Fundamentals of Interactive Journalism

By Anastasia Economides and Karina Ioffee

The economy may be in a freefall, but tourists from all over the world are continuing to flock to New York City. They come for the iconic sites such as the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, and of course, the world-famous shopping in Times Square.

The euro exchange rate plummeted this summer and has not fully recovered.

Although the value of the euro against the dollar has fallen since July, European tourists especially are still finding good deals in the Big Apple.

 In Times Square, German tourist Nicolas Wallens said he booked his ticket earlier this year, and despite the financial turmoil, never considered canceling.

Nicolas Wallens, Tourist

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Seventeen-year-old Charlotte, who is visiting from England, said she had been planning to splurge on some clothes while in New York. Now, she says, she has to be a bit more careful with her money.

Charlotte, Tourist

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Tour guides are also singing the blues. At the Empire State Building, Selemi Adediq, 30, an agent for CitySights NY, a tour bus company, said that he had sold only three tickets by 4pm on a recent Friday. And because Adediq’s income is based on commission, less tickets means less money in his pocket.

Selemi Adediq

Selemi Adediq, Tour Guide

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For more information on how tourism has declined over time, check out the December report from the New York City Economic Development Corporation.

I don’t if you guys heard but we are in a recession. And I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t save any of  my money. 

To a large extent I have cut down on some expenses since school started and I stopped making real money. But there is still health expenses, and living expenses which take a huge cut out of my monthly budget. Obviously there are things I could do to pinch pennies, but truthfully I just don’t think to do it. 

I’m not sure if it was just something I’ve never thought to do, but I sure know I was never taught to do it. There was always a sort of “figure it out on your own” mentality in my family.  

I figured out credit cards really quickly on my own when I took out a bunch at the tender age of 18 and one month and spent a lot of money I didn’t have. Still paying one of them off seven years later. 

Yet in times of economic crisis, a person’s savings become incredibly important to livelihood. When push comes to shove that’s what is going to help people get through. 

I hear about my friends in severe debt from school, or credit cards and I wonder, is it an American thing? or a generational thing? 

The Times has a great interactive series on the crisis called “The Debt Trap.” The series includes an amazing graph that shows most Americans have an average savings of $392 dollars per year and around $120,000 per year in debt. What? That’s insane to me. 

CUNY’s own Barbara Raab has some good things to say about saving money, but she also notes that it isn’t easy being thrifty.

 I think the solution is really to start teaching people about money, credit, and saving at a young age. I know that a class in high school on this stuff would have helped me much later on. 

But maybe the recession will force us all to re-evaluate our spending habits, and when we (if we) ever get the economy back to into an upswing I’ll be sure to put some money in the bank and keep it there. Hopefully there are lessons here we can take to heart and actually remember. 

Until then we always have the sage-like Suze Orman to help us. 

It’s Christmas down at Union Square! Or is it? The 13th annual Holiday Market with it’s candy cain colored tent tops and bright lights scream Christmas, but inside the booths retailers are singing the holiday blues. They say there’s traffic, but the bells on the cash registers just aren’t ringing often enough.

A large portion of my CD population consists of senior citizens.  As the older, wiser generation, I figured these people, who have experienced the cost of living rise and fall while presidents came and went, may have a more reliable outlook on how we’re faring out.   

Are we really going through some rough times?  Can it be compared to the Great Depression? I spoke with three elders who went through the Depression and all agreed that life is definitely more difficult today.

92-year-old Betty Priori from Sunnyside is a retired furrier who worked until the age of 73.  She was first pushed into the working world during the Depression when her family faced foreclosure.

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She said that life is harder today in that people need more money. “My children almost lost their home, but thank god their mortgage was paid.  My daughter is working two jobs, I expected them to have an easier life.”

Annabel, 91, who withheld her last name, recalls her mother taking care of four children.  Her father died of the influenza epidemic. 

“Whatever she gave us, we ate.  Sometimes it would be a box of sardines” for dinner, she said.  Annabel added that other times it may be tomato herring, which would be sold as two pieces for a dime, and with those two pieces, her mother would make four sandwiches out of them.

She believes it isn’t any better today financially and continues to accommodate.  “I don’t complain, if I can’t afford it, I don’t buy it,” she said.  Annabel is worried about her Medicare, and doesn’t believe it should be privatized, as it is hard enough for people to come up with money to pay for insurance, according to her.

 During the Depression, Carmelo Deprima earned nickels by shining shoes in Manhattan.  He is now dependent on his Social Security check to pay for rent, which increased in the past few months.

Here is Deprima comparing shelter and food needs back then and now:

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In light of the financial situation, when Deprima is not eating reduced-fare meals from the senior center, he makes soup. “My [late] wife used to cook…now I cut down on cold-cuts and Entenmanns’s cake.” 

Yet, when referring to the younger generation, he predicts the cost of living will only get worse.  “I feel sorry for you people.  I’m glad at least I already have one foot in the grave.”  

self-inflicted? maybe so.

Self-inflicted implies that I may have played a direct role in the current economic turmoil. I have not had the chance to set up shop to supply a demand in the service industry other than my small world of hand-to-mouth activities. I have been able to participate as a consumer and through the years I have consciously moved slowly, carefully considering wants versus needs. For example, I want the new digital camera system and it’s excellent new line of lenses- I need a back up hard drive for the files my current camera has already created.

Lately in thinking a bit more about this basic idea of wants versus needs, I have re-considered my eating habits. Do I need to eat a steak? What is the real cost behind the dollar value to the food I want to consume? Where are the cows coming from? In what conditions do they live? What can the people near the cow farms afford to eat?

This idea was probably born after watching a documentary made in Africa directed by Hubert Sauper. The film is appropriately called “Darwin’s Nightmare” and introduces a microcosm to the capitalist trend of consumption. Darwin’s Nightmare sheds light on a delicacy fish, the Nile perch which thrives in Tanzania’s Lake Victoria, the largest tropical lake in the world. The fish was dropped into the lake in the 1950’s in order to farm the fish and export lavish fillets into European markets. Through the years the perch fed on the native fish diminishing the food supply of the local communities of fishers.

You can begin to see how the story unfolds; many were left with little food and had to resort to feed off the perch carcasses thrown away by the packing company, the film has a scene where women and children dig around maggot infested fish bones for food.

So the situation here is this- while some nice family sits over a beautiful, healthy fillet, the local community where that fish comes from feels a direct impact- poverty and starvation.

So back to my thoughts, what are the needs I have and what are the wants?
Who are the communities involved, how are they negatively affected by my buying power.

So how can I take these thoughts into action? Baby steps. I try to support the independent farmer as much as I can by going to the farmers markets. Even though it costs more, I support organic farms. I love the fact the my eggs come from chicken that walked even if it went nowhere, nonetheless defined “free-range.”

I feel that my buying power is what makes me a participant in the economy.

I also encountered a very similar reaction from a low-income local while working my beat in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Martin D. said “We didn’t own nothing before, we’re not gonna own nothing now.”

But responsibility lies on all of us who live in capitalistic societies sitting back while others decide for us. I hate to admit this, but perhaps this is exactly what we need to wake up and consider our roles and errors in living beyond our means. What we can’t afford is elected leaders who make bad decisions.

This entry is in response to the blog posted by Mary Stachyra on Spetmeber 25, 2008

http://blogs.journalism.cuny.edu/interactivefundamentals/2008/09/25/our-economic-crisis-a-self-inflicted-wound/

This past Thursday afternoon I headed downtown to take pictures of a protest of the Wall Street bailout for a class assignment. I arrived early and found a couple of guys offering fliers to passersby near the bull sculpture at Bowling Green. They told me they’d learned about the event online and didn’t know exactly who had organized it. As I waited for the action to begin, I watched tourists taking photos of their friends standing next to the bull’s hindquarters or groping its legendary testicles.

Eventually protesters, journalists and onlookers began gathering at the site. The crowd of demonstrators included Socialists, members of Code Pink and other anti-war groups, and individual New Yorkers angered by the proposed government rescue of financial institutions. Spectators looked on curiously as cops advised people to stay out of the street. (more…)

I made the mistake of looking at my IRA portfolio yesterday.

Let’s start by admitting that I was not the most financially savvy individual. I was well into adulthood before I got rid of credit card debt and started putting money into a savings account. While people my age were putting down their first payment on an apartment, I was buying a copy of “Money for Dummies” and schooling myself on compound interest. I even forced myself to watch Suze Orman on Oprah. This was it, I thought. I was going to be responsible and save.

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