’s his take? “Health and aging issues drove the midterms more than other issues, including preserving the Affordable Care Act (with special emphasis on threats to pre-existing condition protections), considering Medicare for All proposals and lowering prescription drug costs. The election results make prospects stronger for new policies to lower prescription drug costs, something President Trump has said he generally favors.”
Stressing that his number-crunching is very early analysis, Blancato goes on, “The election results also showed there may be signs of change in the way older voters vote. Republicans have captured their vote in every election since 2008, but according to CNN exit polls, 48% of voters 65 and older and 49% of those 45 to 64 identified themselves as Democrats; 50% of both groups called themselves Republicans. By contrast, in the 2014 midterms, 41% of House … voters 65-plus and 45% of those 45 to 64 were Democrats.”
On Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, be believes, “The prospects of “entitlement reform” that would lead to cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid now seem much less likely with a divided Congress.” That’s because of the bipartisan reluctance to address “difficult choices on this until it is absolutely necessary. And that time is not now.”
Meanwhile, he says, threats to Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for lower-income Americans, “virtually disappear in a divided Congress.” That’s an understatement. As the New York Times Abby Goodnough reported, Nov. 7, deeply red Idaho, Nebraska and Utah voted to expand the program, and at least three other scarlet states are poised to follow suit.
Blancato, executive director of the National Association of Nutrition and Aging Services Programs, added, “One possible danger ahead: The return of the ‘pay as you go’ rule, which mandates offsetting revenue losses with spending cuts, will start with the next federal fiscal year, beginning October 1, 2019.” He goes on to comment on relevant leaders in the blue-again House and key statehouses.
*** ” How older first-time candidates fared in the midterm elections,” by Sandra Fish, Considerable.com (Nov. 8): With the tag line, “Let’s just say the term landslide probably isn’t appropriate,” Considerable (the awkwardly named play on NPR’s All Things Considered) reported that at least 105 of the 121 political newbies ages 50 or older that the website identified saw defeat. Many aimed “to unseat established incumbents in congressional districts that were strongholds for one party or the other.But at least 13 others won, and three appear poised to win. All but four of those candidates were competing in open seats.”
Among the winners, Considerable, which also now owns Grandparents.com, listed billionaire Democrat J.B. Pritzker, 53, who upset incumbent Gov.Bruce Rauner, and Tennessee Republican businessman Bill Lee, 59, who took that states open gubernatorial seat.
Surfing into the House on a blue wave for the first time was Clinton administration Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, 77, who will represent southeastern Florida. Also, among women boogie boarding the wave to victory, was Democrat Cindy Axne, 53, who oustedan incumbent Republican in Iowa.
Prominent among four GOP first-time congressional winners is Greg Pence, brother of Vice President Mike Pence, who won an open seat in Indiana. Meanwhile, wrote Fish, “None of the six 50-plus first time candidates challenging incumbent Democratic U.S. senators won their contests.”
3. GEN BEATLES NEWS
***John Wasik’s Down-Ballot Blue Wave: In GBO’s “Who Knew? Department” comes news that the retirement-finance journalist and 17-book author just got elected to suburban Chicago’s Lake County Board, flipping the District 6 seat away from incumbent Republican Jeff Werfel. On Facebook, Wasik credited his opponent for his gracious gesture in conceding defeat with an offer of help in the Democrat’s transition. How early 2000s of him! one would hope that’s a sign of civility worthy of attention from those up-ballot.
Wasik, 61, currently writes the “Bamboozlement” blog for Forbes.com, aimed at protecting investors from financial scams. He’s also been a frequent contributor to the New York Times “Retiring” column, the Wall Street Journal, Morningstar.com, Bloomberg and Reuters.
His latest book, a departure from his economics writing, is Lightning Strikes: Timeless Lessons in Creativity from the Life and Work of Nikola Tesla,about “the intersection between disruptive technology and what it means to be human.” As a community activist, he co-founded the Citizens Action Project, a nonpartisan group working for property tax relief.
*** “Being Terminally Ill” was the headline on a painfully honest and deeply reflective October 24 piece by Ronni Bennettposted on her widely respected blog, Time Goes By (“What It’s Really Like to Get Old”).
Bennet, 77, wrote, “The headline today is my new status: terminally ill. After knowing this for two-and-a-half weeks now, I still don’t fully believe it. First of all, I feel as healthy as the best I have ever been. Nothing hurts. I have no symptoms. I can do anything I need to do. Except for one thing: I have been disabused of that marvelous notion humans have all our lives of being the one immortal: You might die one day, but not me.”
Bennet, who started Time Goes By 15 years ago, continues, “Isn’t that a horrible phrase, ‘terminally ill.’ It’s too clinical, even industrial. It ignores the humanity of the life that will be extinguished and it sounds so imminent, as if I am already on the first bus out of here — a bus being driven, of course, by the grim reaper, hood in place and scythe in hand. But that’s not true of me. For a while anyway. I’ve got some time.”
About two years ago she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, according to PBS Next Avenue. Now the veteran broadcast journalist is facing the latest prognosis with the same avid curiosity that made her the first managing editor of CBSNews.com. Over the years she produced shows for such top talents as Barbara Walters, John Tesh, Whoopi Goldbergand Matt Lauer.
With thatcurious and critical eye she dipped into the chat about dying on the internet. Bennet reports finding that The Mayo Clinic “has a pretty good page about how to be with a loved one who is terminally ill.” Others, though, less laudably advise Googlers to “choose your words carefully, don’t ask questions, talk about something other than cancer.”
To that, Bennet wrote, “Huh? Just speak. I don’t care what words you use. Ask any questions at all and god, at this point, certainly talk about cancer and dying all you want. I can’t promise my responses will useful because I’ve never done this before and I’m still learning. But do say what you want to say.”
This past week what she wanted to say appeared in her blog, “The Day After the U.S. Midterm Election.” Writing on election day as the final results were tumbling in, Bennet observed, “When Trump was elected in 2016, before I knew of my cancer diagnosis, I told anyone who would listen that whatever else happened, I would be pissed off big time if I did not live long enough to see how the Trump era ends (everything ends eventually). Count me pissed off. But at least I have seen this election.” She then invited readers to weigh in, and so far three-dozen clearly devoted readers have done exactly that.
*** Investigative Reporter Wally Roberts, 77, Dies: GBONews learned only recently that veteran investigative reporter Wallace Roberts died last summer in his hometown of Williamstown, Vt., following A brief illness not identified in the local newspaper obituary. Roberts had written for decades about civil rights and issues of social justice in education, the environment and eldercare for such media as the Washington Post, The Nation, American Prospectand the Village Voice.
Racial and economic inequities in Medicaid-funded nursing home care especially absorbed his energies in recent years. His two-part series for the NAACP magazine, The Crisis, and New America Mediaexposed the roots and structural racism of antiquated Medicaid policies. He wrote the stories, “The Death of a Black Nursing Home,” and “Why Medicaid’s Racism Drove Historically-Black Nursing Home Bankrupt” (link appears at the bottom of Part 1) with support from the Journalists in Aging Fellows Program. The notice in his hometown paper, The Barre Montpelier Times Argus, reported that at the time of death last July, he was writing a new book, You Don’t Want to Go There, about the nursing home industry.
4. EYES ON THE PRIZE
*** A Big Win for NPR’s Wrenching Series, “Abused & Betrayed” which took top honors in the Ruderman Foundation Awards for Excellence in Reporting on Disability. NPR’s special investigations unit – Joseph Shapiro, Robert Little and Meg Anderson– spent a year reporting on sexual assaults against people with intellectual disabilities. As GBONews reported when the series aired, the team found in previously undisclosed government numbers that people with intellectual disabilities are seven times more likely to be sexually assaulted than people without disabilities.
The judges said, “Among a collection of many excellent contenders, this entry stood out head and shoulders. NPR devoted thorough, sensitive reporting on a long overlooked issue and people who often are unable to say #MeToo for themselves.” Seven segments ran in January 2018, plus a follow-up story in June.
The award, administered by the National Center on Disability and Journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, came with a $10,000 prize.
*** Reporters can apply for theAmerican Association for Cancer Research 2019 June L. Biedler Prize for Cancer Journalism, by the Dec. 12 deadline. The award recognizes “outstanding journalism that enhances the public’s understanding of cancer, cancer research or cancer policy,” says their site. It is open to professional journalists for newspapers, magazines, television, websites, television and radio reaching lay audience.
“Recipients are awarded a $5,000 cash prize, a commemorative plaque, and recognition at the AACR Annual Meeting, March 30 – April 3, 2019 in Atlanta.” There is no entry fee. June L. Biedler, PhD, was a pioneer in cancer research, and former member of the Board of Directors of the AACR.
*** Harvard’s Nieman Fellowship Application Deadlines are, for the International Fellowships, Dec. 1, 2018, and for U.S. Fellowships, Jan. 31, 2019. Up to 12 Fellows each from the U.S. and International groupswill spend the 2019-20 academic year at Harvard University, for which they will receive a stipend of $70,000 paid over a nine-month school year to cover living costs. The fellowship also provides housing, childcare and health insurance allowances based on the number and ages of family members. Nieman additionally covers the cost of attending Harvard classes for fellows and their affiliates (Fellows’ partners or spouses).
Fellows, besides spending their two semesters auditing classes at Harvard and participating in Nieman events, can also audit classes at MIT, Tufts and other area universities.
Can’t commit to a school year? The website explains, “The Knight Visiting Nieman Fellowships at Harvard offer short-term research opportunities to individuals interested in working on special projects designed to advance journalism in some new way.” These can run from a few weeks to three months. The application deadline for these fellowships passed in September, but they will become open again next July with a fall deadline.
Applicants for academic-year Nieman Fellowships, including staffers or freelancers, “must be working journalists with at least five years of full-time media experience.” Candidates nominate themselves for Nieman Fellowships by submitting an application and supplementary materials, including recommendation letters. There are no age limits or academic prerequisites, and a college degree is not required, says the website. Also, the deadline for the Abrams Nieman Fellowship for Local Investigative Journalism will be Feb. 18, 2019.
5. THAT SAME OL’ AGEISM
*** “65 or Older? Here’s What We Owe Our Kids,” by Glenn Kramon, New York TimesOp-Ed (Oct. 25): The drop-head: “I’m a baby boomer. Our parents spoiled us by building a better world than they had. Somewhere down the road, we stopped promising our own children the same.”
The regurgitation of this quasi-political effluence was, sad to say, entirely predictable. In this case, though, I was glad to see the Timesthen run a slew of pretty smart rejoinders from readers. Kramon follows the well-worn pattern, most notoriously evinced by the 1988 New Republiccover story, “Talkin’ ‘Bout My Generation,” by Henry Fairlie (with the magazine’s cover line, “Greedy Geezers”). That line was eventually amplified to a “10” by the late hedge fund billionaire Peter G. Petersonin his books like Gray Dawn and articles in The Atlantic Monthly disdaining senor stinginess—in taking too much from his grandchildren for old-age entitlement programs.
The selfish seniors of the 1980s would later be dubbed the Greatest Generation, just in time for politicians and the mainstream media to suddenly contrast them favorably to the presumed profligacy of the “me-generation” boomers. Why the recurring generational opprobrium, often from aging writers, and mostly from those with business and financial backgrounds? Guess. They typically begin, as Kramon does, by exhorting their authority of years. His lede: “I’m a 65-year-old member of the Me Generation . . . If we’re to avoid living down to our self-centered nickname, our post-65 narrative must change.”
The sorry tales go on, commonly, to note that today’s elder corps started with the best of intentions decades ago, but times changed and so did what they costs us. Kramon, a former assistant managing editor at NYT and current lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, goes on, “Now that doctors keep us alive longer, we’re costing far more than our parents and grandparents did. Annual health spending — $2,200 per American in 1970 when we were their age — almost quintupled to more than $10,000 in 2016, after inflation, according to the National Health Expenditure Accounts.” Hmm: Does might that have more to do with explosive costs unique in the world to the U.S. health care system?
Kramon goes on that rising costs of older people (also part of the budget-mired argument) have resulted because the nation has become victimized by its success. He writes, “One reason is Medicare, covering Americans over 65 or disabled.” Is it because of those old politicians? He adds, “I even wonder whether increased Medicare spending is partly responsible for the election of Donald Trump, whose margin of victory came from voters in our generation. Without that spending, might enough of us have died sooner and tipped the balance in favor of Hillary Clinton?”
I gotta wonder if this wouldn’t have earned the writer a nasty tweet from Trump—who’d insist, probably rightly in this case, that he, not some presumed demographic imperative, was totally responsible for his election. Gotta wonder, too, if Kramon considered that other even older white guy in the 2016 race, Bernie Sanders, who had wide support from young voters. But I digress.
A few paragraphs in, Kramon gets to his money shot: Those undeserved entitlements. He paces through the usual string of highly debatable saws: aging boomers are getting more benefits than they put in (unless you look at categories like older women and ethnic elders, among numerous groups the extra sums, largely from overall economic growth, were meant to protect); the dependency ratio of younger workers needed to support seniors is unsustainably low (an intuitive but dicey argument long contested by many distinguished economists more than the conservative he cites); and etcetera.
“What should we older folks do,” Kramon asks? His answers — stay health: “I still contribute to Medicare, I don’t draw benefits” — be more productive, volunteer “like many my age here in Silicon Valley”; donate some of those “many trillions in assets” held by boomers– all worthy gestures for the affluent.
The column than goes squishy, as these missives often do, with avuncular counsel to his Stanford students to vote and do good things. They should aspire to solve today’s problems — with programs like Medicare, Medicaid and the Civil Right Act — the kinds of achievements, says this boomer, that “our generation has failed at.”
Those social advances, he holds, arose in the mid-1960s from “Republicans and Democrats of my parents’ and grandparents’ generations.” Ah, yes, the current gauzy glow of bipartisanship, which this septuagenarian editor recalls rather differently. Ah, to bask in the celestial calm he imagines from, say, 1968!
The problem with Kramon and the others is that they argue in the zero-sum budget vane, allowing little room for savings or gains. Their underlying default is the conservative notion of “personal responsibility” without social responsibility in the most dynamic – and often wasteful — economy in the world. It’s as if the American wealth engine can’t maximize the protection of and contributive opportunities for its aging population. Just think of what the internet, for all of its problems, has done to expand the economy in only two decades of its existence. Did Kramon somehow miss that down at Stanford?
*** “Are Baby Boomers Being Selfish?” What did his older NYTreaders think of Kramon’s presumptive commencement speech to today’s youth? The paper posted numerous letters on Nov. 3. Here are notable excerpts:
Dana Franchitto, South Wellfleet, Mass., wrote the editor: “As someone who is grateful to have been born in 1950, I must take issue with Mr. Kramon’s article. First of all, it is loaded with assumptions about our generation, Medicare and Social Security. These are not ‘entitlements.’ We earned them through many years of hard work. Second, many of us will not enjoy the luxury of retiring early. We are not all former yuppies who are retiring from six-figure salaries . . . .He fails to account for an unsteady economy and ever-rising health care and prescription costs . . . .”
Michael Hodin, chief executive of the Global Coalition on Aging, New York,wrote, “. . . First, his assumptions about how boomers are behaving is out of date: 72 percent of today’s pre-retirees report that they want to work, not retire; 23 percent of new American entrepreneurs are ages 55 to 64. We are already behaving differently from 20th-century retirement norms. Second, his solutions, while nice, don’t get to the core shift, which is for employers and the rest of us to change our views about welcoming anyone at any age to work …”
Gary E. Davis, Berkeley, Calif.: “. . . I think we owe our children a fair understanding that there was not really a Me Generation. That was a fiction of breezy journalism. . . .”
Robert Millsap, Woodland, Calif.: “I really resent Glenn Kramon’s article. Reading it, one would believe that the Social Security and Medicare trust funds have been declared unsustainable. . . That’s not what is happening. . . The actuaries have given repeated assurances that these programs are sound. . . We have been assured that relatively modest adjustments would cure these shortfalls. . . They have not been made because Republicans in Congress want to strangle the programs . . . .”
Well, plenty of Democrats, too. Anyhow, older readers of the NYT seem to have pretty good tracking codes for following the money and bankrupt arguments for seniors to stop being so mean to their grandchildren (and turn over those social insurance funds).
*** “Silver is the New Gold,” by Lisa Napoli, Marketplace(Oct. 26): Let’s follow more money. One element of confusion about older people—whether impoverished or the most affluent generation ignored by the marketplace—is that both are true. For decades, I’ve heard gerontologists say that roughly one-third of boomer will reach later life rich, a third will be in the middle and a third (disproportionately from ethnic and racial groups) will be impoverished. The main difference that’s unfolded: The middle part has slid down toward the last.
That said, people ages 50-plus, say economists, do hold the vast majority of discretionary dollars in the United States. Yet marketers continue to chase after the quicker bucks they think they can make from Millennials (never mind Gen-X). This matters because the market attitude is not only counter to reality, but it hampers the development of better and safer projects for older people. That goes for news and information on aging in America, as well.
Napoli’s piece profiles David Harry Stewart, 59, a photographer for glossy magazines and national brands. She explained, “A few years back, he started to notice that the ad people commissioning his work were half his age. ‘What they’re going to do is market to the people they know best. Themselves,’ Stewart . . . asked why he wasn’t taking pictures of people who looked like him. ‘They were like, “Oh, old people?” he said. “We don’t care about old people”’ There’s this whole group that gets forgotten. Late forties to pre-elderly — that’s a big market.”
In response, Stewart created “a kind of Vogue for older people, which he calls Ageist. ‘We’re saying this exists,’ he said. ‘These people are living in a very different way than their parents were.’”
Napoli continues, “Data tracker Nielsen says people over 50 control 70 percent of all disposable income. Bay Area ad strategist Mary Furlong consults with brands on the purchasing power of older adults — and the right way to approach them. ‘If you’re in the car industry, you should be looking at the kind of woman who wants to upgrade to a luxury car with great sensors, so she can continue to drive,’ Furlong said. ‘If you’re in travel, you better be aware that they’re going to take six or seven trips a year.’”
The Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), founded in 1993, publishes Generations Beat Online News (GBONews.org). JNG provides information and networking opportunities for journalists covering generational issues, but not those representing services, products or lobbying agendas. Copyright 2018 JNG. For more information contact GBO Editor Paul Kleyman.
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