This year’s Pulitzer goes to … an ex-journalist

The Pulitzer Prize is journalism’s highest honor, and this year one winner no longer is a journalist.

On his last day working for his local newspaper, Ryan Kelly photographed a white supremacist driving a car through a crowd in Charlottesville, Virginia. He told the Associated Press that he left the profession because of the long hours, low pay, stress and job insecurity. He was doing digital media work for a brewery when he learned he’d won the award. And as the AP reported, he wasn’t the first journalist to leave the profession before or not long after winning the Pulitzer.

These are tough times for journalism in general and newspapers in particular.  Continue reading →

For waiting kids, these are the real superheroes

Lauri Currier, Christie Erwin

Project Zero’s Christie Erwin takes a selfie with The CALL’s Lauri Currier at the Walk for the Waiting.

There were superheroes on the field at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock Saturday – Superman, Spiderman, Wonder Woman, some others. And then a lot of real ones.

The comic book characters – those were actors. The real ones were people like Bryan and Stephanie Emmerling, who are adopting their second daughter after fostering her for the past year-and-a-half.

The Emmerlings – he a FedEx delivery driver, she employed by a mortgage company – were among thousands participating in the Walk for the Waiting. The annual event raises money for three faith-based organizations serving children removed by the state from their biological families because of abuse, parental drug use or other reasons. The CALL works with churches to recruit foster and adoptive families. Project Zero connects potential adoptive families with children whose parents’ rights have been terminated. Immerse Arkansas primarily provides support to children who are aging out of the system without being adopted. Continue reading →

Poll shows why GOP must ride the Trump train

Donald TrumpWe learned this week that it’s statistically possible that the only Republican voters in eastern Arkansas’ 1st District who don’t approve of President Trump are the half a dozen who said so in a poll.

The survey by Talk Business & Politics and Hendrix College found that 96.6 percent of respondents in that district said they approve of Trump’s performance. It polled 676 likely Republican primary voters statewide, or about 169 per congressional district, though it wasn’t exactly that. If it were, that would mean somewhere around six voters in the 1st said they didn’t approve of Trump or didn’t know, while the rest approve.

But the survey had a margin of error of 3.8 percent both ways, and 96.6 plus 3.8 equals more than 100. So who knows – maybe those are the only six? Continue reading →

Looks like the governor is safe

Asa HutchinsonAs the campaigns heat up before the May 22 primary …

I’d been wondering why Gov. Asa Hutchinson hadn’t been spending more of that $1.86 million he had in the bank as of March 31. A recent poll may provide the answer.

The governor has always been an overwhelming favorite to be re-elected, but if he were to face a challenge, it more likely would happen in the May Republican primary rather than the November general election. Primaries are weird because they attract a smaller turnout with more partisan voters. His opponent, Jan Morgan, is pretty good at bringing attention to herself through hot-button issues that are important in a Republican primary – guns, in particular. In the age of Donald Trump, she’s the more Trump-like candidate.

So I thought she might make the governor sweat a little. Continue reading →

After 100-plus foster homes, a family at last

Walk for the Waiting

The Walk for the Waiting at War Memorial Stadium in 2017.

Meghan raced into Christie Erwin’s arms and hugged her excitedly. And then she was given a red armband because she no longer needs Erwin’s help to find a family.

The reunion occurred at the Big Rock Fun Park, where Erwin’s organization, Project Zero, brought waiting foster children and potential adoptive parents together in hopes of finding matches.

Meghan, 17, whose name is changed here, has been in foster care since she was two years old. She’s one of 4,729 Arkansas foster children who have been removed from birth parents who were drug addicts or abusive or had other issues – a number that’s down from last year’s 5,113. There are programs to help the birth parents get their lives together and get their kids back, but eventually some lose their rights.

It is not an easy life for the children. Meghan had been in more than 100 foster homes until moving in with current foster parents Jason and Karen Johnson, whose names also have been changed. Continue reading →