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timated between 45 and 52 years -- the shortest in North America except for Haiti.
• The statistics on Pine Ridge make for powerful, heart-wrenching stories, but some Oglala Sioux tribal members both on and off the reservation think it's exploitative, with too little emphasis on the people who are working every day to try to make a difference.
• "For more than 30 years I have greeted reporters from around the world who came to Pine Ridge to do the ultimate story on 'Indians' and I cringe when I see some of the articles after they have been published," said Tim Giago, a tribal member and longtime journalist who has founded several Native American newspapers.
• A $500 million lawsuit the tribe filed in February against several beer makers and beer stores in the nearby town of Whiteclay, Neb., led to a barrage of media coverage. Alcohol is banned at the reservation, but stores in the Nebraska town that has about a dozen residents and that's just two miles away sold the equivalent of 4.3 million, 12-ounce cans of beer.
• A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit Monday, saying the case belonged in state court. The judge did not rule on the merits of the suit, which blames beer makers and the stores for chronic alcoholism on the reservation.
• Before the lawsuit, an ABC documentary titled "A Hidden America: Children of the Plains" that aired last year drew both appreciation and consternation among tribal members because it focused on poverty, alcoholism and violence on the reservation.
• More recently, Oprah Winfrey's OWN aired "Life on the Rez" part of its "Our America" series hosted by journalist Lisa Ling, in July. Rapper Lupe Fiasco mentioned Pine Ridge in his hit single "Around My Way" and tweeted photos from an impromptu visit to the reservation. And in August, National Geographic Magazine featured a 36-page spread documenting the history of the Lakota people, the poverty that has become entwined in their lives and efforts to overcome it.
• Arriving to cover a story with a narrative already decided before the first interview is conducted isn't new in journalism. It's happened in Detroit with reporters writing about empty schools, skyscrapers and factories after the city's economy faltered. There's even a term for it: ruin porn. In Brazil, shantytowns known as favelas and the associated poverty and gang activity is a common thread that sees a lot of newspaper ink.
• Giago has blasted "beer-sniffing reporters" who swoop in to Pine Ridge to report a story about alcoholism on the reservation without fully appreciating why the reservation has the statistics it does. Reporters often miss the people who are running the anti-alcohol programs or the schools trying to educate tribal members so they

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