GBO NEWS: Journalists Fellowship Deadline Extended; Boston Globe’s New Boomer Beat; “Death Cafes” & “FUN-erals”; Real News on Medicare, Drug Costs and Retirement; Ageism a Royal Pain (Says the Royal Society)
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations– Celebrating 25 Years.
June 3, 2018 — Volume 18, Number 8
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: No Tolerance for “No Tolerance”—Truthful Reporting: #intolerancepolicy.
1. EYES ON THE PRIZE: ***Journalists in Aging Fellowship Deadline Extended–July 12; ***Chinese Elder Abuse Series Wins Sing Tao Daily Top CUNY Ippies Award; ***Paiute Elders’ Health System Story Wins Native American Journalists Association Award.
2. GEN BEATLES NEWS: Boston GlobeProfile—Robert Weisman’s New Boomer Beat.
*** Two Stories on Death Cafes (Cuisine to Die For): * “One Woman Helps Others Make Sure End-Of-Life Planning Is ‘Good To Go,’” by Lisa Napoli, NPR Weekend Edition; * “The Positive Death Movement Comes to Life,” by John Leland, New York Times (Welcome to “FUN-erals”);
*** “Everything Old is News Again”and “Communications Challenges in the Longevity Market,”by Kevyn Burger, series in Stria News.
4. FISCAL REFORM SCHOOL: *** “No, Medicare is Not Going Broke:Understanding the 2018 Medicare Trustees Report,” AARP Public Policy Institute; *** “It’s the Monopolies, Stupid!” by David Blumenthal, M.D., President, The Commonwealth Fund (Drug companies play Monopoly with our health); *** “How to Rescue Retirement,”by Jacob S. Hacker, Politico.
5. AGE-OLD AGEISM: *** “That Age-Old Question: How Attitudes to ageing affect our health and wellbeing,” The Royal Society for Public Health.
1. EYES ON THE PRIZE
*** Application Deadline Extended to July 12 for Journalists in Aging Fellows Program: GBONews’ organization, the Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), and the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) have announced an extended application deadline to Thurs., July 12.
Now in its 9thyear, the fellowship program provides selected reporters a $1,500 stipend plus an all-expenses-paid trip to GSA’s Annual Scientific Meeting, which this year will be in Boston in November. Application details are at www.geron.org/journalistfellows. Reporters from the mainstream and ethnic media are welcome. Direct questions to Paul Kleyman, pfkleyman@gmail.com, phone: (415) 821-2801; or Todd Kluss, tkluss@geron.org, phone: (202) 587-2839.
The program’s sponsors this year are AARP, The Silver Century Foundation, The Commonwealth Fund, The Retirement Research Foundation, and The John A. Hartford Foundation.
*** Chinese “Blessings” Elder Abuse Scam Wins Top CUNY Ippies Award: Reporter Ke “April” Xu of Sing Tao Daily (New York Edition) won First Place in the Investigative/In-Depth Reporting category for her series, “The Blessing Scam: A Con Returns to Haunt Chinese Community.” Originally appearing in Chinese in Sing Tao Daily, Xu’s investigation, published in Spring 2017), exposed the resurgence of a common financial elder abuse scam playing on the superstitions of older women. The two-part English translation appeared in New America Media. Click to read Part 1 and Part 2, as well as the original feature package in Chinese. Xu wrote the series with support from the Journalists in Aging Fellows program.
The Ippies, a project of the Center for Community and Ethnic Media at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism, arethe only journalism awards in NY City honoring reporting in English and other languages by the ethnic and community press.
***Debra Utacia Krol’s story, “Paiute Tribe Elders Navigate a Faltering Health Care System,” will receive First Placehonors at the Native American Journalists Association 2018 NAJA National Native Media Awards Banquet in Miami, Fla., July 18-21. The article, which appeared in High Country News, won for Best Elder Coverage (Print/Online). And, oh, yes, GBONews is happily qvelling (a word from the Yiddish tribe), because she also did the story supported by our Journalists in Aging Fellows Program. It’s swell that NAJA includes Elder Coverage as a regular awards category in various divisions. Krol also will pick up awards in other categories.
2. GEN BEATLES NEWS
Boston GlobeProfile—Robert Weisman’s New Boomer Beat: Boom-thump!There’s a new surge in the pulse of the generations beat at the Boston Globe, as well as at Stria, a recently launched news-and-analysis news site for business and thought-leaders in aging.
Every now and then in the past 25 years, when a group of us started the Journalists Network on Generations (and GBONews.org), just as I’ve thought the age beat might be getting anemic, a new flush of energy has proved there’s life in the old beat, yet. From the start it was clear that a core of journalists love and will stick with the compelling issues of aging and retirement through media thick and business-model thin. Those needing to step out of the beat, often for lack of editorial support, frequently come back to our much-neglected topic area.
This issue of GBONews profiles the new full-time enterprise beat on boomer aging (and 50+ Gen Xers) at theBoston Globe.GBONews plans to carry our interview with Stria (rhymes with “Hi-ya!”) publisher and founder, Susan Donely in the next issue.
Following is our e-mail conversation with the Globe’s Robert Weisman, an 18-year veteran of the newspaper, who began developing the boomer beat, a new editorial concentrations for him, this past December.
GBONews: Rob, what, exactly, is your assignment, and how did it come about?
RW: My new beat is covering baby boomers and life after 50. I proposed the beat last year as part of a broader “reinvention” of the Globe’scoverage in which several new beats were created. While we always wrote about aging and health issues, mostly as part of our medical reporting, we had never looked at this older population in a holisitic way — work, health, money, lifestyle — that cuts across our traditional beat structure. Like most news organizations, we’ve been making a big push to attract younger readers. But I pointed out to the editors that older folks are our most loyal readers, online and especially in print.
GBONews: What have you been covering previously, and why did this boomer beat come to you now?
RW: I joined the Globe in 2000 as its technology editor, and specifically to launch a new technology and innovation section. (I’d previously been a business editor at the Seattle Timesand Hartford Courant.) After assigning and editing tech stories at the Globefor about three years, I returned to reporting. Over the years I’ve covered a number of business beats: high tech and venture capital, aerospace and management issues, hospitals and health insurance, and most recently biotech and life sciences. The boomer beat seems a great fit for me now, allowing me to do enterprise stories that shed light on some broad issues and incorporate a lot of knowledge and contacts I made in previous beats.
GBONews: What are some of the key subject areas you expect to take on in the coming year or so?
RW: The beat was launched last December, and I’ve already written about everything from personal reinvention to Alzheimer’s and joint replacements to boomers avoiding end-of-life planning. Retirement, housing and transportation will all be ongoing topics. And I’d like to tackle issues stemming from our broken retirement system where many of the programs — Social Security, Medicare, pensions — were designed for an earlier era and different economy.
GBONews: Are you also doing any other permutations of your stories – podcasts, videos, etc.?
RW: We’ve had some excellent Globe videos — on people who’ve reinvented themselves late in life, and on an 84-year-old builder of New England stone walls — accompanying some of my stories. I’ve also been connecting with some of the resources in the field in and around Boston, and participated in a Q&A with MIT AgeLab director Joe Coughlin, author of The Longevity Economy.) I’m certain there’ll be opportunities to reach readers in other formats as we go forward.
GBONews: Have you had any personal experiences that have motivated or inspired you to take on these issues.
RW: As a boomer myself, almost every conversation I hear at the YMCA or at dinner parties my wife and I attend is grist for potential stories. I’ve gone through the experience of watching both of my parents age and caring for them as best I could. My personal experiences inform my coverage, but I’ve approached this beat the way I’ve approached other beats: with an open and skeptical mind. I recognize there’s much I don’t know about every story I begin reporting.
GBONews: What’s been your biggest challenges so far? Have there been any surprises?
RW: Almost every story I’ve covered has evolved in a different way than I expected when I started reporting it. One example was a recent story on gay and lesbian boomers. When I launched on the story, I assumed it would be about things getting better for a group that began their adult lives in the closet and met with greater acceptance as they got older. And while that’s true, I quickly learned the story was more complex. Many older gay and lesbian boomers fear having to return to the closet if they get sick and have to enter a senior center with disapproving fellow residents or receive home care from aides from countries that frown on homosexuality.
GBONews: What’s been the response so far from readers, from professional and academic sources you’ve contacted–and from your editors?
RW: The stories have gotten a terrific response. Many have been among the most read and commented-on stories on Globe.com, and I receive a constant stream of emails and story ideas from readers.
GBONews: Is there anything else that you’d like to add for fellow reporters on the age beat around the country?
RW: Since I’m just getting started on this beat, most of my fellow reporters on the beat probably know more about it than I do. But one thing I’m trying to do is to tell stories, as much as possible, through real people rather than expert voices and studies. To find the real people, I often seek feedback on the Globesubscribers page on Facebook and through a “board of advisors” I’ve created, which is really an email list of friends and associates who are fellow boomers and know a lot of people.
See links to his stories, such as on ageism confronting older workers, LGBTQ seniors, or scientific developments on aging, at Rob Weisman’s MuckRack page. Note also that the Globe has a paywall, although it offers a brief free trial period. He can be reached at robert.weisman@globe.com.
3. THE STORYBOARD
*** Two Stories on Death Cafes (Cuisine to Die For):
* “One Woman Helps Others Make Sure End-Of-Life Planning Is ‘Good To Go,’” by Lisa Napoli, NPR Weekend Edition(May 26): “Only one-third of Americans older than 65 have living wills. That’s according to a survey published last year in the journal Health Affairs. Not surprisingly, younger people are even less likely to have made preparations for their death.
One woman in Los Angeles has made it her business to help people get their affairs in order. Every month or so, 49-year-old Amy Pickard hosts a potluck gathering at her apartment. ‘They’ve been described as death Tupperware parties,’ she explains. Guests bring food that reminds them of a deceased loved one . . . .She walks them through a 50-page document she’s created called the “Good to Go” Departure File.”
Napoli added in an e-mail to GBONews.org, “I’d originally interviewed this woman for my podcast, Gracefully, which I started a little over a year ago to tackle issues surrounding aging and ageism from a 50-something year old perspective. (Finding it a challenge, even as a veteran reporter with over 30 years of experience on the national stage, to get these topics covered—I went the podcast route.)”
* “The Positive Death Movement Comes to Life,” John Leland, New York Times, (June 22): Leland’s story comes with the subhead, “Death cafes, death doulas, ‘Ask a Mortician,’ DeathLab — once the province of goth subculture, death is having a moment in the sun.” He also wrote a companion piece about developing this story for the “Times Insider” department, “Putting the Fun in Funeral.” A story source called one program “FUN-erals.” GBONews wonders, if someone held these at a country inn, would they call it a Dead & Breakfast?
*** Meanwhile, Leland, also bestselling author of Happiness Is a Choice You Make: Lessons from a Year Among the Oldest Old. was interviewed on KPFK Radio’s long-running “Experience Talks,” on July 1. Leland based the book on his yearlong 2015 series of conversations with six New Yorkers ages 85-plus., all living in different circumstances and in different states of health. Of numerous interviews he’s done, notably with Terry Gross on “Fresh Air,” you may find this one especially engaging. “Experience Talks” host, Tim Carpenter, CEO/Founder of the L.A.-based nonprofit EngAGE, Inc., is a leading figure in creative aging.
Frankly, much as this editor has enormous admiration for Gross, her interview with Leland doted too much on the infirmities and emotional confrontations with mortality, missing much of the book’s richest insights and joyfulness. Well, it’s hard to complain much, since her interview got the book in many more hands and on the NYTbestseller list.
Further, Leland is scheduled for appearance well into the fall. He mentioned in an e-mail that he’s been feeling “a little discombobulated by juggling the book and the job, but enjoying the ride while it lasts.” Most of his talks will be around the tri-state (NY, NJ, CN) area, but with detours to Chicago and San Antonio in November. To see the full schedule and whether he’s coming your way, contact Lottchen (pron like Gretchen) Shivers at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, office: 212-206-5324, cell: 845-453-0383, e-mail: lottchen.shivers@fsgbooks.comfor his schedule.
*** “Everything Old is News Again,” and “Communications Challenges in the Longevity Market,” by Kevyn Burger, both in Stria News: The first in an overview of the senior press newspapers and magazines around the country. The latter is a round-robin interview with a “panel” of five media and communications experts, including the editor of GBONews, about the status of news and information on our topic.
4. FISCAL REFORM SCHOOL
*** “No, Medicare is Not Going Broke: Understanding the 2018 Medicare Trustees Report,”by Lina Walker, Harriet Komisar, and Keith Lind, AARP Public Policy Institute blog: (June 7): “The June 5 release of the Medicare Trustees Report has triggered alarm bell-style media headlines. Dozens of news reports about Medicare’s worsening financial outlook have painted a bleak picture—some bleaker than others, with one boldface headline [in Politico] announcing, “Medicare will go broke three years earlier than expected.”
The “go broke” headline was referring to the report’s projection that the trust fund that pays for hospital services, called the Hospital Insurance (or Part A) trust fund, will be depleted in 2026, three years earlier than projected in 2017.
“Let’s set the record straight: First, Medicare is not going broke. Second, the Trustees Report is not even saying that Medicare won’t be able to pay for hospital services,” say the authors
The study continues, “Even if the Hospital Insurance trust fund were to be depleted, Medicare would still be able to meet 91 percent of its obligations for hospital services. And, as it has done in the past, it could make adjustments to address the remaining shortfall without resorting to draconian changes to the program or imposing large costs on people with Medicare. According to a recent study, ‘…the [Medicare] trust fund has been projected to reach insolvency within 12 years or less in 22 of the annual reports issued since 1970, six of which predicted that the trust fund would be ‘broke’ within five years or less.’ (Emphasis added.)
“Moreover, let’s not forget that hospital services are just one part of the larger Medicare program. Medicare also includes coverage for physician services (Part B) and prescription drugs (Part D). Efforts to strengthen Medicare’s long-term finances should look broadly across all these components, working to improve quality of care (which actually can mean savings) and control spending.
“Some recent innovations in payment and delivery system reforms have shown promise in doing exactly that. Other strategies include ensuring that Medicare does not pay more for services based on the setting in which those services are delivered, and reducing use of services that are not necessary.Medicare should also stop overpaying for prescription drugs. A recent government report shows that brand-name drug prices in Part D increased six times faster than the rate of inflation between 2011 and 2015.”
The report concludes, “We should not overreact to the recent Trustees Report. Instead, we should use it as a signal to advance what’s working from current innovations and tackle unnecessary spending in Medicare and the broader health care system.”
*** “It’s the Monopolies, Stupid!” by David Blumenthal, M.D., M.P.P., President of The Commonwealth Fund, on the Fund’s blog site (May 24, 2018): “At the core of the nation’s drug pricing problem is one fundamental fact:Drug companies enjoy government-sanctioned and -enforced monopolies over the supply of many drugs. These monopolies result from patents awarded under federal law for novel molecules. Patents allow manufacturers to prevent competitors from selling the same drug for 20 years from the time the patent is filed.
“Given that the process of gaining regulatory approval to market their new drug takes time, research suggests new drugs have, on average, 12 to 13 years of market exclusivity. Once new drugs are approved by the Food and Drug Administration, the monopolies assured by patents enable pharmaceutical companies to charge any price they choose. They generally pick prices that not only cover their development costs, but also generate profits that exceed those of most other industries . . . Drugmakers are also free to raise prices whenever they want at rates they alone determine.”
Blumenthal goes on to explain that although the U.S. patent system does allow for competitive drugs, which others have called me-too drugs, only marginally different. But he adds, “This results in competition that lowers drug prices, but often by not enough to make the medications affordable for many patients.” In addition, pharmaceutical manufactures, such as Mylan developed patentable mechanisms (the EpiPen) toextend the lives of their patents beyond 20 years.
“These approaches include making minor modifications in the formulations or packaging of drugs that have no clinical significance, as well as paying potential generic competitors not to introduce generic drugs,” he writes.
Stating that the current system offers “no free-market solution to lowering drug prices,” Blumenthal continues, “Only a countervailing nonmarket force of equal strength can bring those prices down. Other western industrial countries, recognizing this, authorize their governments to step in and moderate drug prices for the benefit of their citizenry.”
He concludes, “As long as pharmaceutical companies have uncontested market power to set prices for many patented and generic drugs, those prices will remain a huge problem for Americans and their elected representatives.”
*** “How to Rescue Retirement,” by Jacob S. Hacker, Politico (June 7): Next year, Hacker, director of Yale’s Institution for Social and PolicyStudies, will be publishing an update of his 2006 book, The Great Risk Shift:The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream.”The drop-head with this Politicoop-ed reads, “A bold plan for a transformed private retirement system that would actuallyprovide financial security to older Americans.”
Hacker writes, “The social policy story of the past generation is the shift of economic risk from government and employers onto workers and their families. Thecauses are diverse: weakened unions; footloose companies; tightenedbudgets. The effects are not: Whether the policy topic is jobs, healthcare, housing, education or child care, Americans have more and more skinin the game.”
Retirement, he says, is especially vulnerable due to the declining contribution of private pensions and the diminishing percentage of income that Social Security replaces of pre-retirement earnings (below 40 percent). Consequentially, according to Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research, the proportion of youngerworkers “slated to retire without saving enough to maintain theirstandard of living in old age” has jumped from just under one-third in 1983 to more than half (53%) in 2010.
Hacker explains, “The reason is simple: People don’t save enough in defined-contribution plans even when they have them. The median account value is around $20,000.” The hit is also on the United States economy, he adds: “Our economy depends on the spending of anaging population, and if people enter old age in dire need of assistance,the economy will suffer and taxpayers and families are going to have tostep up to support them.”
Conceding, “I know howhard it is to change entrenched policies” in Washington, Hacker sounds the alarm that mounting research shows that “it’s ever clearer that thesystem is failing on a broad scale.” He urges, “Experts need to tell the truth: Americans won’t save enough unless they arerequired to do so.”
Hacker notes that half of U.S. works don’t have a 401(k)s plan, and few of them contribute to them because they “simply don’t make enough to salt away enough, if anything, for retirement,”
Hacker comments, “I once believedSocial Security needed to be moderately pared back. Now I’m convinced weshould close its financing gap by raising additional revenues—mainly bylifting or eliminating the cap on earnings subject to its payroll tax andextending that tax to investment earnings. In fact, we need to boost SocialSecurity payouts for some vulnerable populations, such as women who werecaregivers during their working lives, not scale them back.” He’d also scrap the annual cap limiting how much income is subject to the Social Security tax. Hacker offers policy changes, such as a new public option called SocialSecurity Plus.
In addition, Hacker cautions against raising the retirement age. Pointing to “a wave of startlingstudies,” He says low-income workers “have experienced virtually no increase in life expectancy over the past twodecades.”
While federal action is unlikely for now, Hacker suggest that states and cities can spearhead a movement toward establishing a universal 401(k)s byoffering their own plans. “More important, Americans know the system isn’t working, and they want itto become more like Social Security: simple, guaranteed, secure. Employersare not going back to their traditional role. Americans will not magicallybecome super-savers. A generation of risk-shifting has failed. We shouldn’tslash Social Security. We should make it the model for a transformedprivate system that actually provides retirement security.”
5. AGE-OLD AGEISM
*** “That Age-Old Question: How Attitudes to ageing affect our health and wellbeing,”The Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH’s): No discernibly ageist remark would dare pass beneath the Royal Society’s stiff upper lip following the recent release of this brow-furrowed report. The report states, “Our research identified a range of ageist attitudes that broke down into 12 main categories. Survey respondentsviewed getting older most negatively when thinking about: 1. participation in activities; 2. Memory loss; 3. appearance.”
Among many bullet points was this: “Cultural and ethnic backgrounds play a significant role in shaping perceptions of older people. Among those who identify as from a black ethnic background, attitudes to ageing and older people were overwhelmingly more positive.” This has also been reported in the United States. For instance, see: “Do White and Black Older Adults Perceive Social Status Differently?” by Leoneda Inge, WUNC Public Radio/New America Media (Jan 15, 2017). According to the radio and written story, as black elders pack events celebrating their years, experts say white retirees may find their status diminished more by exclusion and age discrimination.
Meanwhile, everyone, here’s to a safe and tasty Independence Day—including for those children and their moms.
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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