Al's Morning Meeting

What a great topic, and what an opportunity to explore the effects of a run-up in food prices this year. The price of food is increasing faster than it has in 17 years, and there doesn't seem to be much relief. Economists predicted an increase of 4 percent this year, but that was already reached in May.

The paper says:

The face of hunger in Maine is varied. It's elderly people who pay so much for rent, heating, gas and medicine that there's not enough left every month for nutritious food. It's young families with parents who, between them, hold down three or four jobs, but need to frequent food pantries and soup kitchens to get the food they need. It's veterans like the 85-year-old man in western Maine who doesn't want to be identified.

"I just barely make it," the veteran says in a whisper, his red-rimmed eyes squinting in the bright light from his kitchen window. "There's a lady from the food pantry who brings ... all kinds of stuff, once a month, cereals and soups and all that stuff. If they didn't bring it to me, I'd just have to get by best I can."

"Best I can" for this elderly veteran is a refrigerator filled with two eggs, a few bottles of salad dressing, some margarine and a packet of baloney that belongs to a young man who is staying in the house for a few days. There's a little cereal in the pantry, too.

The veteran's son says, "He doesn't get the food he needs, he's missing a lot of different vitamins ... Right now he has enough food for another couple of days, he's down pretty close."

This project is unique, not just for its depth but because it was written by the paper's opinion page editor. The paper explains:

"For I was hungry" documents the depth and breadth of hunger in Maine, from the dramatic increase in food pantries to the thousands of children who come to school hungry to the elderly with bare cupboards.

In one way, "For I was hungry" is not a typical newspaper series. Most series are written by news reporters or a team of reporters. But this series was researched and written solely by the Opinion page editor and not only reports the facts of hunger in Maine, but also editorializes about what should be done about this sad and urgent problem.

The explanation continues:

Opinion page investigative series are rare at newspapers of any size, but nearly unheard of at small daily newspapers like ours. Usually, only metropolitan newspapers with Opinion page staffs of half a dozen or more can free up a writer long enough to delve deeply into a single topic. But this newspaper made a commitment to the community three years ago when I published our vision statement. We want, I wrote at the time, to become "distinguished papers of our size; we go beyond standard news coverage with journalism that informs, probes and provokes."

"For I was hungry" is one way we can fulfill that vision.

The reader comments were interesting. The bulletin board comments were not very soft-hearted. Readers pressed for answers as to why the women featured in the piece had money to smoke and watch cable TV but not buy groceries. They wondered why a son would charge a parent rent when the senior citizen didn't have enough money to buy food. None of these are bad questions, and I think we as journalists have to press the subjects of our stories for these kinds of answers, or the message of the story gets lost.

Who is Hungry?

As background to the Maine story above, I am posting some findings from a 2006 study published by America's Second Harvest (A2H) food bank, the largest network of emergency food suppliers in the nation. The study was based on 52,800 interviews with A2H clients and 31,000 questionnaires completed by agencies that help collect and hand out food.

Here are some of the findings:

• The A2H system served an estimated 24 to 27 million unduplicated people annually, with a midpoint of 25.3 million. This includes 22 to 25 million pantry users, 1.2 to 1.4 million kitchen users, and 0.8 million shelter users.

• Approximately 4.5 million different people receive emergency food assistance from the A2H system in any given week.

• 36.4 percent of the members of households served by the A2H National Network are children under 18 years old.

• 8 percent of the members of households are children age 0 to 5 years.

• 10 percent of the members of households are elderly.

• About 40 percent of clients are non-Hispanic white; 38 percent are non-Hispanic black, and the rest are from other racial groups. 17 percent are Hispanic.

• 68 percent have incomes below the official federal poverty level during the previous month.

• 12 percent are homeless.

• Among all client households served by emergency food programs of the A2H National Network, 70 percent are estimated to be food insecure, according to the U.S. government's official food security scale. This includes client households who are food insecure without hunger and those who are food insecure with hunger.

• 33 percent of the clients are experiencing hunger.

• Among households with children, 73 percent are food insecure and 31 percent are experiencing hunger.

• 42 percent of clients served by the A2H National Network report having to choose between paying for food and paying for utilities or heating fuel.

Want to know more? Click here for America's Second Harvest media center. Click here to find your local A2H food bank. In 2005, NPR did a project, "Hunger in America," that is worth a look and listen.

Car-seat makers enjoy a rare advantage among companies. Theirs is the one children's product every parent, by law, must use. And many parents assume all seats are equally safe, so they choose based on what fits their budget or matches their car's interior.

But the willingness of some executives to dismiss warnings about potential hazards means parents can buy a car seat without knowing all the risks. At the same time, regulators have left consumers in the dark by failing to develop safety ratings for seats or significantly toughen crash tests.

As a result, the device designed to protect the most vulnerable passengers in a car is tested by the government in fewer crash scenarios than the car itself or its seat belts.

Regulation of car-seat manufacturers largely boils down to self-reporting. A car seat can break into pieces during crash tests, the Tribune found, and its maker doesn't have to report those results if the tests fell outside the narrow parameters of the government standard.

By examining the test reports of some of the largest car-seat makers, internal company documents, depositions and public records, the paper gained rare insight into the inner workings of the industry -- and to decisions that can compromise safety.

The Web video that accompanies the print story shows how to install a car seat properly, how to buy the right seat and how to find out if the seat your child is using has been recalled.

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 on the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.