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Results of Recent PollsThis poll ran from February 1 to 7, 2010.
Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple Inc., quoted in the article "Apple Takes Big Gamble on New iPad," published by the Wall Street Journal on January 25, 2010. Referring to the new Apple iPad, Jobs said "We want to kick off 2010 by introducing a truly magical and revolutionary product today." The article began: "Steve Jobs took the stage Wednesday to sell the world on one of his biggest gambles since returning to Apple Inc. nearly 15 years ago: a multimedia tablet-style computer called the iPad. The 9.7-inch touch-screen device, which will let users play games, check email and read books, presents a major challenge to the media, publishing and wireless industries. For Mr. Jobs, it is an attempt to convince consumers they need yet another gadget—one between their mobile phones and laptop computers. Before a crowded auditorium in San Francisco, Mr. Jobs acknowledged the company faced a high bar. Many past efforts to sell tablets have flopped. But he argued there was room for a new category of devices, especially one that was "so much more intimate than a laptop and so much more capable than a smart phone." This poll ran from January 25 to 31, 2010.
The title of an article by David D. Kirkpatrick, published by The New York Times on January 23, 2010. Kirkpatrick wrote: "There are two things that are important in politics,” Mark Hanna, the great Republican kingmaker of the late 19th century, once said. “The first thing is money, and I can’t remember what the second one is.” What was true in Hanna’s century remained true in the next, and since the Watergate scandal of the 1970s, Congress has imposed stricter regulations on money in politics. Advocates of those rules argue that they rein in corruption and increase public trust in government. But after more than three decades, has the system made a difference? The question took on new urgency last week as the Supreme Court threw out regulations that prohibited corporations from buying campaign commercials that explicitly advocate the election or defeat of candidates. Democrats called the ruling a threat to democracy; Republicans cheered it as a victory for free speech." This poll ran from January 18 to 24, 2010.
Ted Turner, from the article "Ted Turner wants to run CNN again" by Paul Bond, published by the Hollywood Reporter on October 15, 2009. Turner said about newspapers: "You're chopping all these trees down and making paper out of them and trying to deal with all the waste paper. It's the biggest solid waste problem that we have." At CNN, he wants "less fluffy news and more international news," especially about China, Turner says in an interview set to run on Bloomberg TV on October 23, 2009. "Less talk, more news," he says. As for Cartoon Network, Turner tells anchor Betty Liu, "If I had control of it, I'd put 'Captain Planet' on at a top time period so that kids would see the environmental superhero instead of just Superman." This poll ran from January 11 to 17, 2010.
Fox News Channel anchor Gretchen Carlson, talking with Bill O'Reilly of Fox News on April 29, 2009. Carlson was quoted by Simon Maloy at Media Matters in the article "Fox News: Keeping the faith," published on January 5, 2010. Maloy was writing about Brit Hume, a former Fox News anchor, who failed to ignite much of a controversy with his suggestion that Tiger Woods should renounce Buddhism and embrace Christianity. Hume said: "I don't think that faith (Buddhism) offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith." Maloy wrote: In a way, Hume's appeal for Woods' salvation was a fitting coda to Fox News' annual winter exercise in manufactured outrage on behalf of the supposedly beleaguered Christian community -- the increasingly ridiculous "War on Christmas." Despite the fact that Christianity is by a long way the world's predominant and, arguably, most influential faith, Fox News continues to insist every year that the entire religion is threatened by an evil coalition of atheists and other militant "secularists" who want to "abolish" Christmas by forcing department store clerks to say "Happy Holidays." And if that weren't stupid enough, Fox stepped on its own ridiculous message by running commercials this year wishing viewers "Happy Holidays." The "War on Christmas" is part and parcel of Fox News' attitude toward matters of faith -- "religion" equals "Christian." On April 29, 2009, Bill O'Reilly asked Fox & Friends anchor Gretchen Carlson if she thought "the media is anti-religion." Carlson responded: "I do, because it's not cool to be Christian." This poll ran from January 4 to 10, 2010.
Ruth Reichl, the editor of Gourmet magazine until it was shut down in October 2009, from an interview with John Koblin in the New York Observer titled "Ruthie in Wonderland! Ruth Reichl Reflects on Conde Nast," , published on October 16, 2009. Koblin wrote: "Ms. Reichl, who has given only two interviews since her magazine folded last week, took a few minutes to talk about Condé Nast with the Observer. She said she would write a book about Condé Nast, and we asked for a small preview. “It’s a very rarefied world,” she said. “It was a world that most people—I had no idea that this particular world existed. I sort of think of it as ‘Ruthie in Wonderland.’ People are fascinated by the world. It’s a life that is probably coming to an end.” What would change, we wondered? “That kind of luxury that we all had is probably a thing of the past. The new business realities have changed the life at Condé Nast. I think print magazines as we know them will cease to exist.”" This poll ran from December 28, 2009 to January 3, 2010.
G. K. Chesterton (May 29, 1874 – June 14, 1936), the English journalist, novelist, and essayist. George Bernard Shaw described him as "a man of colossal genius." Chesterton wrote: "The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. Unless a man starts on the strange assumption that he has never existed before, it is quite certain that he will never exist afterwards. Unless a man be born again, he shall by no means enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." This poll ran from December 21 to 27, 2009.
In 1897, Virginia Hanlon sent a letter to the editor of The New York Sun:
"DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old. On September 21, 1897, Francis Pharcellus Church of The Sun replied: "Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding. No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood. This poll ran from December 14 to 20, 2009.
Jack Shafer, from the article "Par for the Course - Why we can't get enough of the stories about Tiger Woods and the Salahis," posted at Slate on December 2, 2009. Shafer wrote: "Given how desperately we want to believe in a human god, it didn't take much peddling from Team Tiger for us to accept Woods as a modern deity. With every new tournament victory, every new product endorsement, his divinity grew. His marketers made him a symbol of tolerance and brotherhood, and his father, Earl Woods, spoke gibberish about his son being a creature of destiny. Getting married and having children only added to Woods' marketability. I'm divine and monogamous and the center of a happy nuclear family. And we ate it up. So now that the "real" Woods has been revealed as a wild bone-daddy who behaves more like your out-of-work, alcoholic brother-in-law than an object of worship, we feel cheated. Aside from the hundreds of millions he's earned from golf tournaments and endorsements, turns out he's a lot like the rest of us. Our hunger for salacious news about him isn't necessarily about voyeurism. We're embarrassed by the gap between who we believed Woods to be and who he really is; and, having put Woods on that pedestal, we want to bring him down where he belongs—with the rest of us sinners. We're like the kid who, upon learning that there is no Santa Claus, conducts a wide-ranging investigation to determine how such a fraud was perpetrated on him. And we'll keep consuming Woods news until our picture of him more closely conforms with reality. We love to crown kings and cultivate messiahs. And then kill them. "I'm human and I'm not perfect," Woods said in his post-crash communiqué to his public. "I am not without faults and I am far short of perfect," he reiterates in his second communiqué, published today, in which he confesses his "transgressions." Gee, Mr. Woods, where did we ever get the idea that you were perfect? Oh, from you! This poll ran from December 7 to 13, 2009.
Steve Jobs, from an interview with John Markoff of the New York Times for the article "The Passion of Steve Jobs," published on January 15, 2008. Markoff wrote: "Today he had a wide range of observations on the industry, including the Amazon Kindle book reader, which he said would go nowhere largely because Americans have stopped reading. “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.” This poll ran from November 30 to December 6, 2009.
George F. Will of the Washington Post, from the op-ed article "Economic Boost? Bah, humbug," published on November 29, 2009. Will argues that Christmas gift-giving is "destroying billions of dollars of value." From the article: "Were it not for sentimentality about sentiments, which are highly overrated, we would behave rationally, giving cash, thereby avoiding value subtraction. We almost do that with wedding registries. And cash for Christmas, or semi-cash in the form of gift cards, no longer seems so tacky. Between 1998 and 2005, gift card sales grew 27 percent a year. They now are about one-third of Christmas spending and rank near the top of lists of preferred gifts." However, Will acknowledges that buying gift cards puts billions of unused dollars in the pockets of retailers, as many of the cards are never used: "A tenth of gift cards\' values, worth billions of dollars, are never redeemed. The cards are lost Christmas morning in the blizzard of wrapping paper, or just forgotten." This poll ran from November 23 to 29, 2009.
Gary Steiner, a professor of philosophy at Bucknell University, from the op-ed article "Animal, Vegetable, Miserable,” published in the New York Times on November 21, 2009. Steiner is a vegan, meaning a strict vegetarian -- someone who eats no animal or dairy products at all. He wrote: "These uses of animals are so institutionalized, so normalized, in our society that it is difficult to find the critical distance needed to see them as the horrors that they are: so many forms of subjection, servitude and — in the case of killing animals for human consumption and other purposes — outright murder. People who are ethical vegans believe that differences in intelligence between human and non-human animals have no moral significance whatsoever. The fact that my cat can’t appreciate Schubert’s late symphonies and can’t perform syllogistic logic does not mean that I am entitled to use him as an organic toy, as if I were somehow not only morally superior to him but virtually entitled to treat him as a commodity with minuscule market value. We have been trained by a history of thinking of which we are scarcely aware to view non-human animals as resources we are entitled to employ in whatever ways we see fit in order to satisfy our needs and desires. Yes, there are animal welfare laws. But these laws have been formulated by, and are enforced by, people who proceed from the proposition that animals are fundamentally inferior to human beings. At best, these laws make living conditions for animals marginally better than they would be otherwise — right up to the point when we send them to the slaughterhouse. Think about that when you’re picking out your free-range turkey, which has absolutely nothing to be thankful for on Thanksgiving. All it ever had was a short and miserable life, thanks to us intelligent, compassionate humans." This poll ran from November 16 to 22, 2009.
Peggy Noonan, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, from the article "Palin's Failin'," published on October 17, 2008. Noonan is the author of eight books on American politics and culture. She was a special assistant to the president in the White House of Ronald Reagan. Before that she was a producer at CBS News in New York. Noonan wrote of Palin: "This is not a leader, this is a follower, and she follows what she imagines is the base, which is in fact a vast and broken-hearted thing whose pain she cannot, actually, imagine. She could reinspire and reinspirit; she chooses merely to excite. She doesn't seem to understand the implications of her own thoughts." On November 17, 2009, publisher HarperCollins will release Palin's memoir titled "Going Rogue." Palin is reported to have received at least a $1.25 million advance for the book, and her total compensation may be much higher. Sarah Palin, 45, is a former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate. On July 26, 2009, Palin quit the governorship of Alaska after serving 2-1/2 years of her four-year term. To promote her new book, Palin will appear on The Oprah Winfrey Show on Monday, November 16. On Tuesday she will be on ABC TV’s "Good Morning America," talking to Barbara Walters. More of the interview will air Friday on "20/20." This poll ran from November 9 to 15, 2009.
Jacob Wiesberg, arguing that Fox News is bad and un-American, from the article "The O’Garbage Factor" published in the Newsweek magazine issue dated October 26, 2009: "That Rupert Murdoch may tilt the news rightward more for commercial than ideological reasons is beside the point. What matters is the way that Fox's model has invaded the bloodstream of the American media. By showing that ideologically distorted news can drive ratings, Ailes has provoked his rivals at CNN and MSNBC to develop a variety of populist and ideological takes on the news. In this way, Fox hasn't just corrupted its own coverage. Its example has made all of cable news unpleasant and unreliable." This poll ran from November 2 to 8, 2009.
A question posed in a recent national survey of attitudes toward global warming, conducted by the Pew Center for The People & The Press. The study found that, relative to the previous poll conducted in April 2008, fewer Americans see solid evidence of global warming and just 35% view it as a "serious" problem. The Center provided this summary of the results: "There has been a sharp decline over the past year in the percentage of Americans who say there is solid evidence that global temperatures are rising. And fewer also see global warming as a very serious problem -- 35% say that today, down from 44% in April 2008. "The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Sept. 30-Oct. 4 among 1,500 adults reached on cell phones and landlines, finds that 57% think there is solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades. In April 2008, 71% said there was solid evidence of rising global temperatures. "Over the same period, there has been a comparable decline in the proportion of Americans who say global temperatures are rising as a result of human activity, such as burning fossil fuels. Just 36% say that currently, down from 47% last year." See the full results of the Pew Global Warming Study. This poll ran from October 27 to November 1, 2009.
In the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star on October 19, 2009, editor Elbert Bud Jones wrote "Peace Prize is deserved; now, fight for progress:" "Once again, I felt a sense of pride when I read that President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, which to me is reminiscent of his swearing-in ceremony. How ironic that there are people here depicting him as Hitler or Stalin or other dubious characters. President Obama deserves this award for looking the other way when certain people of color try to undermine him. He deserves this award for the steadfast belief that the Republican Party will cross party lines and join him. He deserves this award for looking the other way when race is brought to bear. Race matters only when the other side implies it. The Noble Peace Prize committee saw what many Americans also saw--a person they felt will make a difference. The president should have one more goal: to lose the olive branch, pick up the sword, smite those who obstruct progress, and knight those who go forth to make our country stronger. We're not looking for El Dorado. Just give each person an equal playing field, one that's not slanted or rigged where only the top half can endure." This poll ran from October 19 to 26, 2009.
On September 13, 2009, the Associated Press reported that nearly two-thirds of Americans think the news stories they read, hear and watch are frequently inaccurate, according to a poll released Sunday by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. That marks the highest level of skepticism recorded since 1985, when this study of public perceptions of the media was first done. "The poll didn\'t distinguish between Internet bloggers and reporters employed by newspapers and broadcasters, leaving the definition of "news media" up to each individual who was questioned. The survey polled 1,506 adults on the phone in late July. The survey found that 63 percent of the respondents thought the information they get from the media was often off base. In Pew Research\'s previous survey, in 2007, 53 percent of the people expressed that doubt about accuracy. The findings indicate U.S. newspapers and broadcasters could be alienating the audiences they are struggling to keep as they try to survive financial turmoil. Pew Research didn\'t attempt to gauge how shrinking newspapers, reduced staffs and other cutbacks at news organizations are affecting people\'s perceptions, although the reductions probably haven\'t helped, said Michael Dimock, an associate director for the center. This poll ran from October 12 to 18, 2009.
Michael Moore, from an interview in The Onion about his new movie, "Capitalism: A Love Story." From the interview: "Well-timed to the current financial crisis, Moore\'s latest documentary Capitalism: A Love Story is his most sweeping agitprop to date, a multi-pronged argument against a system he contends is fundamentally corrupt and undemocratic. Moore recently spoke to The A.V. Club about his new film his desire to rebuild America's economic system from the ground up, and his dual mission to agitate and entertain." This poll ran from October 5 to 11, 2009.
This poll ran from September 28 to October 4, 2009.
A question posed by Grant Johnson, founder and CEO of Brookfield, Wisconsin-based marketing agency Johnson Direct. He wrote about car dealers on September 15, 2009 at the Chief Marketer web site: "Here’s a story on poor customer service you may enjoy. Recently I began the painful process of looking for a new car. A SUV, actually, to replace our 2002 Chevy Suburban, as with 4 kids and a dog, my family does not fit into a traditional car. My wife narrowed her choices to another Suburban or a Toyota Sequoia. This is post “cash for clunkers” and I assumed they would want to dump these gas guzzlers fast. I forgot to never assume. I reach out to four (4) Chevy dealers and three (3) Toyota dealers and I can not even get a call back. I go online, try that method, totally ignored. After my 4th or 5th attempt, I finally reach one dealer for each product who will only negotiate if I come to the dealership and when I get more specific, they ignore me and don’t return my calls. As I write this I still have not made any headway. Car dealers still don’t seem to understand that their model is broken and even worse, treat me, and I am sure many of you, like we are annoying them by wanting to buy their products. NOT a wise way to create raving fans. Customer service can be a “game changer” in marketing in any economic climate, especially a down economy, yet these automobile dealers just don’t get it. Pay attention to customer service. It will heed you well. Your bottom-line will prove it." This poll ran from September 21 to 27, 2009.
Dave Eggers, founder of the American publishing company McSweeney’s and author of "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius," among other books, from a mass email message he sent to John Lingan at the website Splice Today in May 2009. Eggers is known for his charity work at 826 National, the nonprofit writing and tutoring centers for children ages six through eighteen. The name originates from the first center Eggers founded seven years ago, in the Mission District of San Francisco at 826 Valencia Street. "As long as newspapers offer less each day—less news, less great writing, less graphic innovation, fewer photos—then they’re giving readers few reasons to pay for the paper itself. With our prototype, we aim to make the physical object so beautiful and luxurious that it will seem a bargain at $1. The web obviously presents all kinds of advantages for breaking news, but the printed newspaper does and will always have a slew of advantages, too. It’s our admittedly unorthodox opinion that the two can coexist, and in fact should coexist. But they need to do different things. To survive, the newspaper, and the physical book, needs to set itself apart from the web. Physical forms of the written word need to offer a clear and different experience. And if they do, we believe, they will survive. Again, this is a time to roar back and assert and celebrate the beauty of the printed page. Give people something to fight for, and they will fight for it. Give something to pay for, and they’ll pay for it." This poll ran from September 14 to 20, 2009.
From the BBC News story "Organic 'has no health benefits'" published on July 29, 2009. The story began: "There is little difference in nutritional value and no evidence of any extra health benefits from eating organic produce, UK researchers found. The Food Standards Agency, which commissioned the report, said the findings would help people make an "informed choice". But the Soil Association criticised the study and called for better research. Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine looked at all the evidence on nutrition and health benefits from the past 50 years. Without large-scale, longitudinal research it is difficult to come to far-reaching clear conclusions on this, which was acknowledged by the authors of the FSA review. Among the 55 of 162 studies that were included in the final analysis, there were a small number of differences in nutrition between organic and conventionally produced food but not large enough to be of any public health relevance, said study leader Dr Alan Dangour. Overall the report, which is published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found no differences in most nutrients in organically or conventionally grown crops, including in vitamin C, calcium, and iron. The same was true for studies looking at meat, dairy and eggs." This poll ran from September 7 to 13, 2009.
Congressman Bill Delahunt (D-MA), speaking with Margaret Warner and U.S. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) on the PBS program "Newshour with Jim Lehrer" on September 3, 2009. The segment was about U.S. policy towards Honduras. Delahunt said: "I think we have to understand the context of Honduran politics. It\'s been a country that has been ruled by an economic elite. And, with all due respect to the elections that have been held down there, that economic elite exercises disproportionate influence in that democracy. In the past -- and I dare say at times now -- it would be fair to describe Honduras as a banana republic." This poll ran from August 31 to September 6, 2009.
Barry Diller, the president of InterActiveCorp and former CEO of Paramount Pictures and Fox, quoted by Scott Rosenberg in his blog at Salon.com, posted on October 6, 2005. Rosenberg wrote: Barry Diller was the kickoff interview here at Web 2.0 yesterday afternoon, which was more than a little odd, because Barry Diller does not appear to have anything to do with Web 2.0 — if, by Web 2.0, we mean, as conference hosts John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly said, an approach that involves innovation on the Web platform, an “architecture of participation,” lightweight business models, Web services with no lock-in, and so on. No one has been smarter than Diller about rummaging through the broken and disused parts of old-Web flameouts and using them to assemble money-generating machines in relatively dull markets. And yet he has had no success — maybe even no interest — in creating innovative services or bringing new ideas to the Web. His company is a sort of Night of the Living Dot Com Dead. Diller does not suffer fools — or interviewers — gladly, and he reserves a special sardonic disdain for tech-industry hype. That can be refreshing. I first heard his digital-skeptic act over a decade ago, at a panel at the old Intermedia conference in 1993, where he shared the stage with Bill Gates, Apple’s John Sculley and cable mogul John Malone. While the other spouted visionary platitudes, Diller simply fumed at their disconnection from his reality. (I wrote about the event for my old paper, here.) Today, Diller is still wearing his skeptic’s hat; at Web 2.0 he turned it on those among the new wave of Web visionaries who have dared to dream that our new publishing and searching technologies might help bring a wider conversation into being beyond control of the broadcast world’s gatekeepers. “There’s just not that much talent in the world,” Diller says, “and talent almost always outs.” This poll ran from August 24 to 30, 2009.
Dave Friedman, president of the Americas for Razorfish, commenting at Chief Marketer about the results of a study by the interactive ad agency about how and why viewers watch television now – and how they'll tune in over the years to come. "In this experiment, we wanted to see what it was like for the average American family to live without television for an extended period of time, as a way to gauge how important TV is in our collective daily lives. It was a simple concept: eight average American families, no TV for a week, and we’d pay them $350 to keep photo diaries of their experience. Then, we got a call from our researchers. No one was going for it. We reduced the timeframe by a couple of days and tried again. Still, no takers. After a few more back-and-forths, we asked the question: How long would you be willing to give up TV for $350? The answer? Just 2 days. The study had determined its own headline: Three days without television was too long, a week was unimaginable." This poll ran from August 17 to 23, 2009.
John Mackey, the co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market Inc., from the op-ed article "The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare - Eight things we can do to improve health care without adding to the deficit" published in the Wall Street Journal on August 11, 2009. Mackey wrote: "At Whole Foods we allow our team members to vote on what benefits they most want the company to fund. Our Canadian and British employees express their benefit preferences very clearly — they want supplemental health-care dollars that they can control and spend themselves without permission from their governments. Why would they want such additional health-care benefit dollars if they already have an "intrinsic right to health care"? The answer is clear—no such right truly exists in either Canada or the U.K. — or in any other country. "Rather than increase government spending and control, we need to address the root causes of poor health. This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health. "Unfortunately many of our health-care problems are self-inflicted: two-thirds of Americans are now overweight and one-third are obese. Most of the diseases that kill us and account for about 70% of all health-care spending—heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes and obesity — are mostly preventable through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, minimal alcohol consumption and other healthy lifestyle choices." This poll ran from August 10 to 16, 2009.
In the article "Report: Consumers Substituting Online TV for Cable" published in Mediaweek magazine on July 29, 2009, Mike Shields writes that people are switching from cable TV to watching video online: "Nearly a fifth of Internet users watch video online almost every day. Women are catching up to men in terms of online video usage. And a growing number of recession-conscious Americans claim they are using the Web as a cable TV substitute. "Those are some of the more noteworthy research nuggets found in the latest report issued on Wednesday (July 29) by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, which focused specifically on online video. According to the report, 19 percent of Internet users surveyed claim they visit video sites in a typical day, up from 8 percent just three years ago. "And while Web video continues to skew young and male, in the past year the gender gap has closed, found Pew. This year’s report found that 59 percent of women visit video sites versus 65 percent of men. However, just a year ago only 46 percent of women made the same claim compared to 57 percent of men. Overall, online video viewing is becoming a core Web activity for most: close to two-thirds (62 percent) of adults have watched videos on sites like YouTube, considerably more than the 46 percent of adults who say they active on social-networking sites and far more than the 11 percent adults who regularly use Twitter, found Pew. "Not surprisingly, given the surging popularity of professional content on sites like Hulu, Pew’s report found that many Web video users are graduating past the short, funny viral clips which helped establish the medium just a few years ago. More than one-third of Internet users (35 percent) claim to have streamed a TV show or movie online, versus just 16 percent in 2007, according to the report. Pew’s research found that watching long-form professional still tends to be a behavior favored by younger users (61 percent of internet users ages 18-29 claim to have done so), though older demographics are catching up. "And in these tough economic times, for some viewing shows for free online is becoming an attractive alternative to paying for cable. According to a recent Pew report, 22 percent of American adults say they have cut back or cancelled cable in the past year (while only 9 percent have cut back on paying for Internet services). And within that cable-cutting segment, almost a third—32 percent—say they’ve taken the step of connecting their computers to their TV to consume Web video, a step that until recently has proven to be intimidating to most Americans." This poll ran from August 3 to 9, 2009.
Senator John McCain (R-AZ), from an interview by Stephen Moore in "The Weekend Interview" feature of The Wall Street Journal published on August 1, 2009. McCain said: “Look, this is a very popular, attractive, and eloquent president,” he continues. “But I think he was elected to govern in a centrist fashion. And instead,” he says, the administration is “governing from the far left.” Mr. McCain thinks this approach will capsize. “They don’t get that this is a right-of-center nation. Sooner or later, it becomes increasingly clear to the American people that he’s out of sync with the majority.” The latest polls are already showing some of this slippage: Mr. Obama’s favorable rating is now just over 50%, down from 70% his first weeks in office." This poll ran from July 26 to August 2, 2009.
Graham Bowley, from the article "2 Giants Emerge From the Ruins of Wall Street," published in the New York Times on July 17, 2009. Referring to the strong second-quarter earnings reported by JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, Bowley wrote: "Both banks benefited from billions of dollars in taxpayer support and cheap government financing to climb over other banks that continue to struggle. They are capitalizing on the turmoil in financial markets and the weakness of their rivals to pull in billions in trading profits. "For the most part, the worst of the financial crisis is over. Yet other large banks, including Citigroup and Bank of America, are still struggling to return to health." This poll ran from July 11 to 25, 2009.
Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger, talking at the annual Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley, Idaho in response to a question about whether people will pay to view videos on the Internet. Joe Flint wrote the story for the Los Angeles Times on July 8, 2009: "Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Bob Iger wasted little time setting the tone for this year's Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley, Idaho. "Getting into his rental car after checking in at the Sun Valley Resort here, Iger held court with the media for a few minutes and declared: "People are going to pay [for] content.... We're not worried about monetizing content." Of course, Disney's ABC network started making some of its content available free on the video website Hulu at the same time it is joining News Corp. and NBC Universal as a co-owner. "Not surprisingly, it didn't take long for another media executive to pop up and offer a contradiction. Blake Krikorian, the co-founder of Slingbox, the device that enables people to watch their home TV from anywhere, said the industry was "trying to put the genie back in the bottle." Another naysayer was former AOL executive Ted Leonsis, who thought anyone trying to get consumers to pay for content online would be disappointed. This poll ran from July 6 to 10, 2009.
On July 3, 2009, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin announced that she is stepping down from office on July 26, after serving 2-1/2 years of her four-year term. She did not reveal her plans. The Anchorage Daily News reported: "Palin made the announcement at a hastily called press conference held at her Wasilla home as the holiday weekend began. She complained about ethics complaints lodged against her, said the media isn't reporting her accomplishments, and struck conservative political themes like smaller government, resource development and national security." Speaking on ABC television network program "This Week" on July 5, conservative columnist George Will said "the one that rings most hollow is she doesn't want to put Alaska through the terror of being a lame duck governor. If she is just weary of it, one can understand that. Still, she made a contract with them to serve out her term. And she said, in her own words, she now is a quitter." Palin's announcement follows closely the release of a widely circulated article about her ("It Came from Wasilla") in the August 2009 issue of Vanity Fair magazine by Toddd Purdum. The article includes damaging statements about Palin from former staffers of the presidential campaign of Senator John McCain. This poll ran from June 29 to July 5, 2009.
Elise Erickson, 28, visiting New York City from Hansville, Washington, said of Michael Jackson, "Everyone's a fan, he's the king of pop." Erickson was quoted in the Reuters News story "World mourns Michael Jackson," published on June 26, 2009. On June 25, 2009, the 50-year-old pop singer and composer died in Los Angeles after going into cardiac arrest. Legions of fans are mourning his death, including U.S. President Barack Obama, who called Jackson a "spectacular performer." Sony, one of Jackson's record labels, said this about his life and accomplishments: "During his extraordinary career, he sold an estimated 750 million records worldwide, released 13 No.1 singles and became one of a handful of artists to be inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The Guinness Book of World Records recognized Jackson as the Most Successful Entertainer of All Time and "Thriller" as the Biggest Selling Album of All Time. Jackson won 13 Grammy Awards and received the American Music Award's Artist of the Century Award." This poll ran from June 22 to 28, 2009.
A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, conducted from June 12 to 15, 2009, shows that 56 percent of Americans approve of President Barack Obama's performance, down from 61 percent percent in April. President Obama's job approval rating fell to 58% in Gallup Poll Daily tracking from June 16-18, a new low for Obama in Gallup tracking. This poll ran from June 15 to 21, 2009.
Donna Barrett, the president and CEO of Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc., writing at the Newspaper Association of America web site on April 29, 2009. Barrett wrote: "Enough already. Partial facts and misinformation about newspapers are distorting the view for everyone, including readers and advertisers. Let's set the record straight: Newspapers still enjoy considerable readership and deliver strong results for advertisers. More Americans read printed newspapers than own dogs. More Americans read printed newspapers than watch the Super Bowl. Newspapers and their Web sites reach a larger audience than ever before. The crisis facing newspapers is not an audience problem. It is a revenue problem. Newspapers deliver vital information to communities, as they have since this country was settled. But something has to pay for all of that news. Advertising has traditionally supported the valuable content provided by newspapers. Two developments have devastated that revenue. The first is the recession. Newspapers are no different than television, radio, Internet, Major League Baseball, NASCAR and all businesses that rely on other businesses for money from advertising and promotion. The recession has led to a significant decrease in ad spending. Everyone is hurting. Newspapers just talk about it more. Free Internet sites such as Craigslist are the other factor. These sites siphon off considerable classified advertising. It is tough to compete against free, and free doesn't pay for journalists." This poll ran from June 8 to 14, 2009.
Robert G. Picard, a professor of media economics at Jonkoping University in Sweden, a visiting fellow at the Reuters Institute at Oxford University, and the author and editor of 23 books, including "The Economics and Financing of Media Companies." The comment is from the opinion article "Why journalists deserve low pay" published by the Christian Science Monitor on May 19, 2009. Picard wrote: "Journalists like to think of their work in moral or even sacred terms. With each new layoff or paper closing, they tell themselves that no business model could adequately compensate the holy work of enriching democratic society, speaking truth to power, and comforting the afflicted. "Actually, journalists deserve low pay. "Wages are compensation for value creation. And journalists simply aren't creating much value these days. "Until they come to grips with that issue, no amount of blogging, twittering, or micropayments is going to solve their failing business models." Picard added: "To create economic value, journalists and news organizations historically relied on the exclusivity of their access to information and sources, and their ability to provide immediacy in conveying information. The value of those elements has been stripped away by contemporary communication developments. Today, ordinary adults can observe and report news, gather expert knowledge, determine significance, add audio, photography, and video components, and publish this content far and wide (or at least to their social network) with ease. And much of this is done for no pay. "Until journalists can redefine the value of their labor above this level, they deserve low pay. Well-paying employment requires that workers possess unique skills, abilities, and knowledge. It also requires that the labor must be non-commoditized. Unfortunately, journalistic labor has become commoditized. Most journalists share the same skills sets and the same approaches to stories, seek out the same sources, ask similar questions, and produce relatively similar stories. This interchangeability is one reason why salaries for average journalists are relatively low and why columnists, cartoonists, and journalists with special expertise (such as finance reporters) get higher wages." This poll ran from June 1 to 7, 2009.
Automotive historian Bob Elton, quoted in the article "Can "Government Motors" succeed where GM failed?" published by Reuters on May 31, 2009. The article cites "fundamental problems" with General Motors: "GM, which has posted $88 billion of losses since the start of 2005, has too many plants, too many workers and too many dealerships to be comfortable with a dramatic decline in sales. The automaker also has more than 3,000 parts suppliers, many of which have strained balance sheets and may require financial support because of extensive production cuts by GM and Chrysler since the start of the year. "I don't think they're going to be successful in answering the fundamental problems of this company -- they are addressing the financial issues, but not the business issues," said Stuart Hirshfield, a bankruptcy lawyer with the Mintz Levin law firm. Under the restructuring, GM wants to reduce the number of U.S. plants to 31 by 2012, from 47 facilities now. It has also promised a new small car investment to the United Auto Workers union. "Although they have made significant progress on the cost side, the product side and the manufacturing footprint are still long-term challenges," Fitch Ratings managing director Mark Oline said. To fund GM's restructuring, the U.S. government already plans to provide to another $40 billion, on top of $19.4 billion already provided in emergency funds. The total cost could quickly rise if GM falters, analysts caution. "I think this is going to be Obama's Vietnam," said automotive historian Bob Elton. "Every time he turns around, there goes another $20 billion." This poll ran from May 24 to 31, 2009.
Adam Sternbergh, from the article "Spam Haiku: Why 60 percent of Twitterers quit," published in the May 17, 2009 edition of New York magazine. Sternbergh wrote: "It’s likely you’d no sooner heard of Twitter than you learned that Ashton Kutcher was already using it. So was Anderson Cooper. Suddenly, every gnarled politician in D.C. was sending out “tweets” (instant group messages) to their “followers.” (I’m by no means an early adopter, but when John McCain beats me to a new gizmo, I worry.) Even Oprah is tweeting, prompting the Times to announce, “Twittermania has only begun.” "But one nagging question lingers: Just what is it good for? The implications of hive-mind citizen reporting are interesting, certainly. And it can work as a real-time search engine. But otherwise, being pestered by a constant stream of people’s thoughts sounds to me less like a communications breakthrough than a form of torture devised by Philip K. Dick. "Recently, Nielsen reported that 60 percent of people who use Twitter once fail to return the following month. (At a similar stage of its growth, Facebook only lost about 20 percent.) In response to this report, one online commenter argued that new users simply don’t get that Twitter is perfect for “involving your brand in relevant conversations.” Eureka! Maybe this explains why so many writers, pundits, politicians, and celebs tweet, even as the rest of America shrugs. After all, those are exactly the types to think that (a) their every stray thought is publishable poetry and (b) it’s crucial to constantly insert their name—their brand—into the conversation. "Which brings us back to Dan Baum. As it turned out, he had not only a story to tell but a product to sell: his book Nine Lives. A gossip site called Baum’s confessional “a watershed moment for Twitter, and storytelling in general,” and it’s true that a few of his updates achieved a koanlike beauty (e.g., David Remnick’s final dismissal: “?‘That’s not possible,’ he said, and that was that”). But reading this entire tale on Twitter was like reading a novel, line by line, inside a thousand fortune cookies. Not ideal for storytelling, no, but man, what a fantastic gimmick. "That’s Twitter: A tool to mass-blast the public with whatever message you choose, whether you’re promoting your book or yourself. This practice used to have a different name: spam. But “tweeting” sounds much more cuddly than, say, “shilling,” and Twitter’s a much cuter name than Wiki-spam." This poll ran from May 11 to 17, 2009.
Deborah Armstrong, senior VP of sales and marketing at Mediaspace Solutions, a company that places newspaper advertising. Quoted in the article "Higher ad-to-edit ratio not a good thing," published in the July 2008 issue of Editor & Publisher magazine. Armstrong said: "Newspapers are the most trusted news medium. That sense of trust helps your ad when readers see it." This poll ran from May 4 to 10, 2009.
Casino developer and operator Steve Wynn, talking with Charlie Rose on the CBS Television Network program 60 Minutes from April 12, 2009. Wynn has recently opened a new Las Vegas casino called the Encore. At age 67 he is a living legend in the gambling business, having built the Mirage and Bellagio casinos. He sold the Bellagio and Mirage Resorts in 2000, pocketing more than $600 million. Born Steve Weinberg, Wynn grew up in the gambling business. His father, Michael Wynnn, was a compulsive gambler who owned a string of bingo parlors. When Steve was 10, his father took him to Las Vegas for the first time. Wynn told Rose: "My father had a terrible problem with gambling. He was a guy that enjoyed that activity so much that he lost control of it." When Wynn was an infant, his father changed the family name from Weinberg to Wynn. Michael Wynn died during heart surgery at age 47, leaving the family with a gambling debt of $350,000. Steve Wynn took over the family business, made a success of it, and paid back the money his father owed. Wynn told Rose the only way to win in a casino is to own one, "unless you're very lucky." Rose asked Wynn if he had ever known a gambler who went to Las Vegas, won big and walked away. "Never," Wynn replied. |
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