How One Stinking Press Release Ended My Career

by Sharon Kayne

Before I retired, I spent the last 18 years of my career working as the communications director of a child advocacy organization. During my tenure there, I wrote and sent out hundreds of press releases. Prior to that job, I worked in journalism, where I received and sifted through thousands of press releases. Suffice it to say that upon retirement, I was happy to be putting press releases behind me.

So what do I do? I volunteer to send out the press releases for an event being held by the writers’ organization I belong to. Because, apparently, I have some sort of masochistic desire to punish myself. In truth, my angst about press releases comes from one press release in particular, which played a big role in my decision to retire early.

The press release in question announced the annual KIDS COUNT state rankings on child well-being, which are put out every summer by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Sadly, New Mexico was ranked dead last in the nation for several years running. As disappointing as the low ranking is in and of itself, my main problem with it was that I worked for an advocacy organization with the sole mission of improving child well-being. We were damn good at what we did, but the ranking made us look like absolute failures. I mean, really, your mission is improving child well-being, but you announce to the world—every damn year—that your state is the absolute worst in that department? Talk about masochistic!

Why would my organization put out a press release that made us look like losers? Because my organization was the state grantee for the Annie E. Casey Foundation and putting out that fucking press release was a grant requirement. Oddly enough, Casey, being one of our oldest and largest funders, actually paid for many of the awesome policy wins that we achieved. I can’t possibly list all of those policy wins here, but they included the creation of tax credits, free health care, affordable child care, free early childhood services, ending predatory lending, and many other issues. While our wins undoubtedly improved child well-being, the state’s very high child poverty rate didn’t budge. That’s because the child poverty level is a limited measurement.

When the US Census Bureau measures poverty, all they consider is family income. But there’s so much more to poverty than income. Federal and state governments have, in fact, lots of programs to help lift working families out of poverty—income supports like tax credits, and help with housing costs, grocery purchases, and health care. You’d think that, in order to determine if these programs are working, the feds would consider them when they measure poverty rates. Well, they have started to, actually. A few years back, the US Census created a supplemental poverty measurement, which takes many of those supports—as well as the regional cost of living—into account. And the last year that I was at my job, the Census came out with a supplemental poverty measurement for children. Turns out, New Mexico has a significantly lower (that means better) child poverty rate under the supplemental measurement, which proves that our policies to improve child well-being were actually working. Let me tell you, I was happy to put out the press release about that data because it showed that New Mexico was making progress.

Since the KIDS COUNT ranking is all about child well-being, you’d think Casey would jump on the supplemental poverty data as a more accurate measurement. But, no. For some reason known only to them, they wanted to stick with the regular child poverty measure that makes New Mexico—including my organization and all the legislative champions we worked with—look so bad.

Don’t get me wrong: there are many other problems with the KIDS COUNT ranking. For starters, it’s a racist piece of crap. Allow me to explain why: the KIDS COUNT ranking doesn’t just look at child poverty, but at 15 other outcome measures that are linked to and impacted by child poverty. It can come as no surprise to anyone with half a brain that white kids tend to have the best outcomes on these measures. Further, it stands to reason that virtually all of the states that rank in the top ten are majority white-kid states. Lily-white states like New Hampshire, where white kids make up something like 80% of the child population, rank very well in KIDS COUNT. New Mexico, on the other hand—like most of the other states that rank in the bottom ten—has a much smaller population of white children. Fewer than 25% of New Mexico’s kids are white, for example. (For comparison, the national average for white kids is 49%.) So, really, what the KIDS COUNT ranking tells us is that centuries of white affirmative action have been really good for white kids, while putting kids of color at a disadvantage. Sadly, when you “rank” states on child well-being, in essence, you’re punishing states with lots of children of color and praising states for having lots of white kids. And that not only sucks, but it’s counterproductive.

In truth, KIDS COUNT is a valuable program that’s done a lot to put policies that improve child well-being at the forefront. But by punishing New Mexico, which has actually implemented lots of good policies to help kids, by ranking them last, you’re kinda implying that there is something wrong with the state. Or its kids. Fuck that. Years ago, I suggested to the folks at Casey that they grade the states—not just on child outcomes but on state inputs as well—instead of creating this competition where there are winners and losers. I was actually laughed at.

When the supplemental poverty measurement for kids came out and Casey failed to use it in their ranking, that’s when I knew: I could never send out another press release about the KIDS COUNT ranking. That meant retiring early, which was alright because I also wanted to spend more time writing and self-publishing my novels anyway.

Why I decided to add volunteering to send out a press release to that equation is anyone’s guess. Because, clearly, I still have a great deal of unresolved angst about the whole damn press release thing.

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