Category: The Dish

by Elizabeth Nolan Brown

I am a member of the millennial generation, which means so are my same-age friends, obviously. Yet they routinely refuse to acknowledge this. Some genuinely don’t realize that they, born in the early 1980s, could possibly be considered part of the same generational cohort as those born in, say, 1997. Some seem to know they are millennials technically but refute the label on grounds of principle. So strong is this Millennial Denial Syndrome that appeals to logic – most generations span 15 to 20 years! not identifying with generational tropes doesn’t change your birth year! – only work about half the time.

Millennial journalist Lauren Alix Brown was recently forced to confront the terrible truth about herself:

No one likes the term “millennial,” with its connotations of narcissism, laziness, and self-delusion. And yet it wasn’t until I was editing a piece on millennials, and my office debated the merits of the term for a global audience, that I realized I was one.

But don’t worry, her pain was short-lived. Brown quickly decides that if she is considered a millennial, the term must be meaningless:

Millennial has become a catchall for everything right and wrong with the younger generation. In being used too broadly and frequently, it’s become meaningless for some of the nuances that differentiate us. It also covers a swath as wide, in some definitions, as those born from 1977 to the year 2000.+

The official millennial birth boundaries are blurry, but most place the start between 1979-1982 and the end between 1994-and the late 90s. Generational scholars William Strauss and Neil Howe, who coined the term “millennial”, defined the generation as those born between 1982 and 2000. Regardless of how you slice it, you’ll hear the same complaint from older millennials: they simply have nothing in common with those born 10, 12, 15 years behind.

“Everyone thinks they are distinct from the generation below them,” Brown acknowledges, but she thinks “among millennials, there truly is a divide”:

Most importantly, the Great Recession: A group of us entered the workforce in a distinctly different economy from today’s graduates. A recent survey conducted by Zogby Analytics looked at millennials in two cohorts—those born between 1979-1989 and those born 1990-1996. The older cohort was more apt to have a college degree, consider their current job a career, and less likely to have lost a job in the past 12 months. Older millennials were born to Baby Boomer parents and graduated college and entered the job market in a boom time.The younger set, which entered adulthood during the financial crisis, are products of Gen X-ers.

Yet millennials who entered the job market pre-recession were quickly greeted by it. Many of my friends had no sooner gotten their first professional, post-college jobs than they were losing them in 2008-2009 layoffs. I’m not convinced that entering the workforce pre- or post-recession is as great a marker of difference as some say it is. Perhaps older millennials are more likely to have college degrees and consider their current jobs a career because they are older? In the Zogby survey, we’re talking about the difference between people 25-35 versus those ages 18 to 24!

Putting economic influences aside, Brown quips that she doesn’t feel at all millennial as she encounters “new grads who drink coffee through a straw during an interview or respond with ‘k’ over Gchat.” Yet I remember hearing similar complaints from folks when my friends and I were just out of college and searching for jobs. Boomers and Gen X-ers assure me that their elders had similar complaints about them as interns and entry-level staffers.

I understand why it may seem weird, looking at a 16-year-old from the ripe old age of 30, and being told that you’re supposed to have something in common with them. But generations are, in theory, taxonomied more for historical shorthand purposes than major in-the-moment meaning. So you remember dial-up Internet and they don’t? So they got a Facebook profile at 12 and you were 20? Compared to the cultural gulf between any millennial and any member of our grandparents’ generation, or any member of the post- post- millennial generation, these differences are minuscule and virtually meaningless. And in 50 or 100 years, they will be undetectable to those looking back.

So anyway, here’s my plea to my fellow millenials: Accept the label, because you’re never going to shake it. But this doesn’t mean you have to accept what they say about us. Part of the reason millennials are so mocked and maligned is because nobody wants to admit to being one. The sooner you admit to your dreaded millennial-ness, the sooner you can start changing the conversation about us.

by Dish Staff

Brad Plumer shakes his head over “that magical time of year when shark scientists tear their hair out over all the misleading claims about sharks that get splashed on TV”:

Case in point: On Sunday, the Discovery Channel aired a two-hour segment called “Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine” about a 35-foot-long great white shark the size of a sub that supposedly attacked people off the coast of South Africa. And, surprise! None of this was real. As zoologist Michelle Wciesel points out at Southern Fried Science, the “submarine shark” in South Africa was an urban legend started by journalists in the 1970s who were trying to fool a gullible public. But the Discovery Channel didn’t debunk the myth — instead, they offered up computer-generated images and interviewed fake experts with fake names (like “Conrad Manus”) about the fake submarine shark.

As Arielle Duhaime-Ross observes, actual scientists are not amused:

Of course, this isn’t the first time Shark Week has experienced backlash for its negative portrayal of sharks and its tendency to rely on fiction rather than fact, as last year’s Megalodon documentary was widely trashed for suggesting that extinct sharks still roam Earth’s waters. But this year feels different, perhaps because a number of shark scientists have begun to explain why they refuse to work with Discovery – and how Shark Week burned them in the past. …

Samantha Sherman, a marine biologist at James Cook University, says that Shark Week was “the best week of the year” growing up, but it has taken a distinct turn toward pseudoscience. As a result, she says, her colleagues have been less than forthcoming when producers have called them and asked for help. “I have a couple friends that have been approached by Discovery and have turned it down because of where it’s going and the fear-mongering,” she says. “They don’t want to be part of the hate, or have their message misinterpreted so they have just said ‘no.'”

Joanna Rothkopf sighs:

In an interview with the Atlantic’s Ashley Fetters, Shark Week’s former executive producer Brooke Runnette outlined Shark Week’s programming strategy:

To a large extent, she says, the ominous tones and the imminent danger are still what draws viewers to Shark Week. In the past 25 years, Runnette and her team managed to isolate “what works” into a neat, distilled list of elements: “The shark is the star. Just keep showing that. Don’t give too much reason to worry. Make sure we stay outside, because it’s summertime, and everybody wants to see the colors and the light outside. You don’t want to be inside talking to people; if anything, you want to be outside talking to people. Just be in the water, with the shark; or be out on the boat, with the shark.”

It’s a classic story of modern media — when clicks and views mean success, accuracy and quality become unnecessary bonuses. We just need to stop being surprised when it happens.

by Elizabeth Nolan Brown

K. Annabelle Smith notices that many small farmers aren’t bothering to get certified “organic” because the paperwork is too much of a hassle:

Data from this year’s census shows there are 18,513 certified organic farms and businesses in the United States, a 245 percent increase since 2002. But New Jersey is among 17 states that have seen a decline in organic certifications since 2008. [Jennifer] LaMonica’s CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) is one of 40 organic farms the Garden State “lost” in recent years. Though there are a number of reasons for the decline—farm consolidation and limited water resources among them—one major explanation is that formerly certified organic farms are simply dropping their USDA stamp of approval.

(…) It’s not necessarily prohibitive startup costs that are turning farms off of the organic certification process. Depending on the size of a farm, it only costs between $200 and $1,500 to have a USDA inspector survey land for certification. But the required recordkeeping can be unmanageable for a farm of Sea Salt’s size. Farmers with a certification are only inspected by the USDA once a year, but they are required to keep daily records of everything, from how often they irrigate to total hours spent weeding. And the more diverse the crop, the more complicated the paperwork.

The rules also prohibit organic farmers from sharing any equipment with non-organic counterparts. And should a farmer use the label improperly? They can face up to $11,000 in fines per violation. Organic farmers have been long been complaining that the USDA certification process, with its intensive record-keeping requirements and potential risk, puts small farms and food companies at a disadvantage to the organic brands run by food conglomerates.

But how can consumers rest assured their “organic” food really is organic without the aid of USDA certification? Interestingly, a non-governmental certifying board may already be answering that question. It’s called the Certified Naturally Grown program, Smith explains:

It’s based on the USDA’s organic standards, but offers a less bureaucratic method of inspection: peer-to-peer. Each farmer in the program is required to do at least one inspection a year for another CNG farmer. The program, which has been around since October 2002, continues to expand. Farms in 47 states are registered as CNG, and the program received more than 300 new applications last year.

Steven Zwier and Robyn Weber run Asbury Village Farm, a CNG operation in New Jersey. Like LaMonica, they grow a small, diverse crop, but Zwier and his wife have no other hired labor. The USDA organic program was not a good fit for their farm, Zwier explains, because, with a two-person workforce, he needs to put all of his energy into the fields. Like LaMonica, he relies on the farm’s strong community reputation to keep a steady customer base, but wanted the extra level of credibility CNG offers.

“CNG strips down the red-tape bureaucracy of us paying the government our certification fees to keep statistics for them,” he says.

The CNG approach is called a participatory guarantee system (PGS). “While the PGS concept is still new to many in the United States, PGS programs have been in place for decades” elsewhere, the organization says.

Farmers in the Philippines this week launched a such a system, finding their country’s main organic-certification process “too slow” and labyrinthian. “In a second-party certification system like the PGS, we are well-represented in the committee and our opinions and knowledge are recognized,” Jose Ben Travilla, an organic farmer and PGS inspector, told MindaNews.