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A quarter-century of Prime

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By Debbie Gardner
debbieg@thereminder.com

Prime celebrates its 25th anniversary this month. In cultural terms, that means this publication has just about spanned a generation.

When the first issue was published on Oct. 13, 1992, the editor’s note spoke to how this was a publication for readers “age 55 and over.”

Someone age 55 in 1992 was born in 1937, four short years before America entered World War II.

Someone turning 55 this year was born in 1962, two years before the end of the much-heralded (and lately maligned) Baby Boom generation.

Those early readers came of age in a time of conflict and sacrifice, with many of those early “55 and over” readers having seen the horrors of war in Europe, or like my dad – who was 65 the year “Prime Times” launched – in the Pacific.

In contrast, those turning 55 in 2017 had just entered their teens when the U.S pulled out of another war that significantly impacted the culture of this country – Vietnam.

Through a long lens

I’ve been on the editorial staff of a version of Prime for nearly 22 of its 25 years, coming onboard in 1995 to work on the short-lived Connecticut version of PrimeTimes. For 14 of the past 17 years, I’ve served as the publication’s editor, assuming that position in 2001 and continuing to oversee its editorial direction with the exception of a short hiatus to work in other publications for the company from 2009 to 2012.

This long association with Prime affords me an interesting perspective on how the product, and the readership, has evolved. As the historical retrospective above suggests, I started out writing for that WWII generation – people like my parents, aunts and uncles – many of whom I know are still loyal monthly readers. But now I find myself also writing for my friends and slightly younger family members, as we, the Woodstock Generation of the 1960s – the Boomers – as well as members of the latch-key Generation X, move toward our 50s, 60 and beyond.

We are, and we aren’t, the same paper The Reminder’s founder, Carlo Buendo, launched on Oct. 13, 1992. He saw a growing cohort of population with a need, and strived to fill it.

Today’s Prime still seeks to serve that growing population – one that, according to census figures has swelled from 32.5 million in the 1990s to 59 million in 2016. Projections are that in the next 20 years, people age 50 and older – the Boomers – will make up the largest segment of the population in the United States.

Some things never change – everyone wants tips on handling their finances, staying healthy, finding great local things to do, and planning that next vacation getaway. But between the 1990s and this past decade, there have been many changes for Prime’s readers.

Health

The healthcare landscape has become much more complex than simply signing up for Medicare at retirement. For example, ongoing changes in Medicare coverage and insurance premiums over the years have meant many retirees found themselves in situations where prescription medications became too expensive. I remember stories in the early 2000s about the pitfalls of ordering meds from Canada and other online pharmacies to try and mitigate costs. Other changes in the healthcare system over the years led to confusion about choosing insurance plans – and articles on how to read your prescription formulary before signing up to make sure your drugs were covered. There were always questions about how and when to sign up for Medicare, and what the plan covered for what cost – something that continues to change as health coverage evolves under each administration.

Throughout this same time period, alternative medicine became a growing trend, and in the 2000s, Prime added a local columnist with herbal and alternative medicine expertise to help readers make the most of staying healthy. We also periodically devoted features to local athletes  – those from the annual Senior Games and others in running groups, hiking groups, cyclists and even mountain climbers – who epitomized a healthy lifestyle at any age.

In 2017, keeping tabs on the ongoing changes to the Affordable Care Act – and how this may affect the premiums for those over 50, remains something on Prime’s radar going forward, as will innovations in healthy lifestyles.

Wealth

But health and healthcare aren’t the only area where there has been somewhat of a seismic shift in the past 25 years. In the last quarter-century lines between what we call work and traditional retirement have become somewhat blurred.

For example, I remember writing stories in the 1990s and early 2000s celebrating people who were still working in their late 70s, as though that was an oddity. Around that same time period, Prime ran a two-part feature on how to plan for your happy and secure post-work life, and financial advice focused on growing nest eggs for early – or lengthy and carefree – retirement.

That all changed in 2009, when the economic downturn caught every age bracket by surprise. Through 2014, Prime ran nearly monthly columns on how to find a job after 50, as many in that age group found themselves downsized out of a job – or with diminished nest eggs – as the economy tightened and the downturn dragged on.

Pew Research Center confirmed this ongoing shift in economic priorities in 2016, when research indicated there were more Americans over the age of 65 in the workforce than there were prior to 2009’s Great Recession, many who are still employed full time. This trend, Pew noted, reversed nearly 30 years of employees leaving the workforce permanently at traditional retirement age, or even a bit before.

In response to this shift in attitudes, Prime now continues to provide periodic targeted pieces on job searches and career advice, and notices on career training events and over 50 job fairs, when they occur.

Attitudes

Another phenomenon began creeping into the articles we ran in Prime just after the turn of the Millennium. The over-65 community began rising up against the use of the word “senior” in articles about their cohort, preferring the word “elder”. I even got an advisory from some of the senior advocacy groups about the issue.

It was also around that time that I started to get books about jobs and employment at mid-life, with titles such as “So What If I’m 50?” Looking back, I see the threads of a trend beginning, but one so subtle even someone like me, who was immersed in writing for and about this population group, didn’t completely see.

According to Pew Research, the seeds of Age Discrimination took root in our society about 20 years ago, as our obsession with youth – and one of the nation’s smallest population groups  – took hold. More recently, the World Health Organization (WHO), saw this phenomenon as enough of a significant problem to dedicate space on its website for information about ageism in society and its implications.

According to the WHO, “Ageism is widely prevalent and stems from the assumption that all members of a group (for example older adults) are the same. Like racism and sexism, ageism serves a social and economic purpose: to legitimize and sustain inequalities between groups. It’s not about how we look. It’s about how people that have influence, assign meaning to how we look.”

Most importantly the WHO observes “Socially ingrained ageism can become self-fulfilling by promoting in older people stereotypes of social isolation, physical and cognitive decline, lack of physical activity and economic burden.”

Perhaps some of the growth of this prejudice can be linked to innovations such as the iPod, or the iPhone, or just the explosion of tech in general, but the dramatic shift in how we connect as individuals communicate and get work done does weight heavily against those who were not early tech adaptors or what’s now called “digital natives.”

It appears that in today’s society instead of seeing individuals age 60 and older as mentors – something that was common for generations before – many in the workforce, and even in families, see these individuals as obsolete because they can’t “keep up.”

To counter this inequality, Prime, since its earliest days, included information on tech innovations, from highlighting the early growth of “SeniorNet” programs to introduce those approaching -or in- retirement to computers, to ongoing tech columns that have highlighted innovations in health monitoring devices, aids to the hearing and visually impaired, home automation, smart watches, the latest in tablets and laptops, and more.

But even those of us who were early adaptors – I started working on my first Mac in 1984 and have been using tech in myriad forms to perform my job ever since – can sometimes feel left in the dust by the pace of things today.

I’m not certain if it’s this digital divide, or the equally rapid explosion of medicine – which sometimes has led to treatment of illness and conditions that have left patients suffering – that have led to this concept of aging as decline.

Or maybe we Boomers can just blame the mantra to “never trust anybody over 30” that permeated the 1960s culture for the ageism they now encounter.

Who reads today’s Prime?

The target audience for Prime hasn’t changed, we still write and research for individuals 55 years of age and older. But as you’ve seen, the reader has in some ways, changed. Statistics show individuals age 60, 70, 80 and older in general, are healthier and more active than their counterparts of a generation ago, and their interest is in staying that way and not slowing down. Again, according to Pew Research, nearly 20 percent of this population is still on the job, and planning to stay there – either by necessity or by choice. And those workers are doing more than just earning a paycheck, this group is also active in volunteering, with 44 percent of those age 55 and older donating their time and talents, a figure that jumps to 66 percent for workers 75 years of age and older, according to the Urban Institute‘s Retirement Project.

Today’s readers also have an entrepreneurial spirit; more small businesses are being opened by people age 55 and older than any other age group.

“The public obsesses over tech whiz kids in hoodies,” said Leah Buchannan, Editor-at-large, in a 2017 article in Inc. magazine. “But a more dynamic entrepreneurial species is the silver fox. Among entrepreneurs who start businesses between the ages of 20 and 64, almost a quarter are 55 or older, compared with 15 percent in 1996, according to the Kauffman Foundation.”

To put it simply, today’s Prime readers are much less likely to want to know what’s happening at their local Senior Center (now often called Adult Centers) than the inaugural readers from 25 years ago.

How has Prime responded to these cultural shifts? We give you “Six Things” each month – a short-hit mix of tech and trends and culture. We’ve examined health aging and ageism through features about programs at local community colleges and visits by anti-ageism advocates. We’ve talked to career changers and cancer survivors and entrepreneurs and advocates about subjects that matter. We’ve taken a look at myriad topics from charity donations to last minute vacations to smart investing and combatting bullying – all through our Three Big Questions. And we continue to provide highlights of great things to do in the area, alternative medicine advice, financial and estate planning and a look at the latest tech innovations every month.

We’ve also added a columnist who looks at myriad topics through a boomer perspective.

How will Prime change in the next 5, 10, 15 years? You, our readers, will help us decide.