Over at TOS On Tour my former boss and a damn good editor and journalist is posting a must-read diary about his trip to South America. He’s in southern Peru now, amid stunning poverty and the physical destruction wrought by a magnitude 7.9 earthquake on Aug. 15, 2007.
Peru is one on a long list of commodity-rich countries that have a hard time maintaining consistent economic growth due to the gyrations of global demand for the kinds of things it has to sell: minerals, steel, textiles and energy commodities like natural gas and crude oil. Even when times are good, as they have been in recent years, countries like Peru have a hard time spreading their modest transitory prosperity among their own people. The percentage of Peru’s population living below the poverty rate in 2007 was 45%, according to the CIA Factbook. Its 2007 per capita gross domestic product of $7,800 was higher than Columbia, the Dominican Republic and many African nations facing similar economic realities. Not surprisingly, the poverty rates among those nations are similar. For reference, the United States’ poverty rate was 12% and its per capita GDP in 2007 was $45,800.
TOS makes the point that, “Different doesn't do justice to the void between life in Peru and in the U.S. Alien would be much more like it, and damned if the commenters on newspaper sites wouldn't approve of the usage upgrade…. Flat out destitution -- and worse, less hope for improvement than any poor folk in America.”
I believe him when he writes that because he has seen both places. I have to say, though, that it is hard for me to fathom when I think about places like New Orleans, or Appalachia, or even parts of Chicago’s own West and South sides. Breathtaking poverty exists here as it does there, and in some places I imagine the outlook isn’t much less bleak than in a place like Pisco.
Perspective is key. It’s hard to hide a reality like 45% of your population living below the poverty line. When the figure is 12% one must look harder, along Lower Wacker Drive, for example, or in building vestibules early in the morning; on the ventilation grates along E. South Water Street, just off Michigan Avenue, or in the stairwells leading down to the Randolph Street commuter rail station; in the nooks of the city’s railroad bridge underpasses, and in the vacant lots along the Orange Line southwest of downtown, where blue tarpaulin tents and little islands of trash appear, disappear and then reappear, depending on the day.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t see this as a competition. Poverty is poverty, no matter where it is or how well it is hidden. TOS’s descriptions of the conditions in parts of Peru got me thinking about some of the things I’ve seen here, that’s all.
I’m looking forward to reading more as his trip progresses.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Caution: Fork Ahead
I’m losing my job. They’re closing the website where I work with nine other journalists. Lucky me, though: they’re phasing us out. While most of my coworkers will be out of work as of Friday, I will, to the best of my knowledge, have a job until Dec. 31, at which time I will be given my walking papers and my (rather generous) severance package.
For all of us whose sweat, tears and cuticles have mixed with the sandwich crumbs and spilled pop inside our QWERTY keyboards, it’s decision time. What’s next?
I find myself in the rather unusual position of being able to see what’s coming. Most of my coworkers had two weeks from the date they learned they would be losing their jobs to the end. They have had to quickly recover from the shock of it all and get down to the serious business of finding jobs to pay bills and care for families. As things stand now I have the time and the money to plan.
Having been a tool of the Man pretty much since I left daily newspapers in 2000, I have little interest now in continuing that relationship. I might consider going to work for my old boss, were the right situation to present itself. I think daily newspapers as they are now are pretty much fucked. Wall Street has extorted whatever easy profits were to be had and left journalism’s carcass rotting in the sun. Public companies should not own newspapers because public companies are beholden to shareholders, not readers. Owning a newspaper is a civic undertaking, and as far as I can tell most shareholders aren’t interested in civic undertakings (I should add, at least as it relates to their investments). So I will avoid stepping into that mess for now.
Good journalism, especially local journalism, does have a future. I could see trying to get some money together to start an online community news service. It might incorporate written stories, photos, audio and video posted daily to a website and emailed to subscribers, plus a once-a-week print publication with all of the previous week’s written stories and photos. It’d be a shitload of work for me, but I’d make sure it was done right.
Another option is to freelance, to write what I want to write but never find the time for. Maybe it’s a novel, maybe it’s a piece on the Chicago music scene. That’s appealing, but also a ton of work to make it pay. Also, I have no freelance contacts as of now; I’d be doing a lot of cold calling.
Those are the two top options at this point, provided I manage to benefit from the twin luxuries of time and money in the way I think I might. They’re both romantic, pie-in-the-sky thoughts. But what the hell? I’m 37, nearly 38. It’s time to dream a little, and maybe turn the dreams into something real. My cousin Julie (herself a talented writer) has been encouraging on this point. She and I are kindred spirits, artists struggling to emerge from our respective cocoons and fly toward the bright light of the possible.
The key for me will be to overcome The Fear. I have supportive people around me, though, which makes it all easier to contemplate. That fork in the road ahead is real, but I have plenty of warning. These next few months are gonna be real interesting.
For all of us whose sweat, tears and cuticles have mixed with the sandwich crumbs and spilled pop inside our QWERTY keyboards, it’s decision time. What’s next?
I find myself in the rather unusual position of being able to see what’s coming. Most of my coworkers had two weeks from the date they learned they would be losing their jobs to the end. They have had to quickly recover from the shock of it all and get down to the serious business of finding jobs to pay bills and care for families. As things stand now I have the time and the money to plan.
Having been a tool of the Man pretty much since I left daily newspapers in 2000, I have little interest now in continuing that relationship. I might consider going to work for my old boss, were the right situation to present itself. I think daily newspapers as they are now are pretty much fucked. Wall Street has extorted whatever easy profits were to be had and left journalism’s carcass rotting in the sun. Public companies should not own newspapers because public companies are beholden to shareholders, not readers. Owning a newspaper is a civic undertaking, and as far as I can tell most shareholders aren’t interested in civic undertakings (I should add, at least as it relates to their investments). So I will avoid stepping into that mess for now.
Good journalism, especially local journalism, does have a future. I could see trying to get some money together to start an online community news service. It might incorporate written stories, photos, audio and video posted daily to a website and emailed to subscribers, plus a once-a-week print publication with all of the previous week’s written stories and photos. It’d be a shitload of work for me, but I’d make sure it was done right.
Another option is to freelance, to write what I want to write but never find the time for. Maybe it’s a novel, maybe it’s a piece on the Chicago music scene. That’s appealing, but also a ton of work to make it pay. Also, I have no freelance contacts as of now; I’d be doing a lot of cold calling.
Those are the two top options at this point, provided I manage to benefit from the twin luxuries of time and money in the way I think I might. They’re both romantic, pie-in-the-sky thoughts. But what the hell? I’m 37, nearly 38. It’s time to dream a little, and maybe turn the dreams into something real. My cousin Julie (herself a talented writer) has been encouraging on this point. She and I are kindred spirits, artists struggling to emerge from our respective cocoons and fly toward the bright light of the possible.
The key for me will be to overcome The Fear. I have supportive people around me, though, which makes it all easier to contemplate. That fork in the road ahead is real, but I have plenty of warning. These next few months are gonna be real interesting.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
