Monthly Archives: July 1999

By Pat Ford
Pew Center

They had a deceptively simple goal, the team that produced The Charlotte Observer series “Hunger in the Land of Plenty.” They wanted to answer the question, “Why is there still hunger?”

Editor Steve Gunn (then projects editor, now metro editor) says the question haunted him after driving a van full of homeless people to a shelter in the boom town of Charlotte, where unemployment was 2.4 percent. He enlisted Jeri Fischer Krentz, who covers non-profit agencies for The Observer. She teamed up with reporter Blair Robertson and photographer Patrick Schneider to get to the human turmoil at the bottom of Gunn’s question.  Read more

An Unconventional New Tool:
Dialogue Connects Readers with Suffering Children

By Pat Ford
Pew Center

“I’m hungry. When does the bread people come?” — Bobby, age 3

“Don’t you know a lot of people die here?” — Jimmy, age 10

“They’re taking our daddy away.” — Lovon, age 4

“Didn’t anybody ever tell you life isn’t fair?” — Angelica, age 4

These are the voices of the “Motel Children,” some of the hundreds of children living lives of deprivation in tourist-turned-residential motels across the street from Disneyland (“The Happiest Place on Earth”). Read more