Black Marriage & Divorce/We do have an effect/Notebook/Radio - 5/05

Thu May 26 14:36:49 EDT 2005

- DIVORCE AND MARRIAGE AFFECT BLACK CHILDREN MORE
- GM "MISTRESS" BILLBOARD
- INFIDELITY GREETING CARDS
- THE NOTEBOOK 
- MARRIAGE AND MONOGAMY SURVEY
- RADIO INTERVIEWS 101

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- DIVORCE AND MARRIAGE AFFECT BLACK CHILDREN MORE
May 25, 2005    

Divorce and marriage play much bigger economic roles for black children than
white children in the United States, according to a new study by two UC
Davis economists.

Marianne Page and Ann Huff Stevens find that in the first two years
following a divorce, family income among white children falls about 30
percent, while it falls by 53 percent among black children.

"This difference increases dramatically in the long run," Page and Stevens
write. "Three or more years after the divorce, about a third of the loss in
whites' household income is recouped, but the income of black families
barely improves."

In fact, three or more years after the divorce, the black families' income
remains 47 percent lower than if the parents had remained together.

Marriage appears to have even greater benefits for black children whose
single mothers marry than for their white counterparts, according to the
study.

Page and Stevens estimate that while the family income of white children
rises by 45 percent when their single parent marries, the family income of
black children rises by 81 percent with marriage.

One reason for the difference in improvement is that married black mothers
are more likely to work than married white mothers. On the other hand, when
divorce occurs, the probability of black mothers working does not change,
while recently divorced white women have an 18 percent greater probability
of working.

The study, published in the February 2005 issue of Demography, followed a
nationally representative, longitudinal survey of Americans conducted by the
University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research.

Media contact(s):
€ Marianne Page, Economics, (530) 752-1551, mepage at ucdavis.edu
€ Ann Huff Stevens, Economics, (530) 752-3034, annstevens at ucdavis.edu
€ Susanne Rockwell, UC Davis News Service, (530) 752-9841,
sgrockwell at ucdavis.edu
-------------------
PLAN TO ATTEND THE African American Healthy Marriage Initiative Roundtables
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> Click for more information: http://www.smartmarriages.com/blackman.html
> 
> 401 - Saturday, June 25
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> Black Americans are the most unmarried group in the world. Learn to teach the
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> curriculum.  

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> Black Marriage Day Celebrations  Nisa Muhammad, Dion Evans, MA
> Getting Denominations On Board  Darrell Armstrong, MDiv, George Young, MDiv

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- GM "MISTRESS" BILLBOARD

General Motor's Nancy Libby, Communications Manager for the Western Region,
returned my call today.  Here's the story on the billboard.  It was not a
hoax.  The billboard featuring three cars "for a wife, or a girlfriend, and
the classiest car - for your mistress" -- was actually up for a month in the
San Francisco area. It was up during February 2005, Marriage Week -- talk
about unfortunate timing. The billboard was the winner of a local contest
run on the GM "Find Your Life Style" website.  Libby was not sure who the
judges were or how involved the GM board or management was in the decision
to post the billboard. But,"Based on the negative feedback, GM has decided
not to repeat the billboard in any other location."  The ad will not run
again anywhere. Ever.  This and the story below on the "Affairs greeting
cards" shows that our feedback can have an effect.

To read the original post about the billboard and "affairs cards" -
http://archives.his.com/smartmarriages/2005-May/msg00021.html

Also, I got some angry comments about this when I asked you to try to
contact GM, and I said "In Detroit, of course" which was interpreted as some
kind of slam about values in Detroit.  I was simply pointing out -- for time
zone purposes -- that the numbers I gave you were for an office in Detroit
I'd wanted to know where I was calling because I kept getting nothing but
voice mail - wondered where/what their business hrs were. The "of course"
was just that -- a friendly "of course" because that's where the GM/auto
manufacturers would logically be located. - diane

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- INFIDELITY GREETING CARDS
Hi Diane,
We do have an effect!  The Montgomery Gazette interviewed me and several
other Bethesda residents that complained about the "affairs cards" story.
The reporter said that they'd had a huge response to the article, and were
doing a follow-up.  They could have done a lot better, but at least the
second article gets at some of the chaos that infidelity creates in a
marriage. The Gazette's young reporter had never experienced infidelity or
any of the other extremely difficult things that marriage can hand a person;
I suspect she learned a lot very quickly after she spoke to people who've
been on the front lines of the marriage wars.
Joanna Bare
-------------------------
Infidelity Greeting Cards Under Fire
by Stephanie Siegel
Staff Writer
May 25, 2005

Readers sound off on sentiment, business

An article last week about a Bethesda woman who created a line of greeting
cards designed for people involved in affairs elicited numerous responses
from readers who found the idea objectionable.

"I was really shocked about the infidelity cards," said Bethesda resident
Lola Gimmel. "I don't agree with this sort of thing and I just felt it was
shocking."

Cathy Gallagher created the line of cards and launched her company, The
Secret Lover Collection, at the National Stationery Show last week in New
York. The story ran on May 18 in The Gazette, headlined "Love notes for that
'other' special someone."

People in the card industry said the idea is unique and marketable, but a
number of The Gazette readers and others who work with couples dealing with
marital infidelity said there's no place in society for such a product.

"We don't see Hallmark cards about abuse or alcoholism or addiction," said
Joanna Bare, chairwoman of the board of directors of the local chapter of
Save Your Marriage Central, a national organization that helps couples who
are dealing with infidelity. Bare, a Bethesda resident, e-mailed The Gazette
after reading the story.

Like abuse or addiction, affairs cause havoc in marriages, Bare said. Cards
for people in affairs romanticize such relationships and ignore the harmful
aspects of them.

"[Gallagher is] expressing emotions that people certainly do feel, but what
she's missing is that the emotional high that goes with having an affair is
not a loving way to act," Bare said. "If we want to be ethical people,
acting on those emotions is not something we should do."

According to Bare, between 60 and 80 percent of marriages are affected by
infidelity -- the same statistics Gallagher cited as one reason for creating
the line of cards.  . . .

. . .Often a single person is involved in an affair with a married person,
she said.

"It's a way to hold onto the person," she said. "I can imagine a single
person sitting at home getting this card that says hold on even if holiday
after holiday we can't be together."

To read the complete article:
http://www.gazette.net/200521/bethesda/news/276630-1.html.

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- THE NOTEBOOK 

> Diane, 
> I, too, finally saw "The Notebook."  Fantastic.  The two scenes to show as
> clips are the one where the young lad explains that it will take work for
> their marriage to work, but he's in it for the long haul.  This is near the
> end.  Second scene is where the old hero says he is sticking with his wife
> when his children tell him he should not.  Definitely deserves the award.
> Jim Sheridan

Any volunteers who can track down the producers contact info for me?  Any of
you working on a guide to use this movie in Marriage Ed classes?  - diane

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- MARRIAGE AND MONOGAMY SURVEY

>From Katherine Frank of the Department of Sociology at the University of
Wisconsin, Madison:

If you are over 18 and currently married, you are eligible to participate in
our confidential study on monogamy and marriage. We are specifically
interested in couples for the survey portion of the study, but can make
arrangements for individuals as well. The researchers are experienced social
scientists in the areas of sëx, love, and relationships and are affiliated
with the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. If
you are interested in discussing your opinions on love, sëx, and commitment,
please contact Katherine Frank at katefrank at comcast.net to request more
information or visit the survey website:
http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/monogamysurvey/.

(Taken from the April/May issue of the http://www.marriagetransformation.com
newsletter.  Free: subscribe on the website.)

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- RADIO INTERVIEW 101
By Bryan Farrish
www.radio-media.com

Getting Your Own Show, part 1

After you've done about a hundred interviews, it may be time for you to
consider starting your own show.  You may have wanted to do so from the
beginning, but it is much more complex and expensive than you probably
think, so we recommend that you do at least a hundred interviews first.  If
you won't be doing this many interviews, then you'll go farther faster by
just sticking with interviewing, and forgetting about getting your own show.
Plus, it's difficult enough getting your own show on just one station, but
syndication to other stations is extremely tough, so you want to make sure
there is a real long-term career need to do so before you drop your
interviewing efforts in favor of your own show.  We'll cover here why you
need lots of interviewing experience...

First, you want to do enough interviews so that the people at the stations
(who remember when you interviewed there) will be there to recommend your
new show to the PD.  And you'll need lots and lots of recommendations, since
only a few PD's are going to actually consider your show, i.e., it's a small
percentage of the total.

Another reason for doing many interviews first, is that you'll need the
experience dealing with radio stations.  Someone walking in off the street
wanting to do a show right away would never be able to pull it off... and
stations know this.  Thus, being able to demonstrate to prospective stations
that you have been on lots and lots (hopefully hundreds) of interviews will
be somewhat of a resume' for you.

Also, you are (presumably) going to want to do a show whereby you interview
other guests, so, being able to demonstrate that you have been on the
calling side of the fence is going to be very valuable when asking PD's for
a slot on their stations.  Knowing what callers go through in terms of busy
signals, dropped calls, cells, idiots, and (especially) screeners, will all
help.  After all, stations are trying to get more of a particular type of
caller on the air; enough of the wrong callers and your show is going to be
pulled.

Yet another point, often overlooked by almost everyone, is that by having
done many, many interviews over the course of a few years, you have shown
that you are not growing tired of radio, or the media in general.  This is
important because many people have started out their show with a bang, only
to throw in the towel in 6 months because of boredom, nervousness, or
something else.  Stations know this, and would rather have you bomb out on
somebody else's dime, because the last thing they need is to get listeners
accustomed to a particular show, and then have that show disappear
(especially if sponsors have sponsored the show, in which case some suing
could result.)

Lastly, there is the focus of your show.  While you may have been doing
interviews for a while, focusing on your particular topic of interest, it's
rare that this one topic can sustain an ongoing non-brokered show.  Your
interviews appeared once, maybe twice, on any particular station, and were
probably just a few minutes at that.  Your show, on the other hand, is going
to be at least a half hour, every single week.  So, you are going to have to
spend some time honing your show-focus into something which will hold
listener's attention without boring them.

------------------------------------------------------------
Bryan Farrish Radio Promotion is an independent radio interview promotion
company.  310-998-8305 x95  www.radio-media.com for FREE newsletter
------------------------------------------------------------

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