Ann Claire Johnson

1.30.18

HW: Blog Post

Advanced Reporting

1. Two questions for Bobby Ampezzan about how Arkansas Public Media works, what experience you need to publish there, etc.

• If I wanted to write for Arkansas Public Media, are there any publications I should avoid working at prior to this one?
• When applying to write for Arkansas Public Media, does it help or hinder me to be more creative with my writing?

2. At least one question or a significant observation on reporting on the working poor from Ch. 2 of Nickel and Dimed.

• One scene in the book that stood out to me was when Earl is talking about the kitchen. I think that the way she is observing this situation and that she notices how shanty this house is tells us how different it is to her previous life style. “We go into the basement of the ramshackle combination motel and boardinghouse, where Earl indicates a closed door—the kitchen, he says—but we can’t go in now, because a guy is sleeping there. He chuckles, as if sleeping in kitchens is just another one of the eccentricities you have to put up with in the landlord business” (Nickel and Dimed, 55).

3. List two examples of how the NY Times writer uses detail in The Holdouts. For example, how does she describe cigarettes? How does she describe a sense of community?

• The is how she describes high expectations followed by disappointment, “But, like a parent with a gifted child who doesn’t live up to expectations, she has been occasionally disappointed. She expected a meritocracy, where hard work and intelligence rule the day, and found that whom you know and how you present yourself can best the best. The smoking rules, too, bring back a few memories of her childhood.”
• This is how she describes the urgency to smoke cigarette despite it not reaching the peak of it’s popularity yet, “There was a time, not so long ago, that no one lingered, cigarette in hand, between the MetLife buildings on East 24th Street. They smoked at their desks, or, later, in a smoking lounge. Then in 1995, City Hall started rolling out its restrictions and the herding began: big room to small room, inside to outside, public to private, acceptable to anathema.”

4. Chart with census income: find your assigned county’s median income, the number of people in $15,000-$24,999 wage band, and the percentage of people in the $15,000-$24,999 wage band, compare to state and national averages. –BONUS: Visualize this in Tableau, upload graphic

• My county was Crawford county. They have 3277 people in the $15,000-$24,999 wage band, and the percentage of people in that wage band is 13.9%. Compared to the state average of the number of people in that wage band (154,017), Crawford County counted for 1/47 of it. Compared to the United States number of people in that wage band (12,054,642), Crawford County Counted for 1/3679 of it.

5. Identify a low-wage worker you intend to interview for the class

• I will be interviewing a stripper from the Gentleman’s Club. (Strip Club)