In January 2006, I wrote an “outside the tent” op-ed column in the Times about the paper’s lousy coverage of working people. Soon thereafter (I’m not implying cause-and-effect), the paper brought in Joe Matthews to cover the long-vacant labor beat. That was a positive step, and Joe is a good reporter and does an excellent job, but it appears that his beat has been narrowly defined as primarily the link between labor unions and politics—in other words, unions as a political interest group—rather than the way business and the economy impacts the working and living conditions of the vast majority of residents in your circulation area.
In the past, a few of your reporters—Henry Weinstein, Hector Tobar, and Nancy Cleeland, among them—have excelled at this. The recent loss of Nancy Cleeland, who left the paper because she was frustrated by the paper’s unwillingness to cover the lives of ordinary working families, was a serious blow in this regard.
The LA Times has no full-time news reporter covering housing issues, despite the region’s serious housing crisis. It has no full-time reporter covering workplaces, despite the fact that the LA area is one of the most interesting and diverse regions in the country in terms of its occupational and economic sectors. It has no full-time reporter covering low-income neighborhoods—a reporter who can cultivate sources and learn about the daily twists and turns of live in these communities. These are topics that require expertise, knowledge of the subject, and cultivation of a range of sources that cannot happen overnight. They require, in other words, for the Times to make an investment in these beats, these issues, and the people and communities they impact.
In short, when business reporters’ beats are focused entirely on finance and earnings statements, they ignore 90% of what business is. Watching CNBC or reading Sorkin’s work in the Times, you would never know that “business” is the place that actual people work or that the decisions made with respect to those earnings statements hurt those workers, just like they hurt these folks:
I listened to O Pioneers! on my walks with the dog this last week and thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s not as rich a story as My Ántonia—everything seems simplified, though in a good way. The traction that American writers have gotten from of THELAND is really quite astounding, and O Pioneers! is a fair example of it. Take this, from the end:
I’ve lived here a long time. There is great peace here, Carl, and freedom…. I thought when I came out of that prison, where poor Frank is, that I should never feel free again. But I do, here.” Alexandra took a deep breath and looked off into the red west.
“You belong to the land,” Carl murmured, “as you have always said. Now more than ever.”
“Yes, now more than ever. You remember what you once said about the graveyard, and the old story writing itself over? Only it is we who write it, with the best we have.”
They paused on the last ridge of the pasture, overlooking the house and the windmill and the stables that marked the site of John Bergson’s homestead. On every side the brown waves of the earth rolled away to meet the sky.
“Lou and Oscar can’t see those things,” said Alexandra suddenly. “Suppose I do will my land to their children, what difference will that make? The land belongs to the future, Carl; that’s the way it seems to me. How many of the names on the county clerk’s plat will be there in fifty years? I might as well try to will the sunset over there to my brother’s children. We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it—for a little while.”
Carl looked at her wonderingly. She was still gazing into the west, and in her face there was that exalted serenity that sometimes came to her at moments of deep feeling. The level rays of the sinking sun shone in her clear eyes.
Of course, such clear eyes only exist in novels, but what pretty pictures they are! By the time Cather wrote the novel, she was already an accomplished writer and had left Nebraska long behind—her own attachment to THELAND was minimal. But regionalism is only like realism, just as realism is only like reality….
But it is late and I am rambling. It is a good book, but just as important is this: the reader of the audiobook, “rachelellen,” is quite good. I recommend listening for her lyrical performance. If you support Librivox in no other way, at least do its readers the honor of a listen.
In the process, JP also wonders what the change in faculty looks like against college enrollment. Fortunately, those statistics are readily available from NCES, so I put together a couple of quick charts to look at the numbers. First, this is what the last 10 years have looked like when comparing faculty across all universities. It shows what AFT reports, which is that the number of tenure-track faculty (in blue) has basically remained constant, while non-TT faculty (in red) has increased significantly.
Second, this is what the last 10 years have looked like when adding higher-education enrollment (in yellow) to the mix. To put the numbers on a comparable scale, I reduced the enrollment numbers by a factor of 10.
Notice that increases in non-TT faculty track almost point-for-point with increases in enrollment. Colleges are filling in the gaps created by high enrollment with non-TT faculty almost exclusively. Although the number of TT positions has increased very slightly the past few years, the fact of the matter is that tenured jobs across higher-education are indeed becoming more scarce: they represent a smaller and smaller portion of the total number of positions available.
I voted for a tax today. It was a 1% sales-tax increase recommended by the city government and earmarked for flood recovery, matching federal government funds for things like improving infrastructure by the river and relocating one of the city’s wastewater treatment plants.
But it wasn’t an easy decision. When I asked myself whether I would be happier to see the measure pass or fail, I was ambivalent. I am uneasy about sales taxes. Sure, the tax’s advocates said that, as much as it was a tax on us, it was also a tax on out-of-towners who come in to shop, that passing it would get them to help pay for our flood recovery. Similarly, current and former city council members told us we were going to pay for the infrastructure improvements one way or another—better this than utility rate hikes.
But sales taxes are among the most regressive. Everyone must pay them at the same rate, regardless of their ability. And besides, if the choice truly was between a sales tax and a utility rate hike, there is public assistance for the poor to pay their utilities. No such public assistance exists to help the poor pay sales taxes.
Ultimately, I voted for the tax for two reasons. First, last year’s flooding made it apparent flood mitigation really is needed here. Of course, the best way to limit the effects of flooding in the future is to convert as much as the Iowa River’s flood plain to wetlands as possible. But even if that were possible sooner than later, infrastructure improvements to roads along the river will also be necessary. Second, the way the tax was structured, it was in my best interest to vote for it. Every community in the county had to vote for it independently, and the tax would be levied only in the towns and cities where it passed. Its revenue, however, would be apportioned by population, and Iowa City has the greatest population in the county. By virtue of the fact we would benefit most, the tax was much more valuable to us than it was, say, to North Liberty or Swisher.
And I think it is the competitive calculations brought on by the second reason that made me most ambivalent about the vote. The fact the tax was limited to flood recovery was its strength and its weakness: on the one hand, it addressed a very real need in our community; on the other, it tied the hands of the smaller communities in the area.
Anyhoo, the tax passed by six votes. At the same time, it failed in Coralville, where many of the area’s hotels and its biggest mall are, thus scuttling most of the high rhetoric of those who said out-of-towners would help pay for our new public works. Oh well.
When reading stories detailing the entitlement that Wall Street bankersbrokers leeches feel and A Tale of Two Cities at the same time, suppressing the urge to hoist our resident Marie Antoinettes on pikes and parade them down the streets is really difficult. Or better, to drag them by our big shiny trucks. The French Revolution doesn’t get nearly the credit it deserves for its commitment to economic justice.
After the layoffs at my job last week, one of my colleagues decided she was more scared of the future than she was happy with her job. She applied to a different department and interviewed today. Which, incidentally, I am probably not supposed to know. But I do know, and I have mixed feelings about the prospect of her leaving. Is it bad that most of those feelings are positive? I mean, sure, having her would give us some continued stability, but I am not convinced the stability she provides is worth keeping. And I don’t say that just because she and I have never really gotten along.
On a similar note, how does one go about being sympathetic with someone who was laid off if you didn’t contact that person immediately? Because there are a few people I worked with who were laid off, and I still haven’t talked to them about it, and my guilt over that fact makes me hesitate to say anything now.
The city called a neighborhood planning meeting last night; we dutifully went. No sooner were we searching for a table than a couple of young women began following us around the room. “Do you mind if we sit with you? We really want to sit with people our own age.” Saying “Sure” was the first mistake.
One of the women in particular was like a 50-year-old man complaining about the neighbors down the block who don’t mow the grass but every eight days instead of five. No sooner had the meeting started than did she lay into her problems: “There are no playgrounds!” she said. “No one should live less than six blocks from a playground.”
She complained about the violence and ascribed it to “THOSEPEOPLE from Chicago who come to Iowa City because there is a waiting list on HUD money in Chicago, but they can get on the rolls here.” (See a version of the argument here.) She explained that her mom watched the same thing happen in Elkhart, Indiana, and it just broke her heart. “Some people think we can change them, but they just bring their violence here.” She said she didn’t feel safe walking down Wayne Avenue at night—even though Wayne is one of the main feeder-streets into her cul-de-sac neighborhood.
Later, she laid into Hy-Vee. “I boycotted Hy-Vee for four months because their prices were too high. They should be lower.” Her solutions were two-fold. First, she agreed with her friend that we needed more big-box stores in the area. Second, she thought a nice mom-and-pop grocery store would be ideal, presumably because the prices there would be cheaper.
And she complained about traffic lights. And she complained about parks. And she complained about fence ordinances. And she complained about the local elementary school. And she complained about the fact that she had to drive past “low-income housing“—that is, condos and apartment buildings and townhomes and duplexes—to get to “higher income housing.” And it soon became clear that what she really wanted was to live in a different neighborhood.
