GBONEWS: Knight Journalism, NPF Fellowship Deadlines; Older Voters’ Quiet Resistance, NPR News, CNN; Jane Fonda on CBS with Ashton Applewhite; PLUS Books New and Classic; 12th Legacy Film Fest; & MORE
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations.
December 5, 2024 — Volume 31, 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. If you have difficulty getting to the full issue of GBONews with the links provided below, simply go to www.gbonews.org to read the latest or past editions. Send your news of important stories or books (by you and others), fellowships, awards or pertinent kvetches to GBO News Editor Paul Kleyman. [pfkleyman@gmail.com]. 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, and links to the full issue at www.gbonews.org. GBONews does not provide its list to other entities.
In This Issue: Nominated as new U.S. Assistant Secretary for aging – Peter Pan. (“Gee, Wendy, if no one grows up, we can cut Social Security.”)
1. EYES ON THE PRIZE: *** Knight Journalism Fellowship Deadline, Jan. 15; *** National Press Foundation Fellowship for Journalists of Color, Deadline, Dec. 15.
2. SOME OLDER VOTERS WISE UP: *** Older Voters’ “Quiet Resistance”: *** “Demographics Did Not Determine How People Voted,” by Domenico Montanaro, NPR All Things Considered; Older Voters’ “Quiet Resistance,” by John King, CNN.
3. GEN BEATLES NEWS: *** Jay Newton-Small Named Albuquerque Journal’s New Exec Editor; *** Herb Weiss Published Third Collection of his age-beat columns.
4. THE MEDIAMOBILE (Books, Movies, TV, Oh, My!): *** The Untold Story of Books: A Writer’s History of Book Publishing, by Michael Castleman; *** Not to Be Forgotten, GBONews Reader Recommendations of Eldercare Titles; *** Spiritual Aging: Weekly Reflections for Embracing Life, by Carol Orsborn; & More.
PLUS *** 12th Legacy Film Festival on Aging (LFFOA), Feb. 14-23, 2025; *** PLUS — “Jane Fonda With a Secret of Aging Well,” also introducing anti-ageism advocate Ashton Applewhite, CBS Sunday Morning.
5. WORDS FROM THE WISE: *** A Year with Rilke: Daily Readings from the Best of Rainer Maria Rilke (HarperOne, 2009), and JoJo Rabbit.
1. EYES ON THE PRIZE
*** Knight Journalism Fellowship Deadline, Jan. 15: The John S. Knight (JSK) Journalism Fellowships at Stanford University, is accepting submissions for the 2025-26 school year through Jan. 15, 2025.
U.S. journalists will be selected, “who are able to step away from their professional obligations to focus full time on being a fellow on campus, exploring and testing ideas for addressing a problem in journalism,” according to their website.
The fellowship provides a stipend of $125,000. (That’s not a typo.) It also cover the cost of Stanford tuition for fellows and Stanford health insurance for fellows, spouses and children. Both journalists working in news organizations or as freelancers/contractors need to have at least five years of full-time professional work experience in journalism, not including internships during college. The fellowship program does not require applicants to have a college degree.
Check out their Frequently Asked Questions. It states, “Information about fellowship stipends and other benefits, eligibility, and the dates of upcoming webinars for prospective applicants is on our Become a fellow page. If you don’t find an answer to your question, email us at jskfellowships@stanford.edu and someone will get back to you.”
*** National Press Foundation Fellowship for Journalists of Color, Deadline, Dec. 15, 2025: We know it’s a tight deadline at this point, but NPF has lots of fellowships, so if you miss this date, take a look at their fellowship section for others.
NPF’s website states, “U.S. journalism has an ongoing diversity crisis. There simply are not enough reporters and editors of color to inform, engage and accurately reflect our society. To combat this, the National Press Foundation’s Widening the Pipeline Fellowship will provide trainings in Washington, D.C., as well as virtual workshops to support journalists of color staying in – and leading – the newsrooms of tomorrow. NPF welcomes U.S.-based journalists from any medium with seven years or less of professional newsroom experience to participate in this career-defining cohort.”
It continues, “This competitive fellowship is open to U.S.-based reporters and editors working in print, television, radio or online media. We greatly value diversity in all our programs and applicants from across the nation are encouraged to apply. . . The foundation will cover airfare, hotel, some ground transportation and most meals for the two in-person trainings in Washington, D.C., held in February and December 2025. A virtual training day will be held roughly every month” through December 2025.
“Applicants must submit a letter from their supervisors saying they will be permitted to attend all sessions. The application deadline is Dec. 15.”
2. SOME OLDER VOTERS WISE UP
*** “In This Election, Demographics Did Not Determine How People Voted,” by Domenico Montanaro and colleagues, NPR All Things Considered (Nov. 22, 2024): “There’s a political realignment taking place, not just on education and race, but also by age. Older voters, for example, were once seen as a solid Republican voting bloc, but seniors shifted away from Trump in the majority of the swing states (North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia).”
Later in the story: “Harris got better margins with women, older voters (65+) and white voters but nowhere near enough to counterbalance Trump’s increases with other groups.”
*** “How these older voters who backed Harris are engaging in ‘quiet resistance,’” by John King, CNN (Nov. 26, 2024): Voters over the age of 65 are among the most reliable to cast ballots. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris evenly split these voters nationally, with 49% each, according to exit polls. In Pennsylvania, Trump had an edge with voters 65 and over – 52% to 48% for Harris.
3. GEN BEATLES NEWS
*** Jay Newton-Small Named Albuquerque Journal’s New Exec Editor: Congratulations to our friend, bestselling author and former White House correspondent Jay Newton-Small, who heads into 2025 as the new executive editor and VP of the Albuquerque Journal/ABQJournal.com.
GBONews readers may recall that in 2017, she left her coverage of Washington politics at Time Magazine to found MemoryWell, which drew on her caregiving experience for her father’s Alzheimer’s disease.
Working with long-term care providers, the company networked journalists with residents’ families to create concise, iPad-based life stories of their loved ones that could introduce the memory-impaired person to facility staff. Inspiring her development of the program was her effort to summarize her father’s distinguished life and career as a United Nations diplomat in diverse corners of the globe to the nursing staff at his facility. That resulted in their becoming more devoted to his care.
In recent years, Newton-Small, now 48, moved to Santa Fe, NM, where she met her future husband. In 2020, the moved to Albuquerque. There, eventually, the reporting itch got her scratching again at politics as a columnist for the ABQJournal, leading to her new appointment as its top editor.
Previously, according to ABQJournal, Newton-Small had covered George W. Bush’s White House for Bloomberg News, later serving as interim bureau chief for Time Magazine in London and the Middle East. ABQJournal Publisher William P. Lang said, “Jay not only brings a deep knowledge of and experience in traditional print publications, but also has over a decade of broadcast, digital and multimedia platform development work.”
Time published her bestselling book, Broad Influence: How Women Are Changing the Way America Works, in 2016. She’s also. Been a fellow of the Halcyon Incubator, New America Foundation and the Institute of Politics at Harvard University. In her Facebook post about the new gig, Newton-Small wrote, “As the paper of record for New Mexico, the Journal is an incredible opportunity to convene, build community and break news!”
*** Congratulations to Herb Weiss on publishing Volume III: Taking Charge: Even More Stories on Aging Boldly, the latest of his selected columns on aging written over his four decades, first on the Washington scene and in recent years from his base in Pawtucket, RI. Weiss, whose commentaries run weekly in RINewsToday, writes, “Although some of the content may reflect aging issues, research results, study and poll findings, and legislative policy debates from years past with insights are relevant and informative. The stories, while often localize to Rhode Island, contain universal truths applicable across the nation.” Readers can learn more on his website, https://herbweiss.com.
4. THE MEDIAMOBILE
*** The Untold Story of Books: A Writer’s History of Book Publishing, by Michael Castleman, Unnamed Press, 2024: Since 1450, Guttenberg’s name is enshrined in the origins of publishing, but did you know that he went bankrupt? Ever wonder why New York became America’s publishing capital in the 19th century? The opening of the Erie Canal beckoned, “Go West, book sales!” Today, the book business is thriving, but 40% of publishers’ income “flows through Amazon.” Where does that leave the future of the Big Five publishers, not to mention indies?
Castleman, a veteran health journalist and author of many titles, spent years digging into the business history of book publishing from the writer’s vantage point, “to lift the veil, to demonstrate how the book business actually developed and continues to evolve today.”
Akin to a magician’s handbook, The Untold Story pulls quarters behind the ears of the book industry, revealing the hows and whys of publishing balance sheets, both by sleight of hand and legitimate.
Through the centuries since Guttenberg adapted a wine press to print God’s “word” in 1450, readers will meet those familiar (Charles Dickens, Stephen King) in their fights for writers’ rights, and personalities behind iconic names.
There’s the story of when, in 1924, a young music lover from a rich family, Richard Simon, had taken a job selling Steinway pianos in a building also housing a trade magazine that employed a struggling editor from an poor immigrant family, named Max Schuster. Their conversations would lead to publishing history — and some musical history, too, since Simon had a daughter named Carly.
The Untold Story of Books isn’t a blockbuster, but Castleman reports that since its release this summer, it’s gone into a second printing. Because this quality paperback isn’t on aging per se, interested GBONews readers may order a copies for a modest $18, and a PDF for $9.99, via Bookshop.org, or, well, you know. Journalists can contact him in San Francisco at michael@mcastleman.com; cell (415) 385-1485; website mcastleman.com.
*** Not to Be Forgotten: GBONews.org recently asked readers to recommend favorite books on eldercare, in order to supplement the five titles offered up in the New York Times. Thanks to those who responded.
* Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life: This 2020 Pulitzer Prize Finalist and New York Times bestseller by UCSF geriatrician Louise Aronson, MD, (Bloomsbury Publishing) is the most thorough and well-written indictment of the eldercare system in the United States since the late Robert N. Butler, MD’s 1975 Pulitzer Prize winner, Why Survive? Being Old in America (Johns Hopkins, 2003 edition).
* Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, by Atul Gawande, MD, Metropolitan Books, 2014: This now-classic volume by Gawande, a New Yorker contributor and surgeon, was a NYT No. 1 bestseller. He wrote, “In the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot.” He’s a master storyteller infusing the challenges of aging with a deep sense of compassion and commitment to the human spirit.
* Handbook for Mortals: Guidance for People Facing Serious Illness, by Joanne Lynn, MD, Joan Harrold, MD,and Janice Lynch Schuster, Second edition, Oxford University Press, 2011: Not to be confused with the Handbook for Mortals series of young adult fantasy romance novels by Lani Sarem, this one take a practical and sometimes poetic look at our actual mortal coil. As the Oxford website states, the reality-based (non-fantasy) Handbook for Mortals “addresses the needs of both the body and the spirit in our final years,” ranging from “down-to-earth advice on how to talk to your doctor to inspiring quotes from such writers as Emily Dickinson, W. H. Auden, Jane Kenyon, and others.”
* When Your Aging Parent Needs Help: A Geriatrician’s Step-by-Step Guide to Memory Loss, Resistance, Safety Worries, and More , Leslie Kernisan, MD, and journalist Paula Spencer Scott offers a practical approach to holding difficult conversations and many family-life situations. Kernisan guides readers through what to do and what to say while providing “respectful assistance and intervention to a declining elderly parent” in multiple situations. Also, check out Spencer Scott’s book, Surviving Alzheimer’s: Practical Tips and Soul-Saving Wisdom for Caregivers (Eva-Birch Media, 2013; 2018 paperback).
* They’re Your Parents, Too!: How Siblings Can Survive Their Parents’ Aging Without Driving Each Other Crazy by Francine Russo (Bantam, 2010): Yup, 15 years older since its publication and still angry about who got more attention. Russo, widely published in media from the New York Times Magazine to Family Circle, struck a nerve with this book among family caregivers and those facing a parent’s life ending. The book is likely sparking conversations as you read this, and maybe helping a few call a family cease fire – especially post the 2024 election — long enough to recall the love that started it all.
* The Soul of Care: The Moral Education of a Husband and a Doctor, by Arthur Kleinman, MD, Viking, 2019: A renowned physician for decades at Harvard Medical School, Kleinman tells of learning the true and hard lessons of giving care as his beloved wife Joan sank every more deeply into early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.
Got more favs? Drop GBONews the title, author, publisher and year at pfkleyman@gmail.com.
More New Releases
*** American Eldercide: How It Happened, How to Prevent It, by Margaret Morganroth Gullette, University of Chicago Press, 2024: As we wrote in the September GBONews, The Brandeis University scholar documents tens-of-thousands unnecessary fatalities among older Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic.” The publisher has nominated the book for a Pulitzer Prize.
*** Spiritual Aging: Weekly Reflections for Embracing Life (Inner Traditions, 2024) is Carol Orsborn’s latest of more than 35 books. Long a leader in the Conscious Aging movement for spiritual development with aging, Orsborn, a Jungian psychologist, writes, “Many of us navigating the years beyond midlife report high self-acceptance, freedom, and joy. However, there can also be bouts of second-guessing and regret and the occasional longing to be reminded that you’re not in this alone.”
The volume aims to walk readers through 120 reflective commentaries to be read weekly over a two-year cycle. The entries aim to address “issues and concerns that arise among those who view aging as a path to spiritual culmination. From transforming loneliness to solitude, loss of identity to freedom, anger to self-protection, fear to faith, and envy to love.”
Orsborn is also the editor-in-chief of Fierce with Age: The Digest of Boomer Wisdom, Inspiration, and Spirituality housed atSpiritualAging.Substack.Com. GBONews.org readers may request a review copy from Galaxy Media Management, email: info@galaxymediamanagement.com; phone: (310) 429-6885; website: www.galaxymediamanagement.com.
*** Aging Sideways: Changing Our Perspectives on Getting Older, by Jeanette Leardi. Although the book is self-published, it comes with an impressive list of endorsements from anti-ageism advocates, such as Ashton Applewhite, and generations-beat journalists, like Richard Eisenberg. His review in MarketWatch stated, “She offers a refreshing, entertaining, and thought-provoking approach for how to explore and perceive growing older, combining her research and analysis as a gerontologist with her personal experience.”
In an excerpt from the book published this fall in Generations, journal of the American Society on Aging, Leardi wrote, “We should stop placing such great importance on identifying ourselves according to generational categories. Instead, let’s value, protect, and enrich the ecosystem we inhabit together. How well we care for our shared environment will determine the extent to which we all survive and thrive in it –– in the many growing seasons to come.” To request a review copy, contact her at jeanette@jeanetteleardi.com.
*** AND ZOOMING THE MOVIES — The 12th Legacy Film Festival on Aging (LFFOA), Feb. 14-23, 2025: This most engaging assemblage of international films (fiction, documentary, long and short) continues virtually now, for the third time, as the little (Zoom) projector that could. Unlike others, like AARP’s celebrity hobnob spotlighting Hollywood fare, the San Francisco-based Legacy festival screens a spectrum of selections that go to the roots of the gray experience.
One of the 30 productions for the upcoming festival, for instance, is Barefoot Empress (2022), from India, by director Vikas Khonna. The film centers on a 96-year-old woman in Kerala, India, who pursues her lifelong dream of getting an education.
The range of themes explored in the upcoming festival will include community, love and marriage, artistry, lifelong dreams, eldercare, resilience, and retirement. Working in collaboration with film curator Arlene Reiff, the Festival’s octogenarian founder and Executive Director Sheila Malkind, forges on despite the on-going effects of her 2020 stroke.
To learn more, including film descriptions and photos, email Malkind: info@legacyfilmfestivalonaging.org; phone (415) 515-2708 (415) 846-6611. Their website, https://legacyfilmfestivalonaging.org, does not yet include the 12th Festival schedule, but scroll down to see the kinds of films offered in recent years. The list constitutes a catalogue of terrific movies on aging, many not shown elsewhere but now available on streaming services.
*** PLUS MUST SEE TV — “Jane Fonda With a Secret of Aging Well”, and introducing anti-ageism advocate Ashton Applewhite, CBS Sunday Morning (Dec. 1, 2024): Says the CBS website, “A Yale study showed that older people with more positive beliefs about aging lived an average of 7.5 longer than people who equated aging with disease and decline. Actress and activist Jane Fonda and anti-ageism advocate Ashton Applewhite present ‘Sunday Morning’ viewers with a key to living a longer life, by maintaining a better outlook.” It’s a nifty 4 minutes.
5. WORDS FROM THE WISE
*** A Year with Rilke: Daily Readings from the Best of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy (HarperOne, 2009): Volumes of daily readings have never interested this editor, but I’ve surprised myself in recent years by returning annually, along with my partner Susan, to this collection of passages by that most modern of poets, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926).
Selections in A Year with Rilke range from passages from Letters to a Young Poet, to his post-World War I masterworks, the Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus. Particularly relevant for this political moment is this excerpt from Letters to a Young Poet, titled “When Doubt Serves,” written on November 4, 1904:
“Doubt can serve you well, if you train it. It must become a way of knowing, a good critic. Every time doubt wants to spoil something for you, ask why it finds something ugly and demand proofs. Thus tested by you, doubt may become bewildered and embarrassed, even aggressive. But don’t give in, demand reasons and be persistent and attentive every single time, and the day will come when, instead of a destroyer, he will become one of your best servants—perhaps one of the most intelligent of those who help you build your life.”
More recently, Rilke provided this coda to the Oscar-nominated film JoJo Rabbit: “Let everything happen to you / Beauty and terror / Just keep going / No feeling is final.”
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 2024 Paul Kleyman. For more information contact GBO Editor Paul Kleyman.
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