After writing nearly 500 posts over the last few years on health care, Medicare, and Social Security, I have observed that, for the most part, voices of ordinary people affected by policy changes decreed by elites and passed on by the press have been absent from the discussion. That raised a question: Why and for whom are we really writing? So I turned to Don Barlett, a partner in the legendary reporting duo of Barlett and [Jim] Steele of the Philadelphia Inquirer, later of Time and now at Vanity Fair. They have the distinction of winning two Pulitzer Prizes and two National Magazine Awards, so I figured they could tell me about why their work connected with the public, especially in ways that reportage does not always do today. Their series “America: What Went Wrong” chronicled what was happening to workers in the early 1990s in a period of great economic dislocation. It was later turned into a book. Their new book, The Betrayal of the American Dream, will be out next year.
Trudy Lieberman: What was the key ingredient that made your series, “America: What Went Wrong”, connect with people?
Don Barlett: It brought all the pieces together. One phrase we heard over and over was “I thought this was happening only to me. They thought they were alone.” There’s no question the story hit a nerve because people saw themselves in it. There were 400,000 to 500,000 reprints, and the book was on the best seller list for eight months.
TL: Can you give some specifics about how that series connected so strongly with ordinary workers?
DB: We interviewed workers who had lost their jobs in industries that had given people a solid middle class living. And not high-income jobs. Jim would interview a shoe worker in Missouri and I would interview a glass worker in West Virginia and when we returned to Philadelphia and typed up the notes, the stories were identical.
These industries were the glue that held small towns together. For the first time you saw how government policies were destroying a way of life.
TL: What else was going on?
DB: The news media portrayed this economic dislocation as a temporary recession. But in fact it was structural. In western Pennsylvania, work from a transformer plant was being shipped to Mexico. Wages were being lowered and benefits eliminated. A lot of the blue collar guys had nothing. One called COBRA a fraud. He had just gotten a bill for it which he had a hard time paying. We each spent a lot of time in different parts of the country. Reporting was an ongoing process. We interviewed people who worked in these plants and they were having a problem finding new work. All of a sudden, their lives were turned upside down by forces they never saw coming. The series was very popular with people, but not with economists. That was the last time people still believed their government.
TL: What do you mean by putting all the pieces together?
DB: We looked at who was profiting. Who was making money off these government policies that led to the destruction of people’s lives. This is still going on today. We’ve been getting e-mails from people asking when are you going to revisit this issue. A number of people are saying ‘I just discovered this’ (the old series).
TL: Is the web a good medium for this sort of reporting?
DB: Yes and no. Yes for gathering information. Not necessarily for replacing the function served by newspapers. You need to walk people through a complex issue so they understand it. There’s no walking through on the web. You lose them. It’s a great research tool, but as a communications tool, it leaves much to be desired on serious issues. It’s great for gathering information but someone has to put it together and explain what it means.
TL: Is that being done?
DB: Everybody is trying, but you can’t deal with all serious issues in a sound bite. There are longer pieces but readers are in and out. They don’t seem to be absorbing it.
Don Barlett wrote: Take end-of-life care. The question is “can we afford to spend $80,000 for treatment that extends life for two months?”
padikiller notes: Just look at that word "we" there... That one little word states the commie/liberal cause in just two letters! Leave it to a Pulitizer winner to pull it off!
This one little word presupposes a collective cost to society of medical treatment and collective ownership of the means to pay for this treatment... That the spending of $80,000 to extend an individual life is choice to be made by "us". That the $80,000 in question is "our" money, not the individual patient's money.
WOW!... Now THAT is some commie "professional journalism" for you!
Respectfully, Mr. Barlett, the actual question is more fundamental one. Is our nation going to become a collectivist/communist/socialist nation where individual medical care decisions are made by the government (or one its designated arms)? Or will our nation revert to its founding principles and maintain the individual rights and liberties that drove the capitalism that created the vast wealth that liberals wish to plunder?
#1 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Fri 1 Jul 2011 at 10:19 AM
I think Don Bartlett is correct in his analysis. While the average person has had a harder time just getting by in recent decades, most reporting on that also suggests that economic reality can't be altered by mere citizens. Who are journalists writing for? That's a great question. As DB says, "There used to be moral outrage in the newsroom, but now not so much."
#2 Posted by Suzanne B, CJR on Fri 1 Jul 2011 at 05:52 PM
Barlett has never given an inkling of consideration of the possibility that the measures supported by his bourgeois "progressive" readership may have harmed the people for whom he expresses sympathy. A common failing of ideologically frozen journalism. Instead, it's all about Wall Street, just like in 1937 or something.
If he wants to suck it up and challenge his own predispositions, he might investigate why supposedly reactionary states like Texas are creating jobs, while supposedly progressive states like California are stagnating. If higher taxes and more social programs are the answer, what went wrong in California, one of the most highly-taxed and regulated states in the country? Could it be that hostility to private business - now, I know this is radical, don't have a cow - does in fact drive entrepreneurism to "red" states, or offshore? I've never seen a journalistic investigation which even considers the possibility. Barlett always knows the outcome of the stories he writes before he writes them, in my experience of his work with Steele. So orthodox left-leaning journalism frequently misses the story, as with the strong reaction against Obamacare last year.
#3 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Mon 4 Jul 2011 at 08:21 AM
Trudy, have you ever spoken to anyone who is not far left? I suggest you interview someone with a differing point of view - who knows, you might learn something.
#4 Posted by JLD, CJR on Mon 4 Jul 2011 at 10:57 AM
Hiya jackals.
"padikiller notes: Just look at that word "we" there... That one little word states the commie/liberal cause in just two letters! Leave it to a Pulitizer winner to pull it off!"
Yeah that's how end of life care usually works. "We" pay for it, whether it's through higher private insurance premiums or through increased taxes to fund Medicare - the insurance program that covers a lot of ends of life. You're an idiot that needs to lay off the Glen Beck liquor if you think that describing a social reality makes one a socialist.
"Barlett has never given an inkling of consideration of the possibility that the measures supported by his bourgeois "progressive" readership may have harmed the people for whom he expresses sympathy. A common failing of ideologically frozen journalism. Instead, it's all about Wall Street, just like in 1937 or something."
(paraphrased) "Bitch bitch bitch... LEAVE WALL STREET ALONE."
Give it a rest.
Spin the wheel from 1981 to now and watch what happens:
http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/pages/interactive#/?start=1981&end=2008
The decimation of American manufacturing and the financialization of the American economy that replaced it has concentrated wealth amongst the managers and bankers who run companies using the labor markets of Mexico, China, and the Caribbean to manufacture products for sale in American superstores. There is no sharing of the the wealth anymore between those who make and those who manage and the gains in incomes for 4 out of five quintiles prove it. Managers and shareholders keep the profits, workers get subsistence if they are lucky.
Maybe if you could take your blinders off, you'd see that a society that neglects its infrastructure, its productive economy, and the bottom 80% of its people is a society suffering from acute necrosis.
"If he wants to suck it up and challenge his own predispositions, "
How many examples of industry defining investigative journalism do you have on your resume again? Shut up.
"he might investigate why supposedly reactionary states like Texas are creating jobs, while supposedly progressive states like California are stagnating. "
And if he did, would you like the answer? Because the answers aren't so pleasant to your partisan idiocy when you look into it.
Texas created jobs because:
a) They had regulated banks that prevented the real estate bubble and crash. California has acres of empty foreclosed houses, acres of blight. The Texas economy does not have that drag.
b) Petroleum prices are high. Know of any place with a petroleum industry?
c) Texas created a lot of jobs. "The Texas model added 37% of all net U.S. jobs since the recovery" says Richard Fisher, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Let's see what's that done to the unemployment rate:
http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_&met_y=unemployment_rate&idim=state:ST480000&dl=en&hl=en&q=texas+unemployment#ctype=l&strail=false&nselm=h&met_y=unemployment_rate&fdim_y=seasonality:S&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=state&idim=state:ST480000&hl=en&dl=en\
Well that is funny, it looks pretty flat. Texas has added a lot of low wage jobs and lost a lot of high wage ones, which one of the reasons it faces a huge budget deficit. Why not talk about Wisconsin? They had a higher unemployment rate and they brought it down to 2% points below Texas.
I could go on.
"have you ever spoken to anyone who is not far left? I suggest
#5 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 4 Jul 2011 at 02:19 PM
Well that is funny, it looks pretty flat. Texas has added a lot of low wage jobs and lost a lot of high wage ones, which one of the reasons it faces a huge budget deficit. Why not talk about Wisconsin? They had a higher unemployment rate and they brought it down to 2% points below Texas.
I could go on.
"have you ever spoken to anyone who is not far left? I suggest you interview someone with a differing point of view - who knows, you might learn something."
If the audience wants to hear the same droning right-wing conservative bs, they can tune into almost any news broadcast or listen to almost any politician and, aside from Bernie Sanders, they'll hear the same horse pucky.
Is it really so bad to talk to a legendary investigative journalist instead of the usual yabbering about who called what a dick or a flake?
#6 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 4 Jul 2011 at 02:22 PM
"DB: The news media portrayed this economic dislocation as a temporary recession. But in fact it was structural. In western Pennsylvania, work from a transformer plant was being shipped to Mexico. Wages were being lowered and benefits eliminated. A lot of the blue collar guys had nothing. One called COBRA a fraud. He had just gotten a bill for it which he had a hard time paying. We each spent a lot of time in different parts of the country. Reporting was an ongoing process. We interviewed people who worked in these plants and they were having a problem finding new work. All of a sudden, their lives were turned upside down by forces they never saw coming. The series was very popular with people, but not with economists. That was the last time people still believed their government."
"Barlett has never given an inkling of consideration of the possibility that the measures supported by his bourgeois "progressive" readership may have harmed the people for whom he expresses sympathy. A common failing of ideologically frozen journalism. Instead, it's all about Wall Street, just like in 1937 or something"
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/07/05/auf-wiedersehen-suckas/
"It doesn’t matter, though. Our corporate culture rewards immediate profits and doesn’t care about longterm viability. It doesn’t care about human capital and the things that make a company what it is. If they can save a few million in the short term, goose the executive bonuses for their thrifty leadership, they will do it. And they’ll move on to their next raise before the damage is obvious."
Stories as sad as Mark Richard and Wall Street are out of touch. Societal necrosis is an ugly thing.
#7 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 5 Jul 2011 at 11:43 AM
Barlett (and CJR, and Thimbles) ought to take a look at the Morgensen-Rosner account of the origins of the housing disaster (and recession). It might shake up the frozen left-right stereotypes a little. It's no good just fulminating against 'greed' and Wall Street. People always act in their self-interest in one way or another. The harm is often done when greed and Wall Street are given perverse incentives by politicians - often liberal politicians who think of themselves as well-meaning. (And having congratulated themselves on their tolerance and compassion and so on, feel justified in getting perks of their own as a reward.)
I guess the idea that liberal-left political intentions can produce vicious outcomes, and that liberal-left politics can attract greedy and arrogant people, is still too much for some folks to get their brains around - so much easier, network-TV style, if the world is divided into easily recognizable good guys and bad guys.
#8 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Tue 5 Jul 2011 at 12:42 PM
The "perverse incentives" to which Mark refers are clear:
Forcing private lenders to make loans to underqualified borrowers. There is a more than 30-year history of the federal government doing precisely this.
And of course the outcome of making these loans is utterly predictable - default rates through the roof. And somebody else paying for it.
Watching the liberals both justify the federal intervention into subprime lending and simultaneously discounting its deleterious effect on the market is truly entertaining. A bold and brazen hypocrisy that anyone can see.
Mark is right that people will act in their own interests. Lenders will jack interest rates, costs and fees as much as they can. Borrowers will inflate income and understate expenses as much as they can. And government regulators will do as little as possible. This is just how life works.
The liberals believe that increasing regulation will make free money for someone somehow. If only there were more regulations and more regulators, money would flow from some magical money fountain and all would rejoice in milk and honey. They honestly believe that regulations not only protect social interests (which they do, at least in theory) but also that regulations enhance efficiency (which they absolutely do not).
Anytime you monkey with the free market, you do so at the expense of the economy. There is no question that the federal government's monkeying with the subprime market cost money. This a plain reality that the liberals will never acknowledge, but it is a reality nonetheless.
#9 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Tue 5 Jul 2011 at 04:56 PM
"Barlett (and CJR, and Thimbles) ought to take a look at the Morgensen-Rosner account of the origins of the housing disaster (and recession). It might shake up the frozen left-right stereotypes a little. It's no good just fulminating against 'greed' and Wall Street."
That isn't what she says:
http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/audit_interview_gretchen_morge.php
"So I think that was well-covered and certainly by real-estate reporters. But what I don’t think was well reported was the Wall Street-enabler aspect of it, and the role of securitization, and certainly the questionable practices. I don’t think people understood the degree to which mortgages were being given to people just as long as they were ambulatory or breathing. That was something I think that could have used a lot more coverage earlier on in the game...
The press can’t prevent these kinds of things. Yeah, they can expose the practices and that should have been done more assiduously. But it was this huge momentum that was fed by this demand from investors and this fee machine on Wall Street and among the mortgage brokers and bankers and lenders. So, I can’t imagine how reporters would stop that."
Trudy, Ryan, do you see why CJR should do another Gretchen interview so she can clarify her story?
http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/audit_notes_gutting_blame-the-.php#comment-47036
By the by Mark, how's Texas?
#10 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 5 Jul 2011 at 06:48 PM
Haven't been in Texas lately, Thimbles, but I did motorcycle out to Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. I saw, in addition to the usual neurotics and posers, a homeless man defacating in the street in broad daylight. Somehow I doubt that the NY Times (or CJR) mentality will take such episodes and make them a metaphor for the sickness of an environment, the way I expect they would seize on similar behavior in a red-state environment.
#11 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Fri 8 Jul 2011 at 12:43 PM