Today the New York Times published a front-page story that I think is emblematic of what’s wrong with a lot of NYT reporting. The article was “Instead of Work, Younger Women Head to School: Upgrading Their Skills Rather Than Settling for Low Pay” by Catherine Rampell. The problem with it, as usual, wasn’t that it wasn’t well-researched (it was brimming with statistics), or cogently-written (the author makes a persuasive case that yes, more young women these days are using the economic downturn as an opportunity to go back to school instead of working crappy, low-paying jobs). The problem is that the NYT seems to fundamentally downplay the importance of actually talking to the people they’re reporting on.
The article had solid evidence for what the news was: the economy sucks, good jobs are scarce, statistics are showing that a disproportionate number of young women are dropping out of the labor force.
But it also had a truly staggering, almost insulting, number of sense-makers. In total four experts were interviewed, including not one but two economists, a research director at a Chicago think thank, and the president of a community college in North Carolina. And what was the cumulative conclusion of their insights? The shocking revelation that (wait for it....) more young women are enrolling in college. Why we needed four separate experts and a comprehensive info-graphic to confirm the obvious fact that young women departing from the workforce has coincided with young women enrolling in school, is quite frankly beyond me. But thank you NYT for being so thorough.
If only if they could have been equally thorough in their coverage of real live women who are actually affected by this change. In contrast to the experts consulted, only one woman undergoing this transition (a Master’s candidate named Lauren Baker, who recently quit her job at Starbucks to go back to school) was actually interviewed for the article.
As a reader, I found this a little offensive. I understand the importance of experts, and I’m reassured to know that the New York Times has such knowledgeable sources at their disposal, I really am. But if the decisions of young women are only discussed and conjectured about at length by outside experts, while the women themselves are not being given their own voices, this is, what author Kate Zambreno would label, "a huge fucking problem", (especially given that the subject matter of this article so obviously intertwined with complex feminist issues). For shame, NYT.
But anyway, moving on. In an article published yesterday, titled Keeping Boomers Fit for Work, the Wall Street Journal reported on companies that have been making a concerted effort to keep aging workers healthy, to avoid job turnover.
The author reports that, "Duke Energy Corp. offers a special stretching program for its line technicians before they start a shift. Harley-Davidson Inc. has trainers stand ready to ice down inflammations between shifts at one of its engine plants." In contrast to the NYT article, I thought that the WSJ actually did a really good job of covering those making the news, affected by the news, as well as sense-makers.
In terms of news-makers, they interview the director of University of Michigan's Center for Ergonomics (where they have been trying to accomodate their surgeons by adapting surgical techniques that are less physically demanding), both the general plant manager and a senior health and safety specialist at Harley-Davidson, and a general manager of safety and health at the mining company Unimin.
News affected sources here include Barry Poe, a 53-year-old Duke line technician, and Orlando "Gonzo" Meza, a 52-year-old cement-truck driver for Vulcan. There are also specific details about what kinds of changes have been implemented for workers: at Unimin, workers used to have to "carry 40-pound buckets of silicate material down a narrow catwalk to reach a mixing tank, then bend over to tip the silicate into the tank. Now Unimin uses pumps to get that material into the tank", at Vulcan "Chutes used for wet concrete are now made of lighter composite materials instead of steel, reducing the weight to 27 pounds from about 48," and at Harley-Davidson trainers are stationed at on-site gyms, to "prepare exercise routines tailored to individual jobs and have ice packs available at shift change."
For sense-making the author provides an infographic from the Bureau of Labor statistics showing that in a survey of 10,000 middle-aged workers in the private sector, injuries have fallen by almost 10% in the last four years. He also speaks to Joseph Couphlin, director at the AgeLab at MIT who says that "More employers should be preparing to deal with an older, frailer work force."
Overall, I thought the second article was successful because it gave great specifics, had good sense-making, and most importantly, talked to all the right people.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Reading Journal: Sources
Reading Journal:
Tuesday Dec. 6, 2011
In an article published in The Guardian on Tuesday, Miram Elder reports on the Russian response to a recent parliamentary election where Vladimir Putin’s party, United Russia, lost a significant amount of seats.
I found this story really tough to dissect because there’s so much going on in it (and so many sources cited). Elder provides quotes from 8 different sources that cut across the political spectrum.
There seemed to be three main things that constituted the news or the “what” of the article: firstly that Putin’s party is waning in power (this clearly carries the biggest impact), secondly that news of election results were followed by protests, and thirdly that the protest was met by a police crackdown ordered by the Kremlin.
The lede indicates that the immediate news we should be focusing on is that “The Kremlin mobilised thousands of police, interior troops and pro-government youth groups on Tuesday night to crack down on protests,” but clearly this is just a smaller piece of bigger news.
The police seem to be the news-maker of the immediate news, and on that score they are used as a source. But the bigger news-maker is probably the Russian parliament who voted Putin’s party down, and no one from the parliament is quoted.
I categorized the protestors as the people affected by the news, since they weren’t involved in the results, but will be voting in the upcoming election (which, by the time I post this blog entry, may have already happened)—their voices were the most represented in the article. But the only sense-making came from the author, in specific contextual examples like her inclusion that if Putin were to get reelected he would be in power until 2024. Similarly in the final paragraph she touches on the importance of LiveJournal in Russia as a mobilizing platform for youth. I think both of these areas could have used quotes from experts to further back up the author’s assertions, and also because the article feels uneven in its coverage of protestors vs. experts.
The NYT published an article on Thursday following up on comments made by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, that held the Russian election had not been conducted fairly, and the response that her comments elicited from Putin.
I thought that the New York Times piece was more insightful and had a more balanced spectrum of sources than the Guardian. The authors, Herszenhorn and Myers, set up the article first with a play-by-play of Clinton and Putin's (the two news-makers here) interchange.
First they bring in Putin's displeased remarks about Clinton“The first thing that the secretary of state did was say that [election results] were not honest and not fair, but she had not even yet received the material from the observers").
Then the authors go on to analyze Putin's statement, concluding that his choice to "single out" Clinton was "strikingly personal","effectively thrust the United States on the side of the protesters in the streets challenging the Kremlin’s authority." They point to Clinton's previous "outspoken" criticism of the election as a motivating factor behind his strongly worded response.
The authors then segue back to the protests that broke out after the election, and bring in a new voice: Sergei A. Markov, a Russian political analyst. As a key sense-maker, Markov affirms that the opposition demonstrations are indicative of a widespread belief in Russia that there was fraud at play in the election, "especially", as he says, "in Moscow and Petersburg."
His predictions about what would eventually come out of the elections were especially helpful to understanding the broader implications of Putin's discrediting remarks toward Clinton—and to rising tensions between the US and Russia. "Mr. Markov said he expected the government to treat the public like a whining child. 'The authorities will attempt to conduct themselves with society as a parent would a child who is crying and demanding some kind of toy,' he said. 'In this case, it is not correct to go out and buy the child a toy, but rather distract him with something else.' Mr. Putin’s accusations of foreign meddling could provide that distraction.
I think that the core news of this article (Clinton's allegations that the election were unfair) most directly affects Putin and his representatives, and since he was quoted responding to Clinton (as was Russia’s ambassador to NATO, Dmitri O. Rogozin) the news-affected perspective seems covered. I don't think they needed to include protestors, but it probably wouldn't have hurt.
Tuesday Dec. 6, 2011
In an article published in The Guardian on Tuesday, Miram Elder reports on the Russian response to a recent parliamentary election where Vladimir Putin’s party, United Russia, lost a significant amount of seats.
I found this story really tough to dissect because there’s so much going on in it (and so many sources cited). Elder provides quotes from 8 different sources that cut across the political spectrum.
There seemed to be three main things that constituted the news or the “what” of the article: firstly that Putin’s party is waning in power (this clearly carries the biggest impact), secondly that news of election results were followed by protests, and thirdly that the protest was met by a police crackdown ordered by the Kremlin.
The lede indicates that the immediate news we should be focusing on is that “The Kremlin mobilised thousands of police, interior troops and pro-government youth groups on Tuesday night to crack down on protests,” but clearly this is just a smaller piece of bigger news.
The police seem to be the news-maker of the immediate news, and on that score they are used as a source. But the bigger news-maker is probably the Russian parliament who voted Putin’s party down, and no one from the parliament is quoted.
I categorized the protestors as the people affected by the news, since they weren’t involved in the results, but will be voting in the upcoming election (which, by the time I post this blog entry, may have already happened)—their voices were the most represented in the article. But the only sense-making came from the author, in specific contextual examples like her inclusion that if Putin were to get reelected he would be in power until 2024. Similarly in the final paragraph she touches on the importance of LiveJournal in Russia as a mobilizing platform for youth. I think both of these areas could have used quotes from experts to further back up the author’s assertions, and also because the article feels uneven in its coverage of protestors vs. experts.
The NYT published an article on Thursday following up on comments made by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, that held the Russian election had not been conducted fairly, and the response that her comments elicited from Putin.
I thought that the New York Times piece was more insightful and had a more balanced spectrum of sources than the Guardian. The authors, Herszenhorn and Myers, set up the article first with a play-by-play of Clinton and Putin's (the two news-makers here) interchange.
First they bring in Putin's displeased remarks about Clinton“The first thing that the secretary of state did was say that [election results] were not honest and not fair, but she had not even yet received the material from the observers").
Then the authors go on to analyze Putin's statement, concluding that his choice to "single out" Clinton was "strikingly personal","effectively thrust the United States on the side of the protesters in the streets challenging the Kremlin’s authority." They point to Clinton's previous "outspoken" criticism of the election as a motivating factor behind his strongly worded response.
The authors then segue back to the protests that broke out after the election, and bring in a new voice: Sergei A. Markov, a Russian political analyst. As a key sense-maker, Markov affirms that the opposition demonstrations are indicative of a widespread belief in Russia that there was fraud at play in the election, "especially", as he says, "in Moscow and Petersburg."
His predictions about what would eventually come out of the elections were especially helpful to understanding the broader implications of Putin's discrediting remarks toward Clinton—and to rising tensions between the US and Russia. "Mr. Markov said he expected the government to treat the public like a whining child. 'The authorities will attempt to conduct themselves with society as a parent would a child who is crying and demanding some kind of toy,' he said. 'In this case, it is not correct to go out and buy the child a toy, but rather distract him with something else.' Mr. Putin’s accusations of foreign meddling could provide that distraction.
I think that the core news of this article (Clinton's allegations that the election were unfair) most directly affects Putin and his representatives, and since he was quoted responding to Clinton (as was Russia’s ambassador to NATO, Dmitri O. Rogozin) the news-affected perspective seems covered. I don't think they needed to include protestors, but it probably wouldn't have hurt.
Friday, December 2, 2011
Felix Morelo: Portrait of a Street Artist
In New York City, unfamiliar faces greet you at every corner; from cursory glances exchanged by passing strangers on the sidewalk, to unreciprocated stares on the subway. But in Union Square, the busied hub of lower Manhattan, faces can be found in a more unlikely source: looking up at you from the ground.
These particular faces cannot talk, but their words are sometimes calcified in chalk speech bubbles drawn next to them.
They are the creation of Felix Morelo, a Colombian street artist, who has been regularly drawing them all over the gum-splotched hexagonal brick tiles that cover Union Square, as well as on neighboring city blocks, for the past three years. Now a neighborhood fixture, Morelo can also sometimes be seen sitting in Union Square with a cardboard sign offering free advice.
For casual admirers and fans of Morelo’s work alike, his chalk faces are often a source of amusement and encouragement. Fans who happen to catch Morelo in the act of drawing his faces will often stop to tell him that his work has cheered them up, on the way to wherever they may have been going. But to the contrary, the faces were born out of a much different emotion.
Looking out on Union Square from a wooden table in a Starbucks on 17th Street, Morelo described anger as the primary motive behind his street art. His face, while quick to break into a smile, instantly hardens when the topic of how he came to create his street art arises.
"People think it's happy, but it's not," said Morelo definitively.
Like generations of artists before him, Morelo has suffered in the pursuit of his art. He was forced to drop out of Parsons, just three credits shy of a earning a BFA, after he defaulted on his student loans. Since then, he has devoted himself to breaking into the art world while simultaneously struggling to support himself financially.
Amid a litany of odd jobs that included construction work, cutting meat as a butcher, and working as a bike messenger, Morelo hit a rough patch that included a period of homelessness, during which he lived on the streets.
“All my failures led me to do the faces,” said Morelo of his mounting frustrations.
But for an aspiring fine artist who found himself unable to catch the attention of the art world or get his own solo show (“I’ve never really been good at networking,” Morelo readily concedes) he was able to seek inspiration from another likeminded figure: a street artist named James De La Vega, who dismissed the gallery world in favor of publicly displayed chalk drawings.
“The big advantage [of chalk] is that it’s legal,” Morelo explained.
He added of De La Vega’s successful method that the trick is in taking simple phrases and “just repeating [them] over and over until you start getting recognized.”
Morelo’s signature phrase is probably his “bad luck spot,” a chalk circle drawn at random on the sidewalk that portends doom for anyone who should step in it.
The realization of quick, easily repeated catchphrases did not come to him immediately. He initially started experimenting with chalk by doing his usual drawings on the sidewalks around the city, until he found that it wasn’t working. That’s when Morelo says he came up with the faces, a theme that had already been pervasive throughout all his drawings. “They signified a longing or desire to be surrounded by people, rather than being homeless, or all alone, no girlfriend.”
When he started drawing faces on the ground at Union Square, a shape began to take hold. “The first time I did 50 faces, and everything clicked,” said Morelo. “I started realizing the pattern would disrupt the hexagon tiles.”
Even better, he found he could that he could churn out a large quantity of drawings in no time at all— each face took only seconds to draw. If he did an entire block of faces in this way, people would have to look at him.
To date, his most expansive project has been a series of faces that stretched from 10th Ave. to Avenue C. along 14th Street.
By making the move to street art Morelo feels that he has finally succeeded in forcing people to acknowledge him; or in his own words, to say, “Look at me motherfuckers! I may not be able to speak properly, but you’re going to look at my work.”
Now Morelo lives and maintains a studio in a space that he rents illegally with his girlfriend. His chief hope for the future is to get grants and fellowships that might enable him to focus on creating art for the rest of his life without having to worry about monetary limitations.
Although chalk is his signature, Morelo says he would love to get commissioned to do murals around the city. Chalk has its own downsides.
“It makes me sad, disappointed it’s not gonna last,” Morelo says of the drawings that gradually fade, sometimes washing away overnight if it rains. It’s like a metaphor for life, he says: “If you see it, take a photograph, because it’s only here for a moment.”
These particular faces cannot talk, but their words are sometimes calcified in chalk speech bubbles drawn next to them.
They are the creation of Felix Morelo, a Colombian street artist, who has been regularly drawing them all over the gum-splotched hexagonal brick tiles that cover Union Square, as well as on neighboring city blocks, for the past three years. Now a neighborhood fixture, Morelo can also sometimes be seen sitting in Union Square with a cardboard sign offering free advice.
For casual admirers and fans of Morelo’s work alike, his chalk faces are often a source of amusement and encouragement. Fans who happen to catch Morelo in the act of drawing his faces will often stop to tell him that his work has cheered them up, on the way to wherever they may have been going. But to the contrary, the faces were born out of a much different emotion.
Looking out on Union Square from a wooden table in a Starbucks on 17th Street, Morelo described anger as the primary motive behind his street art. His face, while quick to break into a smile, instantly hardens when the topic of how he came to create his street art arises.
"People think it's happy, but it's not," said Morelo definitively.
Like generations of artists before him, Morelo has suffered in the pursuit of his art. He was forced to drop out of Parsons, just three credits shy of a earning a BFA, after he defaulted on his student loans. Since then, he has devoted himself to breaking into the art world while simultaneously struggling to support himself financially.
Amid a litany of odd jobs that included construction work, cutting meat as a butcher, and working as a bike messenger, Morelo hit a rough patch that included a period of homelessness, during which he lived on the streets.
“All my failures led me to do the faces,” said Morelo of his mounting frustrations.
But for an aspiring fine artist who found himself unable to catch the attention of the art world or get his own solo show (“I’ve never really been good at networking,” Morelo readily concedes) he was able to seek inspiration from another likeminded figure: a street artist named James De La Vega, who dismissed the gallery world in favor of publicly displayed chalk drawings.
“The big advantage [of chalk] is that it’s legal,” Morelo explained.
He added of De La Vega’s successful method that the trick is in taking simple phrases and “just repeating [them] over and over until you start getting recognized.”
Morelo’s signature phrase is probably his “bad luck spot,” a chalk circle drawn at random on the sidewalk that portends doom for anyone who should step in it.
The realization of quick, easily repeated catchphrases did not come to him immediately. He initially started experimenting with chalk by doing his usual drawings on the sidewalks around the city, until he found that it wasn’t working. That’s when Morelo says he came up with the faces, a theme that had already been pervasive throughout all his drawings. “They signified a longing or desire to be surrounded by people, rather than being homeless, or all alone, no girlfriend.”
When he started drawing faces on the ground at Union Square, a shape began to take hold. “The first time I did 50 faces, and everything clicked,” said Morelo. “I started realizing the pattern would disrupt the hexagon tiles.”
Even better, he found he could that he could churn out a large quantity of drawings in no time at all— each face took only seconds to draw. If he did an entire block of faces in this way, people would have to look at him.
To date, his most expansive project has been a series of faces that stretched from 10th Ave. to Avenue C. along 14th Street.
By making the move to street art Morelo feels that he has finally succeeded in forcing people to acknowledge him; or in his own words, to say, “Look at me motherfuckers! I may not be able to speak properly, but you’re going to look at my work.”
Now Morelo lives and maintains a studio in a space that he rents illegally with his girlfriend. His chief hope for the future is to get grants and fellowships that might enable him to focus on creating art for the rest of his life without having to worry about monetary limitations.
Although chalk is his signature, Morelo says he would love to get commissioned to do murals around the city. Chalk has its own downsides.
“It makes me sad, disappointed it’s not gonna last,” Morelo says of the drawings that gradually fade, sometimes washing away overnight if it rains. It’s like a metaphor for life, he says: “If you see it, take a photograph, because it’s only here for a moment.”
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