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Becoming a Window: A Journalism Student's Journey to Becoming a Reporter for the Modern World
Writing and Civic Engagement | 2015
A one-year Master’s program intended to allow one to, well, master journalism is not a whole lot of time—in fact, according to Anjali Shastry, it is “hella, hella, hella fast.”
And it’s even more intense when it’s 3,000 miles from where you spent your whole life. A graduate student at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, Shastry is in the midst of this rigorous rite of passage in her quest to leave her mark on the world. The lead political reporter for Merrill’s Capital News Service’s Annapolis Bureau, she’s also written for other state publications, namely, the Greenbelt News Review and the American Journalism Review, and juggles an internship with Voice of America doing social media. With already such a wide array of publications under her belt since graduating UCSB last June, one would think she’s been gearing up for a prominent journalism career for a very long time.
Not so: “I didn’t mean to get into journalism,” Shastry says, “—that was a complete fluke.”
“My entire life, I’ve known I wanted to write, that I wanted to do things with words. And I come to college, I’m an English major—I’m just like, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do.’ Maybe I’ll get a Ph.D. Maybe I’ll be a novelist. Maybe I’ll be an editor.”
Things changed, however, after her freshman year and a friend encouraged her to join UCSB’s newspaper, The Bottom Line. Before she knew it, Shastry had become one of the most respected members of the Editorial Board. “A quarter in, I was a staff writer; a quarter after that, I was Features Editor; and then a quarter after that, I was Opinions Editor.” The welcoming, personal environment she found herself in at TBL allowed her to “cultivate this love of journalism on its own” and sparked a greater desire to produce words not just for the sake of it, but to have real-world effects, joining the campus’ Word Magazine and The Catalyst literary publications. Within a couple short years, biking between on-campus Editorial Board meetings has transformed into a four-day-a-week, Taylor Swift-fueled, 30 mile drive north to Annapolis to cover political on-goings in the state capital.
And it’s not just the commute that has changed: her undergrad career of witty feature articles covering Isla Vista life and stinging op-eds tackling often-overlooked social norms has evolved into a graduate portfolio that includes mostly hard news stories on Annapolis’ government as well as some feature-oriented pieces examining “technological innovations in digital storytelling.” Such a swift, dramatic swing in journalistic scenery and practice also set off what were perhaps inevitable, new insights into what it means to be engaged with society. At Merrill’s Capital News Service, this means staying on top of her beat of covering Annapolis politics. “If a bill is about to come out,” she says, “every senator or delegate attached to that bill, I follow them around for days. I’m like, ‘Whuzzup, tell me about this bill, what’s it doin’ today, what are you doin’ today, what’s goin’ on, has anything happened?’ I really follow it from the beginning to the end. So it’s like a different version of being part of the process and being engaged with the material.”
A thorough, comprehensive engagement with Annapolis politics has also solidified and informed Shastry’s notion of her role as a journalist; exposure day after day to the players and processes that make up the substance of her beat reports changed her perspectives on the issues she finds herself covering.
“I can totally see…an opinions writer who’s never met [Maryland] Governor [Larry] Hogan writing about his very short week in office so far or how he may be doing great or how he may be totally screwing up or whatever,” she says. “I’ve met Hogan a bunch of times, and so it kind of changes my perspective on that….But being part of the process, being really engaged with it, and also learning how to keep a distance from it so that you can report objectively….changes my view on everything.” This unique, in-depth, and more comprehensive understanding of her subjects has strengthened her notion of a reporter’s duty to remain objective and unbiased. “You can’t be part of the process where you’re giving [your subjects] ideas for things, you know. You can’t be advocating for anything. You have to follow them; you just have to be like a shadow….You’ve got to report on what they’re doing; you can’t make waves.” The result is a journalist who’s a “ghostly observer”—an “inside-outsider”—one who gives everyone featured in a report an equal voice.
Learning everything there is to know about Annapolis politics and how to give its players equal voices also mean that, as a reporter, Shastry and her work are becoming her readers’ window to the world where the journalist’s engaging reporting renders her as news-bringing middleman invisible. “That’s the point of a newspaper: we’re spreading news. So there shouldn’t have to be a comment on the people who spread said news. It should be about the news.” It’s the material that counts and the material that ideally should be the target of comments, she says. “You want the article to lay the groundwork for the information that they have, and you want them to be engaged—you want them to have discussions about it….I want there to be [on the part of readers] some sort of ‘Well, I think this because of this’. And I want people to be able to see other sides of the story that I can’t necessarily put in it.”
With the rate people are consuming content nowadays due to the information overload the Internet makes possible, Shastry’s increasingly realized how hard it is “to get people interested in news that isn’t about a Kardashian or about a woman who ate fire.” To combat this, she says, especially when myriad other news organizations are covering the same stories, addressing readers directly outside the article itself becomes as important as giving readers the opportunity to engage with each other.
“If someone’s just like, ‘Hey, the prime minister of India’, which is definitely a comment that I’ve gotten a few times on stories about India--they’re like, ‘I hate him’, and I’m just like, ‘What is it that makes you hate him. Do you have any factual reasons? Do you happen to know the prime minister of India personally, and one time he ate your doughnut--what’s going on?’ Trying to get involved and just be like, ‘We’re not just putting information out there, we want you to engage with it, and we will engage with you’.”
The article itself is the groundwork for readers’ engagement; Shastry’s addressing their concerns is an added layer of engagement that provides a greater feeling of connection and elevates her work above competitors’. The Internet and social media’s capability for this kind of interaction between those who are actively and passively civically engaged has changed a reporter and her writing’s roles, according to Shastry. “I didn’t always see being a reporter as being someone who has to facilitate discussions. Think about how static a newspaper is. Before the Internet…if you commented on it, you had a discussion with your family at the breakfast table about a story.” The greater audience she’s had since starting to write in a grad school capacity has forced her to begin tackling head-on this new journalistic responsibility of actively facilitating article-based discussion.
Her platform as a reporter serves as her readers’ catalyst to positive interaction with the world around them—Shastry’s most basic notion of civic engagement—even if it involves simply becoming more aware of what’s going on around them and “finding yourself in a different position with the world just because you know more now.” A recent Capital News Service story on the state budget, at the very least, broadened her readers’ realizations of what is going on in their state and how it affects them—an active instance of civic engagement sparking an intellectual instance. The learning process she’s undergoing through her Master’s program becomes a sort of chain of civic engagement: constantly tracking down politicians and getting her microphone ahead of the competitions’ mics greatly expands her own awareness of the world, which results in her producing relevant articles to inform and engage readers, which then in turn allows them to intellectually interact with the world around them—be it in their thoughts, on a comment board, or sharing on social media.
But it’s not just hard news stories, however, that can spark others’ civic engagement; for Shastry, feature stories, like those she’s written for the American Journalism Review, have the potential, if composed well, to get people interested in and caring about significant issues that matter but may not affect them. “Think about the Rolling Stone UVA story, right? The rape story. Yes, it was massively discredited, but what it did is it took a very complicated issue and it humanized it. And it put it around the story of Jackie, and…it resonated with people. And yes—yes, it was discredited pretty heavily, but the point is, it exploded—it made people care about this issue. Reporting a rape in a hard news story would not have had that affect.”
In a feature story from this past August for the American Journalism Review, Shastry brought in the perspectives of a Santa Barbara reporter and a UC Santa Barbara student activist and journalist to examine the effects of the media’s coverage of tragedies within affected places. The explicit human element underscoring her article draws on the experiences of those who weathered the media’s coverage of the May 2014 Isla Vista tragedy by juxtaposing a reporter’s assertion that it’s her job to ask those who were affected questions and to keep people informed alongside a student’s belief that it’s unethical to immediately bombard these people with questions. Becoming this metaphorical window for readers to peer directly inside the media’s effects on a place in the wake of tragedy humanized this issue and allowed readers to relate to an important concern in society that doesn’t necessarily affect them. The more she’s written for organizations like the American Journalism Review and Capital News Service, the more Shastry has realized that making these articles compelling to read is vital to being a civically-engaged journalist as well as sparking others’ civic engagement. “The day I can make a story about the budget interesting to read—I think that’s the day that I learn that I know how to do my job.”
Paired with her goal of bringing personal awareness and connection to a broad range of issues, the inherent, informative nature of Shastry’s work means journalistic writing plays multiple roles in society. Facts and information like Maryland’s proposed $40.4 billion budget or its effects on Medicaid are intended for dissemination—to inform readers of what they should be acknowledging and considering. Topics such as the media’s descending on Isla Vista in the wake of its tragedy to get teary-eyed quotes allow readers to broaden their intellectual horizons and join a wider community and its values. Perhaps the most significant facet of her work is the opportunity that being this window to the world in the setting of modern, feedback-oriented reporting provides; presenting events, ideas, and issues in a thought-inducing manner and setting naturally induce these roles while allowing readers themselves to build on the discussions her articles lay out.
Despite solidifying her notions of what it means to be a journalist in modern society and producing professional content for real people’s consumption and digestion, Shastry is still diving into these new roles and learning to put into practice these strategies for facilitating her own and others’ civic engagement—her bureau chief in Annapolis, is, after all, her teacher as well. The more experience she gets, the more engaging her writing becomes, and the better she understands how to weave words and insights into having deep, wide-ranging effects.
“I don’t know how to do my job,” she reiterates, “until I can make a story about the budget fun.”
And it’s even more intense when it’s 3,000 miles from where you spent your whole life. A graduate student at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, Shastry is in the midst of this rigorous rite of passage in her quest to leave her mark on the world. The lead political reporter for Merrill’s Capital News Service’s Annapolis Bureau, she’s also written for other state publications, namely, the Greenbelt News Review and the American Journalism Review, and juggles an internship with Voice of America doing social media. With already such a wide array of publications under her belt since graduating UCSB last June, one would think she’s been gearing up for a prominent journalism career for a very long time.
Not so: “I didn’t mean to get into journalism,” Shastry says, “—that was a complete fluke.”
“My entire life, I’ve known I wanted to write, that I wanted to do things with words. And I come to college, I’m an English major—I’m just like, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do.’ Maybe I’ll get a Ph.D. Maybe I’ll be a novelist. Maybe I’ll be an editor.”
Things changed, however, after her freshman year and a friend encouraged her to join UCSB’s newspaper, The Bottom Line. Before she knew it, Shastry had become one of the most respected members of the Editorial Board. “A quarter in, I was a staff writer; a quarter after that, I was Features Editor; and then a quarter after that, I was Opinions Editor.” The welcoming, personal environment she found herself in at TBL allowed her to “cultivate this love of journalism on its own” and sparked a greater desire to produce words not just for the sake of it, but to have real-world effects, joining the campus’ Word Magazine and The Catalyst literary publications. Within a couple short years, biking between on-campus Editorial Board meetings has transformed into a four-day-a-week, Taylor Swift-fueled, 30 mile drive north to Annapolis to cover political on-goings in the state capital.
And it’s not just the commute that has changed: her undergrad career of witty feature articles covering Isla Vista life and stinging op-eds tackling often-overlooked social norms has evolved into a graduate portfolio that includes mostly hard news stories on Annapolis’ government as well as some feature-oriented pieces examining “technological innovations in digital storytelling.” Such a swift, dramatic swing in journalistic scenery and practice also set off what were perhaps inevitable, new insights into what it means to be engaged with society. At Merrill’s Capital News Service, this means staying on top of her beat of covering Annapolis politics. “If a bill is about to come out,” she says, “every senator or delegate attached to that bill, I follow them around for days. I’m like, ‘Whuzzup, tell me about this bill, what’s it doin’ today, what are you doin’ today, what’s goin’ on, has anything happened?’ I really follow it from the beginning to the end. So it’s like a different version of being part of the process and being engaged with the material.”
A thorough, comprehensive engagement with Annapolis politics has also solidified and informed Shastry’s notion of her role as a journalist; exposure day after day to the players and processes that make up the substance of her beat reports changed her perspectives on the issues she finds herself covering.
“I can totally see…an opinions writer who’s never met [Maryland] Governor [Larry] Hogan writing about his very short week in office so far or how he may be doing great or how he may be totally screwing up or whatever,” she says. “I’ve met Hogan a bunch of times, and so it kind of changes my perspective on that….But being part of the process, being really engaged with it, and also learning how to keep a distance from it so that you can report objectively….changes my view on everything.” This unique, in-depth, and more comprehensive understanding of her subjects has strengthened her notion of a reporter’s duty to remain objective and unbiased. “You can’t be part of the process where you’re giving [your subjects] ideas for things, you know. You can’t be advocating for anything. You have to follow them; you just have to be like a shadow….You’ve got to report on what they’re doing; you can’t make waves.” The result is a journalist who’s a “ghostly observer”—an “inside-outsider”—one who gives everyone featured in a report an equal voice.
Learning everything there is to know about Annapolis politics and how to give its players equal voices also mean that, as a reporter, Shastry and her work are becoming her readers’ window to the world where the journalist’s engaging reporting renders her as news-bringing middleman invisible. “That’s the point of a newspaper: we’re spreading news. So there shouldn’t have to be a comment on the people who spread said news. It should be about the news.” It’s the material that counts and the material that ideally should be the target of comments, she says. “You want the article to lay the groundwork for the information that they have, and you want them to be engaged—you want them to have discussions about it….I want there to be [on the part of readers] some sort of ‘Well, I think this because of this’. And I want people to be able to see other sides of the story that I can’t necessarily put in it.”
With the rate people are consuming content nowadays due to the information overload the Internet makes possible, Shastry’s increasingly realized how hard it is “to get people interested in news that isn’t about a Kardashian or about a woman who ate fire.” To combat this, she says, especially when myriad other news organizations are covering the same stories, addressing readers directly outside the article itself becomes as important as giving readers the opportunity to engage with each other.
“If someone’s just like, ‘Hey, the prime minister of India’, which is definitely a comment that I’ve gotten a few times on stories about India--they’re like, ‘I hate him’, and I’m just like, ‘What is it that makes you hate him. Do you have any factual reasons? Do you happen to know the prime minister of India personally, and one time he ate your doughnut--what’s going on?’ Trying to get involved and just be like, ‘We’re not just putting information out there, we want you to engage with it, and we will engage with you’.”
The article itself is the groundwork for readers’ engagement; Shastry’s addressing their concerns is an added layer of engagement that provides a greater feeling of connection and elevates her work above competitors’. The Internet and social media’s capability for this kind of interaction between those who are actively and passively civically engaged has changed a reporter and her writing’s roles, according to Shastry. “I didn’t always see being a reporter as being someone who has to facilitate discussions. Think about how static a newspaper is. Before the Internet…if you commented on it, you had a discussion with your family at the breakfast table about a story.” The greater audience she’s had since starting to write in a grad school capacity has forced her to begin tackling head-on this new journalistic responsibility of actively facilitating article-based discussion.
Her platform as a reporter serves as her readers’ catalyst to positive interaction with the world around them—Shastry’s most basic notion of civic engagement—even if it involves simply becoming more aware of what’s going on around them and “finding yourself in a different position with the world just because you know more now.” A recent Capital News Service story on the state budget, at the very least, broadened her readers’ realizations of what is going on in their state and how it affects them—an active instance of civic engagement sparking an intellectual instance. The learning process she’s undergoing through her Master’s program becomes a sort of chain of civic engagement: constantly tracking down politicians and getting her microphone ahead of the competitions’ mics greatly expands her own awareness of the world, which results in her producing relevant articles to inform and engage readers, which then in turn allows them to intellectually interact with the world around them—be it in their thoughts, on a comment board, or sharing on social media.
But it’s not just hard news stories, however, that can spark others’ civic engagement; for Shastry, feature stories, like those she’s written for the American Journalism Review, have the potential, if composed well, to get people interested in and caring about significant issues that matter but may not affect them. “Think about the Rolling Stone UVA story, right? The rape story. Yes, it was massively discredited, but what it did is it took a very complicated issue and it humanized it. And it put it around the story of Jackie, and…it resonated with people. And yes—yes, it was discredited pretty heavily, but the point is, it exploded—it made people care about this issue. Reporting a rape in a hard news story would not have had that affect.”
In a feature story from this past August for the American Journalism Review, Shastry brought in the perspectives of a Santa Barbara reporter and a UC Santa Barbara student activist and journalist to examine the effects of the media’s coverage of tragedies within affected places. The explicit human element underscoring her article draws on the experiences of those who weathered the media’s coverage of the May 2014 Isla Vista tragedy by juxtaposing a reporter’s assertion that it’s her job to ask those who were affected questions and to keep people informed alongside a student’s belief that it’s unethical to immediately bombard these people with questions. Becoming this metaphorical window for readers to peer directly inside the media’s effects on a place in the wake of tragedy humanized this issue and allowed readers to relate to an important concern in society that doesn’t necessarily affect them. The more she’s written for organizations like the American Journalism Review and Capital News Service, the more Shastry has realized that making these articles compelling to read is vital to being a civically-engaged journalist as well as sparking others’ civic engagement. “The day I can make a story about the budget interesting to read—I think that’s the day that I learn that I know how to do my job.”
Paired with her goal of bringing personal awareness and connection to a broad range of issues, the inherent, informative nature of Shastry’s work means journalistic writing plays multiple roles in society. Facts and information like Maryland’s proposed $40.4 billion budget or its effects on Medicaid are intended for dissemination—to inform readers of what they should be acknowledging and considering. Topics such as the media’s descending on Isla Vista in the wake of its tragedy to get teary-eyed quotes allow readers to broaden their intellectual horizons and join a wider community and its values. Perhaps the most significant facet of her work is the opportunity that being this window to the world in the setting of modern, feedback-oriented reporting provides; presenting events, ideas, and issues in a thought-inducing manner and setting naturally induce these roles while allowing readers themselves to build on the discussions her articles lay out.
Despite solidifying her notions of what it means to be a journalist in modern society and producing professional content for real people’s consumption and digestion, Shastry is still diving into these new roles and learning to put into practice these strategies for facilitating her own and others’ civic engagement—her bureau chief in Annapolis, is, after all, her teacher as well. The more experience she gets, the more engaging her writing becomes, and the better she understands how to weave words and insights into having deep, wide-ranging effects.
“I don’t know how to do my job,” she reiterates, “until I can make a story about the budget fun.”
How Our Health Care and Ethics Are Marred by Market Reasoning
Writing and Ethics (UCSB) | 2014
Blind, deaf, and homeless, Timothy Martin was being cared for in a private hospital in Reno, Nevada, uninsured and unable to care for himself. One day, however, the hospital abruptly decided it was time for him to go and put him on a Greyhound Bus bound for San Francisco, dropping him off on the side of a street there like an unwanted package. He managed to wander into a nearby bar for temporary shelter, only to be kicked out and left to cry on the street. Only then did an ambulance arrive to take him to the public San Francisco General Hospital. In a matter of days, Martin’s life spiraled dangerously back into an unfortunately all-too-common abyss crafted by the perpetuating trend of market reasoning in the medical field. Martin’s health and wellbeing were not deemed worthwhile anymore for West Hills Hospital to deal with. He was not cost-effective. Over the past several decades, market reasoning and capitalist values have taken over the mindsets and workings of the American health system. Treating the sick is fine and dandy, but it has to be strictly cost-effective and able to bring in the cash.
For-profit hospitals, the physical home of market reasoning in health care, have long and ugly track records of poorer quality, higher costs, unfair practices, and greed-based operating systems. Studies published in prominent and respective peer-reviewed journals like the New England Journal of Medicine have shown that for-profit patient expenses and post-operative complications are higher and their quality of care is lower. Simple, routine items such as bandages and over-the-counter painkillers will cost many times their normal store prices and arbitrary post-discharge costs are routinely charged to patients. Their mortality rates are also relatively poor — in fact, for-profit mortality rates are 25 percent higher than the nearly completely not-for-profit major teaching hospitals. Unfortunately, many people are stuck with these hospitals if there isn’t a not-for-profit near enough to them.
At for-profits, which, by definition, aim specifically to make money, patient treatment is predicated on what would allow the hospital to save and make the most money. Doctors are beholden to investors as well as to their patients and recommend and give treatment based in large part on financial goals that are unrelated to health needs. The reason we are so often recommended to have an x-ray or an MRI or any other expensive technological procedure is not because we always need them, but because doctors are pressured into making sure they’re utilized in a profitable enough way. Administrators receive large bonuses if they can successfully meet financial targets and cut costs. Columbia/HCA, the biggest owner of for-profits in the nation, paid an executive $10 million in a severance package when he left the corporation. Even the figures from for-profits’ bills to Medicare have been found in some cases to have been inflated, so as to milk the system even more. The spike in Medicare spending during the early 1990s, perhaps unsurprisingly then, coincided with a noteworthy for-profit boom. Patient well-being and traditional medical ethics have been shoved firmly into the backseat as corporate strategies have been implemented in all aspects of this “business.”
While these frightening trends have been great for health care executives, they do nothing to improve the overall system and only hold it back. Compared to other industrialized countries, the U.S. spends much more on health care for below-average life expectancy while maintaining the highest hospital spending per discharge. Americans are prescribed and take more prescription drugs than any other country on Earth. It becomes abundantly clear that when the overarching goal is to make and save as much money as possible, real health goals cannot be achieved.
Health and health care are very basic necessities people need in order to live any kind of decent life. It can be argued that they are necessary to even participate in the market in the first place. People may be able to figure out what kind of car or house they need and can then wade into the market to acquire it, but cannot be expected to make all their medical decisions if they don’t have the requisite and extensive experience and knowledge. Medical decisions and treatments are something they have to rely on doctors for, and when doctors are beholden to others who are unconcerned about their health, patients can be taken advantage of in unfair and even dangerous ways. Given its vital nature and vulnerability to being taken advantage of, health care is obviously not something market forces can adequately provide people with; they are evidently not at all compatible.
Clearly, a market-oriented, profit-driven approach to hospitals and health care is extremely detrimental to everyone in the country but those receiving the gigantic bonuses and severance packages; it wastes money, increases patient expenses, makes doctors instruments of investors, and leads to worse treatment and recovery expectations. But it’s not just detrimental to the mechanics of the system and the finances of the patients. It degrades how we view each other as human beings.
Patients are coming to be seen more as customers and their care as a commodity. Genuine concern for people’s well-being is being replaced by an impersonal, market-determined price tag that governs how hospitals and health care providers should act; we are handing over our notions of human worth and well-being to money-based reasoning. The degradation of our health ethics is never more apparent than when we see people like Timothy Martin being treated more and more as dollar values whose caretaking is based solely on whether or not we feel it is worth spending money on.
Fortunately, the Affordable Care Act is beginning to mitigate and end many of these abuses and inappropriate objectives. In addition to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office’s estimate that it will rein in our bloated health care costs and reduce the deficit, the ACA will tie proper efficiency and cost-effective measures into practices that provide better health results. Other unethical, profit-driven practices, such as denial of coverage based on pre-existing conditions, are also outlawed by the law.
The only way we can salvage our vanishing health care ethics is by halting and reversing the worrisome encroachment of market reasoning into our health care system and switch our focus back to people’s well-being and intrinsic human value. Otherwise, what are we but a means to others’ greater profits?
For-profit hospitals, the physical home of market reasoning in health care, have long and ugly track records of poorer quality, higher costs, unfair practices, and greed-based operating systems. Studies published in prominent and respective peer-reviewed journals like the New England Journal of Medicine have shown that for-profit patient expenses and post-operative complications are higher and their quality of care is lower. Simple, routine items such as bandages and over-the-counter painkillers will cost many times their normal store prices and arbitrary post-discharge costs are routinely charged to patients. Their mortality rates are also relatively poor — in fact, for-profit mortality rates are 25 percent higher than the nearly completely not-for-profit major teaching hospitals. Unfortunately, many people are stuck with these hospitals if there isn’t a not-for-profit near enough to them.
At for-profits, which, by definition, aim specifically to make money, patient treatment is predicated on what would allow the hospital to save and make the most money. Doctors are beholden to investors as well as to their patients and recommend and give treatment based in large part on financial goals that are unrelated to health needs. The reason we are so often recommended to have an x-ray or an MRI or any other expensive technological procedure is not because we always need them, but because doctors are pressured into making sure they’re utilized in a profitable enough way. Administrators receive large bonuses if they can successfully meet financial targets and cut costs. Columbia/HCA, the biggest owner of for-profits in the nation, paid an executive $10 million in a severance package when he left the corporation. Even the figures from for-profits’ bills to Medicare have been found in some cases to have been inflated, so as to milk the system even more. The spike in Medicare spending during the early 1990s, perhaps unsurprisingly then, coincided with a noteworthy for-profit boom. Patient well-being and traditional medical ethics have been shoved firmly into the backseat as corporate strategies have been implemented in all aspects of this “business.”
While these frightening trends have been great for health care executives, they do nothing to improve the overall system and only hold it back. Compared to other industrialized countries, the U.S. spends much more on health care for below-average life expectancy while maintaining the highest hospital spending per discharge. Americans are prescribed and take more prescription drugs than any other country on Earth. It becomes abundantly clear that when the overarching goal is to make and save as much money as possible, real health goals cannot be achieved.
Health and health care are very basic necessities people need in order to live any kind of decent life. It can be argued that they are necessary to even participate in the market in the first place. People may be able to figure out what kind of car or house they need and can then wade into the market to acquire it, but cannot be expected to make all their medical decisions if they don’t have the requisite and extensive experience and knowledge. Medical decisions and treatments are something they have to rely on doctors for, and when doctors are beholden to others who are unconcerned about their health, patients can be taken advantage of in unfair and even dangerous ways. Given its vital nature and vulnerability to being taken advantage of, health care is obviously not something market forces can adequately provide people with; they are evidently not at all compatible.
Clearly, a market-oriented, profit-driven approach to hospitals and health care is extremely detrimental to everyone in the country but those receiving the gigantic bonuses and severance packages; it wastes money, increases patient expenses, makes doctors instruments of investors, and leads to worse treatment and recovery expectations. But it’s not just detrimental to the mechanics of the system and the finances of the patients. It degrades how we view each other as human beings.
Patients are coming to be seen more as customers and their care as a commodity. Genuine concern for people’s well-being is being replaced by an impersonal, market-determined price tag that governs how hospitals and health care providers should act; we are handing over our notions of human worth and well-being to money-based reasoning. The degradation of our health ethics is never more apparent than when we see people like Timothy Martin being treated more and more as dollar values whose caretaking is based solely on whether or not we feel it is worth spending money on.
Fortunately, the Affordable Care Act is beginning to mitigate and end many of these abuses and inappropriate objectives. In addition to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office’s estimate that it will rein in our bloated health care costs and reduce the deficit, the ACA will tie proper efficiency and cost-effective measures into practices that provide better health results. Other unethical, profit-driven practices, such as denial of coverage based on pre-existing conditions, are also outlawed by the law.
The only way we can salvage our vanishing health care ethics is by halting and reversing the worrisome encroachment of market reasoning into our health care system and switch our focus back to people’s well-being and intrinsic human value. Otherwise, what are we but a means to others’ greater profits?
The Power of the Pen
Story of self | Writing and Civic Engagement (UCSB) | 2015
With both the current and incoming Editorial Board members of The Bottom Line newspaper packed into a tight circle within the Annex’s small media center room, Anjali was effectively squeezed onto the floor. On the verge of tears, the Opinions Editor shared her experience of having a reporter abruptly confront her during a moment of grieving to give a statement on this past May’s Isla Vista tragedy. That night, the Ed Boards were primarily focused on addressing how we dealt with the rampage that had occurred just days earlier, and Anjali’s heart-wrenching account poignantly demonstrated the Board’s stance that unrestrained reporting on traumatic events within an affected community is not ethical journalistic practice.
The sheer scale and intensity of the IV tragedy, in addition to how painfully close to home it was — physically, socially, emotionally -- had greatly affected our ability to handle covering it. Given the explicit danger of immediately reporting and utter lack of reliable information to be found in the immediate aftermath, TBL produced only very light coverage right off the bat. Wanting to address these circumstances right away, a handful of Ed Board members, understandably in an emotionally compromised state, ran a letter to the editor from a former Executive Content Editor stating that we wanted to minimize the physical and emotional harm to our reporting staff. One of the effects was criticism for not adhering to a news organization’s primary function of delivering the facts and information of important events, including a stark juxtaposition with a rival paper which had, from the very start, put out reports (though they were, ironically, woefully inaccurate and misleading). Until Storke Tower sounded its single 1 AM tone, current and new TBL editors and directors emotionally discussed how they had juggled journalistic responsibilities while awaiting updates on friends’ safety and articulated the nuances of reporting on traumatic events to a traumatized readership -- a journalistic debate the tragedy sparked around the country. Word by consequential word, this emotionally weary group of journalists crafted an editorial acknowledging our original, rash judgments and outlining our belief that it would be disrespectful to our readership to inundate them with excessive coverage of an event that arguably traumatized them -- that, under these circumstances, our obligation to our readership’s sensitivities and emotional states came before our normal obligation to report the news.
I was no longer criticizing the media’s shameful flooding of the streets of Newtown, Connecticut with news vans nor John King’s cringe-worthy Boston bombing reporting snafus, but actively thrust into the foray of setting policy for engaging with my peers in order to prevent these kinds of media outrages. Amidst the fierce debates and emotional anecdotes swirling within the Annex, the media-consumer relationship had been abruptly flipped in a very personal way. The resulting editorial was not only a manifestation of our engagement with a subset of society, but emerged from a process that served as a tutorial for what it means to be civically engaged.
Voting, attending political rallies, and writing to city councilmembers were no longer the nebulous heart of what it meant to be civically engaged; as the incoming Opinions Editor at the time, I realized that I was, from the comfort of my own chair, a consciously civically engaged person who could foster this engagement in others. The articles I come up with and help my writers develop stimulate people’s ways of thinking about issues that affect society. Along with the news section, I (and the writers) allow our readers to be up to date and engaged with issues and on-goings that affect us and provide a basis for action that can influence these same issues and on-goings. Providing the tools for others to be informed and take action is my form of civic engagement.
Concrete actions that are aimed at shaping the phenomena that affect us require information and motivation -- some sort of spark to think and do, a type of civic engagement on one party’s part that facilitates engagement on another’s. Seeing firsthand the different ways even two different newspapers on the same campus can engage readers on the same, significant issue demonstrated, however, that not all of these sparks and resulting actions can be enlightening or constructive. A rant by Rush Limbaugh that inspires a listener to actively campaign against marriage equality is civic engagement on both ends of the rant just as much as a TBL news piece informing a student enough to inspire her to initiate a community composting program is. As an editor with the ability not just to be civically engaged myself but to facilitate civic engagement in others, I’ve come to realize that my job is more than simply persuading people and providing an opinion, but fostering positive intellectual and action-oriented engagement with society and its issues.
The sheer scale and intensity of the IV tragedy, in addition to how painfully close to home it was — physically, socially, emotionally -- had greatly affected our ability to handle covering it. Given the explicit danger of immediately reporting and utter lack of reliable information to be found in the immediate aftermath, TBL produced only very light coverage right off the bat. Wanting to address these circumstances right away, a handful of Ed Board members, understandably in an emotionally compromised state, ran a letter to the editor from a former Executive Content Editor stating that we wanted to minimize the physical and emotional harm to our reporting staff. One of the effects was criticism for not adhering to a news organization’s primary function of delivering the facts and information of important events, including a stark juxtaposition with a rival paper which had, from the very start, put out reports (though they were, ironically, woefully inaccurate and misleading). Until Storke Tower sounded its single 1 AM tone, current and new TBL editors and directors emotionally discussed how they had juggled journalistic responsibilities while awaiting updates on friends’ safety and articulated the nuances of reporting on traumatic events to a traumatized readership -- a journalistic debate the tragedy sparked around the country. Word by consequential word, this emotionally weary group of journalists crafted an editorial acknowledging our original, rash judgments and outlining our belief that it would be disrespectful to our readership to inundate them with excessive coverage of an event that arguably traumatized them -- that, under these circumstances, our obligation to our readership’s sensitivities and emotional states came before our normal obligation to report the news.
I was no longer criticizing the media’s shameful flooding of the streets of Newtown, Connecticut with news vans nor John King’s cringe-worthy Boston bombing reporting snafus, but actively thrust into the foray of setting policy for engaging with my peers in order to prevent these kinds of media outrages. Amidst the fierce debates and emotional anecdotes swirling within the Annex, the media-consumer relationship had been abruptly flipped in a very personal way. The resulting editorial was not only a manifestation of our engagement with a subset of society, but emerged from a process that served as a tutorial for what it means to be civically engaged.
Voting, attending political rallies, and writing to city councilmembers were no longer the nebulous heart of what it meant to be civically engaged; as the incoming Opinions Editor at the time, I realized that I was, from the comfort of my own chair, a consciously civically engaged person who could foster this engagement in others. The articles I come up with and help my writers develop stimulate people’s ways of thinking about issues that affect society. Along with the news section, I (and the writers) allow our readers to be up to date and engaged with issues and on-goings that affect us and provide a basis for action that can influence these same issues and on-goings. Providing the tools for others to be informed and take action is my form of civic engagement.
Concrete actions that are aimed at shaping the phenomena that affect us require information and motivation -- some sort of spark to think and do, a type of civic engagement on one party’s part that facilitates engagement on another’s. Seeing firsthand the different ways even two different newspapers on the same campus can engage readers on the same, significant issue demonstrated, however, that not all of these sparks and resulting actions can be enlightening or constructive. A rant by Rush Limbaugh that inspires a listener to actively campaign against marriage equality is civic engagement on both ends of the rant just as much as a TBL news piece informing a student enough to inspire her to initiate a community composting program is. As an editor with the ability not just to be civically engaged myself but to facilitate civic engagement in others, I’ve come to realize that my job is more than simply persuading people and providing an opinion, but fostering positive intellectual and action-oriented engagement with society and its issues.
Isla Vista Is Disappearing
Oceanfront Properties Losing Cliff Faces to Erosion
The Santa Barbara Independent | 2015
Back in the days of Isla Vista’s Vietnam protests, a bike path wound its way behind Del Playa Drive’s oceanfront residences. Nowadays, a small, dusty remnant of it remains only along the western-most edge of town. Back then, a drunken reveler leaning a bit too far over one of those back fences fell only a few feet. Now, it’s an all-too-often lethal plunge down to the sand.
Over the course of a generation, erosion has relentlessly eaten away the cliffs between Del Playa’s hodgepodge of iconic ocean-side homes and the sea to the point of nonexistence; the concrete slabs of several properties’ backyards jut three to five feet over the edge of the cliff. Certain fences between them abruptly end 40 feet in the air. With the cliffs losing an alarming several inches to a foot each year, erosion has rapidly become a pressing issue for residents and property owners.
Isla Vista sits on a 45,000-year-old terrace and experiences erosion rates similar to much of the surrounding coast. The cliffs are made from shale, a soft sedimentary rock that any I.V.beachgoer can tell you crumbles easily in your hand. This shale is held together by compaction, in which the rock’s collective weight compresses it into its current form.
The rock’s crumbling nature, perhaps fortuitously, means the cliffs erode away episodically in relatively small chunks, rather than in catastrophic landslides.
According to Edward Keller, a professor in UCSB’s Earth Science department, the erosion is due to two phenomena, which contribute roughly equally to the problem: wave erosion at the cliff base and terrestrial water runoff at the top, including rainfall, groundwater seeps, and urban runoff.
Despite the increasingly precarious position Del Playa’s ocean-side homes find themselves in, the once-in-a-lifetime views and cultural aura surrounding the properties still ensure a competitive race to secure a one-year spot.
“We didn’t really think too much when we first got the place,” said Matt Mersel, a recent UCSB graduate who lived in an ocean-side house during his senior year. “But then, eventually, we would be sitting out in the backyard, and we’d look over to the house next to us that was kind of set in from the cliff more. We could see, ‘Oh, that’s where they had to tear down half of the house because the foundations are exposed and just hanging over the cliffs.’
“Nights when the waves were really strong or there was a storm — when the waves would break against the cliff — our entire house would shake,” he said.
Residents of Isla Vista’s most-coveted neighborhood typically aren’t aware of the nature of the cliffs’ erosion nor how it’s addressed, said Mersel. There’s an implicit understanding that property owners wouldn’t let students rent if living on the edge really was an immediate danger.
The duty of monitoring the erosion falls to the county’s Bluff Erosion Monitoring Program, a 10-year-old component of the Building and Safety Division. The program conducts annual surveys as well as inspections after storms, according to a report the Planning and Development department presented to the county supervisors when the issue came up a couple months back. When buildings come within 15, 10, and five feet from the edge, the department requires certain action to be taken, from hiring a professional to develop a monitoring and repair plan to, as a last resort, issuing a notice and order to vacate the building. When a large chunk of the cliffs slid away along the 6600 block in May, property owner John Abedi had to obtain an emergency permit to demolish the rear 30 feet of an apartment building.
And with a turbulent winter approaching, the chiseling away at Isla Vista’s cliffs is only projected to intensify.
“We expect it will accelerate during El Niño,” said Keller. The resultant higher sea levels and wetter weather only intensify wave and runoff erosion.
As eternal as ocean-side Del Playa might seem to be, the rapid erosion rates are making it clear that it cannot physically last — at least in its current form.
According to Keller, solutions are limited, and cost-effective ones are virtually nonexistent. A seawall, which has been proposed, would have to be as high as the cliffs themselves to be somewhat effective, he says, and would only address wave erosion and result in narrowing the beach and depleting its biodiversity.
“It’s a poster child for beach erosion,” he said. “Isla Vista desperately needs an overall coastal management plan.”
For the foreseeable future, demolition remains the most viable option, with cases like Abedi’s certain to become increasingly common.
“It’ll probably be back anywhere from 10 to 20 feet,” said Keller of where the cliff edge will be in 20 to 30 years’ time.
While demolition is by no means a permanent solution, it could still buy Isla Vista a few decades. Meanwhile, the already-small town will continue to gradually shrink.
Over the course of a generation, erosion has relentlessly eaten away the cliffs between Del Playa’s hodgepodge of iconic ocean-side homes and the sea to the point of nonexistence; the concrete slabs of several properties’ backyards jut three to five feet over the edge of the cliff. Certain fences between them abruptly end 40 feet in the air. With the cliffs losing an alarming several inches to a foot each year, erosion has rapidly become a pressing issue for residents and property owners.
Isla Vista sits on a 45,000-year-old terrace and experiences erosion rates similar to much of the surrounding coast. The cliffs are made from shale, a soft sedimentary rock that any I.V.beachgoer can tell you crumbles easily in your hand. This shale is held together by compaction, in which the rock’s collective weight compresses it into its current form.
The rock’s crumbling nature, perhaps fortuitously, means the cliffs erode away episodically in relatively small chunks, rather than in catastrophic landslides.
According to Edward Keller, a professor in UCSB’s Earth Science department, the erosion is due to two phenomena, which contribute roughly equally to the problem: wave erosion at the cliff base and terrestrial water runoff at the top, including rainfall, groundwater seeps, and urban runoff.
Despite the increasingly precarious position Del Playa’s ocean-side homes find themselves in, the once-in-a-lifetime views and cultural aura surrounding the properties still ensure a competitive race to secure a one-year spot.
“We didn’t really think too much when we first got the place,” said Matt Mersel, a recent UCSB graduate who lived in an ocean-side house during his senior year. “But then, eventually, we would be sitting out in the backyard, and we’d look over to the house next to us that was kind of set in from the cliff more. We could see, ‘Oh, that’s where they had to tear down half of the house because the foundations are exposed and just hanging over the cliffs.’
“Nights when the waves were really strong or there was a storm — when the waves would break against the cliff — our entire house would shake,” he said.
Residents of Isla Vista’s most-coveted neighborhood typically aren’t aware of the nature of the cliffs’ erosion nor how it’s addressed, said Mersel. There’s an implicit understanding that property owners wouldn’t let students rent if living on the edge really was an immediate danger.
The duty of monitoring the erosion falls to the county’s Bluff Erosion Monitoring Program, a 10-year-old component of the Building and Safety Division. The program conducts annual surveys as well as inspections after storms, according to a report the Planning and Development department presented to the county supervisors when the issue came up a couple months back. When buildings come within 15, 10, and five feet from the edge, the department requires certain action to be taken, from hiring a professional to develop a monitoring and repair plan to, as a last resort, issuing a notice and order to vacate the building. When a large chunk of the cliffs slid away along the 6600 block in May, property owner John Abedi had to obtain an emergency permit to demolish the rear 30 feet of an apartment building.
And with a turbulent winter approaching, the chiseling away at Isla Vista’s cliffs is only projected to intensify.
“We expect it will accelerate during El Niño,” said Keller. The resultant higher sea levels and wetter weather only intensify wave and runoff erosion.
As eternal as ocean-side Del Playa might seem to be, the rapid erosion rates are making it clear that it cannot physically last — at least in its current form.
According to Keller, solutions are limited, and cost-effective ones are virtually nonexistent. A seawall, which has been proposed, would have to be as high as the cliffs themselves to be somewhat effective, he says, and would only address wave erosion and result in narrowing the beach and depleting its biodiversity.
“It’s a poster child for beach erosion,” he said. “Isla Vista desperately needs an overall coastal management plan.”
For the foreseeable future, demolition remains the most viable option, with cases like Abedi’s certain to become increasingly common.
“It’ll probably be back anywhere from 10 to 20 feet,” said Keller of where the cliff edge will be in 20 to 30 years’ time.
While demolition is by no means a permanent solution, it could still buy Isla Vista a few decades. Meanwhile, the already-small town will continue to gradually shrink.
Santa Barbara Hopped Up on Craft Beer with Breweries, Festivals All the Buzz
Craft beer has become more than an acquired taste for millennial consumers craving the high-quality flavor and ingredients
Noozhawk | 2016
In a nation where the $106 billion beer market has long been dominated by corporate brands such as Budweiser, Miller and Coors, it’s the craft-beer sensation that has been generating all the brewing buzz.
Craft beer now makes up more than 12 percent of beer sales in the United States, according to data from the Brewers Association. The country is now home to several thousand craft breweries, roughly half of which are considered “microbreweries.”
Craft beers are the indie music of the beer industry: small and independently owned, with extra emphasis on the creation process and quality of the flavor.
“As far as we feel what craft is, it does have a lot to do with size, but it also has a lot to do with paying attention to detail and knowing where your ingredients are coming from and how your beer is produced and how you decide to make those beers,” said Kady Fleckenstein, brand director at Figueroa Mountain Brewing Co.
As an increasingly millennial-oriented city with the capital to embrace the somewhat pricier product, craft beer has found a comfortable home in Santa Barbara.
“You can’t read a newspaper or a magazine these days without reading another article about how craft beer is driving all the growth in the beer industry and how the millennial generation is a craft-beer generation,” said Brian Thompson, founder and president of Telegraph Brewing Co., a local craft brewer with a Santa Barbara tasting room at 418 N. Salsipuedes St.
“A lot of twenty-somethings have never even tasted a Budweiser, and they think of beer as being craft beer — (India pale ale) in particular.”
For many members of Generation Y, craft beer represents a fresh break from the grip traditional beer corporations have had on the industry — a break many would say has more character and flavor.
Craft beer’s prominence has quickly grown to the point of making it mainstream, and its presence in Santa Barbara can hardly be avoided.
Figueroa Mountain Brewing, with a taproom at 137 Anacapa St., was founded in 2010 by father and son Jim and Jaime Dietenhofer and now has four taprooms in the county and two beyond.
Telegraph Brewing was founded in 2006 and now has a handful of distributors across the country.
Paso Robles-based Firestone Walker’s “805” is present in virtually every store’s beer section and every bar’s tap line, and the Funk Zone’s new Lama Dog - Tap Room + Bottle Shop carries craft beers from Santa Barbara and from throughout California.
Thompson said Telegraph’s interest in Santa Barbara is simple.
“We wanted to be some place where there was passion for local products,” he said. “Santa Barbara certainly has that.”
Fleckenstein said the same was true for Figueroa Mountain Brewing.
“We love working with Santa Barbara County beer lovers because they’re so passionate about craft, and we feel like they really appreciate the fact that we are local and family-owned,” she said.
Showcasing Telegraph, Firestone, Fig Mountain and many more are a burgeoning crop of independent beer festivals, attended in hordes by millennials and the South Coast’s growing yuppie crowd.
“Santa Barbara has always been a great tourist destination, so I think that’s one reason why beer festivals are common here,” Thompson said. “It’s a pretty easy pitch to someone who loves beer to say, ‘Hey, come spend the weekend in Santa Barbara and drink some great beer.’”
The Santa Barbara Beer Festival at Elings Park hosts dozens of Central Coast microbreweries, and next month’s Zoo Brew sold out within minutes of tickets going on sale. Immensely popular cultural festivals like April’s Earth Day and June’s Summer Solstice Celebration host beer gardens dominated by local craft brewers.
“Five years ago, we could probably count all the festivals within, say, 100 miles of Santa Barbara on a couple of hands,” Thompson said. “We did probably all of them. Now we could literally, I think, do a festival every single weekend during the summer because it’s not just big festivals — the ones that have been around for a long time.”
The festivals, brewers say, are another means of anchoring themselves in the community.
“Going to the different festivals that are in town is really important to us because, as we expand, we want to make sure we’re still staying close to home and taking care of the locals,” Fleckenstein said.
For the festival-throwers themselves, beer fests present a variety of opportunities to promote both themselves and the community.
“This is a unique way to bring in a new demographic,” Stefanie Coleman, the Santa Barbara Zoo’s assistant director of marketing, said of Zoo Brew. “A lot of twenty-somethings, thirty-somethings who don’t necessarily have kids haven’t been to the zoo in years. ... This is a great way to get them in the door. And we’ve seen that it works, and they can see our conservation programs that are happening just by coming here.
“I think we’re really lucky here on the Central Coast — a lot of microbreweries are popping up — as well as in California in general.
“San Diego seems to be a hub, and so does Central California. The fact that you can get all these unique beers and also be supporting local businesses is really a great opportunity. Why not be able to showcase other local companies and be able to promote how cool Santa Barbara is?”
Craft beer now makes up more than 12 percent of beer sales in the United States, according to data from the Brewers Association. The country is now home to several thousand craft breweries, roughly half of which are considered “microbreweries.”
Craft beers are the indie music of the beer industry: small and independently owned, with extra emphasis on the creation process and quality of the flavor.
“As far as we feel what craft is, it does have a lot to do with size, but it also has a lot to do with paying attention to detail and knowing where your ingredients are coming from and how your beer is produced and how you decide to make those beers,” said Kady Fleckenstein, brand director at Figueroa Mountain Brewing Co.
As an increasingly millennial-oriented city with the capital to embrace the somewhat pricier product, craft beer has found a comfortable home in Santa Barbara.
“You can’t read a newspaper or a magazine these days without reading another article about how craft beer is driving all the growth in the beer industry and how the millennial generation is a craft-beer generation,” said Brian Thompson, founder and president of Telegraph Brewing Co., a local craft brewer with a Santa Barbara tasting room at 418 N. Salsipuedes St.
“A lot of twenty-somethings have never even tasted a Budweiser, and they think of beer as being craft beer — (India pale ale) in particular.”
For many members of Generation Y, craft beer represents a fresh break from the grip traditional beer corporations have had on the industry — a break many would say has more character and flavor.
Craft beer’s prominence has quickly grown to the point of making it mainstream, and its presence in Santa Barbara can hardly be avoided.
Figueroa Mountain Brewing, with a taproom at 137 Anacapa St., was founded in 2010 by father and son Jim and Jaime Dietenhofer and now has four taprooms in the county and two beyond.
Telegraph Brewing was founded in 2006 and now has a handful of distributors across the country.
Paso Robles-based Firestone Walker’s “805” is present in virtually every store’s beer section and every bar’s tap line, and the Funk Zone’s new Lama Dog - Tap Room + Bottle Shop carries craft beers from Santa Barbara and from throughout California.
Thompson said Telegraph’s interest in Santa Barbara is simple.
“We wanted to be some place where there was passion for local products,” he said. “Santa Barbara certainly has that.”
Fleckenstein said the same was true for Figueroa Mountain Brewing.
“We love working with Santa Barbara County beer lovers because they’re so passionate about craft, and we feel like they really appreciate the fact that we are local and family-owned,” she said.
Showcasing Telegraph, Firestone, Fig Mountain and many more are a burgeoning crop of independent beer festivals, attended in hordes by millennials and the South Coast’s growing yuppie crowd.
“Santa Barbara has always been a great tourist destination, so I think that’s one reason why beer festivals are common here,” Thompson said. “It’s a pretty easy pitch to someone who loves beer to say, ‘Hey, come spend the weekend in Santa Barbara and drink some great beer.’”
The Santa Barbara Beer Festival at Elings Park hosts dozens of Central Coast microbreweries, and next month’s Zoo Brew sold out within minutes of tickets going on sale. Immensely popular cultural festivals like April’s Earth Day and June’s Summer Solstice Celebration host beer gardens dominated by local craft brewers.
“Five years ago, we could probably count all the festivals within, say, 100 miles of Santa Barbara on a couple of hands,” Thompson said. “We did probably all of them. Now we could literally, I think, do a festival every single weekend during the summer because it’s not just big festivals — the ones that have been around for a long time.”
The festivals, brewers say, are another means of anchoring themselves in the community.
“Going to the different festivals that are in town is really important to us because, as we expand, we want to make sure we’re still staying close to home and taking care of the locals,” Fleckenstein said.
For the festival-throwers themselves, beer fests present a variety of opportunities to promote both themselves and the community.
“This is a unique way to bring in a new demographic,” Stefanie Coleman, the Santa Barbara Zoo’s assistant director of marketing, said of Zoo Brew. “A lot of twenty-somethings, thirty-somethings who don’t necessarily have kids haven’t been to the zoo in years. ... This is a great way to get them in the door. And we’ve seen that it works, and they can see our conservation programs that are happening just by coming here.
“I think we’re really lucky here on the Central Coast — a lot of microbreweries are popping up — as well as in California in general.
“San Diego seems to be a hub, and so does Central California. The fact that you can get all these unique beers and also be supporting local businesses is really a great opportunity. Why not be able to showcase other local companies and be able to promote how cool Santa Barbara is?”
I.V.'s Biggest Export: Musical Talent
From Reggae Chart-Toppers to Up-and-Coming Surf Rockers
The Santa Barbara Independent | 2015
It quickly becomes clear during a stroll down the crowded streets of Isla Vista on a Friday or Saturday night (or most any night) that hip-hop and EDM dominate the town’s soundscape. But occasionally scattered among the ubiquitous, booming speakers are live performances of a markedly different style — a style more in tune with the vibes and character of the town.
Performed at late-night open mics at coffee shops and jam-packed backyard concerts, the music produced by I.V. residents themselves tends toward the carefree attitude of sunshine reggae and the deep and personal sentiments of the indie singer-songwriter. Over the decades, I.V.’s been as prolific in its creation of musical artists as any half-square-mile of land can be; soft-rocker Jack Johnson, reggae chart-toppers Iration and Rebelution, and EDM (electronic dance music) star Steve Aoki all trace their musical origins to their time in I.V.
The town’s influence on these artists’ music is unmistakable: Iration’s “Summer Nights,” for one, is entirely about its members’ memories of chilling in I.V.; the tar balls covering Johnson’s wife’s “bubbly toes” could only have come from the gunk continuously washing up on the town’s rugged shore.
“It’s a small town, but it’s just filled with people the same age that share the same love for the beach, same love for having a good time, same respect for nature, and just working hard, and then playing hard on the weekends,” said Matthew Tweed, the lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist for The Olés, who combine reggae, rock, rap, and brass instruments. The band, which recorded a firstLP in their home on Sabado Tarde Road, started out playing for friends during the drinking game Snappa before putting on increasingly bigger backyard concerts.
Like their internationally famous predecessors, today’s generation of I.V.-born artists, including The Olés, indie rockers Yancellor Chang, and singer-songwriter Erisy Watt, draw on the people, environment, and ethos of the community to produce music.
“People were really, really responsive and said such kind things about our music, so I just thought, ‘Okay, I’m going to keep going with this’,” said soft-folk artist Watt, whose first performance came at an open mic at Coffee Collaborative with a friend from her residence hall.
On top of the ample opportunities residents and local businesses and organizations offer for performances and the close proximity within which potential collaborators live, the scenic beauty surrounding I.V. has been another source of inspiration.
“I have these spots that I go to, like at the point where Sands [Beach] is and Devereux, and then I’ll run out to Ellwood, where the butterfly preserve is, and there’s this eucalyptus cave where all these eucalyptus trees create this really beautiful cave shape where you could go out and look at the whole coast,” said Watt.
Despite I.V.’s hedonistic reputation, many of the artists who have emerged from its vibrant creative scene look to fuse their work with a socially and environmentally conscious mission.
“I.V. has such a great community, and there are a lot of people that are very environmentally aware,” said Watt, who plans on shaping an eventual tour around community outreach and fundraising for nonprofits. “That’s kind of the experience that I’ve had there — that I want to then kind of spread outward to wherever I go with my music.”
But despite I.V.’s prolific musical history, there exist concerns that efforts to tame the frenetic environment that has given birth to yesterday’s and today’s artists could stifle the tradition.
Brad Katz, a guitarist from the now-broken-up reggae/rock group Yancellor Chang, says he’s witnessed a marked increase in law enforcement’s willingness to discourage and shut down I.V.concerts for even the smallest potential infractions.
“I don’t know a better thing to do with a lot of drunk people than to put them in an area where they’re facing a stage and not being in trouble,” he said.
The success of I.V. bands has carried over to bookings in nearby towns and around the world. Artists like Watt, The Olés, Yancellor Chang, and surf rockers Sun Daes and Dante Elephante have all jammed at Santa Barbara venues such as Blind Tiger, Velvet Jones, and SOhO, and, of course, Iration, Rebelution, and Jack Johnson have played there and way, way beyond.
Both Watt and The Olés are preparing to release new music by the end of the year. In the next few months, Watt looks to release her first EP, while the reggae-rockers are expecting to release their upcoming LP, Strictly Speaking, mastered by Grammy-winner Brian Gardner, before the end of the year.
Performed at late-night open mics at coffee shops and jam-packed backyard concerts, the music produced by I.V. residents themselves tends toward the carefree attitude of sunshine reggae and the deep and personal sentiments of the indie singer-songwriter. Over the decades, I.V.’s been as prolific in its creation of musical artists as any half-square-mile of land can be; soft-rocker Jack Johnson, reggae chart-toppers Iration and Rebelution, and EDM (electronic dance music) star Steve Aoki all trace their musical origins to their time in I.V.
The town’s influence on these artists’ music is unmistakable: Iration’s “Summer Nights,” for one, is entirely about its members’ memories of chilling in I.V.; the tar balls covering Johnson’s wife’s “bubbly toes” could only have come from the gunk continuously washing up on the town’s rugged shore.
“It’s a small town, but it’s just filled with people the same age that share the same love for the beach, same love for having a good time, same respect for nature, and just working hard, and then playing hard on the weekends,” said Matthew Tweed, the lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist for The Olés, who combine reggae, rock, rap, and brass instruments. The band, which recorded a firstLP in their home on Sabado Tarde Road, started out playing for friends during the drinking game Snappa before putting on increasingly bigger backyard concerts.
Like their internationally famous predecessors, today’s generation of I.V.-born artists, including The Olés, indie rockers Yancellor Chang, and singer-songwriter Erisy Watt, draw on the people, environment, and ethos of the community to produce music.
“People were really, really responsive and said such kind things about our music, so I just thought, ‘Okay, I’m going to keep going with this’,” said soft-folk artist Watt, whose first performance came at an open mic at Coffee Collaborative with a friend from her residence hall.
On top of the ample opportunities residents and local businesses and organizations offer for performances and the close proximity within which potential collaborators live, the scenic beauty surrounding I.V. has been another source of inspiration.
“I have these spots that I go to, like at the point where Sands [Beach] is and Devereux, and then I’ll run out to Ellwood, where the butterfly preserve is, and there’s this eucalyptus cave where all these eucalyptus trees create this really beautiful cave shape where you could go out and look at the whole coast,” said Watt.
Despite I.V.’s hedonistic reputation, many of the artists who have emerged from its vibrant creative scene look to fuse their work with a socially and environmentally conscious mission.
“I.V. has such a great community, and there are a lot of people that are very environmentally aware,” said Watt, who plans on shaping an eventual tour around community outreach and fundraising for nonprofits. “That’s kind of the experience that I’ve had there — that I want to then kind of spread outward to wherever I go with my music.”
But despite I.V.’s prolific musical history, there exist concerns that efforts to tame the frenetic environment that has given birth to yesterday’s and today’s artists could stifle the tradition.
Brad Katz, a guitarist from the now-broken-up reggae/rock group Yancellor Chang, says he’s witnessed a marked increase in law enforcement’s willingness to discourage and shut down I.V.concerts for even the smallest potential infractions.
“I don’t know a better thing to do with a lot of drunk people than to put them in an area where they’re facing a stage and not being in trouble,” he said.
The success of I.V. bands has carried over to bookings in nearby towns and around the world. Artists like Watt, The Olés, Yancellor Chang, and surf rockers Sun Daes and Dante Elephante have all jammed at Santa Barbara venues such as Blind Tiger, Velvet Jones, and SOhO, and, of course, Iration, Rebelution, and Jack Johnson have played there and way, way beyond.
Both Watt and The Olés are preparing to release new music by the end of the year. In the next few months, Watt looks to release her first EP, while the reggae-rockers are expecting to release their upcoming LP, Strictly Speaking, mastered by Grammy-winner Brian Gardner, before the end of the year.
Kim and Jack Johnson Inspire and Divulge as They Receive 2015's Distinguished Alumni Award
The Bottom Line | 2015
“I probably shouldn’t tell this story, but that line in ‘Bubble Toes’—‘I was eating lunch at the DLG’—it was actually Ortega,” said alumni Jack Johnson, during a night of conversation, music, and film at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
More than any other, this was probably the revelation that surprised the eager crowd in Corwin Pavilion the most. Though Kim and Jack Johnson’s first milestone together may have been at the humble tables of that dining common over 20 years ago, their latest touchstone was this past Friday, April 24, when they received the 2015 Distinguished Alumni Award as part of the weekend’s All-Gaucho Reunion.
Despite the couple’s fame revolving primarily around Jack’s music, it’s the tireless and continuous environmental and educational work they do that resulted in Friday’s Better Together: An Evening of Conversation, Film & Music. From drastically reducing the environmental impact of their musical tours and concerts to teaching kids in Hawaii the fundamentals of local, sustainable food systems, the Johnsons’ charitable and non-profit work has been as influential as Jack’s discography.
The latest component of their considerable body of social and environmental change is the Edible Campus Project right here at UCSB. This project plans to convert underutilized places on campus into sources of fresh food meant to tackle local food insecurity. With support and leadership from the Associated Students Department of Public Worms, the AS Food Bank, UCSB Sustainability, and the Johnson Ohana Charitable Foundation, the project consists of an on-campus citrus tree grove—the first seeds of which, as announced by the Johnsons’ chancellor from the ‘90s, Henry Yang, were planted last Friday—and a student-run farm meant to provide fresh, sustainable produce and learning opportunities regarding food production.
After the Johnsons received their award, the crowd of current students and alumni were treated to a short film produced by a friend of Kim and Jack. The film highlighted the social and environmental work that underpinned the couple’s recent From Here to Now to You tour—much of which was facilitated by their All At Once social action network. The buses that took them everywhere, from Colorado to Oregon to Los Angeles, converted cooking oil into biodiesel for fuel. A concert at the Santa Barbara Bowl replaced innumerable plastic cups with reusable steel bottles, and each stop between 2008 and 2013 was made into a fundraiser for the non-profits that helped turn the concerts into environmentally responsible and educational events. On top of all of that, Kim and Jack have founded the Johnson Ohana Charitable Foundation, which seeks to affect change in local communities through art, music, and environmental education, and the Kokua Hawaii Foundation, which supports environmental education in Jack’s home state.
According to the couple, it’s these opportunities to produce positive change in communities that inspire them to continue touring longer than they otherwise would. “One of the reasons we decided to keep touring,” Jack said, “was this network of non-profit groups that we’ve gotten to help be a part of building and meeting all these groups when we travel. Their stories are all so motivating and inspirational.”
When bandmate and college friend Zach Gill asked the couple during a Q&A following the film how they manage to juggle the commitments of stardom with all their charitable work and family life, the Johnsons revealed one simple ingredient that they had been weaving throughout all the evening’s light-hearted discussions: “Just keeping the family around the whole time.”
Kim’s father, when he’s around, is the tour’s photographer, and her cousin is the crew’s web designer and developer. A room backstage at concerts is always dedicated to their (and their family and friends’) children for play and schoolwork. Even those who aren’t blood relatives but help out when the Johnsons are traveling the country become a sort of family, they said.
Family and relationships—and their moments, trivialities, and idiosyncrasies—don’t just help bolster their jam-packed lifestyle, but also provide considerable inspiration for Jack’s music, revealed by the impromptu anecdotes that peppered the evening’s talk. “Angel” (Kim’s admitted favorite love song by her husband) was written when he forgot to get her a Christmas present one year, while the popular “Banana Pancakes” was mostly written “in five minutes” as Jack tried to get his wife’s attention when trying to run a new song by her. College life was influential as well: “Inaudible Melodies” is an amalgamation of notes from a film studies class (and originally meant to convince a professor to grant him an extension on a paper).
After the Q&A, amid a flood of requests, Jack and Gill pulled out a guitar and accordion and jammed, playing, among others, the blue “Flake,” the cheerful “Shot Reverse Shot,” the reflective “Do You Remember,” and even Animal Liberation Orchestra’s charming “Girl, I Wanna Lay You Down,” before finishing the evening fittingly with “Better Together.”
As Jack would reiterate to the crowd, however, it’s he and Kim’s being a couple that got them there to Corwin Pavilion that evening—a blend of his love and respect for the environment with her background and passion for education kicked off the most well-known courtships to have unfolded at UCSB. If there’s anything Kim and Jack Johnson have shown us over the years, it’s that social change happens better when we’re together
More than any other, this was probably the revelation that surprised the eager crowd in Corwin Pavilion the most. Though Kim and Jack Johnson’s first milestone together may have been at the humble tables of that dining common over 20 years ago, their latest touchstone was this past Friday, April 24, when they received the 2015 Distinguished Alumni Award as part of the weekend’s All-Gaucho Reunion.
Despite the couple’s fame revolving primarily around Jack’s music, it’s the tireless and continuous environmental and educational work they do that resulted in Friday’s Better Together: An Evening of Conversation, Film & Music. From drastically reducing the environmental impact of their musical tours and concerts to teaching kids in Hawaii the fundamentals of local, sustainable food systems, the Johnsons’ charitable and non-profit work has been as influential as Jack’s discography.
The latest component of their considerable body of social and environmental change is the Edible Campus Project right here at UCSB. This project plans to convert underutilized places on campus into sources of fresh food meant to tackle local food insecurity. With support and leadership from the Associated Students Department of Public Worms, the AS Food Bank, UCSB Sustainability, and the Johnson Ohana Charitable Foundation, the project consists of an on-campus citrus tree grove—the first seeds of which, as announced by the Johnsons’ chancellor from the ‘90s, Henry Yang, were planted last Friday—and a student-run farm meant to provide fresh, sustainable produce and learning opportunities regarding food production.
After the Johnsons received their award, the crowd of current students and alumni were treated to a short film produced by a friend of Kim and Jack. The film highlighted the social and environmental work that underpinned the couple’s recent From Here to Now to You tour—much of which was facilitated by their All At Once social action network. The buses that took them everywhere, from Colorado to Oregon to Los Angeles, converted cooking oil into biodiesel for fuel. A concert at the Santa Barbara Bowl replaced innumerable plastic cups with reusable steel bottles, and each stop between 2008 and 2013 was made into a fundraiser for the non-profits that helped turn the concerts into environmentally responsible and educational events. On top of all of that, Kim and Jack have founded the Johnson Ohana Charitable Foundation, which seeks to affect change in local communities through art, music, and environmental education, and the Kokua Hawaii Foundation, which supports environmental education in Jack’s home state.
According to the couple, it’s these opportunities to produce positive change in communities that inspire them to continue touring longer than they otherwise would. “One of the reasons we decided to keep touring,” Jack said, “was this network of non-profit groups that we’ve gotten to help be a part of building and meeting all these groups when we travel. Their stories are all so motivating and inspirational.”
When bandmate and college friend Zach Gill asked the couple during a Q&A following the film how they manage to juggle the commitments of stardom with all their charitable work and family life, the Johnsons revealed one simple ingredient that they had been weaving throughout all the evening’s light-hearted discussions: “Just keeping the family around the whole time.”
Kim’s father, when he’s around, is the tour’s photographer, and her cousin is the crew’s web designer and developer. A room backstage at concerts is always dedicated to their (and their family and friends’) children for play and schoolwork. Even those who aren’t blood relatives but help out when the Johnsons are traveling the country become a sort of family, they said.
Family and relationships—and their moments, trivialities, and idiosyncrasies—don’t just help bolster their jam-packed lifestyle, but also provide considerable inspiration for Jack’s music, revealed by the impromptu anecdotes that peppered the evening’s talk. “Angel” (Kim’s admitted favorite love song by her husband) was written when he forgot to get her a Christmas present one year, while the popular “Banana Pancakes” was mostly written “in five minutes” as Jack tried to get his wife’s attention when trying to run a new song by her. College life was influential as well: “Inaudible Melodies” is an amalgamation of notes from a film studies class (and originally meant to convince a professor to grant him an extension on a paper).
After the Q&A, amid a flood of requests, Jack and Gill pulled out a guitar and accordion and jammed, playing, among others, the blue “Flake,” the cheerful “Shot Reverse Shot,” the reflective “Do You Remember,” and even Animal Liberation Orchestra’s charming “Girl, I Wanna Lay You Down,” before finishing the evening fittingly with “Better Together.”
As Jack would reiterate to the crowd, however, it’s he and Kim’s being a couple that got them there to Corwin Pavilion that evening—a blend of his love and respect for the environment with her background and passion for education kicked off the most well-known courtships to have unfolded at UCSB. If there’s anything Kim and Jack Johnson have shown us over the years, it’s that social change happens better when we’re together