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Poverty in America
C-SPAN will feature 3 hours on the topic of Poverty in America Sunday, October 2, 2011 on C-SPAN 1 from 7am - 10am (EDT). Announcement from C-SPAN:
Poverty in America This Sunday, October 2, C-SPAN's Washington Journal program presents "Poverty in America", looking at the face of poverty and the Federal, State, and community programs aimed at reducing poverty. Poverty by the Numbers 7:45am - 8:30am ET on C-SPAN A look at the recent Census data showing a record 42.6 [sic, 46.2] million people are now living in poverty in America. We’ll look at the demographics of who is living in poverty, how the face of poverty has changed since the economic downturn and how poverty is measured. Federal Programs & Poverty 8:30am - 9:30am ET on C-SPAN A discussion on federal poverty-related programs: what they are, how much they cost, and their efficacy in reducing poverty. Programs to Fight Poverty 8:30am - 9:30am ET on C-SPAN A look at one of the many community programs to help fight poverty and how they partner with the federal government. We feature the "Half in Ten" campaign, which aims to cut poverty in half in ten years.See also: Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010 (Sept 13, 2011) Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010 Current Population Reports, P60-239, Issued September 2011. Census.gov › People and Households › Poverty Main Continue reading
Proposed Cuts to GAO
Proposed cuts to Congress's investigative arm spark protest, By Alexander Bolton, The Hill (09/29/11).
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Republican, Sen. John Hoeven (N.D.), have crafted legislation to cut Congress's budget by 5.2 percent, or $200 million. Nearly $42 million in savings would come from the GAO budget.Hat tip to Benton. Continue reading
Separating what we do from how we do it
There are a lot of parallels between journalism and librarianship and between newspapers and libraries in the digital age. In a recent article, one journalist has suggestions for journalists that, I believe, have analogies for librarians. One useful idea: the need for mentors (with lots of experience) for the new generation of librarians.
- Why we need to separate our stories from our storytelling tools, By David Skok, Nieman Journalism Lab (Sept 28, 2011). In the digital world, the tools we use to tell the world's stories -- Twitter, Google, Facebook -- control us as much as we control them. I am a digital journalist, and I’m enthusiastic about what our new platforms can provide us in terms of telling stories. But I also wonder whether we’re letting our tools define, rather than serve, the stories we tell. ...Twitter, Google, and Facebook -- to take the most prominent examples -- are wonderful tools that open up a whole new universe of communication, interaction, and reporting. But that's all that they are: tools. And they are tools, of course, that are provided by profit-driven companies whose interest lies as much in their own benefit as our own. ...And the onus is on digital journalists to welcome veteran reporters into the future’s fold -- to help them navigate the new tools that will inform, if not define, the shape journalism takes going forward. But the onus is also on digital journalists to learn from the veterans -- to learn reporting methods and narrative techniques and skills that have nothing to do with Google or Facebook or Twitter, and everything to do with journalism as it's been practiced throughout its history. The veterans may not be able to show you how to create Fusion tables, but I can promise that, from them, you'll learn something new that will help your reporting more than the latest tools ever could.
- Curate for What Ails Ya, By Ben Yagoda, Chronicle of Higher Education Lingua Franca blog (September 28, 2011). [The web] has developed in a such a way that raw data are sorted and organized not by human hands but by algorithms (number of page views, number of thumbs-up, Google's secret sauce, Wikipedia's universal access and veto power) that are certainly democratic and often useful, but just as often bring in too much noise and too much funk. Curating the word and curating the phenomenon suggest a welcome recognition that some situations demand expert taste and judgment.
House Revamps Floor Feed
Eric at Sunlight Foundation Labs reports on a massively improved feed of live updates from the House floor.
- House Revamps Floor Feed, by Eric, Sunlight Labs, (09/27/2011).
- Feed of Live Updates
- XML feed
Private Sector Supports Public Data
A recent Farm Foundation Forum, sponsored by The Farm Foundation, addressed the issue of "Data Collection on Agriculture in a Time of Fiscal Constraints." A presentation [pdf] by Tom Wegner of the private company Land O’Lakes, Inc. addressed the value of public data, the challenges to data collection, and the impacts and consequences of cutbacks in the collection of public data. Wegner noted that public data from the USDA is reliable, objective, consistent, timely, and unbiased, and widely available for all. He said that Land O'Lakes uses public data for business planning, risk management, and evaluating policy options. He concluded by saying that Land O’Lakes is strong advocate of continuing public collection of agricultural data. An audio file of the Forum is available. It is very nice to see the private sector recognizing the value of public data at a time when many politicians are challenging, not just the funding of data collection, but the very idea that the government should be involved in such activities. See also: Farm Foundation Briefing Focuses on Agricultural Data, COSSA Washington Update, Volume 30, Issue 17 (September 26, 2011) The Consortium of Social Science Associations. Continue reading
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