Faye Womack, until recently a worker at a houseboat manufacturing company in southern Kentucky, was just laid off, and has no other job prospects in sight. Monica Owen-Head, a college senior, has no idea whether she’ll be able to get a job—beyond her current, part-time waitressing gig—after graduation. Carl Harm, a mechanical contractor from Traverse City, Michigan, has seen his workload drop from twelve houses in previous years to one house last year. Jason Palmer used to be a supervisor at a video production company in Atlanta; after losing his job last year, he turned to scavenging and selling scrap metal to pay the bills.
We meet Faye, Monica, Carl, Jason, and many others in “100 Days: On the Road in Troubled Times,” an NPR series that puts a journalistic spin on that most quintessential of American pastimes: the road trip. In it, David Greene—NPR White House reporter turned national correspondent—travels the country’s midsection, his course guided by input from listeners, e-mailers, and Twitterers, to document the intersection between politics, economics, and everyday life. “In any modern presidency, the first 100 days are considered a yardstick for what can be accomplished in a first term,” the series’ introduction notes. “In 2009, the new president faces a global financial crisis and the need to restore the confidence of Americans.” The series aims to accomplish that classic journalistic goal: putting human faces to an abstract problem. Telling the stories behind the headlines, from the vantage point of those who are living them.
“100 Days” began, as the best road trips do, with an itinerary that left plenty of room for deviation. (“ROUGH plan for my trip down I-75: Rest of this week in OH. Feb 2-6 in KY & TN. Feb 7-11 in Georgia. Feb 12-20 in Fla,” Greene tweeted in January. “Would love ideas.”) It ended up bringing Greene from Michigan down to Ohio, and then to Kentucky and then to Georgia, and finally to Florida. Listener tips, from Twitter and more traditional platforms, have dictated the stopping points: a listener introduced Greene, for example, to Majestic Yachts, Inc., the Kentucky houseboat manufacturer that recently had to lay off all twenty-seven members of its close-knit staff. A chance meeting brought Greene to Dayton, Ohio, to report on the business of a man he met in Michigan. “It’s been fun to just roll with it,” Greene told me.
The final product of that rolling—stories that play out in audio, in images, in text, and in interactive maps before us—is a powerful if unscientific survey of the recession’s effects…not on Washington power-brokers or on I-bankers’ girlfriends, but on people living in those regions that are largely undercovered by the national media. Through Greene’s travels, we meet the people so often caricatured by politicians and, indeed, by the media itself: struggling small-business owners, waitresses, students, and others in the group the media often shorthand as “everyday Americans.”
Greene narrates their stories in such a way—in a manner both casual and intensely personal—as to make us think of them on a first-name basis. And we learn that, despite the challenges they’re facing, Faye, Monica, Carl, Jason and their fellows are still generally hopeful that the economy—and their lives—will improve. “Over and over again, I heard people say they’re not giving up hope—at least not yet,” Greene reports.
“100 Days” leverages its on-the-ground reporting with information-gathering of a more ethereal variety: Greene takes story and other ideas from his (currently) 1,075 followers on Twitter; comments on the series’s NPR Web page; and e-mails and other more “traditional” reporter-source conduits. Which, overall, infuses “100 Days” with a where-the-wind-takes-us spirit and an unapologetically random air. (“Anyone ever sleep at Billie’s Swamp Safari in the Everglades? In a $35 chickee hut? We’re considering it,” Greene tweeted last week. The next day: “Help! Where should we stay on Lake Okeechobee tonight?”)
The trouble I have with these journalistic 'road trips' is that they treat the majority of the country as 'out-there' land . . . messages back to civilization (i.e., Washington, DC) from the wilds. This is the sort of framing narrative, with vocabulary to match, that is the subtext of accusations about the ideological slant of American political journalism . . . 'Middle America' is objectified and subtly marginalized.
#1 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Mon 2 Mar 2009 at 01:16 PM
That's a good point, Mark, one that I think is largely valid: there are few things more annoying/offensive than journalism that, either out of smugness or a lack of self-consciousness--or both--takes an anthropological approach to reporting. And a woefully high percentage of the parachute-into-the-heartland reports the national media produce (cf: campaign season) are guilty of that kind of glibness.
But I don't think "100 Days" is guilty of it. I mean, sure, on the surface, you have a national (even worse: NYC-based!) reporter taking a road trip into the area that Smug Coastals often shorthand as "flyover country," and then reporting on what he finds. The potential for anthropology inherent in that formula is high. But, to my mind, there's absolutely nothing in Greene's reporting to suggest that he's indulged in it, or that he's treated the areas along his route as "'out-there' land" or otherwise marginalized them. To me, the series' stories reflect an earnest desire to learn and report about a section of the country that is all to often overlooked by the national media.
Now, sure, the line between reporting about people and objectifying them is thin...and you're right to be wary of the road trip trope in general. But, then, it's not fair to hold other reporters' transgressions against a piece of journalism that's trying, actually, to counteract them.
#2 Posted by Megan Garber, CJR on Mon 2 Mar 2009 at 03:35 PM
Megan, I appreciate your response . . . the problem for American political journalism is unintentionally reinforced by your reference to places 'often overlooked by the national media'. The people reported on 'are' the nation; they are often overlooked by the NY/DC media, not the 'national' media. Indeed, contempt for 'local' media (provincial, shallow) is a staple of orthodox press criticism.
Yet, if you think about it, NPR is inseparable in its general tone and story selection from its Washington DC environment. The identity of The New York Times relies heavily on an Upper East Side, white, professional sensibility. One has to look askance when a respected publication such as, say, The New Yorker, is critical of Rush Limbaugh or the Republican Party for being 'too white'; there are few 'whiter' voices in the United States than the ones named above. (I'd wager that Limbaugh's listeners are more diverse in socio-economic class and ethnicity than the readership of The New Yorker.) The dominant editorial identity is white, urban, college-educated (social sciences and liberal arts) and affluent. This class of people is seldom, if ever, held up by NPR or similar information sources as worthy of examination as a distinct and recognizable social type, i.e., 'objectified'. As the flag-carriers of Modernism, they are exempt from any suggestion that their own values and ideology are the particular characteristics of a particular class of people - because most journalists on some level belong to that class and accept its assumptions. The urban bias is both intrinsic to 'the media' and unavoidable, I suppose.
This is a problem. No one who relies on the mainstream media would guess that Texas now has a greater population (meaning job creation) and more Fortune 500 companies located there than New York. Texas is still something very alien to the NPR/NY Times sensibility . . . dusty, dry, full of strange people who vote for Republicans. In fact, the states that continue to grow are these weird places in the Sunbelt, and the states that continue to decline are blue and Snowbelt. The big news organizations, however, remain blue-state bound, which means there has been something of a disconnect between journalists and the country they are reporting on, and I think that's a problem.
To its credit, CJR has occasionally pointed out examples of this provincialism, such as referring to any left-wing politician with a southern or midwestern background as a 'populist', though his or her positions may be strictly Martha's Vineyard and Malibu.
#3 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Tue 3 Mar 2009 at 01:20 PM
gee, i wante green to come to my town but don't know how to twitter...
anyway, this town, klamath falls Oregon is amazing. I feel like here I have learned what a community is about-- people help each other here, coworkers are generous w/ their time and their resources. A special place,
#4 Posted by anet, CJR on Wed 29 Apr 2009 at 02:03 AM