ELON COLLEGE – When Brad Hamm asked people in three regions of North Carolina what was on their minds, he got a surprising answer.
“The people said the economy is not as good as the media is saying it is,” says Hamm, an assistant professor of communications. “More people lack health insurance, people are working harder and longer but their true income measures haven’t grown.”
That questioning and the resulting answers are the basis for a series of stories that will be published by The Hendersonville Times-News, Lexington Dispatch and Wilmington Morning Star during week of Nov. 7-14. The New York Times Regional Newspapers division, which owns the papers, had asked Hamm to serve as the series’ reporting coach.
“The title of the series is “Left Behind,” and it looks at the people who didn’t benefit from the explosion in the economy,” Hamm says. “These people work every day but are falling behind. That goes against the grain about what we believe about the middle class.”
Hamm spent a week in each of the communities covered by the papers and accompanied reporters on their interviews. He also wrote two of the lead stories for the series.
Hamm and the reporters found people struggling in a time when stock market is soaring, corporate profits are high and overall unemployment is low.
“Textile communities are being devastated by plant closings that happen almost monthly,” he says. “Farming communities are in even worse shape. Farmers are saying it is their worst year since the Depression. That’s true for almost every crop and livestock. Quotas are down, yield is down and the price is down.”
Hamm says entire communities in these three regions have been built around farming and textiles and these industries are dying. “We don’t have a clear answer on what to replace them with.”
-30-