Journalism’s challenge to connect communities
Ispent part of last week in Montgomery County, Ohio, the epicenter of the nation’s opioid epidemic.
I didn’t hear grating sounds as an EMT zipped up a body bag of yet another opioid overdose victim. I didn’t watch as a gurney was wheeled across a front yard dotted with brightly colored autumn leaves to a waiting ambulance. I didn’t see the bodies stacked in cold storage because the local morgues had run out of space when overdose deaths spiked, as they did in January, when 65 people died of opioid overdose in Montgomery County.
I was in a brightly lit, woodpaneled conference room of a think tank listening to journalist Doug Oplinger, a fellow at the Kettering Institute, talk about how we might change the practice of journalism to help average citizens find a clear role in addressing community problems — like opioid addiction. Nationwide, 64,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses last year — more than died in the Vietnam War. More than those who died of AIDS at the height of the epidemic, in 1995.
After four decades as a writer and editor at the Akron Beacon Journal, Oplinger left in March to launch a statewide effort to bring together media, elected officials and average citizens to fight twin scourges devastating Ohio — opioids and a changing economy. Oplinger wasn’t looking for hero stories or someone to blame or shame. His No. 1 story was how the community is working together on shared public problems. At a series of community meetings, the public made it clear what media could do to help.
“They told us, ‘We want charts; we want conflicts identified; we want potential solutions outlined that we can discuss and weigh,’ ” Oplinger said. “Help empower us to make decisions.”
What the “charts” revealed was a crisis of biblical proportion. In 15 years, prescriptions for opioids such as OxyContin had soared. The drug was marketed as a “safe” painkiller but instead proved addictive. When patients couldn’t get prescriptions for legal drugs, they soon turned to illegal ones such as heroin or, recently, fentanyl. Many overdosed; the number of overdose deaths rose.
Readers wanted data so they could see and understand the shape, size and nature of the epidemic that arose as industrial jobs disappeared and opioid use proliferated. They needed to understand why Ohio employers now struggle to find workers who can pass a drug test.
The data also showed a misunderstanding of who was using the drugs and a mismatch of resources to respond. In Cincinnati, administrators had scheduled more EMTs for Friday and Saturday nights to be at the ready with the overdose-reversal treatment Narcan for partyers. But the data showed it typically was a quiet act of desperation on a Wednesday afternoon that resulted in a 911 call to treat overdose. Rescheduling EMTs cut overtime costs and made medical resources available when most needed, potentially saving lives.
Readers wanted their news organizations to help lay out options, with suggested actions and their drawbacks. More medical treatment resources? More arrests? More liberal attitudes toward users?
They wanted to know how to deal humanely with addicted loved ones. They wanted media to publish a local number to call for assistance.
“They wanted to turn it around so they could say they were winning,” Oplinger said.
The statewide media response proved more difficult than expected, and Oplinger found himself pleading with newspapers and TV stations to at least publish a local assistance number.
The national media response also was disappointing. “People in Ohio are so freaking angry that their lives have been destroyed in the last 15 years and the only time the coasts care about us was at election time,” he said, his voice rising.
The news media have a big role to play in helping Americans find solutions to their problems, and not just in Ohio. The opioid epidemic is like other public concerns, be it homelessness, housing, wildfire, flood or inadequate schools. That is, broadly shared, often personally devastating. Experts and elected officials can’t solve them alone. It takes the work of you and me and my neighbors and yours. And a healthy news media to help connect, not divide, us.