Moment of Truth: Chronicle-Tribune, Marion, IN
Marion’s Moment of Truth
By Dana Clark Felty
Pew Center
Page one of the Marion, IN Chronicle-Tribune on New Year’s day featured the standard photo: the first baby of the millennium. In this case, twins had been born and the photo showed a happy mother and father with the newborns and a stash of gifts.
Marion appeared to be twice blessed. But, Chronicle-TribuneExecutive Editor Juli Metzger quickly learned that the photo did not reflect the full story of the twins’ lives.
The 21-year-old mother, Stephanie Watkins, was not married to the father. She was living alone in a two-bedroom apartment on $376 a month in welfare payments. Her mother and father tried to help, but Stephanie’s 17-year-old sister also had an 18-month-old child. The twins were the second and third child for Watkins and numbers eight and nine for the father.