65 no longer old

“Vaccines have pretty much ended childhood disease” said Harold Hodgkinson.

As a researcher on demographics and education for the Center of Demographic Policy at the Institute for Educational Leadership, Hodgkinson would know.

Hodgkinson has more professional credentials than projection slides – which seemed endless at his plenary address at the Missouri State PSU Theatre on Friday, April 24.

Hodgkinson explained that population shifts in age demographics are largely in part of the medical advancements achieved towards the first half of the 20th century. After WWII, American veterans returned home to start “getting busy” – starting families and moving to the suburbs. At the time, these population shifts greatly influenced societal values and brought people out from the farms and ghettos and placed them in suburban utopias.

The children born in the two decades after the end of WWII are all grown up now. This shift in population age has its own set of implications we are only now starting to see.  

According to Hodgkinson, “in 2032, 33 percent of voters will be over the age of 65, and only 8 percent will be under the age  of 30.”

So what does this mean for my generation and the generation to follow? A nation ran by blue-hairs. Old farts have always run things, keeping the status quo intact, but now more  than ever to an overwhelming degree.

With social security practically drained, WE (my generation give or take 15 years) will be the ones paying. As Hodgkinson addressed in one, or two, or thirteen of his slides, by the year 2050 there will be just as many Americans over the age of 50 as under.

Someone will have to reap the benefits of this shift. Locally Perkins, Heritage Cafeteria, and any place that takes double coupons are likely considerations to take advantage. Nationally, Florida is practically guaranteed to become the most populated state as more and more seniors move to the coast for retirement.

Television has made the swine flu a crisis simply through the amount of coverage the story has received. Cable news channels have shown hours and hours of coverage since the ”epidemic” started. Local news broadcast update the infected states/death toll list nightly – spreading the fear and interest for more coverage. But don’t worry…”experts” have been making broadcast appearances and participating in Q&A’s  to assure the masses that is everything is ok.

Newspapers are more limited with both time and space. Coverage of the  swine flu in local and national papers are brief and more fact oriented, though I believe some critisism is called for in their coverage as well. As New York Times perfectly provides an example – a newspaper relying more on photograph than word – they have repeatidly printed startling swine flu photos to catch the attention of the masses. (Nuns wearing breathing masks at Mass…the out-of-the-ordinary is screaming for attention printed right on the front page.

To me, this all seems scare tactics, shifting the attention of the masses towards some overhyped illness and away from the real crisis…the economy. Seriously, cough cough – bird flu – cough cough – mad cow. One hit wonder diseases. If only this swine flu turned the infected in to mindless flesh eating zombies…

Police intially arrested Lawler in connection with the assault in February 2008, but prosecutors did not file charges in the matter until late August. Lawler went free.

Lawler went free. Maybe I am looking at this from the wrong angle, but the article seems to imply that Lawler escaped the legal system through fault of the prosecutors – not because he was innocent. There is not enough information in the article to make this sort of implication that Lawler is guilty, and was free (a basic principle and human right in the US of A) because of some legal loop hole.

In my opinion, which doesn’t much matter, Lawler is guilty, but I didn’t feel enough information was presented to make an example of this guy and even post his picture…on the front page.

From here, the Times article is much longer, taking up a whole half of another page, as well as half of the front page. USA Today gives the story a quarter of a page five pages into the D section.

The Times starts its article (5 paragraphs) telling a story that details the character of Dolan from one of his peers in the Catholic Church. USA Today was much more fact orientated, describing who, what, where, and when – including character traits all in the first five paragraphs.

In conclusion, the Times article is longer and more personal in detailing Dolan (probably because he is being named the archbishop of New York – the city the newspaper is named after). USA today is more brief and cuts to the chase, treating the story more like a standard news story and less like a human interest piece.

“They vary in color and are branded with a mark that looks like an S turned sideways (counter-clockwise) with a straight line running beneath the arch of the S-curve, he added. “

“He did not identify the owner of the cattle.”

It was unclear who “he” was throughout parts of the article.

Also, the organization of the article did not satisfy my personal importance of information order. The second paragraph is muddled with information about the breed and weight of the cattle. (They are cows! We know what they look like! I do not need to know they weigh between 1,100 and 1,250 pounds.This seems like a relatively unimportant detail.) Also, the article describes the brand on the cattle – as quoted above – before establishing who the cattle belonged to.

“Responding to critisim and anger over outsize pay and excessive spending at Wall Street banks that have received billions of taxpayer dollars, President Obama on Wednesday put a $500,000 salary cap on top executives at companies that accept large chunks of future government bailout money.”

The sequencing of the lead is long and confusing. It takes 22 words to get to the “Who” of the article – by this time the reader may have already moved on.

A good example of effective lead writing is found just two pages over in the edition of the USA Today. The lead, discussing a car bomb injuring a doctor, reads as:

“The chairman of the Arkansas State Medical Board was critically injured Wednesday when a powerful car bomb exploded outside his West memphis hime as the physician prepared to leave for work, federal and local authorities said.”

This article contains in order the who – chairman of the Arkansas State Medical Board, what – critically injured, when – Wednesday, where – West Memphis, and how – leaving for work.

***Mr. Livengood responded to my blog, not my e-mail (which he never received). His comments are are available under the comments to this blog post.