2017 in Review

The stats: 93 published columns.

66 at Pacific Standard

9 at CNN

5 at The Nation

4 at Washington Post
2 at The Ladders
1 at The Guardian

1 at The Atlantic

1 at Newsweek

1 at Eater

1 at The Establishment

Writing is very different as a column. I'm grateful to Pacific Standard for bringing me on board and already filing for January. Over the next days I'll highlight a few pieces you might have missed.

Still writing a book, writing a little work-for-hire piece, and a thousand big projects after that.

1. Yes, there were People of Color in Pre-modern Europe (Pacific Standard, 12/29/17)
2. Wil Butler's Disco Town Halls (Pacific Standard, 12/28/17)
3. Feature: Disability and Disaster in the Age of Climate Change (Pacific Standard, 12/21/17) 
4. Facebook won't fight blood libel (Pacific Standard, 12/15/17)
5. Al Franken has Resigned (Pacific Standard, 12/7/17)
6. Here comes Austerity to Kill Us (Pacific Standard, 12/7/17)
7. How to Teach A Cyborg (The Atlantic, 12/6/17)
8. The CFPB Protects Davids from Goliaths (CNN, 11/29/17)
9. The GOP Tax Bill Attacks Graduate Students (Pacific Standard, 11/21/17)
10. Franken Should Resign (CNN, 11/20/17)
11. States of Neglect (The Nation, 11/14/17)
12. The GOP Tax on Disability (Pacific Standard, 11/7/17)
13. It's always been the guns (The Nation, 11/6/17)
14. Indoctrination on Right-Wing Campuses (Pacific Standard, 11/3/17)
15. Immigration Rights are Disability Rights (Washington Post, 10/28/17)
16. Bump Stocks and Sandy Hook (Pacific Standard, 10/27/17)
17. Betsy DeVos Attacks Special Ed (Pacific Standard, 10/24/17)
18. Stop Using Cannibalism to Justify Columbus (Pacific Standard, 10/13/17)
19. White Supremacy and Medieval Studies (Pacific Standard, 10/9/17)
20. Paul Ryan Pretends to Care about Mental Health only after Mass Shootings (CNN, 10/5/17)
21. There are no Natural Disasters (Pacific Standard, 10/4/17)
22. Ohio Politicizes Down Syndrome to Attack Abortion (Pacific Standard, 10/3/17)
23. The ADA is not Optional. (Washington Post, 9/26/17. With Lennard Davis)
24. Headphones and Hamilton (Pacific Standard, 9/25/17)
25. A Week in Policing and Disability (The Nation, 9/22/17)
26. Milo's Phony Rally (Pacific Standard, 9/22/17)
27. 5 Ways for Liberal Arts Majors to Get Jobs (The Ladders, 9/21/17)
28. Do Not Involuntarily Commit The Homeless During Hurricanes (Pacific Standard, 9/15/17)
29. Bodily Autonomy and the Left (The Nation, 9/13/17)
30. Nazis Love Medieval Studies. What Now? (Pacific Standard, 9/6/17)
31. We're Failing Our Test for the Age of CRISPR (The Nation, 8/29/17)
32. Portlight Fights to Save Disabled People After Harvey (Pacific Standard, 8/29/17)
33. Florida Demands Parents Call Their Kids Limited (Pacific Standard, 8/28/17)
34. Google Bros and Medieval Beer Bros (Pacific Standard, 8/22/17)
35. Why We Need to Name Nazis (Pacific Standard, 8/17/17)
36. Are Internet Standards Hurting Accessibility? (Pacific Standard, 8/3/17)
37. 5 Ways to Talk about Disability on the Job Hunt (TheLadders.com, 8/2/17)
38. Sterilizing People with Disabilities in Prison (The Marshall Project, 7/26/17)
39. Feature: The Internet of Restaurants is Coming for your Data (Pacific Standard, 7/25/17)
40. The History of Dyslexia (Pacific Standard, 7/21/17)
41. The GOP Plan for Healthcare is Obamacare (7/19/17)
42. Racist Misinformation about Medicaid (Pacific Standard, 7/14/17)
43. Why I won't raise my son in Illinois (Pacific Standard, 7/6/17)
44. Support Lisa Durden (Pacific Standard, 6/27/17)
45. Block Grants: A History (Washington Post, 6/26/17)
46. ADAPT takes the Senate (Pacific Standard, 6/22/17)
47. Feature: Police Killings: Being Black and Disabled in America (The Guardian, 6/22/17)
48. Can Trump's Disability Commissioner Be Trusted? (Pacific Standard, 6/22/17)
49. The Worst Juice Commercial Ever (Pacific Standard, 6/21/17)
50. Medicaid Works. (CNN 6/20/17)
51. Interview: Seanan McGuire (Pacific Standard, 6/15/17)
52. Feature: Seraph Jones and Ashton Gelfand - Criminalization of Autistic Kids (Pacific Standard, 6/12/17)
53. Donald Trump: You Ain't No Henry II (CNN, 6/9/17)
54. Restaurants Haven’t Lived Up to the Promise of the American Disabilities Act (Eater, 5/31/17)
55. Make Vinland Great Again (Washington Post, 5/31/17)
56. Lower Ed vs Betsy DeVos: What's So Great About Being a Customer? (Pacific Standard, 5/30/17)
57. Colorado ADAPT: Saving Medicaid through Direct Action (Pacific Standard, 5/25/17)
58. Jim Hines: Funny and Serious about Gender in Sci-Fi (Pacific Standard, 5/24/17)
59. Uber's Deregulated Business Violates Disability Rights Law (Newsweek, 5/17/17)
60. Why Read a Utopian Novel in 2017? (Pacific Standard, 5/16/17)
61. ACLU sues New Hampshire for Disenfranchising Disabled Voters (Pacific Standard, 5/16/17)
62. Disability Misunderstood as Bad Behavior (Pacific Standard, 5/10/17)
63. How Many Death Row Prisoners Are Disabled? All of them (Pacific Standard, 5/9/17)
64. In Autism Arrest, Only Thing New was Video (CNN, 4/22/17)
65. Disability Rights on Death Row (Pacific Standard, 4/21/17)
66. "I thought I understood America." Talking American Gods with Gaiman (Pacific Standard, 4/20/17)
67. What should you do when your favorite celebrity gets autism wrong? (Pacific Standard, 4/19/17)
68. Stop Sucking: Environmentalism vs Accessibility (Pacific Standard, 4/11/17)
69. After San Bernardino, We need Fewer Guns, More Empathy (April 10, 2017. CNN)
70. How to Break Ground for Deaf Actors in Hollywood (April 2017, Pacific Standard)
71. Day of the Dead Languages (March 2017, Pacific Standard)
72. The Supreme Court Sets a New Precedent on the Death Penalty and Disability (March 2017, Pacific Standard)
73. Can Disability Rights Stay Bipartisan? (March 2017, Pacific Standard)
74. Disabled Americans: Stop Murdering Us (March 2017, Pacific Standard)
75. Stop Calling Some Needs ‘Special’ (March 2017, The Establishment)
76. Feature: Meet the Radical Disabled Americans Fighting the GOP Health Care Bill (March 2017, Pacific Standard)
77. How Disabled Americans Are Fighting the GOP Health-Care Bill (March 2017, Pacific Standard)
78. The Shows Shaking Up Disability Representation on Television (March 2017, Pacific Standard)
79. Wonder the Goldendoodle and SCOTUS (Pacific Standard, 2/24/17)
80. How to Debunk Myths About Autism (Pacific Standard, 3/6/17)  
81. Academic Jobs Screen out Disabled Candidates (Pacific Standard, 2/14/17)
82. Don't Turn my son's Dancing into Inspiration Porn (The Establishment, 2/8/17)
83. The Wisdom of Science-Fiction in the Age of Trump (Pacific Standard, 2/8/17)
84. Milo and Right-Wing Attacks on Free Speech (Pacific Standard, 2/2/17)
85. Advocacy Groups Confront Trump Dilemma (Pacific Standard, 1/30/17)
86. Interview: Maria Town (Pacific Standard, 1/26/17)
87. Betsy DeVos and Special Education (Pacific Standard, 1/18/17)
88. Down Syndrome and Stories (Pacific Standard, 1/13/17)
89. The Obama Era is Over (Pacific Standard, 1/10/17)
90. How a Prosecutor used Disability to Claim Sexual Assault was just Bullying (Pacific Standard, 1/10/17)
91. Use Streep to Get Real on Disability (CNN, 1/9/17)
92. The New Blood Libel (Pacific Standard, 1/7/17)
93. Facebook Live Attack and Violence against Disabled Americans (CNN, 1/6/17)

Column to Follow: Summer Brennan on Language and Power

"On language and power" has been the tagline of How Did We Get Into This Mess? for years, so I'm always excited when other writers focus in on that specific issue. Here's Summer Brennan, with her new twice-monthly column.

I would like to invite readers to join me in doing this. Get a diary or journal and write down as many words as you can that relate to the things that you value. Fascism favors sameness; it represents a desertification of language and thinking. You can fight sameness with diversity. Inside this thought-desert, we must learn to be jungle oases. If you plan to defend nature, write down the names of birds and landscape as a start. Write phoebe, warbler, wren, heron, starling, swift, swallow. Write dale, dell, coppice, coomb, swale, swarth. Let your language soar and spread. Get closer and write root, leaf, stem, stamen, stigma, filament, sepal, pistil, petal. Write down how the world and words around you change.

We all need our hills to defend. As I intend to chronicle in this twice-monthly column, language will be mine. I’ll be here, wielding pen or laptop under the eye of Big Brother, repeating that two plus two equals four.

Lots of new writers out there and newly elevated writers, as publications invest to cover Trump's America. I really like Brennan's, "We all need our hills to defend" line. Find your lane, whatever it is and whatever you can do (which honestly may be - try to survive, which is enough). Then do it.

"Follow the Money" - What's the First Question?

Focus on Trump's business. Follow the money. Ignore the tweets. Focus on Trump's business. Follow the money. Ignore the tweets. Focus on Tru

— David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) November 27, 2016

So I tweeted this during one of Trump's latest online spewings. A lot of people shared it. Many responded, "Fuck you, asshole, I can pay attention to more than one thing at a time."

This debate has played out across not just social media contexts, but in the formal media, as journalists around the country and the world try to figure out how to cover a candidate who shares inflammatory lies in nearly every context, is completely unashamed by hypocrisy, revels in dominance displays (including his ability to generate controversy), has yet to hold a real press conference, and otherwise is unlike any president of the United States in modern history. I think this was the "millions of fraudulent votes" tweet, but honestly I can't even remember.

It's not that the tweets don't matter, because of course they do. This is, though, a message to journalists not to focus merely on what Trump says, but what he does. It's true that most humans can pay attention to many things at a time, but when Paul Ryan, Kellyanne Conway, or Reince Preibus takes questions (since Trump never will), what's the first question?

• How do you react to Trump tweeting that there were millions of fake votes? 
• How do you react to Trump tweeting that there were millions of fake votes despite evidence?

Or

• The Constitution forbids Donald Trump from receiving foreign payments. How will he resolve that?
• Jeff Sessions has a long history of explicit racism. Should he be AG?
• David Clarke had a baby die in his jail recently. Is he qualified to run DHS?
• Betsy DeVos has never been an educator? What, other than being rich, are her qualifications for DoE?

And so forth. Questions on the ACA, on vaccines, on the 1300 jobs Carrier is sending to Mexico.

What's the lede? What's the headline on A1 of the New York Times? You only get one lede, one headline, one first question, one chyron across the screen. So while individuals can, and MUST, follow multiple storylines at once, there's only one lede.

Right now, Trump has the ability to control that first question through tweeting. I don't think that's optimal. 

Because someday Trump will be bombing people and he'll tweet something inflammatory about, I dunno, Moana or something. How can we help the press ask the right question?

Upcoming Webinar: Disability and Journalism - Telling Better Stories

I'm very excited to announced that I will be joining with Lawrence Carter-Long to offer a free webinar on disability and journalism on May 11, via The Poynter Institute. 

There are 56 million Americans who identify as disabled. Tens of millions more are connected to disability as direct caregivers or family members. Yet journalism about disability is too often stuck in decades-old models that imagine disability only as tragedy, a personal medical problem or something to be overcome. Thankfully, the historical divide between newsrooms and disability activist communities is rapidly becoming an a thing of the past.

In this webinar, we’ll offer better ways to tell stories about disability as identity, reveal key resources for reporting on these stories and see the disability angle hidden within almost every beat.

WHAT WILL I LEARN:

• How to avoid common mistakes that dehumanize disabled individuals
• Where and how to find untold stories about disability in America
• The benefits of understanding disability as identity rather than as a collection of medical concerns
• How to connect disability to other stories in other communities in order to practice intersectional journalism

WHO SHOULD TAKE THIS COURSE:

Every major beat has a disability angle, likely one you haven’t explored. Politics, metro, sports, health, entertainment, even weather (we could tell you stories about snowstorms, Hurricane Katrina and wheelchair-accessible trailers) — reporters who work in any of these fields, and the editors who oversee newsrooms, will find a wealth of new stories at their fingertips once they begin to engage with disability.

Please spread the word. Share the link. We'll be reaching out to people across the disability community to learn more about what YOU want to see journalists do better, but please leave comments, end me emails, tweets, Facebook messages, anything.

I'd especially like to encourage you to think about local journalists. Too often we focus on the big nationals - and that matters, as their patterns shape local practice. But while I follow the nationals carefully, I don't know what's being said or reported on in your particular community. Send links! Send commentary! Send anything.

Thanks.

How to Report on Suicide - A new report

I spend a certain amount of my time critiquing reporting on disability: Inspiration porn, mercy killing discourse, how disability links to police use of force, and of course so much more. My basic premise is that journalism matters, language matters, and often the media fails to handle admittedly tricky topics very well. This is especially true for general reporters, I feel, who might have limited experience handling specific topics.

Suicide is one of those areas where we have strong evidence that reporting can directly influence how other people experiencing suicidal ideation respond, so I was pleased to see this report -
Recommendations for Reporting on Suicide - released last week. It's from a huge array of medical and journalism experts.

Some findings:

More than 50 research studies worldwide have found that certain types of news coverage can increase the likelihood of suicide in vulnerable individuals. The magnitude of the increase is related to the amount, duration, and prominence of coverage.

Risk of additional suicides increases when the story explicitly describes the suicide method, uses dramatic/graphic headlines or images, and repeated/extensive coverage sensationalizes or glamorizes a death. ​Suicide Contagion, or"Copycat Suicide," occurs when one or more suicides are reported in a way that contributes to another suicide.

Covering suicide carefully, even briefly, can change public misperceptions and correct myths, which can encourage those who are vulnerable or at risk to seek help.

Two Ethical Futures for The Mighty

The Mighty is a well-funded website that publishes personal essays about disability. Narratives tend to be parent-driven or illness-driven, but they throw a huge amount of content out at the internet without much editorial oversight. The editors search through the vibrant disability-related blogosphere and ask to republish essays for free as well as publishing essays written directly for their site. As far as I know, they pay no one but the editors, but have substantial venture capital backing and of course are trying to build ad revenue.

There are lots of good pieces on the site, many of them published by authors whose work I adore. Most of it, though, falls into either the positive or negative categories of inspiration porn: feel-good or cathartic tragedy.

On 12/20 they published, "Meltdown Bingo" (cached link), a disability-shaming piece. People reacted negatively, and the editors took it down and issued this apology.

Our goal on The Mighty is to give people a platform to share their stories. It’s a simple objective that’s proven challenging for everyone on our staff because we host thousands of perspectives and opinions, from both disabled and able-bodied writers. We don’t expect everyone to agree on every post. In fact, we like when our contributors’ stories start important, respectful conversations. What we don’t want is to cause harm. Here is where I missed the mark when deciding to publish this submission.

That’s on me. I personally apologize to anyone we hurt with this post. It was not our intention, but we need to take responsibility for our actions. Our community called us on this post almost immediately. Thank you.

This isn’t the first time The Mighty has been rightfully accused of ableism.

And to deny that we’ve been ableist would be, well, ableist.

I don't actually think "give people a platform to share their stories." It's to make money while feeling good about themselves.

In their apology, the editor asked three questions:

• What improvements do you want to see made on The Mighty?
• Which websites and writers are covering this space the right way?
• What are we doing right? If we know this, we can do more of it.

If you follow the hashtag #CrippingTheMighty (started by Alice Wong), you'll see lots and lots of answers to all three questions, but especially the second one. Here's my response.

WOULDN'T THIS HAVE BEEN A GOOD QUESTION TO ASK BEFORE LAUNCHING YOUR WEBSITE COVERING DISABILITY ISSUES?

If you read the "why we created The Mighty" page, the editors discuss their process:

Over the last several months, I’ve bought a lot of drinks and dinners for friends and colleagues. I wanted to pick their brains. These are talented people I respect and trust who do amazing work for the likes of ABC News, NBC News, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Yahoo, Forbes, Esquire, MTV, Disney, Google and more.

We kicked around ideas that all came back to a central question: Could we build a media company that actually helps people?

Those are an impressive list of media companies, but notice how none of those include anyone with disabilities, any disability rights organizations, or anyone from the community they are allegedly serving.

Now I know something about being relatively neurotypical and able-bodied and writing about disability. The process starts, and ends, with accountability. My mentors are Rebecca Cokley, Lawrence Carter-Long, Ari Ne'eman, Alice Wong, and so many hundreds more. I reach out to them, I talk to them. I elevate their voices in my pieces for mainstream media. I mess up. They call me on it. I try to do better. I hold myself accountable to the community I serve as a journalist.

I've never had the sense that such accountability was part of The Mighty's plan. In fact, such accountability would get in the way of publishing inspirational/tragic pieces that drive traffic. The Mighty is happy to publish good pieces about identity and lived experience, but those aren't the money makers.

I see two ethical futures for The Mighty.

One: Support the community. If the editors really want to serve the disability community, they have to center disabled voices, use their platform to signal boost in both directions, and be accountable for what they do. If you read their social media feeds, 100% of their promotions are internal - no sharing of other people's work, no using their platform to say - hey, go check out this great blog post from Non-Famous Writer, etc. It's all internal promotion.

You asked who the good writers are, you got comments on Twitter. Now go talk to those writers and get to work learning from them.

Two: Be professional. Hire disabled editors. Pay your writers a fair wage. Take editorial responsibility for every word on your site, just like a real publication. Do whatever you want, but be transparent about your professionalism and stop exploiting disabled and non-disabled bloggers alike.

Because what you're doing now is causing damage to the community you allegedly are here to support, and you can't paper those wounds over with apologies.

Universal Design for Writing About Humans

The National Center for Disability Journalism at Arizona State University has released a new style guide for writing about disability. Here's the press release. There's also a "words not to use" document.

As a disability-rights journalist, I like the NCDJ a lot. They do great work and this is an important guide. These tools are absolutely necessary. People want to know "the correct term."

Of course, correct terms aren't always possible. There continues to be a vibrant debate within the disability community on person-first vs identity-first language, for example. While I don't think it's possible, or desireable, to get past these lists - it's great for journalists and editors doing quick checks on appropriates style - the release has made me wish for a universal design for writing about other humans.

My principles:

Ask.
Listen.
Respect.
Don't assume I know the answers.
Check preferred pronouns.
Hold myself accountable.
Take criticism graciously.
Always try to do better.

If I were a clever chap, that would be an acrostic. Instead, it's just a set of aspirational goals for how to write about other humans.

What did I miss?

Writing About Murder: Mercy Killing and Killer-Centered Stories

Yesterday 11 Alive News Atlanta wrote a story about the murder of Dustin Hicks with the headline: "Dawsonville mother kills son, self, in possible mercy killing." They followed that with the lede: "Murder-suicide or mercy killing?"

As social media began to comment on the phrase, the headline changed to "Dawsonville mother shoots disabled son, self." Later, they also re-wrote the lede. Here's my blog, with screenshots, on the story. Here's a link to the news item as it stands now.

My motto: write victim-centered stories. The phrase mercy killing, although indeed the murderer may have felt he or she was doing a mercy, is not something that should be blithely tossed about by journalists. Moreover, stories that fixate on the killer and his or her issues, rather than the life taken by the killer, is always the wrong way to go.

Here's another killer-centered story from a mother who murdered her child. This one took place in an Arizona hospital. Whereas the Hicks murder took place in a big house, so at least we can say there wasn't abject poverty, this story is tougher. Still, the coverage immediately leaps into looking to explain motives, using the child's disability to explain.

There is a time and a place for talking about services, about stress on parents, about the need for more community engagement when it comes to caregiving. That time isn't right after a murder. No journalist should imply that killing a person with disabilities is a mercy or justified. 

Disability Journalism: Rose Eveleth on not writing ableist garbage

Rose Eveleth has become one of my favorite writers on technology. Lately, she's been  focusing specifically on prosthetics. It's an area that technology is rapidly transforming. It's great to have deeply thoughtful journalists reporting on both the science and the social implications.

In this blog post, she reflects on what she's learned on her beat and how not to write "Ableist garbage."

1. No Inspiration Porn. (Here's my intro to that topic and disability journalism). Eveleth writes, in regards to prosthetics: "It can sometimes feel like these stories are not inspiration porn, they don’t fit the mold, but they are all about making able bodied people feel good about the world via the application of technology to a person they assume must be struggling and unhappy."

2. Remember what prosthetics are for. It's not just about cool tech saving the world, but helping people who need them.

3. Talk to amputees. "Often, as science journalists, we get really hung up on a particular kind of expert: the scientist, the doctor, the engineer. These people have expertise, sure, but they only have a certain kind of expertise. The patient has another kind, and a kind that is just as important."

Read the whole post!

Disability Journalism Award - 2015 Winner is ProPublica on School Restraint

Arizona State University hosts the National Center for Disability Journalism, an excellent group doing important work. The NCDJ offers the only annual journalism award for Disability issues - the   Katherine Schneider Journalism Award for Excellence in Reporting on Disability - and have announced the 2015 winners.

A ProPublica story that uncovered the shocking ways children with intellectual disabilities are physically disciplined in schools across the country has won top honors in the 2015 Katherine Schneider Journalism Award for Excellence in Reporting on Disability...

ProPublica reporter Heather Vogell’s first-place story, “Violent and Legal: The Shocking Ways School Kids are Being Pinned Down, Isolated Against Their Will,” profiled Carson Luke, a young boy with autism, who sustained broken bones after educators grabbed him and tried to force him into a “scream room.” The story underscored the common practice of educators secluding and physically restraining uncooperative school children, sometimes with straps, handcuffs, bungee cords or even duct tape, documenting hundreds of thousands of cases a year.

The ProPublica story is, in my opinion, the most important piece of disability journalism of the year. It's the kind of detailed, data-driven, investigative work that we so need, and it's important that it be recognized by awards like this. I read it when it came out and will obviously be referring to its findings in my book, as it's a terrible invocation of the cult of compliance.

I'm also very pleased with the Honorable Mention - on the legacy of Eugenics in North Carolina. This history isn't known well enough and isn't really in the past. Stories of forced sterilizations in prisons and other contexts keep emerging.

I am less thrilled with the second place winner on "Saving Evan." It's typical mom-vs-autism stuff. Moreover, the format - as you scroll pictures scroll up into your view and then away again - is extremely hard on my not-entirely-neurotypical visual processing centers of my brain. Maybe someone with better eye-brain connections can read it more closely and let me know what you think.

(Note: Of course I apply for this award. I don't expect to get it. Properly, they have always given it to full-time journalists rather than people doing commentary like me. I'd vote for full-time journalists too!).

#WJCHAT - Disability and Journalism

Tomorrow at 5 P.M. PT I will be guest hosting #wjchat, a "chat for web journalists on Wednesdays at 5 p.m. PT. We talk about all things content, technology, ethics, & business of journalism on the web." The topic will be disability and journalism.

I invite people from he disability community to join and talk to journalists about what's going on with disability-related journalism and how we can all do it better. I also ask that you be prepared to listen, and to help make this a useful teaching moment.

See you tomorrow night!