Newsweek reports:
Many former soldiers are finding it difficult to return to 9-to-5 America.
The number of disabled vets from all wars deemed "unemployable" by the
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs tripled from 71,000 to 220,000
between 1996 and 2005. Unemployable vets receive about $2,393 a month,
with the total cost of the program now $3.1 billion a year (up from
$857 million in 1996). That staggering price tag doesn't include the
bulk of recent vets from Iraq and Afghanistan who will enter the system over the next few decades.
Many of those now receiving benefits aren't able to work because of their disabilities, and a majority are over age 60.
The story adds:
It's difficult to
gauge how much of an impact the new generation of war vets will have on
the VA's already strained system. More than 150,000 military personnel
are now serving in Iraq and Afghanistan,
and the total number of troops who've rotated through either country at
some point since September 2001 will definitely be much higher. About
18,000 military personnel have already been wounded in both conflicts.
And many injuries like post-traumatic stress disorder may not surface
until well after their homecomings.
Meth NOT an Epidemic?
Could this be right? A new study says meth addiction is not as big a deal as the media and politicians claim it is. The study, conducted by a group called The Sentencing Project, which supports alternative prison terms for drug users, says four times more people use cocaine and 30 times more people use pot than meth.
Still, The Associated Press reports:
Among men arrested in Phoenix, 38.3 percent tested positive for
methamphetamine. Figures for other cities are: Los Angeles, 28.7
percent; Portland, Ore., 25.4; San Diego, 36.2 percent; and San Jose,
Calif., 36.9 percent.
But nationally, just 5 percent of men who had been arrested had meth
in their systems. By contrast, 30 percent tested positive for cocaine
and 44 percent for marijuana, the report said, citing government
statistics.
Read the report [PDF].
The State of Father's Day
The Census Bureau says half of all Father's Day cards will come from sons and daughters. The rest will be from wives, grandkids and such. Some other Father's Day facts:
- The number-one gift on Father's Day is neckties. The necktie is to Father's Day what flowers are to Mother's Day.
- The Census Bureau says tools and sporting goods are also high on the Father's Day gift list.
- There are an estimated 143,000 stay-at-home dads now.
A number of other organizations have resources on the importance of fathers.
The Alabama Department of Human Resources says:
The chief predictor
of crime in a neighborhood is the percentage of homes without fathers.
Up to 70 percent of adolescents charged with murder are from fatherless
homes. Up to 70 percent of long-term prison inmates grew up in
fatherless homes.
Click here for a state-by-state breakdown of fatherhood trends, from the Web site of Indiana senator Evan Bayh. Warning: It is not pretty.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families listed these 10 fatherhood facts, from the National Fatherhood Initiative's 2004 factbook:
1) Twenty-four million children (34 percent) live absent their biological father.
2) Nearly 20 million children (27 percent) live in single-parent homes.
3) 1.35 million births (33 percent of all births) in 2000 occurred out of wedlock.
4) Forty-three percent of
first marriages dissolve within fifteen years; about 60 percent of
divorcing couples have children; and approximately one million children
each year experience the divorce of their parents.
5) [More than] 3.3 million
children live with an unmarried parent and the parent's cohabiting
partner. The number of cohabiting couples with children has nearly
doubled since 1990, from 891,000 to 1.7 million today.
6) Fathers who live
with their children are more likely to have a close, enduring
relationship with their children than those who do not. The best
predictor of father presence is marital status. Compared to children
born within marriage, children born to cohabiting parents are three
times as likely to experience father absence, and children born to
unmarried, non-cohabiting parents are four times as likely to live in a
father-absent home.
7) About 40 percent
of children in father-absent homes have not seen their father at all
during the past year; 26 percent of absent fathers live in a different
state than their children; and 50 percent of children living absent
their father have never set foot in their father's home.
8) Children who live
absent their biological fathers are, on average, at least two to three
times more likely to be poor, to use drugs, to experience educational,
health, emotional and behavioral problems, to be victims of child
abuse, and to engage in criminal behavior than their peers who live
with their married, biological (or adoptive) parents.
9) From 1960 to 1995,
the proportion of children living in single-parent homes tripled, from
9 percent to 27 percent, and the proportion of children living with
married parents declined. However, from 1995 to 2000, the proportion of
children living in single-parent homes slightly declined, while the
proportion of children living with two married parents remained stable.
10) Children with
involved, loving fathers are significantly more likely to do well in
school, have healthy self-esteem, exhibit empathy and pro-social
behavior, and avoid high-risk behaviors such as drug use, truancy and
criminal activity compared to children who have uninvolved fathers.
Celebrating Dad's First Father's Day: For new fathers, some nice ideas. (You have to scroll down the page a little bit to get to all the information.)
About.com provides inspirational quotes about fatherhood. I like these ones, in particular:
Jewish Proverb
When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry.
Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh
The most important thing that a father can do for his children is to love their mother.
Clarence B. Kelland
My father didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.
Anonymous
4 years: My Daddy can do anything!
7 years: My Dad knows a lot… a whole lot.
8 years: My father does not know quite everything.
12 years: Oh well, naturally Father does not know that either.
14 years: Oh, Father? He is hopelessly old-fashioned.
21 years: Oh, that man-he is out of date!
25 years: He knows a little bit about it, but not much.
30 years: I must find out what Dad thinks about it.
35 years: Before we decide, we will get Dad's idea first.
50 years: What would Dad have thought about that?
60 years: My Dad knew literally everything!
65 years: I wish I could talk it over with Dad once more.
And now, a gift-giving tip from Al:
In my family, we have
a rule. It is not a guideline, it is a rule: "Never buy anything for a
holiday or a birthday that can be used for meaningful work
(examples: iron, mixer, drill, hammer or hacksaw)." I recommend this to
you.
Hospital Infections
The Consumers Union
(the same group that publishes Consumer Reports) is pressing harder for
hospitals to lower their infection rates. The Consumers Union reports that Colorado, Connecticut, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Alaska, Tennessee, Ohio, Rhode Island and Massachusetts all passed or are considering legislation this year to require public disclosure of infections in hospitals. Pennsylvania and Florida already have such laws.
The Consumers Union says 90,000 people die every year from infections they get while they're
in the hospital. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) has launched
a campaign to urge hospitals to get focused on lowering that numbers.
As a result, CU says, lives are being saved, but thousands of hospitals
do not participate. The Consumers Union reports:
Even though 3,000 hospitals have volunteered to participate in IHI's
campaign, not all have made the commitment to follow the infection
reduction practices advocated by the group. Approximately 2,000 U.S.
hospitals are not participating in the campaign at all. More lives
could be saved if all U.S.
hospitals followed the IHI identified practices proven to prevent
surgical and central line infections, and ventilator associated
pneumonia.
But there's a lot more that hospitals could do to minimize infection
risks and prevent needless patient suffering. A good place
to start would be making sure that doctors and nurses clean their hands
between every patient. Studies show that hand washing compliance
rates are generally less than 50 percent. How can patients
have any confidence in the care they receive when basic hand hygiene is
neglected so often? Hospitals also should step up their efforts
to reduce the spread of antibiotic-resistant infections by using proven
methods of screening incoming patients and isolating those with
superbugs from other patients.
Ultimately, efforts such as IHI's must disclose hospital-specific
results. The public deserves to be informed about the results
each participating hospital is achieving -- simply put, the extent to
which infections are actually reduced. Last February, IHI named
14 hospitals that reported zero infections associated with ventilator
treatment after following the IHI infection prevention practices.
Revealing the outcomes for all participants will provide the strongest
incentive for hospitals to do more.
Related stories:
Paper Discloses Ethics
Here is an idea that any newsroom/Web site could consider. It comes
from Al's Morning Meeting reader and Poynter ethics fellow Dean Miller, executive editor of the Post Register of Idaho Falls, Idaho.
The paper not only
has published its ethics policy, it has built an interactive page that
allows readers to see what that ethics policy means in a real story.
Just click around the page's links, and you will see little explanatory paragraphs saying why the
paper published the story the way it did.
The Web site also includes "enforcement cases" based on the enaction of specific items in the code of ethics.
I interviewed Dean via e-mail to learn more:
Al Tompkins: Why did you put this online?
Dean Miller: For internal and external reasons.
Internal:
Updating an online document is a lot easier and more reliable. When I
showed this to a colleague at a global media company, she was kicking
herself. She had just shipped thousands of dollars worth of little
tabbed ethics binders. On Tuesday, part of my newest staffer's
orientation was to sit down and work through the entire site, including
the interactive portion. No matter where he is, he knows exactly where
to find it and any time I update it, I just send an all-staff email and
direct people to the amendments.
External: A.)
Ease of use. This much text would be daunting if printed on dead trees.
But readers can decide how deeply to dig, using the structure our Web
designer, Aaron Avery, concocted. And it's reusable. They can quickly
find the material even a year later if they have another question.
B.)
The Medium is the Message. I am loyal to brands like UPS and FedEx that
give me lots of information when I want it. This is 24-hour customer
service, the way I see it.
C.) The Message: We welcome constructive criticism and we encourage readers to watchdog the press.
What has the reader response been like?
I wrote a full-page summary three weeks ago for the benefit of those who aren't online.
Response
to that was overwhelmingly positive, with many folks saying they found
the code of ethics interesting and reassuring. Readers love those
ethics discussions and I've already had two emails from readers who
articulated their criticism based on materials from the Web site. It
raises the level of the discourse substantially.
Some newsrooms worry that if they publish a code of ethics, some
lawyer will use it against them sometime. What do you say to those
concerns?
If
you have a code of ethics, any lawyer with a brain will get it in
discovery anyhow. Can you imagine explaining to a jury why you
refused to give up your code?
Publishing
it on the Web tells plaintiffs and their lawyers that you're not afraid
of your own code of ethics. And more importantly, it tells your readers
that you are aspiring to high standards, that there are reasons for the
decisions you make and that you're eager to hear what they think of
your interpretation of the Code. Anyone who reads it has to be struck
by how idealistic the press is, and how complicated the decisions can
be.
What has the internal (newsroom) reaction been to publishing "enforcement cases" that involve your staff?
Context
is everything. I moved out of my office years ago. I sit in the middle
of things, so there's lots of opportunity for discussion. For good and
for ill, this is not a union newsroom, so all these conversations take
place face to face, not through intermediaries. Plus, with a wife on
the school board, everybody knew my disclosures would be front and
center.
More
importantly, it's a newsroom that reads and understands the findings of
the Readership Institute's work. Plus, being in a small town means you
regularly run into the people you write about, so you know about
distrust.
I
think that when we noted the kinds of disclosures required of public
officials, and all for the same reasons, it made sense to the news
staff.
Frankly, most of us are so poor that we don't have anything to disclose. And disclosing spousal conflicts is just fair play.
So I can't say it was popular, but it was not seen as a big deal.
How does this kind of disclosure build reader trust?
Time will tell. The initial response has been very strong, but I haven't got science to back that up.
There were those on staff who worried this would just open up more opportunities for Mainstream
Media haters to sow distrust and innuendo. But that's the same argument
secretive government officials make against open meetings all the time.
I hope that this pushes other public institutions to be more open.
One-Second Commercials
I spotted this little item in Advertising Age:
Clear Channel is discussing the idea of one-second radio spots with marketers and media buyers.
The real value of the Blinks, as they are being called, may be in the
publicity they can generate. After all, you're already reading an
article about them, and the short spots are only in the concept stage. ...
The Blinks could be used in a number of ways. Clear Channel's Creative
Services Group crafted a demonstration spot using the McDonald's
jingle, minus the "I'm lovin' it" language, and placed it between one
hip-hop song and another. The group also created a Blink for BMW's Mini
Cooper with a horn honking and man's voice saying "Mini," and placed it
before miniaturized news reports. (Neither marketer has a deal with
Clear Channel for Blinks.) Other audio mnemonics that could use Blinks
are the Intel chime and the NBC bells.
The story says:
Jim
Gaither, director-broadcast at Richards Group, has been in conversation
with Clear Channel about three-second spots. "It's not building a
brand; it's refreshing a brand," he said, adding: "You can't use a
one-second campaign for something that generally has not been
advertised before."
You also need frequency, because if you
just hear a sound and nothing else, the message is going to have to be
driven into the consumer, Mr. Gaither said.
I
think this could work. When I was a boy growing up in Kentucky, I could
listen to the WWL radio station in New Orleans. They would tell you the time
by announcing it as "King Edward Cigar time." See? I still remember it.
I could think of a few others that might work:
See/hear lots of old commercials with great one-liner themes here.
More Thieves Stealing Metal
I am fascinated with
how many stories my readers have sent me about thieves stealing metal,
especially copper, from construction sites. This one topped them all.
Al's Morning Meeting reader Elizabeth Jardina tells me:
Last month in Hawaii, a thief stole copper wire from light poles along the freeway, causing the freeway to go dark.
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas,
edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites,
as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes
directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be
provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends
upon the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors
and inaccuracies found will be corrected.
