Lost Another Good One

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I'm not sure what happened, but apparently Kim Underwood has left the employ of The Winston-Salem Journal. Since moving to Winston-Salem in '04 I've enjoyed reading Kim's work in the Journal and, more importantly to me, I've enjoyed shooting the breeze with him over a cup of coffee on a few occasions.  I even had the opportunity to rub elbows with him for the day job when he covered the Triad Apartment Association's Labor of Love project last winter, and it was a great experience.

Apparently I'm not the only one who is bummed by Kim's leaving the paper. Linda Brinson, former Journal editorial page editor, wrote a "Letter to the Editor" about it:

For many years, his wise and gentle columns touched us all, particularly the columns about his dog, Buster, and the children in his life, Sparkle Girl and Doobins. Kim also is a skilled, highly professional reporterdevoted to fairness, integrity and ethics, qualities that are too often lacking in today’s journalism. He will be missed, and the Journal is diminished by his leaving.

Like I said, I don't know what happened, but I do know that the Journal's lost another good person.

Happy Days

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You know how the economists are all like, "The recession is over! The recession is over!" and we regular schmoes are all like, "Maybe, but the world's still a big ****hole"?  Well, the Census Bureau is here to validate our feelings:

The new figures show, among other things, that the number of people getting married fell to a record low level in 2009, with just 52 percent of adults 18 and over saying they were joined in wedlock, compared to 57 percent in 2000…

The government revealed that the income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year by the largest margin ever, stark evidence of the impact the long recession starting in 2007 has had in upending lives and putting the young at greater risk.

The top-earning 20 percent of Americans — those making more than $100,000 each year — received 49.4 percent of all income generated in the U.S., compared with the 3.4 percent earned by the bottom 20 percent of wage-earners who fell below the poverty line, according to the newly released Census figures. That ratio of 14.5-to-1 was an increase from 13.6 in 2008 and nearly double a low of 7.69 in 1968.

A different measure, the international Gini index, found U.S. income inequality at its highest level since the Census Bureau began tracking household income in 1967. The U.S. also has the greatest disparity among Western industrialized nations.

At the top, the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans, who earn more than $180,000, added slightly to their annual incomes last year, government data show. Families at the $50,000 median level slipped lower.

Three states — New York, Connecticut and Texas — and the District of Columbia had the largest gaps in rich and poor, disparities that exceeded the national average. Similar income gaps were evident in large cities such as New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Boston and Atlanta, home to both highly paid financial and high-tech jobs as well as clusters of poorer immigrant and minority residents.

On the other end of the scale, Alaska, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho and Hawaii had the smallest income gaps.

Headlines

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Local news operations now publicize their stories through a variety of media including Twitter and Facebook.  I have no idea how WXII doles out the responsibility for pushing content from their website to Twitter, but they may want to have a chat about how those 140 characters are used.  For a story today the Twitter feed read thusly: "Winston-Salem Jogger Struck By Vehicle http://bit.ly/aB1uqp." On the website the headline was "Job Seeker At Fair Struck By Vehicle" and the first paragraph read:

A man who was running to get in a hiring line for the Dixie Classic Fair on Tuesday morning was struck and injured by an SUV along Deacon Boulevard.

It ain't the end of the world but there's a big difference between jogging and sprinting across the street to a job interview, and I think it behooves the news ops to make sure all of their headlines accurately reflect the content of their stories.

Bradbury’s Prescience

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After reading this piece (h/t to Lex for the pointer), which is an essay that basically says that Ray Bradbury accurately predicted today's America when he wrote Fahrenheit 451, I've decided that I either didn't read the book in high school and depended on Cliff Notes when I wrote my paper, or my memory is in much worse shape than I thought.  I highly recommend reading the essay, even though it'll make you feel guilty about watching TV.  At least until the next episode of Amazing Race comes on.

The Hill’s Revolving Door

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Live in D.C. long enough you'll realize that there's a fairly standard playbook for the ambitious:

  • Get a job, no matter how lowly, in a Congresscritter's office.
  • Pay your dues.  Work insane hours for pretty low pay, at least by D.C. cost of living standards.
  • Build connections.
  • Go to work for a lobbyist, or start your own lobbying firm, and continue to work insane hours but now make some insanely good money in the process.
  • Pray that your people stay in power.
  • If necessary repeat the process to rekindle your connections/influence.

One guy I knew worked for a Republican senator, left working for him to partner with a couple of guys in a new lobbying firm, and his first year was close to earning seven figures.  I heard through the grapevine that subsequent years were even better, but I lost touch over the last few years so I have no idea how the rise of the Democrats in 08 affected his business.  I suspect it wasn't good, especially after seeing this research (found via Freakonomics blog)about the direct correlation between influence and income of ex-staffers from the Hill.  From the summary:

While there is no scarcity of anecdotal evidence, direct econometric evidence on the extent to which previous ocials are able to convert political contacts into lobbying revenue remains, to the best of our knowledge, non-existent. In this paper we provide such evidence. In particular, we study how the lobbying revenue of congressional sta ers turned lobbyists depends on the power of the congressional politicians for whom they have worked in the past…

Our main nding is that lobbyists connected to US Senators su er an average 24% drop in generated revenue when their previous employer leaves the Senate. The decrease in revenue is out of line with pre-existing trends, it is discontinuous around the period in which the connected Senator exits Congress and it persists in the long-term. The sharp decrease in revenue is also present when we study separately a small subsample of unexpected and idiosyncratic Senator exits. Measured in terms of median revenues per ex-sta er turned lobbyist, this estimate indicates that the exit of a Senator leads to approximately a $177,000 per year fall in revenues for each aliated lobbyist. The equivalent estimated drop for lobbyists connected to US Representatives leaving Congress is a weakly statistically signi cant 10% of generated revenue. We also nd evidence that ex-sta ers are more likely to leave the lobbying industry after their connected Senator or Representative exits Congress.

Here's a nice synopsis of the research:

Katy Perry vs. Little Mermaid

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Some people are making a big stink about Katy Perry's attire in a video shot for Sesame Street.  Basically they're taken aback by her cleavage and are afraid that their rugrats might be scarred for life by the hint of booby existence.  I understand what they're saying but I have to ask: how do they feel about their kids watching a cartoon with a scantily clad fishwoman?  For that matter do they cover their children's eyes when they go to the pool and subject them to young ladies, and some not-so-young ladies, prancing around in dental floss?  I'm gonna call hypocritical BS on this one, but judge for yourself (click on the images to enlarge them):

Katyperry  
Littlemermaid  

Here's the video:

Who Are These People?

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Ever wonder who the people are that leave lots of comments on local news websites?  The folks at the Las Vegas Sun obviously did because they profiled four of their more prolific commenters.

I'm wary to suggest the same type of project for our local news sites, because quite honestly many of their commenters flat out scare me. Still, if they were to profile some of their commenters here are some questions I'd like them to ask:

  • Were you absent that day in fourth grade when they went over the difference between there, their and they're?
  • Were you absent the day they went over the difference between lose and loose?
  • Did you know that insulting subjects of an article, or other commenters, while hiding behind an alias is the definition of a coward? Aliases are for people who are doing courageous things, like blowing the whistle on corrupt politicians. I understand if you want to use an alias due to concerns like people at work seeing what you write, but don't use that as a shield to throw personal bombs at others.
  • Did you know that invoking Hitler in an argument makes you the loser of said argument by default?
  • Are you aware that the statement "we Americans are guaranteed freedom of religion, not freedom from religion" is nonsense?

and finally

  • Did you know that when you're leaving a comment on a story you're not blogging, you're commenting?  Blogging requires setting up a blog, writing something on your blog, having people write a comment on your blog and then replying to those comments.  Go ahead and try it, you might like it.