January 02, 2000 -
Newsstands
facing e-competition [REVISITED]
- CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) -- When it comes to
delivering news from afar, few places stand on tradition
like the Harvard Out of Town News. For 44 years, the small brick kiosk across
from Harvard University has offered news from all corners of
the globe. The landmark stand offers the Ha'aretz from Tel
Aviv and the Connacht Tribune, a weekly from western
Ireland. It has news printed in Spanish, German, French and
Japanese, and publications from countries like Greece,
Italy, Australia and Russia...
REVISITED!
August 17, 2000 -
INTERNET
SAPPING BROADCAST NEWS AUDIENCE -
Traditional
news outlets are feeling the impact of two distinct and
powerful trends. Internet news has not only arrived, it
is attracting key segments of the national audience. At
the same time, growing numbers of Americans are losing
the news habit. Fewer people say they enjoy following
the news, and fully half pay attention to national news
only when something important is happening. And more
Americans than ever say they watch the news with a
remote control in hand, ready to dispatch uninteresting
stories. To some extent, these trends are affecting all
traditional media, but broadcast news outlets -- both
national and local -- have been the most adversely
affected...
Reports by the
Pew Research Center - "For The People& the
press" - They are an independent opinion research
group, sponsored by The Pew Charitable Trusts, that
studies public attitudes toward the press, politics and
public policy issues. The Center's main purpose is to
serve as a forum for ideas on the media and public
policy through its research...
The
Changing Media Landscape - The revolution in
communications technology is clearly changing the way
Americans live, and it has created a highly
competitive environment for those who provide news and
information to the public. Nearly seven-in-ten
Americans (68%) now use a computer on at least an
occasional basis, up from 61% in 1998 and 58% in 1996.
Almost as many have a computer in their home -- 59%,
up from 43% in 1998 and 36% in 1995...
Internet
News: More Log On, Tune Out
- The same
demographic groups which are moving away from the
nightly network news in the greatest numbers are some
of the very same groups which are moving toward online
news use at the highest rates - more affluent, more
well-educated Americans...
Financial
News: Traders Turn to the Internet - While the
crowded landscape has fragmented audiences, it has
given the most sophisticated and technology-savvy news
consumers an array of options that would have been
inconceivable just a few years ago. Americans who are
active stock traders and investors are perfectly
positioned to take advantage of these choices...
Attitudes
Toward the News - The decline in the number of
Americans who say they enjoy the news is a
continuation of a long-term trend. In 1995, a majority
(54%) said they enjoyed keeping up with the news a
lot. That number fell to 50% in 1998 and 45% this
year...
Media
Credibility - While television news viewership
has fallen off in recent years, credibility ratings
for the major TV news outlets have remained relatively
stable. As was the case in 1998 and 1996, CNN is rated
the most believable TV news source. Roughly
four-in-ten Americans who are able to rate it (39%)
say they can believe all or most of what they see and
hear on CNN...
ABOUT
THE SURVEYS - Results for the main survey on
Media Consumption are based on telephone interviews
conducted under the direction of Princeton Survey
Research Associates among a nationwide sample of 3,142
adults, 18 years of age or older, during the period
April 20-May 13, 2000. For results based on the total
sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the error
attributable to sampling and other random effects is
plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. For results based
on either Form A (N=1,593) or Form B (N=1,549), the
sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points...
REVISITED!
August, 2000 -
The
failure of new media The media business has
invested a lot of money and hope in the Internet over
the past three years. So far, it has been a
disappointment. LAST year, NBC’s Internet strategy was
the envy of the media world. The American broadcasting
network had started investing early and amassed a
portfolio of assets while Internet share prices
rocketed. In November, it rolled them together and
floated them as NBC Internet...
REVISITED!
August 18, 2000 -
What
the Internet cannot do - “IT IS impossible
that old prejudices and hostilities should longer exist,
while such an instrument has been created for the
exchange of thought between all the nations of the
earth.” Thus Victorian enthusiasts, acclaiming the
arrival in 1858 of the first transatlantic telegraph
cable. People say that sort of thing about new
technologies, even today. Biotechnology is said to be
the cure for world hunger. The sequencing of the human
genome will supposedly eradicate cancer and other
diseases. The wildest optimism, though, has greeted the
Internet. A whole industry of cybergurus has enthralled
audiences (and made a fine living) with exuberant claims
that the Internet will prevent wars, reduce pollution,
and combat various forms of inequality. However,
although the Internet is still young enough to inspire
idealism, it has also been around long enough to test
whether the prophets can be right...
REVISITED!
August, 2000 -
Publishing
Industry: towards the void? - The publishing
world is headed for the what could be called the
‘second wave’ of Desktop Publishing. During the
first wave, which started with the arrival of the
Macintosh, desktop page layout tools and Postscript,
most publishing companies converted their print
production to computer -based tools. Operations with
complex workflow problems, such as newspapers, moved to
or continued to use high-end editorial systems - but
this currently concerns only a fraction of the overall
number of companies involved in publishing...
January 19, 2001 -
Doctors
forced to use Hotmail for confidential medical records
- By: Kieren McCarthy The Register, Doctors, keen
to benefit from the latest technological advances, are
routinely using Hotmail accounts to send confidential
patient information because of the bureaucracy and
stalling of the NHS executive, we have learnt. The
depressing and worrying situation was uncovered after we
spoke to a number of concerned doctors and IT
specialists working within the health service and
scoured an online GP-UK discussion forum...
January 18, 2001 -
Filter
THIS! Librarians to sue over new law - By Lisa
M. Bowman, ZDNN, The American Library
Association has decided to file a lawsuit challenging a
new federal law that would require filtering in
public schools and libraries. The ALA's executive board
voted to pursue legal action and is still working out
the details of the brief and the timing of the filing.
The filtering amendment, which was attached to a
sweeping appropriations bill that passed in December,
would force schools and libraries that receive federal
funds to use some sort of filtering technology to weed
out visual depictions of material deemed inappropriate
for children. Schools and libraries have three months to
submit their filtering plans...
October 13, 2000 -
Owner
Asks Cops to Locate Stolen Pot Stash
Family Had Permit to Grow Plants for
Medical Use - By Richard
Zitrin, EUGENE, Ore. (APBnews.com)
-- Sheriff's investigators here are
looking for a cache of stolen
marijuana -- so they can return it to
its owner. The marijuana in this case
is not contraband but medicinal
cannabis grown legally with permits
issued by the state, Lane County
sheriff's Sgt. Byron Trapp said.
"It's really no different than
reporting another piece of stolen
property," he said...
January 18, 2001 -
Key
Crime & Justice Facts at a Glance - Small
versions of the charts and brief statements of findings are
presented here with links to full size charts, additional
information about the charts and findings, and the data that
support the chart. A complete list of the trend tables that
support these charts are also available...
January 18, 2001 -
Statement
of Reverend Jesse Jackson - SOURCE: Reverend
Jesse Jackson, NEW YORK, The following is a statement of
the Reverend Jesse Jackson: "I am father to a daughter
who was born outside of my marriage. As her mother does, I
love this child very much and have assumed responsibility
for her emotional and financial support since she was
born..."
January 16, 2001 -
MACROMEDIA
AND ALLAIRE TO MERGE - San
Francisco, California and Newton, Mass, Macromedia, Inc.
(NASDAQ: MACR) and Allaire Corporation (NASDAQ: ALLR) today
announced a definitive merger agreement. The combined
company will unite the Web design and development
communities and enable Web professionals to efficiently
build the look of a Web site and the application logic
behind it—creating the best possible user experience
across multiple devices...
January 16, 2001 -
Patient
Files Opened to Marketers, Fundraisers - By
Robert O'Harrow Jr., Washington Post Staff Writer, New
federal medical privacy regulations, touted by the Clinton
administration as a landmark of patient protection, will for
the first time explicitly permit doctors, hospitals, other
health services and some of their business associates to use
personal health records for marketing and fundraising.
October
31, 2000 -
Court to hear sex predator case -
McNEIL ISLAND, Wash. (AP) - The Special Commitment Center is
on the grounds of a medium-security prison, protected by
prison guards and accessible only by a prison-run ferry. The
125 residents, all sex offenders who have completed their
prison sentences, are confined inside dual razor-edged
fences, and cannot be released without court permission. But
the center is not a prison as far as the state is concerned.
The 10-year-old center, operating under civil law, is where
the most violent rapists and child molesters in Washington
state are sent after they leave prison. State officials say
the center provides treatment that eventually will allow the
sex offenders to go free. Only five have so far. Some
inmates claim the whole program is a sham - an
unconstitutional scheme concocted by lawmakers to keep sex
offenders locked up. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear those
arguments Tuesday in the case of six-time rapist Andre
Brigham Young.
October
30, 2000 -
Nazi foe Felder dies at 100 - MUNICH,
Germany (AP) - Josef Felder, the last surviving legislator
who voted against the 1933 law that entrenched Germany's
Nazi dictatorship, has died after a lengthy illness. He was
100. Felder, who was honored by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder
on his birthday two months ago as a "fighter for
democracy and freedom," died Saturday evening in his
Munich apartment, the Bavarian branch of the Social
Democratic party said Sunday. After joining the Social
Democrats at age 20, Felder was first elected to the
parliament in 1932. He was one of 94 legislators who voted
on March 23, 1933 against the law ceding the Reichstag's
powers to Adolf Hitler's Cabinet, sanctioning the Nazis'
totalitarian state. Felder described the mood of that
session in a book to be published soon, titled "Why I
said No."
October
30, 2000 -
Report: DaimlerChrysler won't sell -
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) - The board of German-American
automaker DaimlerChrysler reportedly is not considering
selling its U.S. unit Chrysler, which is blamed for dragging
down the company's earnings. U.S. analysts have been
demanding the move, saying that the Mercedes-Benz and
Chrysler brands have more value individually than the total
group. DaimlerChrysler's weak third-quarter results Thursday
prompted that response from some analysts. German magazine
Der Spiegel said the board wasn't thinking about selling
Chrysler. The magazine quoted DaimlerChrysler Chairman
Juergen Schrempp as saying, "If we only had the
Mercedes-Benz brand, we would be just dazzling right now,
but that isn't enough long-term if we want to become the
world's leading automobile manufacturer." The fall in
profits at Chrysler were part of the "normal, cyclical
business" but was independent of the carmaker's
strategy for long-term growth, Schrempp said. The company
had already warned of poor third-quarter earnings caused by
the cost of launching new Chrysler models before the results
were released Thursday. DaimlerChrysler shares have steadily
sunk this year and are trading about 33% below their January
high.
October
27, 2000 -
Wash. man sentenced to 480 years -
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) - A man who confessed to killing 13
people and one attempted murder dating back a quarter
century to avoid the death penalty asked God to right his
wrongs as he was sentenced Thursday to 408 years in prison.
"I pray that God will right the wrongs that I have
committed and that justice will bring closure," Robert
L. Yates Jr. told a small courtroom packed with sobbing
relatives of his victims. Last week, the 48-year-old Army
veteran and National Guard helicopter pilot admitted to 10
Spokane-area slayings from 1996 to 1998, the murders of a
young man and woman in southern Washington in 1975 and the
murder of a woman in the state's northeastern corner in
1988. Yates, a father of five, could still face the death
penalty in Pierce County in western Washington, where he is
charged with two additional slayings.
October
27, 2000 -
Group says 16 executed despite evidence
- BALTIMORE (AP) - Sixteen men in seven states have been
executed despite "compelling evidence of their
innocence," a group that opposes the death penalty said
in a report released Thursday. The "Reasonable
Doubts" report by the Quixote Center was based on five
months of research into legal and police documents in cases
from Alabama, California, Florida, Illinois, Missouri, Texas
and Virginia. Four of those executions occurred in Texas
under Gov. George W. Bush, the Republican nominee for
president. Bush has said he doesn't believe an innocent
person has been executed in Texas during his administration.
The report was produced by Equal Justice USA, a project of
the Hyattsville-based Quixote Center, which is organizing a
national effort for a moratorium on executions.
October
27, 2000 -
Some lived through Kursk explosions -
MURMANSK, Russia (AP) - Huddled in a destroyed submarine on
the sea floor, a Russian sailor wrote a terse account of how
he and 22 comrades tried in vain to escape, then scrawled a
last message to his family, Russian naval officials said
Thursday. The note was found in the pocket of Lt. Dmitry
Kolesnikov, whose body was one of the first to be recovered
from the nuclear submarine Kursk that sank Aug. 12 with 118
men aboard. The message was the first firm evidence that any
of the crew initially survived explosions that shattered the
submarine. Written a few hours after the sub plunged to the
bottom of the Barents Sea, the note tells a horrifying story
in eerily straightforward sentences. "All the crew from
the sixth, seventh and eighth compartments went over to the
ninth. There are 23 people here. We made this decision as a
result of the accident," Russian navy chief Adm.
Vladimir Kuroyedov quoted the note as saying. "None of
us can get to the surface," the message continued.
Kolesnikov's handwriting in the first part of the note was
neat, Kuroyedov said during a meeting with the victims'
relatives. But after the submarine's emergency lights went
out, the 27-year-old seaman from St. Petersburg began to
scrawl and desperation set in.
January 11, 2001 -
HOW
CONGRESS FEEDS THE BUILDING FRENZY - "Virtually
all publicly funded convention centers, stadiums, arenas,
and other infrastructure projects are financed with debt
instruments that are exempt from federal income taxes, and
often from state income taxes if the investor resides in
the state that issued the bonds. Allowing investors in
these bonds to earn interest income that is exempt from
federal income taxes enables the municipalities to borrow
at lower interest rates..."
January 09, 2000 - FIRST-TIMER
GETS LIFE FOR DEALING DRUGS - Another example of the
small time drug seller (former addict) probably being
railroaded by the cops. They are probably paid well by the
"big boys" and need a token heroin
"dealer" arrest for their crime statistics. It's
always the "small fry" that are crushed. This
draconian sentence is an example of a justice system gone
mad...
