Award
Winners
1999
MEDIA AWARD
NATIONAL
LEVEL -- LONG-TERM ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Leonard J. Hansen
Copley
News Service
Durango, CO
ASA
on occasion will recognize a journalist whose work has consistently been a
significant contribution to increasing general public awareness of aging issues.
This year ASA is honored to recognize the work of Leonard Hansen with a Long-Term
Achievement Award.
Leonard Hansen is a founder
of the mature market newspaper field. He has specialized in writing to, for
and about mature adults for 25 years. His "Mainly for Seniors" column is in
its 14th year of weekly syndication to 200-plus newspapers by the Copley News
Service. His body of work for this past year includes articles on retirement,
caregivers, osteoporosis, financial planning, nutrition and fitness, Alzheimer's,
telemarketing and mail fraud, and community service. Through his weekly column,
he has encouraged others to pursue coverage of aging issues, improved the
media's understanding of the current and future impact of an aging America,
and increased public awareness of the life circumstances of older Americans.
Len founded the award-winning
Senior World monthly newspapers in San Diego in 1973, and served as editor
and publisher for 11 years, increasing the circulation from 60,000 to 200,000
copies each issue. His book, Life Begins at 50: A Handbook for Creative Retirement
Planning, is in its 10th year of national sale.
He has received 72 journalism
awards, including three National Press Foundation Fellowships. He is a 1999
Fellow with the Alicia Patterson Foundation. The foundation was established
in 1965 in memory of Alicia Patterson, editor and publisher of Newsday, to
support independent projects of significant interest. Leonard Hansen will
be doing an investigation of telephone, mail and Internet investment fraud
of older adults.
Len's bachelor's degree
is from San Francisco State University. He has taught broadcasting at San
Francisco State, journalism at San Diego State University, and media and communications
at Fort Lewis College.
In the Media Award Winners
Symposium at ASA's 1999 Annual Meeting, Len discussed the changing and challenging
scene of media and mature Americans.
NATIONAL
LEVEL
John
Wasik
Consumers
Digest
Skokie, IL
In
his article, "The Crisis in Long-Term Care," featured in the May/ June 1998
issue of Consumers Digest, John Wasik explored the many facets of the problem,
including the increasing proportion of aged patients in the population, the
climbing rate of Alzheimer's disease, the burden on family members, the high
cost of long-term care, and the variation in quality of nursing home care.
He also looked at Medicaid, support services, resources and alternatives to
standard long-term care. He discussed health insurance for long-term care,
financial aspects, and how to rate a nursing home.
He also explored what
needs to be done on a national level, including reforming Medicaid to cover
optional care, providing more support for the HCFA, creating more incentives
for private savings and insurance for long-term care, increasing federal regulation
of the long-term care insurance industry, and integrating long-term care and
healthcare. To prepare this report, the author visited several facilities,
examined reports of more than 17,000 facilities, and interviewed experts and
state agencies in all 50 states and in the District of Columbia.
The report is comprehensive,
readable, factually accurate and very informative. Consumers Digest is a widely
read publication, with approximately 1.4 million paid circulation. This article
informed a great number of Americans and created a real public impact. After
the special report appeared, both President Clinton and Secretary of the Department
of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala held a White House press conference
to announce numerous measures to increase enforcement of nursing home violations,
echoing many of the findings and suggestions in the article.
In his Media Award Winners
Symposium presentation at ASA's 1999 Annual Meeting, John Wasik discussed
the difficulties in gathering and analyzing information on long-term care
facilities and insurance.
Honorable
Mention
Marilyn Gardner
The
Christian Science Monitor
Boston, MA
In two entries, Marilyn
Gardner addresses two complex issues that are undergoing profound changes:
family caregiving and retirement. Finely executed, the pieces reached a large
audience with memorable stories that shattered stereotypes.
The Page One story, "More
Families Take Care of Elders Across the Miles," covered a subject infrequently
treated by journalists: long-distance caregiving. As more families scatter,
more caregivers find themselves shuttling between two cities to care for aging
relatives. The effects on their careers, their spouses and children, their
bank accounts, and their own well-being can be profound.
The five-part series,
"New Outlooks on Retirement," showed that retirement is in the midst of a
revolution. Although many retirement watchers predict that the most dramatic
changes will come when baby boomers retire, the seeds of revolution are being
quietly sown by the generation before them (people now in their 50s and early
60s). They have been called the silent generation and remain largely invisible
in media coverage of retirement.
For many in this generation,
old patterns of mobility that once drew retirees to Florida and Arizona are
giving way to a preference for four-season climates. Similarly, old patterns
of activity centered around golf and leisure are being replaced by more purposeful
combinations of part-time work, continuing education and meaningful volunteer
activities. These new expectations promise to give retirees fuller, more active
lives, and to enrich those around them as they remain contributing members
of their communities.
In her symposium remarks
at ASA's 1999 Annual Meeting, Ms. Garner focused on the challenges and solutions
in long-distance caregiving.
LOCAL/REGIONAL
LEVEL
Maureen West
The
Arizona Republic
Phoenix, AZ
Aging
and retirement issues are regularly front-page news at The Arizona Republic
through the work of Maureen West. Her dedication to aging issues has included
extensive university research at Stanford as a Knight Fellow and regular attendance
at national aging conferences. She methodically digs into the economic, demographic,
social, physical, and mental health aspects of an aging population in the
United States and the world. She recently traveled to Japan to study the effects
of aging and reduced childbirth on that society, particularly in regard to
the lessons that might be useful to America and other aging societies.
This year Ms. West is
being honored for a superb body of work that reflects a depth and breadth
of understanding that is a model for other journalist with interests in the
age beat. Her well-researched and thoughtful stories usually run on the front
page with color photographs. They connect on an emotional level with the readers,
judging from the many reader responses.
Often, her stories break
new ground. The Japan article, for example, she was the first in the nation
to describe the demographic problems underneath Japan's economic woes. It
was followed by similar articles in the New York Times and elsewhere. She
wrote about John Glenn's probable space flight a full six months before the
NASA announcement, thanks to her contacts in aging health research.
Through a continuing series
of articles on end-of-life care, a conversation has been started in Arizona
about how people's final days can be improved. She organized an entire Sunday
opinions section on that topic, writing an opinion piece and the editorial,
and finding contributing writers. The following Sunday, an entire page was
devoted to letters from readers sharing their own experiences.
Because Arizona is home
to many retired people, The Arizona Republic has an opportunity to provide
informative and stimulating coverage of aging issues. Ms. West's 25 years
as a thoughtful editor and reporter and her total dedication to aging issues
has made for a winning combination in Arizona. She created the age beat at
The Arizona Republic.
In her Symposium at ASA's
1999 Annual Meeting, Ms. West addressed how one reporter convinced her editors
that the paper could make an important contribution to the coverage of aging.
Honorable
Mention
John
A. Cutter
St.
Petersburg Times
St. Petersburg, FL
John Cutter's entry included
two articles on driving as well as a piece on Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, author
of On Death and Dying. In these articles, John Cutter exemplifies excellence
in writing, a thorough knowledge of his subject matter and a sensitivity that
brings the people and issues alive for the reader.
The driving articles arose
because of a continuing concern in Florida over older drivers and a growing
body of research about them. Cutter wanted to show a few things he thought
were missing from the discussions: What does driving mean, socially and emotionally
to an older person; what do you do if you can no longer drive; and how bad-or
good-are older adults behind the wheel and why? He was looking to shatter
some stereotypes, which were captured in the first few graphs of the story,
"The Keys to Freedom." Readers came to understand that driving is about more
than mobility, it also is about how people feel about themselves and their
aging-a topic seldom addressed in media depictions of the "older driver problem."
After the stories appeared,
agencies reported an increase in calls for courses like 55 Alive/Mature Driving
and for volunteer rides. Although the Florida Legislature never took up the
testing issue in great detail in the past, there was renewed interest after
the series appeared.
Like the driving series,
the purpose of the Kubler-Ross story was to provide insight into a topic many
of us think we know well-in this case, death and dying. Facing her own death,
the story was a way to make people understand that this debate started long
before Dr. Kevorkian. For readers to see Dr. Ross struggling with her disability
and her apparent desire to die perhaps helped them look at the complex issues
surrounding death, dying and assisted suicide in a different way, in shades
of gray rather than in black or white.
John is founding member
of the Journalists Exchange on Aging. He recently left the St. Petersburg
Times to become a full-time freelance writer. His first assignment is a book
for Scribner on human diseases and conditions. He is finishing his master's
degree in gerontology at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
