{"id":1819,"date":"2011-11-14T11:00:57","date_gmt":"2011-11-14T18:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/?p=1819"},"modified":"2011-11-23T09:51:31","modified_gmt":"2011-11-23T16:51:31","slug":"looking-at-numbers-finding-a-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2011\/11\/14\/looking-at-numbers-finding-a-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking at Numbers, Finding a Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_1829\"  class=\"wp-caption module image left\" style=\"max-width: 225px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2011\/11\/14\/looking-at-numbers-finding-a-story\/main-street\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1829\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1829\" title=\"Main Street\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/files\/2011\/11\/Main-Street-300x400.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/files\/2011\/11\/Main-Street-300x400.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/files\/2011\/11\/Main-Street-620x826.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/files\/2011\/11\/Main-Street-220x293.jpg 220w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Molly Messick \/ StateImpact Idaho<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\"> <\/p><\/div>\n<p>When I went to Camas County to report <a title=\"In Rural Idaho, the Recession Changes One Town\u2019s Fate\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2011\/11\/11\/in-rural-idaho-the-recession-changes-one-towns-fate\/\">our recent story about Fairfield<\/a>, I was thinking about numbers.\u00a0 The county is rural and small.\u00a0 That means it has a low population &#8212; about 1,100 people &#8212; which makes its unemployment rate a moving target.\u00a0 In August, unemployment in Camas County stood at 16.7 percent.\u00a0 Only Adams County had a higher rate, at 16.8.\u00a0 In September, the most recent month for which numbers are available, Camas County&#8217;s rate was a much better-sounding 11.8 percent.<\/p>\n<p>I was thinking about all of this because of the general story idea I was aiming to follow.\u00a0 Idaho is somewhat unusual in that its unemployment rate has gone up since the summer of 2009.\u00a0 (That&#8217;s when the Great Recession officially ended, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.)\u00a0 Camas County&#8217;s unemployment rate reflects this post-recession rise.\u00a0 <!--more-->In late 2007 and early 2008, unemployment hovered in the three to four percent range.\u00a0 As the recession progressed, unemployment inched up, moving toward five, six and seven percent.\u00a0 It was only in mid-2009 that Camas County&#8217;s rate hit 10 percent, and in 2010 that it began to reach highs between 14 and 16 percent.<\/p>\n<div class=\"related-content alignright\"><h4 class=\"related-header\">Related<\/h4><div class=\"links\"><h5>Posts<\/h5><ul><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2011\/09\/15\/the-slow-road-to-rural-job-growth\/\">The Slow Road to Rural Job Growth<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2011\/11\/11\/in-rural-idaho-the-recession-changes-one-towns-fate\/\">In Rural Idaho, the Recession Changes One Town\u2019s Fate<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/div><div class=\"topics\"><h5>Topics<\/h5><p class=\"topic\"><img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/files\/2011\/08\/ChalkBoard_JeffreyCoolidge_getty-60x60.jpg\" height=\"60\" width=\"60\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/topic\/recession\/\">Defining the Recession<\/a><\/p><\/div><\/div>\n<p>What did all of this mean in the actual county and to the actual people living there?\u00a0 I wasn&#8217;t sure.\u00a0 I had spoken to some very helpful and knowledgeable people &#8212; a Department of Labor economist, a Department of Commerce business development specialist, the vice-president of a nonprofit economic development group &#8212; but none of them lives in Camas County, either.\u00a0 The local people I reached told me things weren&#8217;t great, but I still didn&#8217;t have a clear picture.\u00a0 Sometimes, it takes a visit.<\/p>\n<p>The first person I met was David Hanks, the former mayor of Fairfield, Camas County&#8217;s only town.\u00a0\u00a0 As we talked, I started to understand the particular weight of the downturn in this small community.\u00a0 He described the pain of watching a local family &#8212; people he knows, because in a town of 400, everyone knows everyone &#8212; being evicted from their home.\u00a0 He talked about how hard it was to lay off four of the more than 30 local employees who work for his company,<a href=\"http:\/\/hcfusion.com\/\"> High Country Fusion,<\/a> after the economy finally started to affect business early this year.<\/p>\n<p>Hanks is the sort of person who radiates enthusiasm, and he clearly pours a lot of that energy into his community.\u00a0 To meet one person with that kind of love for a town is remarkable.\u00a0 Meeting many such people over the course of one day more or less blew my mind.\u00a0 It&#8217;s hard to describe the feeling with which a person can say, &#8220;I love this town.&#8221;\u00a0 You have to hear the tape.\u00a0 In the case of this story, there were too many examples.\u00a0 Many people said it and in many different ways, too many to include in a single radio story.<\/p>\n<p>I began the reporting process thinking about numbers.\u00a0 I found a story about a town that was on its way up and that is now fighting to hang on.\u00a0 Many local people are fighting for it.\u00a0 Fairfield is a beloved place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I went to Camas County to report our recent story about Fairfield, I was thinking about numbers.\u00a0 The county is rural and small.\u00a0 That means it has a low population &#8212; about 1,100 people &#8212; which makes its unemployment rate a moving target.\u00a0 In August, unemployment in Camas County stood at 16.7 percent.\u00a0 Only [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":1829,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[46,74],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1819"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1819"}],"version-history":[{"count":38,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2234,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1819\/revisions\/2234"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}