Business: December 2005 Archive Page

WashingtonPost.com will now offer articles for free for 60 days, instead of the previous 14, before putting them behind the paid for subscription wall. --Pamela Parker --WashingtonPost.com Extends Free Content Window (ClickZ News)

Hooray! I have in the past few years consciously avoided blogging many good Washington Post stories because 2 weeks is simply not long enough.

The idea that religion can bring material advantages has a distinguished history. A century ago Max Weber argued that the Protestant work ethic lay behind Europe's prosperity. More recently Robert Barro, a professor at Harvard, has been examining the links between religion and economic growth (his work was reviewed here in November 2003). At the microeconomic level, several studies have concluded that religious participation is associated with lower rates of crime, drug use and so forth. --Wealth from worship (Economist)

The article carefully notes the difference between association and causation. Be sure you read all the way to the end for clever bit.

Journalists “are not Emily Dickinson writing poetry on backs of envelopes, not caring whether anybody reads them.”

Given the state of the industry, with newspaper circulations dropping and publications closing, Collinger said that part of the plan is to develop data and “customer driven communications” is integral to making sure the “cobbler’s children have shoes,” he said.

With the rise of blogging and citizen journalism, delivering news the way readers and viewers want is becoming more necessity than luxury, even for major news outlets. The Medill students interviewed seem to recognize that any change in the interest of their business IQ is a good one. --David Epstein --Sign of the Times for J-Schools (Inside Higher Ed)

Google Inc., the leading online search engine company, will open a new engineering and research office in Pittsburgh next year to be headed by a Carnegie Mellon University professor, the company announced Thursday.

The facility will be charged with creating software search tools for Google. It is expected to create as many as 100 new high-tech jobs in the Pittsburgh area over the next few years, said Craig Nevill-Manning, director of Google's New York engineering office. --Google to open new research facility in Pittsburgh (AP | Mercury News)

In the new world of interchangeable, interdependent entertainment modules - athlete performs four songs on soundtrack to movie based on videogame! - a football injury can have unexpected repercussions.

I'm here looking for some insight into the growing practice of adapting games into movies. There are plenty of them - Double Dragon, from Gramercy Pictures, in fall '94; Street Fighter, which Universal was to put in 2,000 theaters this Christmas; Mortal Kombat, from New Line, in spring '95. Beyond these loom movies based on Doom, the shareware phenom, and Myst, the fantasy-realm CD-ROM hit.

So far, though, insights are not exactly jumping out at me. --Scott Rosenberg --The Latest Action Heroes (Wired)

A 1995 article. Not much has changed, though the Myst movie didn't materialize.

I'm using this sabbatical to work on a longer, more complex novel than I've ever written before. Even though I'm giving my writing, and my child, more of myself than they've ever had before, they both cry out for more. "Mommy, I wish you were there when we sing "Come In, Grown-Ups," my daughter says, referring to the fact that she goes to extended care after preschool, while some kids are picked up by their parents. Never mind that last year, she was both taken to preschool and picked up by the extended-care team.

Meanwhile, my book's pull is fierce. I've never had time for perfectionism before, but now I find it hard to let go of any pages. The book's demands sometimes out-shout my daughter's none-too-quiet voice. "Go play," I snapped at her this morning as I tried to finish a complicated scene, and then felt guilty when she melted into tears. --Lee Tobin McClain --Mom on Sabbatical (Chronicle)

Lee is my colleague down the hall.

After a faculty meeting ran a bit long yesterday, I dashed home, grabbed my seven-year-old son without giving him time to finish his daily root beer, and headed back out again for his piano lesson. We usually make it right on time, but the slightly late faculty meeting and a string of red lights meant that we were 20 minutes late to his half-hour lesson.

After the lesson, we came back to campus to help decorate the cafeteria for Christmas. While my son was worried that the event would cut into his computer game time, he had a grand time eating pizza and talking with our Spanish and French teachers. One of the Sisters of Charity handed him ornaments, one a time, bending the little metal hooks for him so he could hang them on the tree easily. Meanwhile, I strung Christmas tree lights. I dropped by The Setonian office just in time to watch the students resolve a photo caption crisis, and then went home.

When I woke up this morning, I realized I didn't want to go to work. I could have used a full day as Dad. My wife had cleaned the rugs and put a lot of stuff away, making room for bringing out our Christmas tree. The sight of big empty stretches of carpets, with neat piles of toys and stacks of library books, just made me want to stay home and have adventures with my daughter’s ponies, teach my son’s home-school lessons, and read aloud the six or seven chapters we have left until we finish The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

If I were working at a dot-com, or selling furniture, I wouldn't at all feel comfortable admitting something like that.

There was nothing about today that I was particularly dreading. In fact, the semester is winding down fairly nicely for me.

First, most of what we call "news" today starts out as a press release, which then becomes a headline, a sound-bite, and eventually a story. In a parallel to the way government operates, in which special interest groups lobby to create or defeat legislation, most of our news stories come as a result of PR efforts paid for by special interest groups (businesses) who have a stake in what becomes "news." (I'd love to come up with a taxonomy of stories by type just to show how few types there really are but that's a different point.)

Second, reporters like to ask good questions for which there may not be good answers. However, they'll force an answer because you can't say "nobody knows."

The third is that everybody loves numbers, regardless of where they come from, and these are the best kind of answers, regardless of whether the numbers are true. -Dale Dougherty --How News is Made (Boing Boing)

A good deconstruction of the ubiquitous Thanksgiving holiday shopping story.

How long have people been calling the day after Thanksgiving "Black Friday"? I don't think I ever heard that term before this season. (I'm always grading papers anyway, so perhaps that's why I never pay attention to shopping stories during the Thanksgiving break.)