Pictures of the Day: Vatican City and Elsewhere

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Photos from the Vatican, Argentina, Afghanistan and Iraq.

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Where Home Is an Elusive Fantasy

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A young man stands in a swimming pool, eyes covered, shoulders hunched, his head slightly bowed. A child bounces from bed to bed. A dainty green cupcake with confetti sprinkles occupies a place of honor on a paper plate.

These moments are captured in family pictures, much like those taken by countless families on summer road trips, the kind they would share with friends back home. But in this case, the children pictured have no home â€" they are living in limbo, reduced to scraping by week to week, or day to day, in a seedy motel in Orlando, Fla.

Nadia Shira Cohen and Paulo Siqueira â€" along with their infant son, Rafa â€" settled into the Remington Inn motel for several weeks last year to produce “Motel America,” a multimedia project that tracked several families who ended up homeless after illness, unemployment, foreclosure and eviction. In a city where Disney’s commercial fantasy attracts thousands of families each year, they are stuck with no idea of what the future holds.

“Just knowing these people are miles away from living in this situation, you get this feeling of extremes,” Mr. Siqueira said. “I didn’t expect it to be so fragile. Some families we talked to, they were rear-ended by a bus and that’s all it took. The supportive services come later. But there is nothing that prevents you from getting into that situation.”

That idea that financial ruin could devastate a family so quickly was the driving force behind the project. Ms. Cohen said she had been reading Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickel and Dimed” when she got the idea to pursue the project. The book, she said, recounted how people living on the edge stayed in motels â€" even though over time it would be more expensive â€" because they did not have enough savings to pay for an apartment’s deposit, first and last months’ rent.

Nadia Shira Cohen Abandoned businesses and houses like this one line Route 17 in Orlando, Fla., just miles from Disney World.

Researching the topic, she and Mr. Siqueira zeroed in on central Florida. Less than a decade ago, people had flocked to the state, lured by jobs in a construction boom that was about to burst. On top of that, the state’s overheated housing market went into decline with the mortgage crisis, overburdening already weak social service systems.

“What happened to all those people who came down for the construction boom” Ms. Cohen said. “This is the hangover of that, when you have people left with nothing. Services were scarce before, and now they’re completely overwhelmed with people who lost their homes.”

They located families with the aid of Families in Transition, a nonprofit group that helps the homeless. They soon encountered families who had traveled a familiar path: losing a job, then a home, moving in with family or friends and ultimately ending up in a motel. If they were lucky, they might find a shelter in a few months.

Tyrone Washington and his family landed in the motel after the car he was driving was rear-ended by a school bus, shattering a brain shunt he had had since childhood. He lost his job of 10 years at a supermarket deli. His wife, who was pregnant, could not work.

“They slowly started sliding down,” Ms. Cohen said. “While at the motel, they got a place together in a homeless shelter, which is rare. It’s quite a stark change from the motel.”

Nadia Shira Cohen Soup cans on the shelves of Families in Transition, an organization financed by the Department of Education in Seminole County, Fla., which helps families without a home get back on their feet and keep their children in school.

For Ginerva Cutcher’s family, life at the motel was a respite from a grim routine. Unable to afford more than a day or two, they would camp out in the woods behind the motel. That is how they spent last Thanksgiving, eating sandwiches. Her 4-year-old son thought they were camping.

“She tried to keep that going,” Ms. Cohen said. “It was a big thing for her. Her husband has a severe case of juvenile diabetes. Their car broke down and they couldn’t get to work. Bus lines canceled night service at some stops and it got problematic. Her job was cleaning at night, and she couldn’t get to work. She’s been looking, but with two kids and her husband sick, she’s just sliding.”

Covering the story with their own child in tow helped Ms. Cohen and Mr. Siqueira gain trust among their subjects. It also unsettled them when they saw children not much older than their son having to live their early years in poverty.

Yet there were also moments of tenderness, even humor. Juan and Janet Cruz had to sell their wedding rings. But they exchanged new ones â€" Mickey Mouse rings. The pair had worked at Disney World, he in security and she as a janitor. Juan’s diabetes led to surgery and disability. They now live in the motel with their two sons and a daughter.

“The kids seemed very involved in the situation and loving towards the family,” Ms. Cohen said. “They were tight.”

But they were old enough to know what they faced.

“These kids were forced to grow up pretty quickly, and they were pretty smart about the whole situation,” Mr. Siqueira said. “Jake was in R.O.T.C. He thinks he wants to start a new life. He seemed to be pretty detached. Even though he is loving towards his family, his idea is to get out. He’s 17. He has everything planned about what to do and where to go.”

Paulo Siqueira/Parallelo Zero Jake Cruz buttoned his R.O.T.C. uniform at the Remington motel, where his family stays. Jake, his mother, father, brother and sister were temporarily living in a motel room off Highway 4 in Orlando since they were evicted.

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A New Focus on Poverty Raises a Question About Times Coverage

Poverty was in the news last week, with the coverage of Pope Francis’ attention to poor people worldwide, particularly those in his home country of Argentina.

It raises a question: Given the extreme poverty in the world and in the United States, how much media attention does the subject get in a week when there is no new pope

An analysis in Nieman Reports’ most recent issue suggests the answer is something like this: “not much” and “less than it used to.”

Dan Froomkin, the article’s author, told me in a phone interview that “it’s nowhere near the radar screen” for most journalistic organizations.

His article notes: “Nearly 50 million people - about one in six Americans - live in poverty, defined as income belo $23,021 a year for a family of four. And yet most news organizations largely ignore the issue.”

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism found that in 52 major mainstream news outlets, coverage amounted to far less than 1 percent of available news space, or “news hole.” It was, Mr. Froomkin writes, in a word, “negligible.”

Mr. Froomkin quotes Philip Bennett, managing editor of PBS’s “Frontline” public affairs series, who says that the topic of inequality and poverty is “part of our national divide in a really important way,” but is “not receiving the kind of sustained, imaginative, aggressive coverage that it deserves.”

How does The Times fit into this picture How robust is its coverage of poverty I’m not sure, but because the subject is so important, I hope to examine it in the weeks ahead.

Here are a few initial observations, based on a few early interviews:

1.! Some advocates for the poor find Times coverage inadequate. Though they praise The Times for doing top-quality enterprise stories and projects on occasion, they feel it’s nowhere near enough.

Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, criticized The Times in a letter to me for “systematically underreporting what is one of the most significant stories of our age: the soaring hunger, poverty and homelessness in America, and especially in New York.”

He is particularly frustrated by The Times’s decisions not to cover “spot news” - like the annual release of a federal report on hunger in America. He also bemoans its lack of interest in city government meetings and related decisions that affect New York City’s 1.5 million people who don’t regularly have enough to eat - including half a million children.

“Poverty is at its highest level in decades and severe poverty is at the highest level since the federl government started counting it in 1960,” Mr. Berg said. But media coverage, he thinks, has actually declined.

2. The reporter who has covered poverty policy for The Times for decades, Jason DeParle, said he believes The Times devotes an admirable amount of space and resources to the topic.

Mr. DeParle, a Washington bureau reporter who recently began a yearlong book leave, told me in a phone conversation that “The Times has made an extraordinary commitment” to the subject. One part of that is his coverage of poverty policy, and he has also written about race, class and inequality for the past 23 years at the paper. But it’s not just his work that shows the commitment, he said.

“Poverty suffuses the pages of The New York Times in one form or a! nother - ! health, immigration, housing - every day,” he said. He added that top editors at The Times have made their interest in poverty and inequality clear to him repeatedly and in no uncertain terms.

3. Observers like Mr. Froomkin praise the quality of The Times’s journalism on poverty and inequality issues but cite the need for more resources and greater emphasis.

“The work is great but it’s in the category of ‘extra special’ coverage,” he said, meaning that poverty coverage is not a regular and integrated part of the paper.

This blog post serves only to raise the issue, not to draw conclusions. I will be reporting on it further in the weeks ahead and hope to share my findings in a Sunday column. I would be happy to hear from Times readers, including those with a particular interest in this important subject.

For 10th Anniversary of Iraq War, a Low-Key Approach From The Times

Anniversary journalism, as I’ve noted before, is a tricky proposition. At its best, it’s an opportunity to look back on an important event and provide the rich perspective that can only come with time. At its worst, it’s empty - a mere regurgitation of what happened with little that is new or fresh added.

Some news organizations are responding to the 10th anniversary of the Iraq war this week with major journalistic projects. Most notable, perhaps, is The Guardian’s impressive effort - dozens of stories and graphics that have been appearing for the past several days.

As an article on The International Herald Tribune’s Rendezvous blog noted this month, The Guardian alo “unveiled the results of a yearlong investigation purporting to show that United States military advisers, with the knowledge and support of many senior officials, including former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and disgraced Gen. David Petraeus, oversaw a vast program of torture inside Iraqi prisons.”

The Times, at least on the news side, is not going that route. So far, the anniversary has mostly been noted on the opinion side, where some columnists have taken up the subject and through a six-part online series called “A War, Before and After.” On Wednesday, the Op-Ed page will feature offerings from two contributors â€" one an American combat veteran and leading military strategist, the other an Iraqi writer who has stayed in Iraq since 2003.

On the news side, no stories have a! ppeared in print to date. The At War blog has a series this week from those directly affected by the invasion.

I asked Dean Baquet, a managing editor, about the low-key approach. He said that while a few stories are planned, editors did not see a need for a major project or special section, as they did with the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“The war itself has been dissected to a tremendous degree,” he told me. “You have to have something new or fresh to say.” He would not provide specifics about the articles that are planned, but said there might be one or two that would make their way onto the front page this week.

Is The Times’s own role in the run-up to the war a part of this relative reticence, as some readers have suggested to me Is there reluctance to revisit a painful period in the paper’s history

Mr. Baquet said that’s not a factor.

“The Times has probably acknowledged its own mistakes from that period more than anyone,” he said. “We certainly haven’t been shy about doing that. We’re doing the stories that make sense to us and that offer our readers something worthwhile.”

Once those stories are online, I’ll will update this post with links to those articles.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 18, 2013

An earlier version of this post misspelled the given name of a managing editor at The New York Times. He is Dean Baquet.

A New Focus on Poverty Raises a Question About Times Coverage

Poverty was in the news last week, with the coverage of Pope Francis’ attention to poor people worldwide, particularly those in his home country of Argentina.

It raises a question: Given the extreme poverty in the world and in the United States, how much media attention does the subject get in a week when there is no new pope

An analysis in Nieman Reports’ most recent issue suggests the answer is something like this: “not much” and “less than it used to.”

Dan Froomkin, the article’s author, told me in a phone interview that “it’s nowhere near the radar screen” for most journalistic organizations.

His article notes: “Nearly 50 million people - about one in six Americans - live in poverty, defined as income belo $23,021 a year for a family of four. And yet most news organizations largely ignore the issue.”

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism found that in 52 major mainstream news outlets, coverage amounted to far less than 1 percent of available news space, or “news hole.” It was, Mr. Froomkin writes, in a word, “negligible.”

Mr. Froomkin quotes Philip Bennett, managing editor of PBS’s “Frontline” public affairs series, who says that the topic of inequality and poverty is “part of our national divide in a really important way,” but is “not receiving the kind of sustained, imaginative, aggressive coverage that it deserves.”

How does The Times fit into this picture How robust is its coverage of poverty I’m not sure, but because the subject is so important, I hope to examine it in the weeks ahead.

Here are a few initial observations, based on a few early interviews:

1.! Some advocates for the poor find Times coverage inadequate. Though they praise The Times for doing top-quality enterprise stories and projects on occasion, they feel it’s nowhere near enough.

Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, criticized The Times in a letter to me for “systematically underreporting what is one of the most significant stories of our age: the soaring hunger, poverty and homelessness in America, and especially in New York.”

He is particularly frustrated by The Times’s decisions not to cover “spot news” - like the annual release of a federal report on hunger in America. He also bemoans its lack of interest in city government meetings and related decisions that affect New York City’s 1.5 million people who don’t regularly have enough to eat - including half a million children.

“Poverty is at its highest level in decades and severe poverty is at the highest level since the federl government started counting it in 1960,” Mr. Berg said. But media coverage, he thinks, has actually declined.

2. The reporter who has covered poverty policy for The Times for decades, Jason DeParle, said he believes The Times devotes an admirable amount of space and resources to the topic.

Mr. DeParle, a Washington bureau reporter who recently began a yearlong book leave, told me in a phone conversation that “The Times has made an extraordinary commitment” to the subject. One part of that is his coverage of poverty policy, and he has also written about race, class and inequality for the past 23 years at the paper. But it’s not just his work that shows the commitment, he said.

“Poverty suffuses the pages of The New York Times in one form or a! nother - ! health, immigration, housing - every day,” he said. He added that top editors at The Times have made their interest in poverty and inequality clear to him repeatedly and in no uncertain terms.

3. Observers like Mr. Froomkin praise the quality of The Times’s journalism on poverty and inequality issues but cite the need for more resources and greater emphasis.

“The work is great but it’s in the category of ‘extra special’ coverage,” he said, meaning that poverty coverage is not a regular and integrated part of the paper.

This blog post serves only to raise the issue, not to draw conclusions. I will be reporting on it further in the weeks ahead and hope to share my findings in a Sunday column. I would be happy to hear from Times readers, including those with a particular interest in this important subject.

For 10th Anniversary of Iraq War, a Low-Key Approach From The Times

Anniversary journalism, as I’ve noted before, is a tricky proposition. At its best, it’s an opportunity to look back on an important event and provide the rich perspective that can only come with time. At its worst, it’s empty - a mere regurgitation of what happened with little that is new or fresh added.

Some news organizations are responding to the 10th anniversary of the Iraq war this week with major journalistic projects. Most notable, perhaps, is The Guardian’s impressive effort - dozens of stories and graphics that have been appearing for the past several days.

As an article on The International Herald Tribune’s Rendezvous blog noted this month, The Guardian alo “unveiled the results of a yearlong investigation purporting to show that United States military advisers, with the knowledge and support of many senior officials, including former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and disgraced Gen. David Petraeus, oversaw a vast program of torture inside Iraqi prisons.”

The Times, at least on the news side, is not going that route. So far, the anniversary has mostly been noted on the opinion side, where some columnists have taken up the subject and through a six-part online series called “A War, Before and After.” On Wednesday, the Op-Ed page will feature offerings from two contributors â€" one an American combat veteran and leading military strategist, the other an Iraqi writer who has stayed in Iraq since 2003.

On the news side, no stories have a! ppeared in print to date. The At War blog has a series this week from those directly affected by the invasion.

I asked Dean Baquet, a managing editor, about the low-key approach. He said that while a few stories are planned, editors did not see a need for a major project or special section, as they did with the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“The war itself has been dissected to a tremendous degree,” he told me. “You have to have something new or fresh to say.” He would not provide specifics about the articles that are planned, but said there might be one or two that would make their way onto the front page this week.

Is The Times’s own role in the run-up to the war a part of this relative reticence, as some readers have suggested to me Is there reluctance to revisit a painful period in the paper’s history

Mr. Baquet said that’s not a factor.

“The Times has probably acknowledged its own mistakes from that period more than anyone,” he said. “We certainly haven’t been shy about doing that. We’re doing the stories that make sense to us and that offer our readers something worthwhile.”

Once those stories are online, I’ll will update this post with links to those articles.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 18, 2013

An earlier version of this post misspelled the given name of a managing editor at The New York Times. He is Dean Baquet.

Pictures of the Day: Somalia and Elsewhere

In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here.

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Photos from Somalia, Pakistan, Cyprus and West Bank.

Follow Lens on Facebook and Twitter.

Pictures of the Day: Somalia and Elsewhere

In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here.

#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}

Photos from Somalia, Pakistan, Cyprus and West Bank.

Follow Lens on Facebook and Twitter.