GBO NEWS: AP Gen Beat Reporter’s Fellowship; LGBT Aging; Entitlement Lies
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations
March 12, 2013 — Volume 13, Number 5
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IN THIS ISSUE: Is That White Smoke, or Just Soot?
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1. THOSE MOST HAPPY FELLOWSHIPS: ***AP Gen Beat Correspondent Matt Sedensky Wins Major Fellowship; ***USC/Annenberg’s $2,000-$10,000 Fellowship Deadlines
2. GEN BEATLES NEWS: ***Anti-Ageism Blogger Ashton Applewhite Speaks in New York City, March 18; ***Network TV Vet Ronni Bennett on TNT Med Drama “Monday Mornings.”
3. HOT WEB LINKS –ON LGBT ELDERS; ALZHEIMER’S WEBINAR: HuffPost’s Catherine New on “Social Security Benefits Denied To Same-Sex Couples, Costing Thousands: Report”; Bay Area Reporter series on Asian, Black LGBT Elders.
4. FISCAL REFORM SCHOOL: ***“The Retirement Crisis Facing Blacks and Latinos”; *** “Brill’s Big Breakthrough” in Time; *** “Footnote” to Krugman-Scarborough Debate; *** Thomas Edsall’s incisive NYT overview of entitlements debate; *** Michael Hiltzik’s Five Biggest Lies About Entitlements in L.A. Times.
1. THOSE MOST HAPPY FELLOWSHIPS
*** AP Gen Beat Correspondent Matt Sedensky is the First Recipient of The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research Fellowship. Sedensky, who has covered issues in aging for four of his 10 years at AP, mainly based in two of AP’s Florida bureaus, plans to use the 12-month journalism fellowship, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, to focus on the economics of aging and work.
On moving from his present digs in West Palm Beach, Fla., to the Windy City, he e-mailed GBO, “The weather is going to be a bit of a shocker, and I’m lamenting having to set aside daily wearing of flip-flops. But I’m a son of New England and spent a couple years in Kansas City, so hopefully all my years in Florida didn’t ruin me.” (Ah, those Jimmy Buffet-regulation flip-flops, Matt. Hope you don’t step on a pop-top. Chicago’s full of ‘em. As for that shaker of salt—better keep it handy for those icy roads.)
Besides his coverage of aging full-time, Sedensky has also won awards for coveraging such stories as Hurricane Katrina, the Virginia Tech shootings and the Vatican handling of sex abuse cases.
Sedensky noted, “To have a full year to devote to the topic entirely will be a huge opportunity.” He added, “I’ll be devoting myself entirely to study, research and writing on aging, particularly on the economic issues posed by the demographic shift. I think there will be opportunities to broaden that at least a bit and look at some of the other societal impacts. But the goal will be meaningful journalism on the age beat.”
Also, maybe Sedensky can teach the folks at NORC (It’s a public policy research center at the University of Chicago) about AP style. The institution’s extensive website might consider spelling out what NORC stands for. Of course, if you’ve written about aging for a while you know what it means – Naturally-Occurring Retirement Community. Right, University of Chicago? (Shoot that acronym.)
Meanwhile, a big GBO News “congratulations” goes to Matt.
*** National Health Journalism Fellowship Deadlines: This program, sponsored by USC’s Annenberg School of Journalism and Communication and the California Endowment includes two programs. One offers journalists an opportunity to explore the intersection between community health, health policy and the nation’s growing diversity. Selected reporters receive a $2,000 grant, and the program pays all travel and hotel costs to the fellowship training sessions in Los Angeles, July 14-18. The application deadline is April 10, 2013.
The announcement states, “This fellowship is open to professional journalists from print, broadcast, and online media through the United States, including freelancers. Applicants do not need to be full-time health reporters, but should have a demonstrated interest in health issues, broadly defined to include the health of communities (see more below). We prefer that applicants have a minimum of three years of professional experience; many have decades. Freelancers should earn the majority of their income from journalism. Applications from ethnic media journalists are strongly encouraged. Applicants proposing collaborative projects between mainstream and ethnic news outlets are given preference, as are applicants who have arranged for co-publication or co-broadcast in both mainstream and ethnic news outlets. Applicants must be based in the United States. Students are ineligible. Please contact us at CAHealth@usc.edu if you have questions about your eligibility.”
In conjunction with the National Fellowship, USC Annenberg also administers the Dennis A. Hunt Fund for Health Journalism, a competitive grants program to underwrite substantive reporting on community health issues. Each Hunt grantee receives from $2,500 to $10,000, depending on project costs, to support research on a community health topic. The application deadline for the Hunt Fund is also April 10. This fellowship program “supports projects that examine the effects of a specific factor or confluence of factors on the health of disadvantaged communities, such as joblessness, health disparities, pollution, violence, land use, urban development, access to health care, and access to healthy food.”
For more information, visit ReportingonHealth.org or e- mail Martha Shirk at Cahealth@usc.edu. Sign up to receive their news and fellowship deadline announcements at http://www.reportingonhealth.org
2. GEN BEATLES NEWS
*** “This Chair Rocks: Fighting Ageism, Cheering Up and Pushing Back” is the title of a talk Ashton Applewhite will give at in New York City at the Hunter College’s Silberman School of Social Work, March 18, 5:30-7:30 p.m. Applewhite is the creator of the anti-ageism blogs “Yo Is This Ageist?” and “This Chair Rocks.” If you’re in the college’s neighborhood, the tab is $15 at the door, and, promises the announcements, “Refreshments will be served.” So get over there and be refreshed.
*** Ten Years Go by for “Time Goes By” Blog: A GBO Shout Out goes to Ronni Bennett, who’s blogged on now for a decade about our aging selves. Her site also includes blog contributions by others, and a rogue’s gallery of links to many other blogs on aging.
Time Goes By, says Bennett, is about “what it’s really like to get old: I report on pretty much all aspects of aging — health and medical, political, cultural, news, elderlaw, humor, media coverage of aging and do a lot of it from my own perspective as I move through old age — I’m now 71.” In 2008, the blog site shared (with the late Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Saul Friedman) the Media Excellence Award from the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
Bennett’s past life in network television is especially pertinent to her latest posting about TNT’s new David E. Kelley drama, “Monday Mornings.” In her previous incarnation, Bennett was a producer at ABC-TV for Barbara Walters on “20/20” and other network shows. In that ancient Internet era of the late 1990s, she also served as the first managing editor at cbsnews.com for three years.
The new medical series by Kelley, winner of many awards for Boston Legal, The Practice, Ally McBeal others, is inspired by a novel from TV physician/reporter, Sanjay Gupta, who serves as executive producer.
Bennett’s review focuses on one episode, “The Legend and the Fall,” about a confrontation between Harding Hooten, (played by Alfred Molina) the chief of surgery at the shows fictional setting, Chelsea General, and Arvin Wayne, (88-year-old guest star Hal Holbrook), the hospital’s renowned brain surgeon. Wayne, who was Hooten’s mentor, faces an investigation after, as Bennett described it, he has walked “into the wrong operating room on the wrong day expecting to lead a team doing a different kind of surgery than is scheduled.”
Although, Bennett concedes, “The show has gotten terrible reviews and may not last much longer,” she stresses that the “Legend …” episode raises “serious questions within the context of enjoyable entertainment while contributing to public awareness and conversation.” The series has also got a great cast, among them Tony Award winner Bill Irwin.
Bennett continues, “We age at dramatically different rates dependent on genes, health and dumb luck. Some people can lose cognitive ability at age 50; others continue to be competent at 90 and beyond. The difficulty – individually and as a society – is working out how to be fair to the fit and still keep people safe from those whose capabilities have declined. That’s what I like about such shows as ‘The Legend and the Fall’ on Monday Mornings. They raise serious questions within the context of enjoyable entertainment while contributing to public awareness and conversation.”
3. HOT WEB LINKS –LGBT ELDERS; ALZHEIMER’S WEBINAR
*** LGBT Elders Struggling Alone: Typical coverage of LGBT (lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender) seniors for the past dozen years or so has been about specialized retirement housing developments for them. These have been well-meaning (and sometimes financially unsuccessful) efforts to build prejudice-free senior living environments, where LGBT elders could find comfort and acceptance in their golden years together. But these projects necessarily appealed to the stereotypically affluent, mostly white, double-income-no-kids-professionals image of gay Americans. Some recent articles, though, revealed more of the struggle many experience.
“Social Security Benefits Denied To Same-Sex Couples, Costing Thousands: Report,” (March 5), on Huffington Post, profiles San Francisco’s Marvin Burrows, 77, a retired shoe salesman, who lost his partner of 50 years – after their 2004 marriage in the City by the Bay. Journalist Catherine New reports that Burrows’ grief at losing his partner in 2005 “was quickly followed by a different emotion: devastation as his financial life crumbled around him. He lost his home, his pets and even his furniture when he was forced to downsize. All for the simple reason that he is gay.” Because the United States government does not recognizes same-sex marriage (and prohibits it under the court-challenged Defense of Marriage Act), “Burrows has not been eligible to collect any of his spouse’s Social Security benefits.”
New, continues with this news: “On average, the surviving spouse in a same-sex union is denied an average of $1,184 in monthly survivor benefits, according to a new report released last week from Human Rights Campaign and the National Committee to Preserve Social Security & Medicare.”
Also in recent weeks, the Bay Area Reporter, a San Francisco-based LGBT newspaper respected for its reporting, ran pieces on issues facing gay ethnic elders. A two part series in January by staff reporter Matthew S. Bajko, which also ran on the New America Media site, included: “Older Gay APIs Bond Over Dinner” (group creates a safe place — over dinner — for midlife or older LGBT Asian/Pacific Islanders to discuss issues), and “Researchers Focus on LGBT Seniors, Including Gay Ethnic Elders,” (research on LGBT seniors has remained in the closet until recently, but studies of aging boomers—including those of color—are increasing.)
The newspaper/website also published staffer Seth Hemmelgarn’s piece, “Black LGBT Elders Face History of Isolation,” in February. (Larry Saxxon knows the isolation and loneliness researchers say challenge black elders in the LGBT community, which can favor those young and white.)
*** “Alzheimer’s: Hope for the Future” Webinar: The American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) is holding a free, live webinar with a Q&A session, Thurs., March 21, 3-4 p.m. Eastern (12-1 p.m. Pacific) on the current state of Alzheimer’s research. According to the AFAR announcement, “In a recent survey, Alzheimer’s was the second most feared disease among American adults, behind only cancer . . . . This webinar will provide an overview of the most promising therapies, and current care options.“ On the panel will be topnotch experts: Richard Besdine, MD, Director of the Center for Gerontology and Health Care Research at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University, and Jason Karlawish, MD, Professor of Medicine and Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. They will discuss new developments in research, diagnosis, and treatment. The program is being funded by the Cigna Foundation. To register go to http://bit.ly/13S6JQm.
4. FISCAL REFORM SCHOOL
*** “The Retirement Crisis Facing Blacks and Latinos” (Feb. 21) is an op-ed that appeared on the PBS website Next Avenue by Nari Rhee, manager of research at the National Institute on Retirement (formerly of the University of California Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education). The piece notes, “Most middle-aged Americans aren’t in a position to retire with enough income to maintain their standard of living, according to recent studies. But a comfortable retirement is even more elusive for many blacks and Latinos, according to my analysis of Census Bureau data.”
She explains, “For one thing, today’s retirees of color are much more likely to have a low income than white retirees. One of 3 blacks and 1 of 2 Latinos fall in the lowest income group among retirees age 65 and older (the average retirement income for that group: less than $6,000), compared with 1 of 5 whites. Poverty statistics put this inequity into even starker relief: Blacks and Latinos who are 65 or older are more than two and a half times as likely as whites to live in poverty.”
Rhee suggests public and private solutions. In terms of the current entitlements debate, though, she states, “Social Security would have to be strengthened, not cut. While the program is critical to all working Americans regardless of race, it has special urgency for people of color because they have less access to other sources of retirement income.”
*** “Brill’s Big Breakthrough” is the review by Columbia Journalism Review’s Trudy Lieberman on the unprecedented, 36-page dissection of U.S. health care, “Bitter Pill,” in Time Magazine by Steven Brill. Lieberman says the “Time manifesto on healthcare costs smashes fences that have constricted this conversation for far too long.”
*** A “Footnote” to Krugman-Scarborough Debate: In last Tuesday’s (March 5) debate on PBS’ Charlie Rose between New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and former GOP congressman and “Morning Cup” of TV, Joe Scarborough, the suitably exasperated Krugman complained that Scarborough left too many “footnotes” to actually footnote for a TV discussion. Okay, I stipulate that Krugman can lapse into arrogance and whining—but honestly, GBO friends, he is the one with the Nobel Prize in economics. Those who have been slogging through this debate for a significant percentage of the life of Social Security, had to watch our toes as Scarborough dropped one half-truth after another.
I’ll just mention one that every journalist needs to hear with the appropriate factual clunk. And it’s one that even President Obama has let thud in some of his statements. Scarborough remarked at one point that under President Eisenhower, the ratio of workers paying into Social Security to retirees collecting benefits was 15 to 1, compared with 3 to 1 today and heading toward 2 to 1 in 2030. Actually, the figure was 16 to 1 in 1950 – under President Truman.
In fact, when Truman became president, it was 42 to 1. The reason is that in Social Security’s initial years, only very limited categories of workers were covered, and benefits were very small. With the end of World War II, Congress, egged on by business wanting to make room for young workers returning to the home front, moved to include more people in Social Security. The ratio by the time Eisenhower left office in 1960 — was 5 to 1, a huge apparent drop in a very short time. In 1950, the government began including millions more workers in the program. And by President Reagan’s election in 1980, the ratio was 3.2 to 1 – close to what it is today.
Nancy Altman, in her book The Battle for Social Security, debunks the myth of the tightening Social Security ratio noose around workers’ necks as “a meaningless factoid.” Altman explains that despite the intuitive (and false) claims that the huge aging boomer population will break the back of workers, “Congress has enacted 10 significant Social Security bills since 1950. Every enactment has taken into account the baby boom, and each has left the program in long-run actuarial balance.”
Washington increased the level of benefits to bring up retirees’ standard of living, but policy makers also added taxes to cover the cost. (Even Scarborough admitted on Charlie Rose that fixing Social Security is a far less daunting challenge than Medicare.) More important is the percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) that Social Security will take up as the boomers all hit retirement age. Currently it’s about 4.3%–and it will rise to 6.4%. That’s about it—not a lot for a society to secure its population in retirement. Oh, and the general impression from budget hawks that the burden of longevity will squeeze us tighter and tighter—also phony. After 2030, when boomer aging passes its peak, the rapid superannuation of the U.S. population will level off, only rising slightly afterward.
More to the point, most economists internationally relay much less on the ratio between current workers and retirees as a gauge of a national economy’s health than the full-dependency ratio of those working compared to those not working, that is retirees plus those who can’t work, due to disabilities, the unemployed–and children. In the U.S., for instance, this wider ratio was never tighter than in 1964 – when the 78 million boomers were born, but almost none had entered the workforce. Somehow all those kids didn’t slow down the economy much in those boom years.
*** For an incisive overview of the entitlements debate, though, read “The War On Entitlements,” by author and Columbia University journalism professor Thomas B. Edsall in the March 6 NYT. He begins, “The debate over reform of Social Security and Medicare is taking place in a vacuum, without adequate consideration of fundamental facts. These facts include the following: Two-thirds of Americans who are over the age of 65 depend on an average annual Social Security benefit of $15,168.36 for at least half of their income.”
*** “The Five Biggest Lies About Entitlement Programs,” is Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik’s latest focus (March 8) on the bogus efforts to cut future Social Security benefits in the name of saving us all from the National Debt. “Social Security and Medicare are big issues,” he write, “and not everyone is telling the truth about them.”
One sample: Lie No. 2: “Entitlement” benefits for millionaires and billionaires are a costly problem. Hiltzik notes, “This is a favorite of people like hedge fund billionaire Peter G. Peterson, a sworn enemy of Social Security and Medicare.” He explains, “The lie here is the assertion that a significant portion of benefits goes to multimillionaires. In fact, their share of benefits is minuscule. That’s because there aren’t very many of them, and they don’t get more than the maximum old-age benefit, which was $30,156 last year. According to the IRS, only 47,732 households reported income of more than $1 million, including Social Security benefits, in 2010. Their total take was about $1 billion, after paying income tax on their Social Security checks. They account for about 14 hundredths of one percent of all Social Security outlays.”
Hiltzik goes on, “By contrast, more than 75% of benefits go to recipients with $20,000 or less in non-Social Security income and more than 90% to people with incomes below $50,000, as economists Dean Baker and Hye Jin Rho of the Center for Economic and Policy Research showed in March 2011. To reduce program costs by even a couple of percentage points, you have to start cutting benefits for people earning as little as $40,000 in non-Social Security income. So when Pete Peterson starts bemoaning how his Social Security check is cutting into his granddaughter’s future, it’s the working class that should bolt the door.”
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 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 2013, JNG. For more information contact GBO Editor Paul Kleyman.
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