So What, Who Cares (vol 3, issue 44) What we miss when we don't talk about Walmart closing
Hello!
I am spending my free time today dealing with Craigslist people who want to barter over a set of $50 shelving that would retail for a few hundred bucks if new. You? Tell me the errand or to-do item that hitting a surprising number of your buttons via Twitter or via email.
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When a Walmart closes, it doesn't just leave ruin porn and retail wreckage behind. It also leaves people scrambling -- for jobs, for groceries, for aid, for human companionship. The Guardian ran a phenomenal piece by Ed Pilkington, "What Happened When Walmart Left," that examines the aftermath of the Kimball, West Virginia, Walmart Supercenter's closing in 2016.
It's a great piece for a lot of reasons, but mostly because Pilkington uses the closure of one massive retail center to highlight the chronic problems of a town left behind by 21st century industries. And it's also the first real, in-depth piece I've read on the aftermath of last year's Walmart closures that doesn't focus on quarterly profits, the retailer's e-commerce drama, or the perennial "They're terrible to workers" pieces.
Over 150 Walmarts closed in the U.S. last year, most in places that are the exact opposite of the eco-friendly creative-class urban oases that get covered whenever anyone wants to look at how retail shapes American life. We're already seeing a rethinking of the whole creative-class-new-urbanist thing -- it turns out it's very good for creating exactly the kinds of conditions where towns are vulnerable to the vicissitudes of retail implosions. Now let's see more coverage of what these retail losses mean for the people who were the customers and employees.
So what? Framing the 2016 closure of Walmart's stores in terms of businesses making or losing money is one story, but it's not the whole story. It was, in fact, at least 154 U.S.-based stories, one for every location closed. Or, in terms of workers affected, it was 10,000 stories.
Some media outlets did try to tell these stories -- Bloomberg news pointed out that for towns where Walmart had already pushed grocery stores out of business, the loss of big-box retailer meant no groceries in often-isolated places. They were following the lead of Thestate.com, which covered the impact one store's closing would have on senior citizens in Winnsboro, South Carolina, and AL.com, which reported on a similar story for Fairfield, Alabama residents.
When Quartz published the map of closing stores, it wasn't hard to see where the closings were concentrated -- the Bible Belt. That led to a bit of national-level coverage: The Washington Post followed up the January 2016 announcement with a February 2016 story asking,"What Happens to a Tiny Town When Walmart Disappears?" (Short answer: Everyone left in town willing to go on the record is miserable.)
But then ... the closing down of vital grocery and pharmacy services in small towns across the Bible Belt failed to grab a bigger national audience. The Atlantic -- which has an entire vertical devoted to reporting on communities and what affect them -- ran stories about Walmart's corporate strategy and what counties could do to recover their tax bases, but not a one examining how people adapt when the sole retail outpost in their small town vanishes. And when I googled for Walmart closures on several national-tier papers to see if they were looking at how small communities were coping with Wall Street-level decisions, I got nothing.
It's no wonder people felt a disconnect with the media. Nobody was paying sustained attention to their stories.
Who cares? Media professionals and media consumers should. In the months after the 2016 presidential election, there were countless soul-searching articles about where and how the media screwed up -- useful in examining gaps in coverage while also permitting media professionals to talk endlessly about how they do their jobs. (So ... win-win if you're in the media, not so much for the audience.)
ANYWAY, there was a brief spate of resolving to do better, there are a handful of reporters who have forged ahead with the "But what do the Trump voters think?" beat, and everyone has discovered what Sam Quinones was working on for years, i.e. there's an opiates-abuse epidemic in the United States and there are frighteningly few resources to combat it or help families affected by it.
But stories like the holes left behind when Walmart closes down count too. They're the real, on-the-ground reporting that shows people, "We're paying attention" and "We're looking for explanations" and "We understand that one story leads to more."
In the excellent Guardian piece alone, there are hooks for following up on any of these topics: where and how people find community gathering spots in this day and age; what happens to food banks and charities when a corporate donor disappears right as need rises; how few opportunities to simply take a walk there are in the southeastern U.S., where most states have less than 5% federal land and many residents live far from any public recreational facilities.
All of these are urgent, local stories. All of them need to be told. Nobody is going to stop telling the story "Wealthy company repositions its assets so it can remain wealthy." But there are many opportunities to start telling stories about what those corporate decisions mean on a community level. There is no reason why corporate media shouldn't start looking at these opportunities as a way to build audience.
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All images in this story are photos of West Virginia, available on Pixabay, taken by a photographer listed as skeeze.
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Your pop culture recommendation for the day: This Jezebel blog entry on the romance comic titles of yesteryear reminded me of one of the Marvel comics one-off, Marvel Romance Redux. The premise of this graphic novel was simple: Take the panels from 1960s romance comics, remove the dialogue but leave the bubbles, and have 2006's premier comics-industry smartasses write in a new story.
It's interesting to see who works within the constraints presented by someone else's art and dialogue placement and who just threw jokes at the panels to see what stuck. If you're a scholar of parodic comedy -- or you have a middle schooler around, because this book hits the sweet spot between "bodily fluid-based humor" and "absurdist comedy" -- pick up this TPB.
And speaking of women and comics about them, I would be remiss if I did not remind everyone that a new Squirrel Girl collection, Like I'm the Only Squirrel in the World, is out. It has rapidly become my favorite trade paperback featuring both Ant-Man cameos and the great nation of Canada, and it was exactly the palate cleaner I needed after digesting The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa writes, Robert Hack pens and inks).
More on The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: It's set in the mid-sixties, the religious fundamentalists and "good girls" are all Satan-worshipping witches, and as each panel raises and serves a new coming-of-age plot point across the net like a Serena Williams serve, the nearly-unbearable dread mounts. I loved it.
My only complaint is that the publishing pace means I'll be waiting until 2018 or 2019 for volume 2.
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