- Questions for Bobby Ampezzan
- Though you work in television and radio, how does print journalism remain relevant in a world absorbed by electronic media?
- When can curiosity take you too far?
- One significant observation I made was the presence of low-skilled workers among low-income workers, and the expectation of failure in these jobs. The training Ehrenreich goes through at the maid job implies the low expectation of success, and the high expectation of failure. She even begins to ask the question of “how poor are my coworkers” (pg 77). This section of the chapter helps me develop a couple of assumptions regarding the working poor. For one, there should be no “income sector”, numerical, specific set of numbers that describes the working poor. Men and women who live paycheck to paycheck because of their low wage jobs are the working poor, simply because they are working and they are poor. There are variety of types of people in differing levels of poor that work these low income jobs.
- The author uses details greatly in this story. Her way of describing cigarrettes not only makes you almost smell them and want one, but see the price people pay to smoke them. She mentions the health and legal complications smokers go through via intense detail and strong language. She also uses detail in describing a sense of community; these smokers were not at all together (I don’t think) at any point during the interviews, but it feels as if they are sitting around a table sharing stories. The issues smokers face imply a sense of community because they are all suffering together.
- Census Data
- United States: The national amount of workers in the wage band given is 12,053,642, 10.2%
- Arkansas: 154,017, 13.5%.
- Washington County: 9,712, 11.6%
- I intend to interview a few of the servers at Iron Skillet in Fayetteville.
Data Journalism Backup Site
Here is my optional tagline
This is an interesting question for Ampezzan: When can curiosity take you too far?
This is a provocative idea and we should discuss this more in class. It is an expansive definition of “working poor” and I would like to explore how we would define this and operationalize it for our reporting.
” For one, there should be no “income sector”, numerical, specific set of numbers that describes the working poor. Men and women who live paycheck to paycheck because of their low wage jobs are the working poor, simply because they are working and they are poor. There are variety of types of people in differing levels of poor that work these low income jobs.”
I would write the Washington County section in this format: Washington County has 9,712 households, or about 12 percent of the population, earning around the minimum wage, or between $15,000 to $24,999, according to a 2016 U.S. Census estimate. This is below the state average of about 13.5 percent of households earning this minimum wage band but it is more than the national average of 10.2 percent.
Interviews: Good approach for the Iron Skillet servers. Let’s get some names and start talking!