Over at The New Republic, various staff members compiled a list of the 12 stories of 2011 that stand out in the sense that they never stood out in the media or in the general public.
Here’s a sampling of the most underreported stories and why they were chosen:
“Tim Noah: Declining Illegal Immigration — The number of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. peaked in 2007 at 12 million and has since fallen to about 11 million, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. The simplest explanation is that there’s been a falloff in economic opportunity in the U.S. due to the recession of 2007-2009.
“… The decline might be due to changes in Mexico itself. The country’s fertility rate has fallen to two children per woman. Secondary school attendance is up. Per capita gross domestic product has increased more than 45 percent since 2000. Family income has increased by a comparable amount. During that same period family income in the U.S. declined slightly. Might the North American Free Trade Agreement and other favorable economic developments in Mexico have achieved what decades of U.S. immigration policy could not? It would be premature to conclude this for certain. But it’s telling that in the current political climate no politician, Democrat or Republican, dare raise even the possibility that the only practical long-term solution to the problem of uncontrolled immigration — rising economic prosperity in Mexico — might be at hand.
“Alec MacGillis: The Higher Ed Bubble … which is still expanding. As the rest of the country engages in recession-era belt-tightening, most of America’s colleges and universities are skating blithely along, refusing to acknowledge a new reality. This fall, tuition at public universities rose by an average of more than 8 percent (to $8,244) for in-state students and nearly 6 percent (to $20,770) for out-of-state students, and an average hike of 4.5 percent at private colleges (to $28,500). The class of 2010 graduated with an average debt load of $25,000. The Obama administration is finally jaw-boning university leaders about reining in costs, but the higher ed sector, grown fat on non-faculty administrators and fancy capital projects, is far from its overdue reckoning.
Another underreported story centers around the nation’s oft-cited “obesity epidemic” and the claim that inner-city minorities are overweight because of a soft form of racism — they have no access to supermarkets with fresh vegetables and other healthy foods. Here’s how John McWhorter described the realities:
“A major study, conducted in several cities over 15 years, has shown that proximity of supermarkets does not affect people’s eating habits. I …expected (the story) to get major coverage in the media, especially given the obvious implications for implementation of Michelle Obama’s Healthy Food Initiative aimed at bringing nutritious food to inner cities. But when the findings were announced in the Los Angeles Times last July, it received a mere flurry of coverage, mostly in back pages and on lesser-known blogs.”
You can see the full list of 12 stories here.
