Covering Poverty Compilation

Compilation
1. What do you think are the misunderstandings about poverty that journalists
are most likely to confront?
(1)Carol Polsgrove
That people are responsible for their own poverty; that poverty is caused by lack of
willpower or willingness to work; that if they were eligible for government help they
would be getting it.
(Excerpt from e-mail response.)
(2)Charlotte Grimes
1. That poverty cant be alleviated.
2. The poor are totally to blame or have no responsibility-either is wrong. Many
factors are beyond their control, others arent.
3. That anti-poverty programs dont workthey do. But they often need updating or
to be refined for new groups in poverty.
(3)Ed Lawler
I dont think that journalists in many cases understand the entire picture. They can
operate easily from stereotypes that impoverished people brought this on themselves.
I think that they need to understand, its a lot more complicated than that. Id start
with that.
(Excerpt from recorded interview.)
(4)Harlan Beckley
Most Americans do not understand that we are the most impoverished nation in the
developed world or that poverty is a complicated mixture of structural injustice, the
lack of capability of freedom to function at a minimal level, and behavioral

responsibility. Too many Americans want to blame it all on a simple cause and often
to declare the poor as undeserving rather than as victims of injustice or the
consequences of their own mistakes.
(5)Kim Walsh-Childers
I think one of the primary misunderstandings is the idea that most poor people dont
work. There is very little understanding of the fact that the majority of people living
in poverty actually have jobs. But its an issue of, you can work 2 minimum-wage
jobs and still not make above poverty wage. I guess the other thing is that that they
would need to understand we tend to conflate poverty and homelessness and thats
often not an issue. Obviously homeless people tend to be poor but not all poor people
are homeless. The other issue I guess that I think these journalists really need to be
able to cope with is the complexity of the problem. Some of the reading that Ive
done suggests that one problem in the coverage of poverty is that journalists are
reluctant to deal with it holistically, so that its not about poverty and healthcare,
poverty and education or poverty and jobs, its all of those things. Education is related
to not having a decent job which connects to not having good health care. Its all
bound up together. I think journalists are reluctant to reflect that much complexity.
Its sort of like, thats too big, I cant really write about all that at once. But you cant
really write about it unless you are dealing with all those issues at once.
(6)Leara Rhodes
That its illiteracy, economic and mental health, and that if it doesnt fall within those
three categories then obviously the people arent poor.
(7)Lynda McDonnell
That poverty is caused primarily by laziness or personal failings particularly
dropping out of school, having a child outside marriage and misusing drugs or
alcohol.
(8)Nancy Nusser
That poor people are likely to have a specific set of values, political beliefs and
education. That most poverty comes necessarily with poor education, lack of
understanding or knowledge of the world. Lack of sophistication about politics.
Generally that they are probably going to be relatively dismissive of poor people.
(9)Pat Thomas
That poverty is a permanent condition. That some people are always poor and that
other people are not poor. Journalists do not think often enough about the dynamic
nature of poverty.
(10)Wayne Worcester
Poverty in every community is relative, a thing entirely apart from government
statistics that determine what poverty level means in dollars and cents. The term fullemployment erroneously suggests a kind of comfort. Full employment tends to
mask minimum wages and inadequate health care coverage. This is neither clearly
understood, nor appreciated. Further, poverty is not as ghettoized as it once was, and
so it very often is invisible. In the suburbs, it can exist cheek-to-jowl with financial
comfort, effectively masked by inexpensive clothing, a leased car and two incomes. A
family, whose existence is reduced to a 24-hour struggle to get by, may very well be
only a sickness away from being homeless and destitute.

(11)William Gaines
Journalists and students I have worked with and taught often have the belief that
impoverished people have brought their situation on themselves by being lazy and
indifferent. They may believe that entire families are milking the system and have no
intention of improving their lot. This misunderstanding has to be corrected if the
reporter is going to function properly and fairly in the coverage of poverty issues.
2. What economic factors most contribute to poverty?

(12)Carol Polsgrove
Availability of jobs that pay adequate wages; lack of unionized jobs; tax systems that
penalize the poor (e.g. relying on sales tax instead of income tax); high cost of
medical care; lack of free or inexpensive child care; high housing costs (probably
more true in urban areas).
(13)Charlotte Grimes
Lack of money. Okay, Im being facetious. The factors (not just economic) that
contribute to poverty: Lack of education; lack of job-training; cultural
gaps/differences (such as punctuality, grammar, dress, manners, sense of
responsibility and sensitivity to employers expectations) that run counter to the
mainstream norm; family and peer pressures; weak economy or a changing economy
that sheds workers.
(14)Ed Lawler
Certainly theres an enormous and growing income gap between the rich and the
poor. I think ideology plays a part as well. I think that there are certain political
agendas that say the poor have gotten what they deserve and they dont deserve any
additional assistance or any additional educational benefits. Those would be the major
concerns I would have.
(15)Harlan Beckley
The shifting labor market that no longer rewards dependable unskilled labor at a
decent wage; the inadequate healthcare system for poor citizens; and an educational
system that leaves many poor Americans unprepared to function in todays economy.
We need journalists to write about these problems.
Scarcity of well-paying jobs. However, it is also the case that theres a conflict,
because in some areas where there are really good jobs and there are some people
who have those jobs that actually creates more of a problem for people in that area
that are low-income b/c it tends to raise housing prices and the cost of living
generally in those areas. Thats a huge issue for university towns for instance. You
have a population of people who are well-educated and generally make pretty good
money and youve got a very large transient population of people who dont need to
make a lot of money. They just need to make a little bit b/c their parents are still
supporting them for the most part. That brings wages down for people who arent in
college. Healthcare is a huge issue b/c people who dont have good healthcare are far
more at risk on their jobs but the cost of healthcare is one reason that so few
companies provide healthcare and are unable to provide decent health coverage for
their employees and also pay decent wages. (Excerpt from recorded interview.)
(17)Leara Rhodes
Health insurance, unemployment, underemployed, part-time jobs, lack of family
planning, low-income jobs, no industry support.
(18)Lynda McDonnell
Recession, family structure (i.e. single parent families), wage trends (especially for
low-skill workers with limited education), weakness of unions, increased economic
globalization and its uneven impact on U.S. workers, geographic differences.
(19)Nancy Nusser
Right now low wages and gaps between the rich and poor which is a result of low
wages, downsizing, exporting jobs and globalization of economy.
(20)Pat Thomas
Its hard to know whats the chicken and whats the egg. Are certain communities
poor b/c theres a lack of adequate jobs that pay decently, yeah thats part of the
problem. But do communities have trouble attracting high paying jobs b/c they have
low education attainment levels, low health levels, and their workforce looks
unappealing to a new industry? Yeah, that could be a factor. But its hard to know
which comes first. In general, lack of jobs, lack of education, and lack of access to
major transportation routes.
(21)Wayne Worcester
Poor-paying jobs and joblessness. Low minimum hourly wages. Exorbitant healthcare costs. Steadily rising prices of food, transportation. A preponderance of part-time
jobs that are bereft of adequate health care benefits and worker rights. Lack of
education and poverty often go hand in hand, yet public, i.e., local, state and federal,
financing of public education always lags, and in all but the most affluent
communities, is rarely viewed as anything but an inexorable drain on tax dollars.
(22)William Gaines
In rural areas, lack of access to education is the major obstacle. The rural high school
student may be capable of attaining a college degree but is not always able to leave
home to attend a college most suitable for his or her interests because of family
obligations. Scholarships are inadequate and have not kept up with inflation. The
promising student may have to drop out at age 16 and get a menial job to help support
the family.
3. A number of public policy institutes focus on poverty. The Urban Institute

comes to mind, as an example. In your experience, which public policy
institutes are the most helpful for journalists to consult?
Brookings, The Joint Center Political and Economic Studies; John Edwards Center
on Poverty at Duke University; Childrens Defense Fund; and American Enterprise
Institute, Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation should be part of the list for political
variety and because theyre players in public policy.
(24)Ed Lawler
Ive not really done much with them. Theres an organization called the Poynter
Institute out of St. Petersburg Florida that doesnt just focus on poverty but it helps to
provide an interesting background for a journalist on a variety of different subjects
including poverty and racial issues. The Pew Center has done some interesting work
on poverty.
(25)Harlan Beckley
There are many, UI is one. You might want to check the Washington and Lee
Journalism Departments website on poverty for others that we believe are valuable.
In dealing with healthcare, Kaiser Family Foundation.
(27)Leara Rhodes
Southern Fund does a lot of work in southern poverty, esp. in the African American
community. The Fanning Institute has done huge surveys and development projects
on poverty. Locally I would go to the Consumer and Family Services (Sharon Gibson
and her boss Sue Griffin have done poverty related work, particularly in South
Georgia counties).
(28)Lynda McDonnell
Institute on Race & Poverty at University of Minnesota, Manpower Demonstration
Research Corp, Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin
(http://www.irp.wisc.edu/), lots of local foundations & government agencies,
Journalism Center on Children & Families at the University of Maryland

(http://www.journalismcenter.org/index.cfm)
(29)Nancy Nusser
Urban Institute
(30)Pat Thomas
In the health arena its certainly the Kaiser Family Foundation who does the best
ongoing analysis of poverty and health with their weekly updates. The National
Academy of Sciences has done some good studies on health and wealth and on
disparities in health status and access to health care. My focus is so firmly in the
health arena that pretty much what I know about. Yes I know about the urban institute
and the center for American progress, which is a pretty nonpartisan think tank and
theres the alliance for health.
(31)Wayne Worcester
The Rand Corporation: www.Rand.org
The Almanac of Policy Issues:
http://www.policyalmanac.org/social_welfare/poverty.shtml
The Russell Sage Foundation: www.russellsage.org/
The Carnegie Foundation: www.carnegie.org
The Synergos Institute: www.synergos.org
The Brookings Center on Children and Families
The Economic Policy Institute
The Center for Housing Policy
(32)William Gaines
I direct my students to learn about poverty from agencies that call on the indigent on a
regular basis, like public aid case workers, visiting nurses, veterans affairs workers,
and senior citizen volunteers. The student journalists should work with people who
come in direct contact with the impoverished. Better yet, they should immerse
themselves in the problems of the poor by visiting their homes and learning first
hand. Leon Dash, a reporter for the Washington Post, spent two years visiting with
one impoverished family and produced a series of articles that won a Pulitzer Prize.
His work was educational, explanatory and very readable.
4. What aspects of poverty do you focus on in your course?

(33)Carol Polsgrove
I teach a public affairs reporting course that covers various areas, depending on the
semester. In one particular semester I asked students to write specifically on poverty;
some topicshealth programs for the poor, the impact of high gas prices on nonprofit
agencies that serve the poor. More often poverty is an issue that comes up in reporting
another topic. For instance, in a recent set of stories of jails, one student reported on
how imprisonment in jail further impoverishes already poor people because of fees
and fines that are levied. In keeping with this approach, I would argue in favor of
examining how the poor are affected in a range of stories on larger topics. At the
same time, reporters need sometimes to focus more squarely on health care for the
poor; educational problems faced by poor students or students in poorly funded
schools; transportation needs of the poor; and difficulties poor people have getting
social services and government-provided financial support; ways in which poor
people are adversely affected by environmental pollution; working conditions for
people in low-paid jobs. Local reporters would do well to talk to state legislators
about current and prospective legislation that is likely to affect the poor, negatively or
positively.
I teach political reporting, so I emphasize how politics affects poverty and the
obligation of journalists to be a voice for the voiceless, including the poor.
(35)Ed Lawler
The course that I teach is community journalism and its taught here in the city of
Chicago so its probably a little bit diff. than the kind of poverty youre addressing.
But a lot of it is similar, regardless of whether its rural or urban. I think what we try
to have the students understand is the nature of poverty, that its not some form of
punishment upon people who are lazy or shiftless or somehow deserve this. I think I
want them to understand the larger picture in terms of how government can or cannot
help, the role of industry, if industry pulls up stakes from inner city neighborhoods
that thats going to have some rather unpleasant consequences for the people in that
particular community. Theres certainly a racial component. My students will go to an
inner city neighborhood and work for an inner city weekly newspaper. The
neighborhood is almost entirely African American. I think I want them to understand
the nature of the struggle that African American people face in the inner city of
Chicago. Theres a great deal of misunderstanding directed to them. Theres a great
deal of prejudice. I think its just important for them to get to meet people who suffer
from poverty face to face. Its very easy to deal with poverty from a stock or
stereotypical image but I think that its very illuminating for students to get into a
community, roll up their sleeves, and begin covering some issues that are in many
cases driven by poverty. Inability to find adequate housing, decent food, decent
clothing, inability to find a job, inability to live in a community that is safe from
crime. Its a very eye opening experience for my students.
(36)Harlan Beckley
I focus on domestic poverty in all of its dimensions. You can find my syllabus on our
website. We have other courses that focus on international poverty and Washington
and Lee now has more than twenty courses that address poverty. See the Shepherd
website for the course listing.
What I have done is incorporate an assignment related to poverty in a magazine and
feature writing class. What Im trying to get the students to do there is just to have
experience writing about people who are living in poverty, whatever the reason is that
they are living in poverty. I dont spend a lot of time teaching them about poverty,
although I did actually talk about the myths of upward mobility, the idea that
everybody has equal opportunity to get to the American dream. We talked about jobs,
education, healthcare; we also talked a little bit about social capital. I guess that
would be another important element that journalists need to understand, particularly
journalists b/c I think journalism students forget that not everyone knows how to dig
up information. Journalists tend to forget that not everybody knows how to find the
name of the person that you need to talk to or the agency that would provide a
particular service b/c journalists generally do know how to find the info. The other
thing we did spend some time talking about is the idea that people are not necessarily
primarily responsible for their own poverty. The idea that you can work really hard,
you can have been an intelligent person, you can play by all the rules for the most part
and you can still end up living in poverty b/c our society does not really protect
against poverty.
(38)Leara Rhodes
Health, at least this latest on the magazine. Were doing a magazine called thrive
which is targeted at families of four between $25,000-35,000, which means that
theyre on the edge of going into poverty but offering them tips on health, financial
resources, diabetes, exercise, food planning.
(39)Lynda McDonnell
History of public attitudes & social programs, trends in poverty
(40)Nancy Nusser
I try to address covering not necessarily poor people but just covering the community
and if the community has poor people in it then thats what journalists should cover.
Journalists are supposed to cover their community. When Im teaching students about
national coverage we talk about covering the bottom of the socio-economic ladders in
cities, talk about covering inner city, rural poor. Covering poverty is going to be
defined by the readership. When I talk about national issues we talk about covering
poor urban, rural areas and also the developing world on a global level.
(41)Pat Thomas
Def. the connection b/t poverty and health, both the health status of people and their
access to care. Those are my big things.
(42)Wayne Worcester
The reporting and understanding of it. The reasons for poverty, its growth in a land of
plenty and the extraordinary ramifications of it. I believe it is important for students
to understand the nobility and importance of the work done in the 19th century by
authors like Charles Dickens and Henry Mayhew; in the early 20th century by the
muckraking journalists, and later by John Steinbeck, Jack London, George Orwell,
James Agee, Harrington, Galbraith, Shipler and Ehrenreich.
(43)William Gaines
I taught a course in investigative reporting in addition to a course in writing and
reporting. I also published a textbook last year, Investigative Journalism, Proven
Strategies for Reporting the Story. I show how investigative reporters can take up the
cause of the underdog, and poor people are certainly included. I show how to
investigate consumer fraud perpetrated on the poor and elderly and expose the abuse
of recipients of government programs who are treated rudely when they apply for
entitlements. I show how to expose public aid nursing homes that sacrifice proper
care of the poor for inordinate profits. I instruct the students in how to look for unfair
treatment of poor and minority neighborhoods. Police may provide better protection
in affluent neighborhoods, respond more quickly to their emergency calls and are less
likely to make traffic stops. Municipal providers may keep the streets cleaner in rich
neighborhood and the parks have better facilities.
5. What three books would you recommend for the tool kit?
(44)Ed Lawler
There are no Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz
Amazing Grace: Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation by Jonathan
Kozol (1996)
The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David Shipler (2005)
(45)Harlan Beckley
I dont know exactly what you mean by the tool kit, but I assume that you are
referring to a set of books a journalist should read. I think they should read David
Shiplers THE WORKING POOR and Jason DeParles AMERICAN DREAM, but I
also think they should read an economist like Rebecca Blank or Janet Currie and
some philosophy. Stuart White would be a good place to start, but for those who are
willing to accept the challenge reading Amartya Sen, (maybe INEQUALITY
REEXAMINED) could prove helpful. I think journalists should continue to read
about poverty from different disciplinary perspectives and not limit their reading to
fellow journalist. David Shipler and Jason DeParle dont limit themselves in that
way.
A book thats kind of interesting that might appeal to journalists b/c its written by a
journalist is Its All Over But the Shoutin by Rick Bragg. The other thing that I
would probably encourage them to read would be the Pioneer Press did a big project
on poverty, which I think was called Poverty Among Us which I think was done
several months ago, and the other thing is The Palm Beach Post recently published a
series of articles called Modern Day Slavery.
(47)Leara Rhodes
Out of the Bario by Linda Chaves
Ecology of a Cracker Childhood by Janisse Ray
One on families really helped me understand that part of looking at poverty is
redefining what a family is. If we define families as 2 parents and 2 children then we
are really going to misguide people on how to get out of poverty, esp. with ethnic and
African American families, those families arent defined the same way.
(48)Lynda McDonnell
In the Shadow of the Poorhouse + Random Family, documentaries as follows:
Country Boys, Hoop Dreams and Boys of Baraka
(49)Nancy Nusser
Rich Media, Poor Democracy by Robert McChesney
The Elements of Journalism by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel
(50)Pat Thomas
Number one choice would be class matters the New York Times collection of its
prize winning series of articles that appeared in 2005, a series of 14 articles that the
newspaper published. Easy and enjoyable to read, tremendously revealing. Also,
Understanding Poverty by Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, Roland Benabou, and Dilip
Mookherjee.
(51)Wayne Worcester
The Other America by Michael Harrington
The Working Poor by David K. Shipler
Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
Also the PBS documentary Waging a Living, by Roger Weisberg
(52)William Gaines
I have no recommendation. I believe the coverage of poverty issues transcends any
book learning and should be attained by first-person contact with the poor.
6. What Web sites would you recommend for the tool kit?
(53)Carol Polsgrove
The website of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues:
http://www.uky.edu/CommInfoStudies/IRJCI/blog.htm
All those for the public policy groups in number 3, plus government sites like the
census, the congressional budget office, the government accountability office. Same
for state and local government Web sites.
(55)Ed Lawler
Poynter Institute, USDA, Urban Institute
(56)Harlan Beckley
See the Washington and Lee Journalism Department website (http://onpoverty.org/)
and its reference to think-tank websites. It is good to include AEI and the Heritage
Foundation, even though you may not agree with what appears on their sites. You can
also check out the Shepherd website for many papers on topics that will, we hope,
interest journalist.
The Neiman Foundation did an article called Remembering the Forgotten that was
about coverage of poverty which was quite good. Census Dept.
(58)Lynda McDonnell
See above, plus the Census Bureau info on poverty.
(59)Nancy Nusser
Urban Institute, Pew Center. If I were talking to students about trying to cover
agricultural poor I would send them first to something like a statistical database like
that so they could find a demographic to cover. That would be one of the first ways to
find something to cover.
(60)Pat Thomas
Kaiser Family Foundation. (kff.org)
(61)Wayne Worcester
In addition to those sites mentioned in the answer to question number three:
http://www.secondharvest.org/learn_about_hunger/Hunger_Almanac_2006.html
http://www.solutionsforamerica.org/thrivingneigh/homelessness.html
http://www.nationalhomeless.org/
http://www.nchv.org/background.cfm
National Coalition for Homeless Veterans:
www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/facts/Why.pdf
www.pbs.org/pov/pov2006/wagingaliving/about.html
www.Carnegie.org/reporter
www.factfinder.census.gov
(62)William Gaines
Web sites of state agencies are important. Every state will have a web site for its
public assistance agency that explains the rules and programs, the state attorney
general will have a web site for its consumer fraud division, the state labor
department will provide information about unemployment compensation, and the
public health agency will show health care programs. Journalists will find these
agencies more helpful than federal agencies, I believe, because they are familiar with
the local laws and local problems. When a well-intended federal government program
goes awry it is usually detected first on the local level.
7.
Which federal poverty programs are the most important for journalists to
know about and understand? The Earned Income Tax Credit comes to mind,
as an example. Which federal programs would be on your list?
Welfare, job training, food stamps, Medicaid
(64)Ed Lawler
Well I think they need to know the role that some of the major agencies play, such as
housing and urban development, earned income tax credit is important because it
does put a small amount of money in the pockets of impoverished people. State and
municipal agencies that are very important when it comes to covering poverty. At
least here in Chicago there is something called Section 8 housing which provides
vouchers for impoverished people so a lot of residents in the North Lawndale
community receive federal section 8 housing subsidies or vouchers in which it helps
them rent a property they probably could not afford on their own. Avoids the other
issue of putting people in these subsidized high-rise housing which has been largely a
failure here in Chicago. Food stamps to the USDA would be important. Programs for
journalists to understand as well.
(65)Harlan Beckley
EITC, Food Stamps, Head Start, NCLB, housing programs, SCHIP, Medicaid, job
training programs, TANF, and Child Support Enforcement come immediately to
mind. They should also look at he Community Services Block Grant and Community
Action Agencies and at the Community Economic Development movement. See
William Simons book on the later.
Welfare, AFDC, Medicaid, Medicare and their shortcomings, limitations on
workmans comp in their state b/c one thing I think a lot of journalists dont
understand is that people make the assumption that if you get injured in the course of
doing your job that you are automatically eligible for workmans comp but that is not
necessarily that case, b/c at least in some states in order to qualify people have to be
able to prove that their injury is job related. Lets say for instance that you have a
back injury. If you have a previous back injury that wasnt work related and then you
injure yourself at work, you arent necessarily going to be able to prove that the new
injury was work-related. I know someone who in the past year, who works in the
nursing home. She developed a detached retina b/c she lifts elderly people all day
long but the doctors told her since there was no way to prove she developed it b/c of
her work then she was not eligible for workmans compensation. Its the things that
we always think of as safety nets; a lot of those things have loopholes. I know of
elderly couples who cant afford assisted living and remain together. In this case in
the state of FL they could only get a certain provision if they separated. There are a
lot of family unfriendly policies. Major ones are workmans comp, welfare. The
WICK program (it was at one time one of the single most successful poverty
reduction programs that we have ever come up with), food stamps.
(67)Leara Rhodes
It would have to be policy regarding affordable housing. What is the
recommendation? We should have of our income go toward housing to be lucrative
and to be able to have money to eat on and do those things that we need to do yet
most people in poverty spend half or of their income on housing. So when you
have those strong statistics you want to look at any policy regarding affordable
housing.
(68)Lynda McDonnell
Section 8 & other housing programs, SCHIP & Medicare, Food Stamps & federal
grants for low-income students to attend college.
(69)Nancy Nusser
Earned Income Tax Credit, Peachcare program in Georgia, whatever healthcare
program is designed for families without health insurance.
(70)Pat Thomas
One of the only means-tested federal programs that has ever shown in research to be
of actual benefit to people is the Dept. of Agricultures Special Supplemental Feeding
Program for women, infants and children (WIC). Comes through block grants to the
states and is used to provide nutrition and diet counseling and health counseling to
pregnant women, women who have recently delivered babies, the babies that they
have to about age five. Brings regular prenatal health assessments. I dont think
reporters know a lot about it.
(71)William Gaines
I believe the U.S. Department of Agriculture school lunch program and the food
stamp program are extremely important. For some children in poverty, it may be the
only proper meal they get each day. Journalists should make sure the local school
districts and utilizing the program to the greatest extent. Also, recipients of the food
stamp program should not be embarrassed publicly when they receive the food stamp
benefits.
8. What should journalists know about:

a. Poverty and race in their communities?
Im sorry, but the only honest answer I can give to this is everything.
(73)Ed Lawler
They are inextricably linked, at least in the city of Chicago. It is important for
students to understand that not all African Americans are impoverished, but
they do go to some of these city communities and see nothing but African
American people. They need to understand that poverty isnt visited on people
strictly b/c theyre African American. Students need to understand that there
are a whole welter of factors that come into play (government indifference,
prejudice directed at them by the mainstream community. I think one of the
problems is they move into communities that are older and already in a state
of decline.)
(74)Harlan Beckley
They should know that poverty and race are inextricably intertwined. Read
William Julius Wilson on these matters.
The first thing they need to know is that not all poor people are minorities.
Again we have a tendency to stereotype and make the assumption that poor
people are always members of minority groups. There is an association b/t
race and poverty and there are lots and lots of complex reasons for that, some
of which have to do with the history of racism in this country, some of which
have to do with crime and family instability and the fact that people are living
in poor neighborhoods. So that brings in the whole education system, how
important. The spending on education is in ameliorating racial disparities and
poverty. Again the importance of health care, how much that contributes to
racial disparities and poverty.
(76)Leara Rhodes
That its not racial, that there are a lot of ethnic communities with poverty but
if you look at the studies, at least the ones Ive looked at, there are just as
many whites in poverty, percentage-wise, as there were blacks. Particularly,
when it came to children, so I dont think race is a factor, thats why I said
education, economics, those factors play more than race.
(77)Lynda McDonnell
What are the numbers now and whats the history, what causes the difference,
the effects on economy. How many poor people have significant barriers to
work chronic health or mental health problems? No reliable transportation?
(78)Nancy Nusser
They should have a strong sense of whether or not theyre equivalent, not just
accept the conventional wisdom. I think a lot of people are unaware of the
extent to which rural white people are poor. So I think what they would need
to do is make sure they are very clear on what the socioeconomic ethnic labels
really mean in their area.
(79)Pat Thomas
I think here is where a sense of place really becomes important. There are
historical reasons why one community is diff. from another. The history of a
specific place often shapes the long term fate of the subpopulations in that
place. We dont look at what the sources of income were in a community
before some sort of change occurred.
(80)Wayne Worcester
In principle, poverty is an equal opportunity affliction. While boundaries of
race, ethnicity, color and religion are artificial in that sense, each of them
often becomes a tool used against the poor in places where wealth is
concentrated in the hands of a white majority.
(81)William Gaines
Journalists should know that there are elements of society who will exaggerate
the cost of poverty programs, disregard their ultimate benefit to society and
promote stereotypes of the poor and minorities. These persons or groups will
often plant unfounded stories that journalists should carefully investigate for
their credibility.
b. Poverty and children?

(82)Ed Lawler
Theres a tragically high incidence of it in both the inner cities and urban
areas. There are children who go to bed hungry at night in relatively wealthy
country there are children that live in sub-standard housing. There are children
in this city alone, 22 Chicago school children killed primarily in gun-fire in
inner cities. Poor children face enormous barriers that the general journalist
would be hard to imagine, hard to fathom, just in terms of basics, such as
having enough to eat, having a safe environment, roof over your head,
adequate and warm clothing.
(83)Harlan Beckley
They should read Janet Currie on education, daycare, housing, healthcare, and
other matters that impinge on the well-being of children in poverty.
They ought to know what a hug percentage of children are living in poverty.
They ought to understand the whole cycle of poverty, the reason that that
occurs. Because kids who come from poor families are less likely to go to
good schools, less likely to be prepared for school. Another agency they
should know about is Head Start. Again I think the idea that if we did a better
job, spending more money on kids living in poverty when they are very
young, we would have a better chance of not needing to continue to spend it.
Those kids would have a far better chance of growing up and not being in
poverty when theyre adults.
(85)Leara Rhodes
It hits them hardest and they cant help it. Its so unfair, like health insurance,
its not their fault. Why should they be penalized b/c they were born? I dont
get it.
(86)Lynda McDonnell
What are the numbers now and whats the difference by race, whats being
done to close any achievement gap, reduce drop-out rates, etc. How are
parents engaged & trained? How does it poverty affect childrens health and
ability to learn? Hows it feel to be a poor kid in this town? What do you do
in the summer?
(87)Nancy Nusser
The extent to which it impacts the overall economy. When the society doesnt
take care of its lowest socioeconomic people (poor children), what happens
ultimately down the road to the economy for everybody, b/c thats the way to
make poverty delve into everybody. They should know about things that
surprise journalists like the infant mortality rate in the United States and find
out whether its been rising or lowering. They should also know about
education levels.
(88)Pat Thomas
Alas, children are dependent on their parents. Trouble is that theyre more
vulnerable. Huge literature that shows if you dont have books at home, the
encouragement to learn at home, if you dont have parents who believe that
education is power and the way to social advancement, then the chances are
you wont value education. And children get those messages early and theyll
always be disadvantaged compared to kids who have books and who have
parents who ask them whether they did their homework, teach them new
vocabulary. Poverty is def. a handicap to little kids concerning education but
also on health status. If parents on S-chip they have access if parents know
how to use it and if the parent has transportation.
(89)Wayne Worcester
Children always are the first victims of poverty. Nearly 25 percent of children
in the United States live at or below the poverty line.
(90)William Gaines
Children will carry the message to a reader because of their simple answers to
complex problems. A child may say I want to be an astronaut and the
journalist will have to explain the probability of that happening when the poor
or minority child is faced with the realities.
c. Poverty and crime?
(91)Ed Lawler
Theres certainly a strong correlation b/t poverty and crime. I think when
youre poor you have a lack of choices. I think people become a bit more
desperate, regardless of race, a desperate person is going to look for an
opportunity to put bread on the table somehow and unfortunately that is done
illegally in some cases.

(92)Harlan Beckley
Journalist need to be aware of both crime prevention programs and of public
defender systems, especially problematic in Georgia. Georgia journalists
should be in touch with Doug Ammar, Executive Director of the Georgina
Justice Project. I believe it has a branch in Athens.
The very strong correlation, that its not coincidental that theres far less crime
in areas where people have good jobs. People who have good jobs and a
decent income generally arent involved in crime. Poverty tends to be more
prevalent in a community where you have a lot of adolescents unless they are
all going to college. The link b/t jobs and crime, and joblessness and crime.
(94)Leara Rhodes
I think economics does drive crime. We see that in areas of poverty we have
more crime. You dont see a lot of crime in wealthy gated communities. But
you see the drive by shootings and everything; I think that is drug-enforced
crime. If you look at the blotter something is always happening on Nellie Bly.
(95)Lynda McDonnell
Whats the connection? Whats being done to help people coming out of
prison into jobs (are inmates able to get education in prison)? What sort of
legal assistance is available to poor people? How do sentences for the same
crime vary by race & income?

(96)Nancy Nusser
I think that what journalists need to do is make sure that the conventional
wisdom and the clichs about that, that poverty and crime go hand and hand,
are really true in their community. They should find out who the victims of
crime are in their communities. It would be really nice to do a story about the
extent that white collar crime outstrips this other kind of crime in terms of its
impact, in terms of how much is really netted. And the stigma attached to
crime that is not in corporations.
(97)Pat Thomas
If I dont have anything and you have stuff and Im a desperate enough person
Ill probably steal it. If people dont see a place for themselves in the
mainstream economy then alternate economies will spring up. Dealing drugs,
there are people that think that the only way to find advancement and a decent
living is by doing something illicit. Used to be moonshine, long tradition in
white rural South, that was a pretty good living to people. If youre shut out of
one economy then youll find an alternate economy, even if its outside the
law. I dont think people set out to be criminals. I think if people felt like there
was a legal way to earn a living, a DECENT living, not a burger flipping
living that probably there would be fewer young people who dove into the
illegal economy. If youve got mouths to feed and things you want in this
world and youre deeply immersed in [material] culture, youre going to want
those things.
(98)Wayne Worcester
Poverty breeds crime. White inmates do not comprise the majority

populations of state and federal prisons in the United States.
(99)William Gaines
Criminal records are easy to come by in an urban poverty neighborhood as
police round up dozens of young people they call gang members only because
they were in the wrong place. Then the criminal arrest goes on the record and
the otherwise employable person is unable to get a job.
d. Poverty and access to financial services?
(100)Ed Lawler
One of the stories and one of the concerns we try to make students aware of is
the whole idea of red-lining. In inner city neighborhoods, and Im sure this is
true in rural impoverished areas, mainstream businesses choose not to do
business in those areas. Insurance is not provided in some cases. Mortgage
companies dont want to lend money in some areas. Grocery stores dont want
to provide services in certain areas. So this whole sort of infrastructure of
poverty journalists need to understand but probably arent going to learn that
in school. I think they probably have to self-educate themselves on some of
these issues.
(101)Harlan Beckley
Read about sub prime lending and housing and about predatory lending at
payday loan establishments, but also about credit in general. See David
Shipler, chapter two, I think, on this matter.

Most banks now charge a certain amount for a checking account. You dont
get free checking unless you maintain a minimum balance well if you have a
minimum wage job and youre living hand to mouth, youre not going to be
able to maintain a minimum balance in your checking account, which means
you are going to get charged for something that someone else whos able to
keep 6,000-7,000 in saving isnt going to get charged for. So its sort of one of
those things where those who have get and those who dont have gets to pay
the fees. Obviously the lower your income the less likely you are to be able to
get a loan to start up a small business or something like that. The other issue
that kind of goes along with that topic is the fact that credit card companies
have irresponsibly marketed credit and the use of credit to people who are in
low-income situations.
(103)Leara Rhodes
They have no access to financial services. When you start seeing pawn shops
pop up in communities you need to be aware that the economic structure has
broken down. We have one now on the eastside and Im just going oh my
God, because I know what that means. It means we have more and more
people not having access to traditional forms of loans and cant make it from
pay day to pay day.
(104)Lynda McDonnell
How much do poor people rely on Unbanks & what do they charge? What do
banks charge for the same services (or do they even offer them)? How have
poor people been used in the sub prime mortgage market? What do tax
preparers charge for advances on refunds & are there ways to get taxes done
free? How do pawn shops operate?
(105)Nancy Nusser
Journalists should be trying to investigate and find out what it takes to get
access to those, what its like to be a poor person trying to get access to those
programs. B/c I think that they would find that its a lot harder to actually get
help than one would realize and how much work it takes. More and more
formerly middle-class people are becoming aware of how much work it takes
being poor, how hard it is to be poor. It takes a long time if your health
insurance company doesnt pay your bills. Its like a full time job trying to
find a way to make your insurance company pay for what its supposed to pay
for. It takes a long time to make your way through any of the welfare
programs to get food stamps, food aide, and free healthcare. I have friends
who have recently become really kind of poor and I hear them talking about
wading through the bureaucracy trying to get what they are supposed to get.
Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich did a story about what it was like to
work minimum wage. Interesting to see journalists go out and try to navigate
the system that poor people have to navigate in order to get what they need.
(106)Pat Thomas
A lot of poor people dont trust banks. If youre poor you are going to have a
hard time getting a loan to buy a house or a car. Sometimes the diff. between
being a functioning member of society and being shut out of it is sometimes a
small amount of money. (gave example) If we had a more flexible financial
system, a way to make a small loan like that to a working person who
probably would be able to pay it back in small installments it would have

made an enormous diff. in that mans life. Our financial institutions are geared
toward people who already have some degree of wealth. People with no
degree of wealth pay incredible interest rates for payday loans, exorbitant fees
to cash their checks if they dont have a regular bank account. Fees to wire
money to family if they dont have a checking account. They pay higher rates
for routine financial services than middle class people do which makes their
already limited resources go even less far. I dont think reporters write about
that much.
(107)Wayne Worcester
More often than not, it takes money and education to access financial services.
One of the terrible ironies of poverty is that it is expensive to be poor.
(108)William Gaines
I did redlining stories when I was a reporter for The Chicago Tribune and one,
called The Black Tax I found that individual discrimination was not the
major problem it was in the past because of the housing and lending laws. But
providers found a way to skirt the law by discriminating against minority
neighborhoods in banking, home loans and mortgages by noting the zip code
on the application. We were able to show that a person living in a minority
neighborhood was being made to pay more for the same service and justified
our title, The Black Tax.
e. Poverty and education?

(109)Ed Lawler
Access is the big problem I think for impoverished people. I think theres the
notion that well if youre poor then youll be given all the grants that you
could possibly want but I think again in Chicago public schools, so few high
school students go to college, which is unfortunate b/c there are a number of
schools that would provide them a great deal of financial assistance, but I
think theres this perception that college is not a place for us, that theres a
lack of guidance counselors that are directing impoverished students toward
college, lack of family support. If youre a first-generation college student you
dont really have someone to lean back on, not only for financial assistance,
but general guidance, you know, what is it that I need to do to survive and get
into college.
(110)Harlan Beckley
Learn about KIPP schools, NCLB, other charter schools, school reform
movements in various places, the achievement gap, and funding disparities.
Look at how poor students are doing in their local communities. They should
also learn about after school programs and their potential forming a bridge
between schools and families.
We have this myth that we provide the same level of public education, we
have free public education in this country therefore everyone has the same
opportunity to get a good education and thats a total myth. Schools are
generally funded based on (at least in FL) the property tax in a county. People
who live in low-income counties generally dont have as much income

therefore they dont own as much valuable property, dont pay as much
property taxes, therefore county has less to spend on schools. So the poorer
the area you live in the poorer your school is going to be in terms of financial
resources and frequently that translates into a lower quality of education.
Dont have big computer labs, people not going to take fun and exciting field
trips, no special programs for children who are developmentally delayed or for
kids who are really gifted. The poorer your county is the less likely you are to
go to a school that is going to do the best possible job of preparing you to go
to college. There is a strong correlation b/t completion of college and income.
(112)Leara Rhodes
Definitely a factor. I think thats a very strong. When you see the drop out
rate, even though the percentage is shocking here in Athens Clarke County.
We have 66% of our high school students drop out before they graduate.
Maybe about 77% of those are African Americans. So race plays a significant
factor in the education. But when I talked with a social worker, she has 200
students in her teens at risk of dropping out, she says she has just as many
from well-to-do families that arent making it as from families in poverty. So,
you know, its hard to tell. Her strongest statement to me was that it was in
kindergarten when they start dropping out, when the parents didnt take the
children on a regular basis to kindergarten. Thats when they first got into the
habit that school and education arent important. Thats where we need to do
something. Policy isnt easy. Its too convoluted. Kindergarten isnt required,
even though studies show that is where children start getting ingrained, start
showing that those kids who arent taking kindergarten are statistically the
ones dropping out of high school. People say where are the money and
resources coming from? Families say that I have two jobs and cant take her
and the bus doesnt run 2 ways. Looking at transportation issues, etc. If I
could say anything for journalists it's that they need to understand how
complicated and intertwined the relationship among all these things is and to
sort them out and to be able to write about it. Its not simple at all.
Whats the correlation? Whats being done to give poor people skills &
education that will raise their incomes? Is there an incentive for local
employers to keep their workers unskilled and poorly paid? How do day labor
places use poor people & immigrants?
(114)Nancy Nusser
Again, the extent to which theyre linked. Everyone sort of assumes there is a
corollary between poor areas and bad schools; Interesting to see if that really
exists. And if it does it would also be interesting to find out, I know that in a
lot of areas b/c of influx of Latin immigrants, some of the poorest areas are
getting pretty ambitious programs for immigrants, b/c its really challenging
for some teachers to be working with a population of ESL speakers. I think
some of our more talented people are going to work in poorer areas where
there is a lot of Latin immigration. It would be interesting to see to what
extent poverty is linked to bad education to what extent some schools have
been able to rise above that.
(115)Pat Thomas
I think poverty can cause people to cut short their education because they feel
they need to drop out of school and go to work. On a deeper level, poverty can
sap the motivation of people. For every one person that says the way to get out
of the housing projects and move from blue to white collar is education, there
are some people whos poverty discourages them from seeing that b/c the
short term gain of going to work or participating in black market economy has
more allure. They need the money right there. A friend of mine whos a
lawyer once told me that what sets middle class people apart from lower class
people is that middle class people are better at deferring gratification. If you
are middle class and have better financial cushion you are better able to say
ok, its gonna take me X number of years to attain this goal but I can do it. I
can put off the big reward b/c I know if I work/study, I will eventually get
ahead, whereas the pressures of having a very low income and little wealth is
that sometimes it makes you unable to defer gratification. Its like, Ive got
this immediate need that I need to fix by any means possible.
In community after community across the country, the poorest places have the
worst public school systems. The single biggest line-item expenditure in every
municipalitys annual budget is public education. The single biggest source of
revenue in every municipalitys annual budget is the property tax. Thus, the
standard formula for publicly financed education sets up a Catch-22 sort of
problem: The weaker and more burdened the communitys tax base, the less
able it is to afford good public schools. In most cities and towns, there always
exists a damaging and unproductive tension between the need for more money
for education and the communitys willingness to accept greater tax burdens
in order to provide it.
(117)William Gaines
What a difference it makes for a student to go full time to school and have to
work in the kitchen of a restaurant to pay the bills, rather than devote his or
her energies to school work. A student with such a burden will chance
exhaustion and depression and will not be able to join in activities that would
further the pursuit of a career, like the debating team or the school newspaper.
Employers see the high grades and achievement in the extra-curricular
activities on a resume of the student who can dedicate full time to the pursuit
of a career, and will show no interest in how many dishes were washed by the
impoverished student with the same ability.
9. What measures or indicators of poverty would you encourage journalists to

regularly follow?
Food stamps, homeless shelters, food banks, unemployment
(119)Ed Lawler
I think you probably need to get a sense for the value of housing in the community,
obviously if its quite low that would suggest some type of distressed housing. Youd
want to get a sense for the level of hunger in a community, level of employment in a
community. Obviously if the level of unemployment is high that is going to indicate
that people are lacking opportunities. The crime rate is important. If an area is
bedeviled by high crime that is obviously going to downgrade the quality of life in a
particular community. You could look at other indicators such as the amount of
mortgage money that goes into a particular community. That goes to my point earlier
about red-lining. Companies that dont see an opportunity to make money in a

community will avoid it. That further leads to the downward spiral of poverty in a
community.
(120)Harlan Beckley
See Rebecca Blanks latest article (check Brookings or the National Poverty Center)
on measuring poverty. It will help to make judgments about the inadequacies of our
official measurement. See Amartya Sen on capabilities for a philosophical challenge
to strictly income measurements of poverty.
Unemployment, income gap (ratio of people at very top of income chain to those at
very bottom. What percentage of people who control top 10 percent of wealth and
percentage of people at the bottom), drop out rates.
(122)Leara Rhodes
Pawn shops and moving. If I was a journalist in Athens Id try to track how many
people move in and out of various low-income housing b/c when they cant pay they
move somewhere else. I would look at the homeless figures. I would look at the food
bank, b/c the food bank is the first thing hit when they lose the first month, before
they go into homelessness and before they do other things. I would monitor whether
the food bank is getting more requests, what is happening there. I would look at
numbers of people applying for part-time jobs. Has that increased for city jobs where
they think they can get benefits. Whereas the last job posting got 20 applications, this
month we got 150.
Poverty rates and trends, wages rates & employment trends by industry, how they
compare to other communities with similar size and economic structure. How are
people made to feel if they use Food Stamps? Is there a stigma for this and other
services? Are there any dentists in town who will serve poor people through
Medicare? If so, what do people do for dental care or if they do without, how does
that affect them? What treatment services are available if any for poor people who
are chemically dependent?
(124)Nancy Nusser
Wages obviously. Difference in buying power compared to how it was in the past.
Gap between rich and poor, somehow measure to what extent poor people are unable
to get basic services such as healthcare. Find a way to measure how much healthcare
theyre actually getting. How many times are they getting to go to the dentist? How
many times are they getting their kids to wellness checkups? I also think malnutrition
and food bank stuff.
(125)Pat Thomas
Well, the ones that Im interested in are sometime I guess hard to measure b/c Im
thinking of a lot of the health outcomes. We routinely look at percentage of pop thats
uninsured, who is under-insured as well as un-insured. There are many employer
linked insurance programs that are pretty worthless, that dont cost much but dont
cover much. Putting people one medical emergency away from real catastrophe and
bankruptcy. Those rates are one of the things that I would def. be interested in. I dont
think journalists pay enough attn. to streetscapes, to whos walking around the street
at 10 a.m. on a Wed. I see a lot of working age people on my way to work, who are
just kind of hanging out. I cant help but think that most of the people wouldnt be
hanging out if we had a better job market. Watch people in grocery stores. I think you
can learn a lot. You can tell a lot about poverty in old people there. Major coupon
shoppers. Will argue with checkout person about specials.
Annual retail sales figures.
Annual housing starts.
Growth in the trade deficit.
Fuel prices.
Credit card debt.
(127)William Gaines
Statistics may tell the story but pictures would be much better. The country is still
haunted by pictures of the Great Depression that showed breadlines or men lined up
for blocks to apply for a few available jobs; and the movie, The Grapes of Wrath.
Pictures of soup kitchens, homeless people sleeping in the parks, and the
unemployment benefits line would remove any doubt left by the statistics.
10. What should journalists know about non-profit organizations that help the
poor in their community?
(128)Carol Polsgrove
They should know who they are and talk with them regularly to find out not only
ongoing problems but also new problems that arise from changes in the economy,
policy, or institutions that deal with the poor.
Again, everything. Usual non-profits that would be good sources are churches and
charities, like Salvation Army, The Red Cross, and Catholic Charities.
(130)Ed Lawler
They should know the ones that exist. They should understand what a non-profit
attempts to do. They should understand the limitations of a non-profit. A lot of nonprofit organizations arent terribly well-funded. They cant solve all of the problems.
They cant create a sense of sustainability in a community. I think they need to
understand what the focus of a non-profit organization is. Is it there to fight crime, is
it there to improve quality of housing, is it there to improve level of education in a
community? So I think it would be important for a journalist to visit the web site if
they have one or look at a brochure or drop by and speak to someone in authority at a
particular non-profit to get a sense of what their mission is and what it is they can and
cant do in a community.
(131)Harlan Beckley
See what community action programs and the community economic development
movements are doing. See William Simons book on the CED movement and the
National Community Action Foundation website in Washington, DC.
That they cant do everything. What they should know is that we as a country dont
make enough charitable contributions for non-governmental organizations to take
care of the poverty problem. There are a lot of great organizations doing wonderful
work. Obviously journalists need to know that a lot of non-profit agency spend a
much higher percentage on administrative costs and a much lower percentage of
donations go to actual services. Habitat for Humanity, problem that has reduced the
usefulness of Habitat to low-income families. There are much more stringent
requirements apparently, on peoples ability to contribute and pay back. But I would
say the main thing is that charities cant do it all and were silly if we think they can.
(133)Leara Rhodes
That there are places to check to see if they are giving all their monies, versus using a
lot of their monies to pay their own expenses and their own salaries. Thats one of the
concerns Ive always had about United Way. There are sites that can tell you that.
How much do they spend, how many people do they serve and what do they
accomplish? How do their practices and results compare to really exemplary nonprofits? Always talk to the people they serve what do they think?
(135)Nancy Nusser
Where they are and what they do. I think a lot of journalists are unaware of those or
dont think to talk to them b/c theyre not on their official source list. I think
journalists should be aware that for every single issue out there, there is some sort of
non-profit that is collecting stats and case studies and anecdotes that they are thrilled
to share with journalists b/c they are trying to get info out.
(136)Pat Thomas
I dont think journalists pay enough attn to 211 agencies. Here in Athens the group is
called community connections. What these are is places to call when you really really
need social services help. Whether domestic violence or food pantry or roof over head
for the night. If I were looking for unobtrusive measures of poverty Id get to know
my 211 agency really well. Number and type of calls they receive would be good
metric for figuring out whats going on. There are a lot of non-profit agencies
engaged with poverty in Athens, there are fewer in a lot of rural areas. I think
community based charities are mal-distributed; they dont necessarily thrive in areas
with worst poverty, just like healthcare. They go where the rich people are. Need is
scattered all around. Id be interested in knowing how good the match is between
available philanthropic areas and the need, esp. in smaller communities.
Much of the community-level work done in behalf of the poor is done by churches
and synagogues and the Salvation Army. More often than not these groups run the
soup kitchens and homeless shelters and take on the role of day-to-day advocates for
the poor.
(138)William Gaines
Charities get a bad rap because of the few that cheat. They may use telemarketers to
solicit funds and have a huge overhead of high salaries, leaving little for the charities
to benefit people. Journalist should know that this is no reflection on the American
Red Cross, The United Way, or the Salvation Army who are called upon by the
public in times of emergencies.
11. What key statistics should journalists be aware of?

Percent of families below the federal poverty line (and what is the federal poverty
line), percent of children in that group, drop-out rates in high schools, percent of
homeless and on food stampssame as number 9.
(140)Ed Lawler
Income levels, crime levels, education levels, if there is a way to determine distress
from non-distressed property. Are they living in sub=standard housing. I think its
important. For them to understand the level of hunger in the community. I think the
USDA might keep statistics on that.
(141)Harlan Beckley
They should know about health statistics, e.g. infant death, early death, low-birth
weight, etc, as well as about various measures of he educational achievement gap,
functional literacy in the United Nations Human Development Report, and, of course,
about the Census Bureau official poverty rate.
Comparison between cost of living in their areas and what one can reasonably earn
from a minimum wage job. Another key statistic is cost of housing. What does an
average home cost? Renting a property? How does that compare to the average wage
and especially how does it compare to minimum wage. State per pupil expenditures
on education. Percentages of health care professionals in the area who will accept
Medicaid assignment. We make the assumption that all doctors will agree to take
Medicaid patients and that is not true. Particularly in the areas like obstetrics and
gynecology, there are lots and lots of doctors who will not accept Medicaid. Another
huge one, the location of good grocery stores. Whats the average distance between a
home in the low-income part of your community and a real grocery store that
provides good quality fresh produce at a reasonable cost?
(143)Leara Rhodes
I think some of the things we just mentioned: people moving into the community,
number of jobs available, unemployment statistics, employment statistics,
underemployed, wages, cost of basic commodities, things that people live on (flour,
milk, cereal, gasoline, transportation costs, new bus increases). I think they need to
talk to the people. I did two community maps, one for Latinos and one for African
Americans. The issues we looked at the strata of income from upper government and
university professors down to the person on the street in these communities. The
leaders as well as community members. They all came out with the same issue, that is
never covered in media, and that is transportation. Thats the major concern. The
second major concern is affordable housing. We dont talk about affordable housing
in the ABH. We dont talk about transportation unless weve got the new bus
terminal. Transportation is a major major issue. Healthcare, major issue, affordable
housing, education.
Poverty rates and trends, wages rates & employment trends by industry, how they
compare to other communities with similar size and economic structure.
(145)Nancy Nusser
Real earning power; minimum wage (how much it has risen, when the last increase
was); underemployment
(146)Pat Thomas
There are the usual ones, the unemployment rates, economic growth of communities,
tax base, the uncompensated care in emergency rooms, number of students on free or
reduced lunch, a whole array of economic indicators, defaults on mortgages you have
to say in recent times.
State and federal unemployment figures.
Any statistics indicating changes in income levels, population growth or shrinkage,
changes in population of school-age children, new-home construction, changes in
poverty-level populations.
The quickest way to attain a federal statistics
breakdown for any community is to pull a fact sheet from this U.S. Census Bureau
web site: www.factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en
And this one: www.quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/09000.html

(148)William Gaines
One source for local stories is the U.S. Census Bureau. A reporter can find the
statistics about income and poverty in the local area and perhaps compare it with
similar cities or towns. The FBI crime statistics coupled with an analysis of the
specific crimes in the local area could be examined for causes. What is the education
and income level of local criminals? What are solutions suggested by town officials
and academic authorities?
12. Where should journalists seek story ideas and resources in their small
towns?
(149)Carol Polsgrove
From local government agencies and nonprofit groups that work with the poor; from
teachers, medical professionals, religious leaders, librarians.
Look at the streets. Go to the churches, schools and charities. Check the census for
zip codes that show highest areas of poverty. Be aware that poverty is not always
concentrated in inner cities. Be aware of new immigrants and refugees, who are often
poor. Check on English-as-a-second-language programsmany without good
English will be struggling with poverty.
(151)Ed Lawler
Church, get to know the clergy in the community. I would imagine in smaller
communities they would have someone responsible for health education welfare of
the community. Keep an eye on crime statistics at PD. Some of the non-profit
organizations might provide stuff on that as well.
(152)Harlan Beckley
They should examine how national policies impinge on the health, education, and
labor markets in their towns. They should learn about transportation problems for to
poor and look carefully at how their healthcare and educational institutions and labor
markets do or do not serve the poor. They should also consider homeless shelters and
food banks, but they should get beyond these typical stories to examine the structural
issues with labor market, schools, after school programs, and healthcare.
They can talk to non-profits, teachers (If they talk to particularly elementary teachers
a lot of those people know horrifying things about what their students are dealing
with.) I think the main thing is to get beyond the official sources. Go talk to people at
the barber shops, beauty salons, go talk to people who run the convenience stores.
Theyre the ones who know the people who are coming in. Talk to people who are
running the food banks. Talk to people at the homeless shelter. IN some cases there
are churches, where some of them are quite involved and know a lot about what is
going on in terms of poverty in their communities.
(154)Leara Rhodes
From the people. What do people want to know? From that you can start putting
together stories. What I learned from the mapping was that there are a lot of well-todo Latino business people in Athens. Then ABH was very annoyed that the Latino
business people didnt buy into Eco-Latino, a biweekly issue for Latinos, mostly
social things. The business people wouldnt buy into so they closed it. Then Brutus
opened up Calientitos down on Lumpkin. He doesnt advertise in any kind of media
at all. Have you ever tried to get in there at lunch? You cant. How can a culture that
relies strictly on word-of-mouth buy into advertising in traditional media forms? They
have to be educated into what can, I mean, its not hurting his business. So are there
other ways in which you can build that business. I think journalists need to be creative
with that. If that isnt what he needs then you need to get to know him and see if there
is anything else that could get the Latinos to advertise.
In poor communities, schools & churches, medical clinics serving the poor, Legal
Aid, police department, street-level community leaders.
(156)Nancy Nusser
I would say again find a non-profit group. Once you find them, if they are partisan
you cant take their side but you can use them for resources. Be aware of
communities. Go to the areas where poor people are, hang out where they are. Hang
out in the Latin district of their communities, restaurants that serve Latin Americans,
schools and kids that come in that obviously come from poor families. There are a lot
of kids who dont have their resources to do their homework at night.
(157)Pat Thomas
I think from everything Ive said, I think the bottom line is to use your powers of
observation in a community. You cant be a reporter in a small town by sitting behind
a desk. You cant be a good reporter in a small community by only writing about the
power structure, like people at city hall. Poor people in most communities are
disenfranchised in their communities. In a town like Athens, very few people in
Athens stop to think that its a majority minority town. There are more black people
than white, yet the power structure, the people in charge, are the white people who
hold the major elected offices in town. Reporters have to not go to the usual suspects
all the time. You cannot just keep going back to the same cards in your rolodex or the
same numbers in your PDA. Churches are potentially great places to pick up stories,
and public parks, classes offered at the library. Library enormous source of stories.
Where people without computers go to use computers.
See the answer to question number 10.
All municipalities house senior centers and social service agencies of one kind or
another, often under the heading of health and human services.
Also, each of the states has agencies that deal with social welfare under one rubric or
another. Connecticut, for example, has the Department of Children and Families,
Commission on Child Protection, Office of the Child Advocate, Office of Health Care
Access, Office of the Healthcare Advocate all in addition to the Department of
Social Services. Personnel in those offices should be able to help a reporter identify
problems and service areas peculiar to their small cities and towns.
(159)William Gaines
A small town resident no longer awaits the arrival of a bookmobile or the Sears
catalogue. Residents enjoy the benefits of cable TV and the Internet. They will be
available to broaden the local story by researching the Internet. Journalists are warned
that they should rely only on government or educational web sites that are identified
by .gov and .edu on the URL line. The minutes of the town board or the county board
may contain discussion of poverty programs and more so the local school district
minutes. From that start, a local reporter might be able to learn of a family that could
be featured about their misfortune. They would have to agree to the interviews or the
reporters efforts would be construed as an invasion of privacy. It might be acceptable
to not name the family, which would not distract from the impact of the story in such
circumstances.

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lack of capability of freedom to function at a minimal level, and behavioral

(Excerpt from e-mail response.)

2. What economic factors most contribute to poverty?

3. A number of public policy institutes focus on poverty. The Urban Institute

Journalism Center on Children & Families at the University of Maryland

4. What aspects of poverty do you focus on in your course?

(Excerpt from recorded interview.)

(Excerpt from e-mail response.)

(Excerpt from recorded interview.)

8. What should journalists know about:

b. Poverty and children?

(Excerpt from recorded interview.)

(Excerpt from e-mail response.)

Poverty breeds crime. White inmates do not comprise the majority

(Excerpt from e-mail response.)

probably would be able to pay it back in small installments it would have

e. Poverty and education?

who live in low-income counties generally dont have as much income

9. What measures or indicators of poverty would you encourage journalists to

about red-lining. Companies that dont see an opportunity to make money in a

11. What key statistics should journalists be aware of?

The quickest way to attain a federal statistics

And this one: www.quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/09000.html

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