SeanReadsTheNews

Postrel's The Substance of Style on Sale for Kindle This Week

Libertarian thought leader, Bloomberg Views columnist and friend Virginia Postrel announces that her book "The Substance of Style," is discounted this week only for the Kindle at Amazon.com.

So if you haven't read Ms. Postrel's enlightening take on the business value of aesthetics and design, this is your chance to do so for only $2.99.  The link is here. 

Enjoy!

SeanHasNotBeenReadingTheNews due to time constraints from his work on the Celebrating Audio Theater - Old & New Convention as well it being the early rounds of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.  We expect posting here to pick up during the summer.

 

April Fool's Unemployment Porn

An early post on SRTN made fun of articles that put forward idiosyncratic employment opportunities as a solution for people facing unemployment - the classic being this New York  Times piece on Etsy.

“I have to wake up around 8, get coffee or tea, and knit for hours and hours and hours and hours,” said Ms. Gibran, who leveraged the exposure she got on the site to forge a deal with Urban Outfitters. “I’m like an old lady in a chair, catching up on podcasts, watching old Hitchcock shows. I will do it for 13 hours a day.” And even after all those hours knitting, she is constantly sketching new designs or trading e-mail messages with 50 or more customers a day.

“Etsy saved my life,” Ms. Gibran said. But, she added, “this is the hardest job I’ve ever had.”

Etsy's own April Fool's Joke this year about it acquiring the city of Portland, Ore., to get its economy going again is based on the same joke.

Under the terms of the so-called “Etsy Plan,” the Brooklyn-based e-commerce site will assume virtual control of Portland’s municipal government and put into action a five-year economic development plan largely aimed at offsetting state-sanctioned austerity measures by employing the roughly 8 percent of Portland’s unemployed citizens in the creation of Etsy-approved items.

Despite the existence of prior art, I do not intend to sue.

Bloomberg: Ireland Sobers Up (Literally)

The austere approach of the Irish government to cleaning up after the banking mess that destroyed their economy a few years ago has led to numerous ironic headlines about the Irish sobering up, having hangovers, etc, all pegged to that country's legendary love for liquor.

Bloomberg News' Finbarr Flynn, perhaps my favorite byline in journalism, notes in story Friday that the sobriety trend in Ireland is literal as well as figurative these days.  I'm highlighting this story because St. Patrick's Day makes some reporting on Ireland obligatory but Flynn actually took the easy narrative and turned it upside down.  Rather than use easy metaphors that are already mined out, he took the opposite track and dug up real facts on the ground that show the interaction of culture and the economy.

Dublin pubs are fighting the slump in business with a 1 million-euro ($1.3 million) marketing campaign called “Dublin Does Fridays.” Sales have plunged as the jobless rate tripled since 2007 to an average 14.2 percent last year and emigration rose to the highest since the 19th century.About 76,400 people left Ireland in the 12 months ended last April, according to the statistics office. Many of those departing are under 30, the natural customer of Irish bars. In addition, about 40 percent of all alcohol bought was drunk at home in 2009 and 2010, up from 31 percent five years earlier, data show.

Flynn goes on to describe how the Irish board of health isn't entirely turned off by these developments and how pub owners are blaming supermarkets and liquor stores for too-aggressive discounting that endangers the special nature of Ireland's pub culture.

You can't help but see the ghost of the old country in U.S. politics after an article like that.

Or not listen to The Clancy Brothers' classic ode to alcoholism.

 

Nocera: MF Global Was a Crime

Joe Nocera of The New York Times took a look back at the MF Global story in his column on Tuesday, wondering why the worst financial crime of the collapse is getting such scant attention in the press.

He opens the column with a dramatic summation of exactly how bad this is, before examining why the government seems to be having so much trouble putting together a criminal case.

Let’s not mince words here. These executives committed a crime. Virtually every knowing violation of the Commodities Exchange Act is a crime, but taking money from segregated customer accounts is at the top of the list. And for good reason. Customer money is supposed to be sacrosanct. If a broker-dealer goes bankrupt, the segregated accounts are supposed to remain safe, a little like the way bank deposits remain protected if a bank goes under. Indeed, customers need to be able to trust the fact that their money is segregated and protected at all times. Otherwise, the markets can’t function.

He goes on to pick apart all the excuses about chaos and mistakes - pointing out along the way that MF Global is claiming it misused 25% of customer assets but somehow didn't realize where the money came from.

He notes that he doesn't believe that the U.S. Department of Justice is deliberately tanking their case because former MF Global CEO Jon Corzine is a huge fundraiser for President Obama but "he understand why some might."

Count me among them - but the column was a great distillation of the situation regardless of politics.

CNNMoney on Guns, Bunkers & Doomsday

Blake Ellis of CNNMoney.com produces a business story that strikes at the heart of the modern libertarian - how much does it cost to outfit a doomsday shelter in 2012 make-believe U.S. fiat money "dollars."

In a dissappointing turn, the econonmy/world-ending disaster isn't pegged directly to the Chinese asking for their money back but rather to polar shifts allegedly predicted by the Mayan calendar.

Bast has spent about $5,000 on stockpiles of food and water, and $11,000 on equipment including gas cookers, generators, batteries, water purifiers and solar power. He also purchased roughly an acre of land that's a 75-minute drive from Melbourne and 1,500 feet above sea level (in order to stay high and dry in case of a flood or tsunami). He has built a house there, as well as a bunker to serve as his "safe spot" in the event of an emergency. Together, the land, buildings and bunker have cost him a total of about $330,000.

We've been a little hard on Blake in the past, with whom we've since worked on multiple stories and is actually one of our best contacts in personal finance journalism right now.

Let us just say that she wiped clean any sins she comitted in over-exposing hypish single-source stories with this gem of a lede.

First you have to stock up on the appropriate gear, ammunition, food and shelter to survive a nuclear meltdown, asteroid, earthquake, solar flare or some other catastrophe. Then there's acquiring the materials you'll need to rebuild a community after the dust settles.

Once you've started there, you can't go wrong.

On a personal note, my goal of re-starting this blog as a regular thing has been sidelined temporarily by my work on a non-profit group launching Celebrating Audio Theater - Old & New, a new nostalgia/modern audio drama convention to take place in Newark, NJ October 12-13, 2012.  I'm responsible for the website/blog for that event as well as for the rest of its publicity and SeanReadsTheNews is the part of my life that's taking the hit for the necessary work.

If I'm not here often between now and the deep summer, that's why.

CNBC: PR Score for London Custom Tailor As Recession Narrows Waists

I can't tell if I love or hate Antonia Oprita's CNBC.com article reporting that a custom tailor in London has seen the average waistlines of his clients shrink since the recession started.

According to tailors Norton & Townsend, British men have lost more than half an inch off their waist because of the credit crunch, as expense accounts slimmed down or totally disappeared.
“The majority of our clients are at executive level who would have seen a business lunch almost as part of their daily working life,” said Austen Pickles, head of Norton & Townsend, in a statement. “But that is no longer the case with expense accounts and lazy lunches out of keeping with the downturn in the economic climate.”

On the negative side, the story has only one source, no direct quotes, no data.  It basically reads as if the reporter spoke to the tailor for 10 minutes and found the combination of recession, social technology and clothes keywords irresistible.

 On the positive side, it's pretty hilarious and hey, who says the informed opinion of people who are close to those in the know about the state of the economy can't be illuminating.

Who hasn't dreamed of making "stuff my clients do every day," an economic indicator - the free version of expensive detailed academic research that gets you ink.

As a matter of PR alone, this was a nice score for the tailor.

 

CNBC Explains the Robo-Signing Settlement

Diana Olick, real estate reporter for CNBC and its associated website, has a great article today on the much-ballyhooed "robo-signing" settlement between the nation's largest banks and most of its various governments and regulators.

Olick's article is refreshing in that it strips away what everyone is saying and gets to what they mean and why the settlement is a good thing - very different from why the banks and governments are saying its a good thing.  She's also much more insightful about the underlying harm that led to the settlement.

The last thing the banks need are fifty state lawsuits over bad foreclosure documents, plus they need to be able to get all these legitimate foreclosures through the courts, so they can stem some losses by reselling the homes. The “robo” scandal has ground foreclosure processing to a veritable halt in much of the county and slowed it everywhere else. Borrowers are sitting in their homes paying nothing. So the banks agree to the deal, any deal, because they have no other choice.

Many reporters have focused on sloppy paperwork by the banks and implicitly concluded that it excuses homeowners from paying their mortgages on time.  Olick correctly observes that this isn't true - but that the settlement might be the best thing for the banks, borrowers and economy anyway.

 

Actor Gary Busey's Bankruptcy Filing: ABC News

It's often been said that inside every corporate communications strategist, there is a consumer/celebrity pitchman waiting to break out.

Based on this report by Susanna Kim of ABC News on actor Gary Busey's bankruptcy filing, I wonder if that's true in reverse for his publicist Michael Conley.

"As with many great American institutions, i.e., General Motors, American Airlines, and others who have utilized the strategic business plan of bankruptcy, Gary's filing is the final chapter in a process that began a few years ago of jettisoning the litter of past unfortunate choices, associations, circumstances, and events, to enable the start of a new and clear path toward peace, happiness, and success with his career and his wonderful new soulmate, Steffanie, and their son, Luke.

This guy really should work for GM or American Airlines.  That was pretty well-done.  In fact, in many ways it's superior to statements issued by the corporations referenced in that it assigns responsibility for the problem to Busey's own actions and associations, doesn't ignore the people hurt by the filing and gives us a reason to care if the reorganization succeeds.

Maybe the difference is that Busey is judgement proof in ways that the directors and executives at GM and American Airlines were not so there is no litigation risk in admitting fault but for whatever reason it sure was refreshing to read.

Fortune: Stanley Bing's "Best Places to Work Survey"

This column by Fortune's humor columnist Stanley Bing on a "Best Places to Work" survey is timely and funny because I'm helping a client with a couple of them right now.

The length of my average workday ...

A. Is basically whatever I think it should be, as long as I get the job done. Some days I even work from home. In my bathrobe!

B. Nine and a half hours. In at 8:30. Out at 6. For the past 15 years.

C. Expands to fill all available space, blocking out the sun, until I exist in a formless, shapeless void filled with nothing but that which must be done.

Bing is a PR person in his secret identity.  It frequently shows.  The truth behind the sarcastic humor in the survey is that 1) very few workplaces are truly distinctive but the judges have to pretend enough are to name winners and 2) Your job as a PR person is to find a way to put form to the idea that a company is a great place work, which is almost always subjective.  

Lots of places that have great perks on paper are terrible places to work in practice and some of the best jobs I've had have been at small shops where the measurable benefits are slight but the work environment is great.

Furthermore, the old, sexist, joke "for every beautiful woman there's a man who's sick of her [stuff]," applies to companies as well.  Sooner or later, we're going to see tell-alls about how horrible is it to work at Google because no work environment is right for every worker.

Remembering Danny Pearl: Cover Story on Al Queda and Tanzanite Trade

From Sarah Needleman at The Wall Street Journal comes the reminder that it's been ten years since Muslim terrorists murdered her former colleague Danny Pearl.

When I launched SeanReadsTheNews, this story on how Al Queda controlled the trade in tanzanite by Pearl and Robert Block, was the kind of story I had in mind for "Best of the Day," and it's how I always remember Pearl's reporting even though it was somewhat atypical for him.

The article convincingly indicted every merchant of tanzanite as a terrorist enabler - a truly ground-shaking piece of business journalism that was a credit to The Wall Street Journal.  I always suspected this story was part of what got Pearl targeted, although I have no way of knowing for sure.

The mosque traders, who aren't licensed as dealers but act as informal middlemen, make clear the gem business must serve their militant brand of Islam. "We as Muslims must unite in dealing in gemstones to help one another and to generate funds to defend Islam from those who want to destroy it," says Aman Mustafa, a Kenyan gem broker and teacher at the mosque, who says he has studied Islamic law in Sudan.

RIP Danny.  The work endures.