Posted April 20, 2001

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By Al Tompkins
Group Leader, Broadcast/Online Producing

The May ratings book is on the way. I'd like to help you do stronger stories that will attract viewers and avoid the typical "ratings book silliness" that entraps so many newsrooms. Here are 20 story ideas complete with links and quick information to help you along. I hope this helps. I wish you a great book and great journalism.

1. The U.S. Census
Surprise! The nuclear family is staging a comeback, or so contends a Census Bureau report. Between 1991 and 1996, the percentage of American children living with both their biological parents jumped from 51 percent to 56 percent, according to a report released April 16 by the US Census Bureau. The finding, which surprised many researchers, suggests that family relations in the United States may be entering a new era of stability after two decades of tumultuous change. Story from The Christian Science Monitor http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/04/13/fp1s1-csm.shtml

2. Mothers in Prison
A little known and almost never mentioned law called the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families act is separating women and their children. Under the federal act, women who are in prison, even for a minor crime, can and often do lose custody of their children. Mother Jones reports that this is a growing problem: Over the past decade, the war on drugs and tougher sentencing laws have put ever more mothers behind bars. From 1989 to 1999, the number of female inmates in state and federal prison leapt from about 40,000 to almost 91,000. Approximately 70 percent of that total were mothers, and most of them were single parents. Based on those numbers, it's estimated that several thousand women have had their parental rights terminated as a result of relatively minor offenses. Read the full story: http://www.motherjones.com/web_exclusives/features/news/prison_kids.html. Contact your local prison support group. Ask your local women's prison for access to mothers who are incarcerated. some prisons have visitation programs to help keep women in contact with their kids. Those prisons find that the women tend to work harder to get out and be with their children.

3. Health Threats from Pressure-Treated Wood
I t may be in your back yard, your boat dock, your neighborhood playground or your deck. And, it may be toxic. In fact, treated lumber often has enough chemicals in it to be considered hazardous waste. The lumber industry is in a big court fight over the safety of wood with chromated copper arsentate (CCA). The St Petersburg Times reports: "One key issue in the case is how much the industry knew about the hazards of CCA wood, and how much it told the public. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned most arsenic pesticides years ago -- except pressure-treated wood. The EPA reviewed CCA 19 years ago, and recommended that the wood carry a warning label. But the wood-treatment industry balked at the labeling requirement. Instead, they persuaded the EPA to allow them to conduct a "Voluntary Consumer Awareness Program." Today, consumers are supposed to get a fact sheet that advises anyone working with the wood to wear a dust mask, goggles and gloves. You're supposed to collect the arsenic-laced sawdust and dispose of it. You're supposed to work in a well-ventilated area and wash clothes covered in sawdust separately. Burning the wood can be life-threatening. Although the industry promised years ago that placards would be "prominently displayed" in home improvement stores to tell consumers about the information sheets, it never happened. And the EPA never challenged the industry about it." Full story: http://www.sptimes.com/News/041601/State/Denial_heats_up_arsen.shtml.

4. Grade School Criminals
Take a look at this stunning story by the St. Petersburg Times, which shows children as young as five or six years old being arrested, handcuffed and jailed. Last year, 2,491 children 10 and under were charged with crimes in Florida, including 1,252 kids nine or younger, according to data provided by the Department of Juvenile Justice and analyzed by the Times. http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/sptimes/index.html

5. Purity Rings
One of the hottest new things among teens -- these rings are a symbol that a teen is abstaining from sex. Stores report they can't keep the rings in stock. Click here to see what they look like http://www.passionandprinciples.com/purity.htm

6. Straight Teeth Without Braces
A new device called Invisalign promises to be able to straighten teeth without braces and metal. See story from KUSA Denver. Also links to company and dental society for comments. http://9news.com/consumer/invisalign.htm.

7. How Well Do Schools Know Kids?
One of the most interesting stories I have seen recently comes from WCCO Minneapolis. Reporter Trish Van Pillsum went to two Twin Cities schools and posted the names of every kid in the school on school library/gym walls. She asked the teachers to go around, look at the names and indicate (with dot-stickers) whether they a) knew something about the student other than his or her class performance b)would be willing to help the studnet with a problem c)would know the student well enough to have a conversation if encountered at the mall. Almost half of the kids got NO DOTS.

These are middle school kids, and 40 percent of the kids had no teacher who knew them well. As Trish said, it is a case of the "have dots and the have nots." You can easily find experts who will help you connect the importance of having an adult who knows the kid well and how well the kid does in school and how well they perform socially. When there is no adult involved in a kid's life, the kid is more have sex at a young age, drink, smoke and do poorly in school. This is an outstanding project, especially as school is about to end.

8. Prison Rape
There is a new study by Human Rights Watch about how often it happens in the U.S. The public's view of rape in prison is that it is almost part of the sentence. Considering the level of HIV and Hepatitis in prisons and jails, rape could be a death sentence. Psychologists say despite public apathy, rape involving men is traumatic and there is almost no counseling available. Moreover, federal laws make it almost impossible for government funds to be spent investigating the cases when they are reported. I might suggest you start by talking with public defenders, or even the editor of the prison newspaper nearest you. There is a pretty good investigative project in how often these cases are reported and prosecuted. To get around the public apathy issue, you might considering looking for a person who was in prison wrongly, innocent of the crime.

Half of all states do not even bother to keep statistics on this crime. (Does yours? What did they find--or why don't they?) Maybe you can find somebody who was awaiting trail and was acquitted or charges dropped. According to a New York Times Story 4/15/01: "Many inmates find that when they try to report a rape, the guards don't want to hear it," said Joanne Mariner, a lawyer at Human Rights Watch, who recently completed a study of prison rape, to be released on Thursday. "They tell them to act like a man, to deal with the problem themselves. There are very few prisons that follow good procedures for counseling, or sending inmates for a medical examination." Because almost half the states do not collect statistics on prison rape -- and many inmates quickly learn that there is nothing to be gained in reporting rape -- there are no reliable national figures on its frequency. And many prison systems play down the problem, suggesting that rape is so rare that there is no need for data. Here is a study from a few years ago from Human Rights Watch http://www.hrw.org/summaries/s.us96d.html

9. The Drug War.
Let's look at your local war on drugs -- is there any evidence it is working? If so many prisoners are druggies, what kind of counseling do they get in prison? Is the counseling front end or back end - -many prisons offer no counseling just before the inmate gets out -- just detox work on the front end. That sets the inmate up to be a user again as soon as they get out. http://www.hrw.org/hrw/reports/2000/usa/Rcedrg00-03.htm

10. Refurbished electronics.
If you are looking for a great camera, computer or other consumer electronics, consider a refurbished model. ((editor's note-in the last year I bought a refurbished laptop for my wife and one for my mother at less than $500 each) Here is a website to get you started on this story. Your local newspaper often lists these in want ads. http://www.refurbishedstore.com/. Some computer companies such as www.gateway.com also have refurbs offered from the company with warrantees and hundreds off the price.

11. Household Mold
As the weather begins to warm up, this will become a bigger story. Some people are so sensitive to mold they actually have to leave their homes. See extensive stories from KHOU Houston: http://www.khou.com/news/stories/6704.html

12. Toxic Chemicals
Who is releasing toxic chemicals in your community-how much and what are they releasing? New EPA study shows you. http://www.epa.gov/tri/ Two-thirds of the toxic chemicals released into the U.S. environment in 1999 came from hard-rock mining companies and electric power plant operators, says the Environmental Protection Agency. Overall, the amount of chemicals released in the United States increased by 5 percent from 7.3 billion pounds in 1998 to 7.7 billion pounds, the EPA said Wednesday in its annual Toxic Release Inventory. It shows four mining states with the highest volume of toxic releases: Nevada and Utah, with 1.1 billion pounds each; Arizona, 963 million pounds; and Alaska, 433 million pounds.

13.Home Lemon Law
You know about auto lemon laws--now Texas, for one, is considering a home lemon law. It is a Texas-sized fight between homeowners and homebuilders (which is a huge lobby in most states.) Does your state have such a law--why not? See story From KHOU: http://www.khou.com/stories/defenders/3100.html.

14. Investigative Stories
Watch dozens of great investigative stories with video streamed on the web free--from IRE.org (investigative reporters and editors) here is the link: http://www.ire.org/broadcast/videostream.html.

15. Living Online
For two weeks, a WCCO-TV reporter lived in an apartment with only her computer and an Internet connection..it was an attempt to show that you could live completely off Internet resources. Here is the story http://www.channel4000.com/realworldrealweb.

16. Beating Those Speeding Tickets
Edmunds.com has a great list and tips for how to do it. http://www.channel4000.com/realworldrealweb/

17. Gasoline Can Safety
Why don't gasoline cans have safety caps on them? By the end of this year, they may according to KHOU TV Houston. a can of gasoline has the explosive power of 14 sticks of dynamite, yet there is no safety requirement for them. http://www.khou.com/stories/defenders/2615.html -great summer safety alert.

18. DVD Rentals
Have you been to the movie rental store lately. It is all about DVD. In fact, in terms of dollars, DVD sales/rentals is not topping VHS rentals. According to The New York Times, "It was in February 1997 that the first DVD players went on the market. And since then, some 15 million American households have purchased the machines. That is still far behind the estimated 95 million, or 94 percent, of households with at least one VCR. But DVD players are quickly gaining ground, and by 2006 nearly two-thirds of households will have them, according to forecasts by Adams Media Research. Mr. Liberfarb, of Warner Home Video, predicted that as more people buy DVD players, disc prices will continue to fall, further enticing consumers to buy rather than rent." Full article at http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/16/business/16DISC.html (free registration required.)

19. Childhood Asthma
A greater percentage of children now suffer from childhood asthma than ever before and nobody knows why. Childhood link to American lung association http://www.lungusa.org/asthma/ascchildhoo.html. Nationwide more than 4 and a half million kids have asthma. childhood asthma foundation link http://www.childasthma.com/.

20. Family Secrets
This investigation by Polly Kriesman at WPIX shows how people are giving away their life history when they donate a used computer without "scrubbing" the hard drive. Every stroke of your keyboard, every letter you ever typed is stored on your harddrive. Polly bought a used computer, then went searching for information. In minutes she was able to find out intimate details of the previous user's life, finances, education, medical history and other details sent in e-mails, kept in files, or downloaded from the Internet. So, how do you scrub a harddrive clean? She offers these ideas: http://www.ontrack.com/dataeraser/

Don't give away secrets with that old PC. Are you donating, re-using, discarding or returning leased personal computers? DataEraserô allows safe recycling of hard drive media without putting confidential information at risk. DataEraser actually overwrites all of the data on your hard drive — so you can feel confident that sensitive information is eliminated. Itís fast, flexible, easy to use, and best of all, DataEraser helps you maintain control of your confidential information. http://www.shred-x.com/Html/core.htm The Shred-X system provides an effortless method to eliminate confidential or sensitive material Polly's links to reformatting your hard drive: http://www.cyberwalker.net/columns/jul99/2907.html http://tech.jmwebdesigns.com/software/expert/reformat.html http://www.macsupport.about.com/compute/macsupport/library/weekly/aa020700a.htm Overwrite your hard drive: http://netsecurity.about.com/compute/netsecurity/library/weekly/aa070300b.htm?