Fundamentals of Interactive Journalism

On December 10th, Sean Hetherington and Aaron Hartzler organized Day Without A Gay. They asked people to “call in gay” to work and spend the day volunteering for GLBT and/or human rights organizations. The idea was intended to demonstrate the contributions of the GLBT community to the nation’s economy.

The event coincided with the International Human Rights Day and was conceived in response to California’s Proposition 8 initiative which banned gay marriage. According to press reports, the turnout was low.

No word yet on whether or not there will be a repeat next year.

On Monday, for the first time in a long time, I watched NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams from start to finish at its scheduled time, complete with commercials.

I’m turned off by most advertising to begin with, but I think that the lack of interest among young people in network news can at least partially be attributed to the ads. (more…)

There is no doubt that China’s booming economy takes slower speed amid the global financial crisis. However, foreign companies are still flocking to China for business opportunities.

InvestHK, the Hong Kong department that promotes the city as a place to do business reported Wednesday that it had advised 257 companies setting up business in Hong Kong this year, more than in any other year, according to the International Herald Tribune’s story. But going to China to deal with business is not an easy decision,  not only because China is as big as the U.S. and its market is very much segmented, but also because of the under-the-table skills and potential risks doing business in China.

I remember On Sept. 14, 2006, SK-II, the high-end cosmetics product of Procter & Gamble (my previous employer), was found by China’s quality supervision authority traces of two elements that could cause potential side effects such as rashes and liver problems. The alleged quality defect, together with P&G’s stubborn reaction in the first few weeks, triggered a nation-wide negative media coverage. Angry online comments and sporadic outbursts of violence in SK II stores escalated the crisis and forced P&G to suspend sales of SK-II products in China for a few months.

P & G mismanaged the crisis on three key elements: failure to correctly evaluate the influence of the burgeoning Internet; failure to execute local strategy to manage the crisis according to consumer habits; failure to avoid potential political risks in a country with difference political systems.
In the digital times, the crisis spread path both on traditional media and on the Internet, which spreads news and people’s dissatisfaction much faster. This fast track also made SK-II, a brand P&G spent huge amount of money and time to promote, sink in a few weeks. From a PR perspective, I’d like to advise people on managing public relations in China: keeping low-profile; paying more attention to the Internet; quick and accurate response; avoiding political risks. If you can do all these, you can at least avoid the potential PR risks in China.

It’s 6 a.m. at the crack of dawn and people are just starting to trickle into southeast Brooklyn’s Kings Plaza Shopping Center. There were no massive stampedes and looping lines outside their doors like at other malls, Targets and Wal-Marts in the region, but for thousands of Black Friday shoppers here, the experience was similarly exhausting and, at times, disappointing.

Honda has cut its annual profit forecast by 62%, Toyota delayed its U.S. plant plan, and the Big Three were still waiting for the rescue plan amid falling global car demand and the global financial crisis. In China, BYD launched a new clean energy car series – F3DM, which is the first electronic sedan in China.

What happened in the automobile industry and what’s the future ahead? None of us knows the right answer right now, just like 50 years ago, everyone was eagerly looking forward to a job opportunity in that industry for no reason.

Car-makers around the world have been announcing lower forecast of sales and profit together with job cuts, and leading US car-makers have been trying to persuade the government to approve a car industry bailout plan.

Everyone is talking about clean energy new model for automobile industry. But after every big manufacturer has Hybrid car series, no one knows if the clean energy cars

can rescue the automobile industry out of trouble.

I’d support the bankruptcy plan of the Big Three, since only on this way, they can get rid of the heavy pressure of retired employees’ compensation and medical aid packages. I’m no idea why in a free market country, there are companies who have to take responsibilities to cover all the retired employee’s compensation and their medical care packages for such a long period.

Additionally, the Big Three haven’t focused on automobile industry for a long time, but investing in the finance field, which made them slump with the crisis. In our impression, automobile industry should be the representative of the real economy, but recent turmoil disclosed that they’ve been involved in the finance economy for a longer time than we expected.

All month until Christmas, Union Square transforms into a bustling holiday marketplace. Dozens of smiling vendors crowd against each other in little striped booths and peddle everything from gems to cookies to the festive crowds.

The staggering amount of foot traffic through the colorful holiday maze makes one think that open air markets are the perfect way to do business during a recession. Talk to some of the vendors, however, and their smiles grow sad. With the dark cloud of deflation hanging overhead, the vendors have one consensus about customers: they’re coming but they ain’t buying.

“It’s definitely slower,” said Alexandra, one of the vendors. “People are being more careful about what they buy.”

In years past, Alexandra’s booth where she sells dolls and designer dresses used to bring in at least a thousand every day. This year, she has yet to reach that number on even the busiest shopping days. In a nearby booth, Lorenzo has seen profits from his artwork literally halved.

The drop in retail prices was a record-breaking 1.7 percent in November. Out in the holiday market, it appears that December is faring no better. Many of the vendors had to cut their prices steeply in order to stay competitive.

But the drop in performance isn’t uniform for everyone. Some booths are doing clearly than others, depending on what products they sell. Jewelry isn’t doing so well but bath and comfort items are still in demand.

“We sell a product that makes people feel good,” says Al. “So that usually does well, even in a hard time.”

Some vendors also have the advantage of customer loyalty on their side. Unlike store loyalty, this kind of repeat business is much more personal. This might explain why so many booth owners are smiling, even though they know their business is going down.

By Sergey Kadinsky & Joel Schectman

The public has now come out against the American car manufacters saying they have been sluggish in innovating their classic American guzzlers.

But a survey by the Japanese Trade Union Confederation showed more than a third of the nation’s companies have laid off workers or taken other steps to reduce labor costs in the past three months to cope with the global economic crisis. Nearly 40 percent of manufacturers are expected to lay off more temporary workers.

At the same time, much like their American counterparts, Japanese unions continue to defend wage increases, the Japanese Automobile Workers’ Union is demanding at least ¥1,000-a-month as a salary adjustment, while other unions are demanding even more.

Since 1986, Japanese law has made it easier for companies to hire temporary workers, who are largely non-union. Both Japanese trade union confederations, Rengo and UI Zensen, are working to enlist these workers, making substantial gains last year in recruiting part-time and non-regular workers into the union ranks, judging by a 12% increase in 2007.

Among Japanese Auto Workers, membership declined from a peak of 830,000 in 1994; to the 2004 membership of 699,000. Today, JAW is looking for further growth through part-time and temporary autoworkers. Their strategy is clearly forward-looking as major automakers recently announced that they would slash the number of contingent employees due to slow sales.

Toyota reports that its number of full-time workers will fall from 9,200 early this year to 3,000 by the end of next March. Mitsubishi Motors Corp. says it will not renew 1,100 contract staff from now until next March. Mazda Motor Corp. is eliminating 1,300 temporary jobs.

People often cite the $70+ per hour cost of American labor as the reason behind the Big Three’s financial losses, but it should be noted that in Japan, the pensions are paid by the state. As a result, labor costs are much lower  for Japanese companies

Even Chris Sands of the conservative Hudson Institute says that a lot of the auto industry’s problems come from having to vest pensions, which often forces them to shift money from working capital. This is a problem not shared by the Japanese auto industry, that has state pension. In the past, American companies  would borrow money to pay for this gap, and they’ve always been able to pay it back. But with the markets frozen this year, they didn’t have this option. That’s why they’ve come begging to Congress.

I don’t if you guys heard but we are in a recession. And I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t save any of  my money. 

To a large extent I have cut down on some expenses since school started and I stopped making real money. But there is still health expenses, and living expenses which take a huge cut out of my monthly budget. Obviously there are things I could do to pinch pennies, but truthfully I just don’t think to do it. 

I’m not sure if it was just something I’ve never thought to do, but I sure know I was never taught to do it. There was always a sort of “figure it out on your own” mentality in my family.  

I figured out credit cards really quickly on my own when I took out a bunch at the tender age of 18 and one month and spent a lot of money I didn’t have. Still paying one of them off seven years later. 

Yet in times of economic crisis, a person’s savings become incredibly important to livelihood. When push comes to shove that’s what is going to help people get through. 

I hear about my friends in severe debt from school, or credit cards and I wonder, is it an American thing? or a generational thing? 

The Times has a great interactive series on the crisis called “The Debt Trap.” The series includes an amazing graph that shows most Americans have an average savings of $392 dollars per year and around $120,000 per year in debt. What? That’s insane to me. 

CUNY’s own Barbara Raab has some good things to say about saving money, but she also notes that it isn’t easy being thrifty.

 I think the solution is really to start teaching people about money, credit, and saving at a young age. I know that a class in high school on this stuff would have helped me much later on. 

But maybe the recession will force us all to re-evaluate our spending habits, and when we (if we) ever get the economy back to into an upswing I’ll be sure to put some money in the bank and keep it there. Hopefully there are lessons here we can take to heart and actually remember. 

Until then we always have the sage-like Suze Orman to help us. 

The pharmaceutical industry is coming under fire for allegedly hiring ghostwriters (writers who work for pay, but not a byline) to write positive reports/analysis of clinical tests on drugs with possible efficacy issues – and then recruiting notable doctors to stick their names on it. This issue has been bandied about for months and suspected for longer, but now U.S. Senator Charles Grassley from Iowa is renewing the fight.

Is the fact that this possibility has surfaced doesn’t surprise me troubling? Even before I declared my concentration in health/medicine reporting, I was aware of the corruption and rampant abuse of power by what is referred to as Big Pharma. Government deregulation and regulation on a slew of business and healthcare policy issues end up benefiting these corporate entites, whether allowing unapproved drugs and drugs with possible side effects to go on the market before they are fully vetted by the FDA or removing/weakening price caps on prescription drugs so that Pharma can charge more for less and profit from donations of life-saving drugs to Third World countries. And of course there are the deceptive drug ads that have had varying levels of regulation over the last two decades.

Journal articles are an important “first draft” introducing new developments in medicine to the public and are among the sources used by health professionals and medical reporters in their story research. Doctors and reporters already look at journal articles with a wary eye, and the likely possibility of journal articles being fabricated can be even more detrimental to the trust people place in such written work.

And that doctors would sign on to put their names on these works they haven’t written – even if they agree with what is being written – is egregious and says they condone this deceptive practice. Like the regulations placed on drug advertisements, all that would be needed is for the doctors to acknowledge that this IS NOT their work. It would be better if it were, but if this is the way they want to roll, then disclose your affiliations.

It is tantamount to plagiarism.