 | Today’s Papers Shake It UpBy Daniel Politi
Posted Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2008, at 6:17 A.M. E.T. All the papers lead with the New Hampshire primaries, where voters surprised everyone by handing Sen. Hillary Clinton a victory over Sen. Barack Obama. Sen. John McCain's victory over Mitt Romney had been widely expected in the last week, but it still marks an amazing turn of events for a candidate that many were ready to write off last summer. With almost all the votes counted, Clinton received 39 percent of the vote, while Obama got 36 percent, and John Edwards was a distant third with 17 percent. On the Republican side, McCain got 37 percent to Romney's 32 percent, while Mike Huckabee and Rudy Giuliani got 11 percent and 9 percent, respectively. As had been expected, it was a day of record turnout and approximately 500,000 voters cast a ballot. If the key word after Iowa was change, today it's comeback as voters breathed new political life into two candidates that had come in third and fourth in last week's contest. Now the only thing that's clear is that "contests in both parties are far from settled despite predictions that a compressed primary calendar would force a quick decision," notes USA Today. For Clinton, comparisons to her husband's candidacy seem almost inevitable as it was his surprise second-place finish in New Hampshire in 1992 that led to his famous "Comeback Kid" speech. Even McCain alluded to it in his victory speech. "My friends, I am past the age when I can claim the noun, 'kid,' no matter what adjective precedes it," he said. "But tonight we sure showed them what a comeback looks like." The Washington Post points out that, in the end, "New Hampshire proved to be the political firewall that the Clinton campaign long had hoped for." With all the pre-election polls predicting a wide margin for Obama's victory, the key question is, what happened? The New York Times goes highest with the theory that perhaps a lot of women turned to Clinton after her "unusual display of emotion" on Monday, which Slate's Chadwick Matlin describes as perhaps "the most famous tears that never fell from an eye." Of course, no one really knows how many voters were persuaded by the moment that was endlessly repeated on television, but regardless, it is clear that women, and particularly older women, played a decisive role in Clinton's victory. "Over the last week, I listened to you, and in the process I found my own voice," Clinton said last night. While it might be easy to forget with all the excitement about the surprising victory, the Los Angeles Times helpfully reminds readers high up in its story that Clinton became "the first female candidate ever to win a major-party primary." Younger voters still went for Obama, but Clinton is trying hard to woo them to her side. The Wall Street Journal points out that in a "purposeful contrast with her concession speech in Iowa," she was surrounded by young people yesterday during her victory speech. Slate's John Dickerson points out that after Iowa, "the Clinton campaign worked hard to bring Obama down to earth," and the Post's Dan Balz says some analysts believe that the strategy worked. We can probably expect it to continue, particularly since many think yesterday's loss will push voters and the media to take a more critical look at Obama. Registered Democrats also favored Clinton, while independents gave a boost to Obama. The NYT and LAT point out in front-page analyses that this might be a good sign for the former first lady because many states that hold primaries in the coming weeks don't allow independents to vote in the Democratic contests. Support from the party's base will be particularly important in many of the states that will hold contests on the critical Tsunami Tuesday, notes the LAT. But that's not to say she'll have an easy time. The next two Democratic contests are in Nevada, where a powerful union will probably back Obama, and South Carolina, where African-American voters are expected to make up about half of the electorate. But, at the very least, Clinton's victory "instantly deflated the almost giddy sense of anticipation inside Obama's headquarters," notes the Post. While the Democratic results solidified the feelings that this has become a two-person contest, McCain's victory means "the Republican field is more scrambled than ever," as the NYT puts it. The results were clearly a blow for Romney, not only because he had made winning the early states a key part of his strategy, but also because he was supposed to have a leg up in New Hampshire, where he owns a vacation home and voters were already familiar with him from his time as governor of neighboring Massachusetts. But McCain was boosted by independents and, as the LAT notes on Page One, Romney widely beat McCain with voters who consider themselves conservatives, which could spell trouble for the senator in later contests. Even McCain's "supporters are wondering whether he can take his adrenaline-fueled campaign national," says the Post. The next Republican primary is on Jan. 15 in Michigan, which the WSJ says will be the first real contest between Romney, McCain, and Giuliani. Romney should, theoretically, have an advantage in Michigan, where his father was a three-term governor. The NYT says Romney's aides now view Michigan as his firewall. Although Huckabee didn't get much of a bounce from the Iowa results in New Hampshire, he has a lead in South Carolina, which votes on Jan. 19, and advisers think he could have a respectable showing in Michigan with the help of rural voters and blue-collar workers that find his populist message appealing. Then comes Florida, where Giuliani has been spending lots of time lately, and which will likely be a decisive marker on whether the former mayor can gain momentum before Feb. 5. As the WSJ points out, even though he's losing big in the early states, Giuliani could end up benefitting from the Republican rule that allocates all of a state's delegates to the winner. (Democrats allocate proportionally.) In other news, all the papers go inside with U.S. and Iraqi forces launching a major offensive against Sunni insurgents in Diyala province. But even before the offensive began, military officials got word that insurgent leaders had fled their hideouts, "confirming a long-standing pattern: When U.S. and Iraqi forces attack, insurgents drop their weapons and blend into the civilian population," says the LAT. The NYT notes that American planners had kept most Iraqi troops in the dark about the offensive in order to avoid just this kind of scenario, which "suggests they cannot fully trust their allies who are supposed to pick up more of the fighting" this year. The Post's David Ignatius says there's currently a "new push" from Kurdish leaders to oust Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. It's a move the United States would rather avoid but officials recognize that Maliki needs to be more effective and inclusive in the coming months to avoid being thrown out of office. The WSJ reports that the White House is working on an economic stimulus plan that would involve giving out tax rebates "of perhaps $500" for individuals and new tax breaks for businesses. With the cancellation of Sunday's Golden Globe Awards ceremony, and the possibility that more awards shows will also be nixed because of the continuing writers' strike, the fashion industry is worried it could face big losses this year, says the WSJ. The red carpet extravaganzas are worth millions of dollars in "free" advertising for the fashion houses. And it's not just about the clothes, one fashion insider tells the paper. "When a Versace dress marches down the red carpet, it helps to sell that label's shoes, their bags, their perfumes." Daniel Politi writes "Today's Papers" for Slate. He can be reached at todayspapers@slate.com |
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Tuesday, January 08, 2008 | Patrician Director of Met Museum Will Retire 
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times Philippe de Montebello January 9, 2008
Philippe de Montebello, who has led the Metropolitan Museum of Art for 30 years and has virtually become synonymous with its monumental profile, announced Tuesday that he planned to retire at the end of the year. A patrician figure whose mellifluous multilingual voice on the museum's audio guides is known to millions of visitors around the world, he is the eighth and longest-serving director in the institution's 138-year history. Mr. de Montebello, 71, has more than doubled the museum's physical size during his tenure, carving out majestic new galleries suited to the Met's encyclopedic holdings. Today it is the city's biggest tourist attraction, with millions of visitors a year. Mr. de Montebello informed the Met's board of trustees at a meeting on Tuesday afternoon that he intended to leave the museum at the end of 2008 or as soon as a successor had been found. A new director has not been named, and the board said it would immediately form a search committee. In a telephone interview, Mr. Montebello said that after a packed fall season and the completion of several big long-term projects like new galleries for Greek and Roman art and European paintings, he felt the time was right. "After three decades, to stay much further would be to skirt decency," he said. "This has not been an easy decision — it's wrenching for me, it's been my entire life. But it's time." James R. Houghton, chairman of the museum's board, said he was not surprised by the announcement. "It has been in his mind for some time now," he said in an interview. "It was a mutual decision and I think the right one." Yet he added: "To look for somebody to fill his shoes will be very hard. The pool of potential candidates is smaller than it once was." While Mr. de Montebello has won broad admiration for his stewardship of the museum, he has sometimes drawn criticism for a reluctance to embrace contemporary art and a dismissive attitude toward claims by archaeologically rich countries to objects they say were looted and sold to Western museums. Two years ago, however, he negotiated a pact to turn over 21 classical artifacts in the Met's collection to Italy. And a dead shark prepared by the artist Damien Hirst is now floating in a tank of formaldehyde at the southern end of the museum under a three-year loan. Asked if the board, knowing Mr. de Montebello's retirement was imminent, had drafted a list of possible successors, Mr. Houghton would only say, "We've got all sorts of lists." He declined to describe the qualities that Met trustees would seek in a new director. (Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, chairman emeritus of The New York Times Company and the father of its current chairman, led the Met's board of trustees from 1987 to 1998 and is now a trustee emeritus of the museum.) Mr. Houghton said that Annette de la Renta and S. Parker Gilbert, both vice chairmen of the Met board, would be the chairwoman and vice chairman of the search committee. Mr. de Montebello said he would not serve on the panel. "I'm the last person to name my successor," he said. "It's not my role." Mr. de Montebello said he timed his resignation carefully. "It seemed like a good moment — to step down on a high," he said, referring to 2007 as an "annus mirabilis." Last year he oversaw the opening of nine new or renovated galleries, beginning in April with the vast Greek and Roman galleries — a museum within a museum — and ending with the opening of the expanded and renovated galleries for 19th- and early-20th-century European paintings last month. The museum also presented some 21 exhibitions, including "The Age of Rembrandt," which included the museum's entire collection of Dutch paintings and attracted 505,082 visitors by the time it closed on Sunday, and "Tapestry in the Baroque," drawing on collections from more than 15 countries. Many of those projects were years in the making, with Mr. de Montebello collaborating closely with his curators, seeking financing and negotiating loans. It has been a long trajectory. He arrived at the Met in 1963 as a curatorial assistant in the department of European paintings and except for four years — from 1969 to 1974, when he served as director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — he spent his entire career there. His ascension to director in 1977 ended a tumultuous decade at the museum. His predecessor, Thomas Hoving, was a showman who shook up the institution, staging a series of exhibitions that attracted blockbuster crowds. But he was considered an autocrat, and by the end of his tenure had alienated many staff members and trustees. French born and Harvard educated, Mr. de Montebello exuded a polish and erudition that reassured trustees and donors even as his European style was often spoofed in the art world in his later years. Over three decades, the institution's endowment went from $1.36 million to $2.9 billion; attendance rose from 3.5 million to 5.1 million visitors by 2000 before retreating a bit after 9/11. Last year 4.6 million people visited the museum. Yet Mr. de Montebello became known as much for his absorption in the Met's permanent collection as for encouraging well-attended shows. Curators say he can often be found in one gallery or another peering at a Greek bust or a studying a piece of richly gilded Byzantine metalwork. Over the years he has been responsible for championing high-profile acquisitions — some gifts, some purchases, some both — like Duccio di Buoninsegna's "Madonna and Child," dating from around 1300; Vermeer's "Portrait of a Young Woman," from around 1666-1667; van Gogh's "Wheat Field With Cypresses" (1889); and Jasper Johns's "White Flag" (1955). He also managed to outmaneuver other institutions in securing bequests of entire collections, like world-class Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works amassed by Walter H. Annenberg, the former United States ambassador to Britain and a longtime Met trustee, and his wife, Leonore. He also motivated donors to finance grand galleries that would show the permanent holdings to better advantage, creating spaces like the 100,000-square-foot Lila Acheson Wallace Wing for modern art, which opened in 1987, and the Carroll and Milton Petrie European Sculpture Court in 1990. In the 1990s Mr. de Montebello embarked on a series of projects that involved "building from within," like the new Greek and Roman Galleries and refurbished spaces for Oceanic and Native North American Art. (Other building programs have included the expansion and renovation of the museum's period rooms and decorative arts galleries; new galleries for prints, drawings and photographs; and vast new spaces for the fast-growing collections of Asian art.) Two years ago, he initiated a project to redesign the Met's entire American Wing, including the Charles Engelhard Court, an effort that is still in progress. In 1989 he halted the Met practice of charging special admission prices for big temporary exhibitions, saying he felt that the fees siphoned attention from the permanent holdings and the full range of art objects at the Met. Still, he oversaw more than his share of blockbusters, including "The Vatican Collections" in 1983; the Velázquez survey in 1989-1990; "The Glory of Byzantium," in 1997; "Egyptian Art in the Age of the Pyramids," in 1999-2000; "Vermeer and the Delft School," in 2001; and "Leonardo da Vinci: Master Draftsman," in 2003. His next act, post-Metropolitan Museum, has yet to be determined, Mr. de Montebello said. "I don't know what's out there," he said. "Surely I'd like to be an advocacy for excellence in art." He allowed that his current job would be hard to top. "I'm the most grateful person on earth," he said. "I've had the privilege to run the greatest institution in the world. How much luckier can you be than that?" For the museum world, one challenge will surely be to start seeing the Met and its long-term director as separate entities. "The Met is a huge organization, and too many people have been increasingly saying to me, 'You are the Met,'" Mr. de Montebello said. "I am not the Met."
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company |
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| Defying Predictions and Some Dire Polls, Clinton Escapes to Fight Another Day January 9, 2008 News Analysis MANCHESTER, N.H. — New Hampshire kept Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton alive. Her victory in the Democratic primary on Tuesday night was portrayed by her campaign as a stunning turnabout. Given how dire her situation had appeared just hours earlier, the spin was not unjustified. In the end, she survived because registered Democrats preferred her to Senator Barack Obama, though independents went for him, according to exit polls. And she benefited from strong support among women, a constituency that she worked hard to appeal to in the campaign's final days here. Mrs. Clinton is now likely to be able to appeal to donors for more money for what is shaping up as a protracted battle against Mr. Obama. The internal squabbling about her campaign's management and strategy is likely to be quieted. And she will no doubt go forth making the obvious comparison: that just like her husband 16 years ago, she is now well positioned to battle her way to the nomination. But Mrs. Clinton faces an opponent who has lately seemed to embody a movement rather than to be a mere political candidate. He has at times been an elusive target, lifted on the wind of nationwide anti-Washington climate change. She has often seemed to be frustrated in seeking to challenge his level of experience, his consistency, his positions or his electability against a Republican Par-
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| In Chinese Factories, Lost Fingers and Low Pay 
Oded Balilty/Associated Press Chinese workers can face serious work hazards and abuse. In Hebei Province in northern China, a worker dragged a barrel in a chemical factory. January 5, 2008 In Chinese Factories, Lost Fingers and Low Pay GUANGZHOU, China — Nearly a decade after some of the most powerful companies in the world — often under considerable criticism and consumer pressure — began an effort to eliminate sweatshop labor conditions in Asia, worker abuse is still commonplace in many of the Chinese factories that supply Western companies, according to labor rights groups. The groups say some Chinese companies routinely shortchange their employees on wages, withhold health benefits and expose their workers to dangerous machinery and harmful chemicals, like lead, cadmium and mercury. "If these things are so dangerous for the consumer, then how about the workers?" said Anita Chan, a labor rights advocate who teaches at the Australian National University. "We may be dealing with these things for a short time, but they deal with them every day." And so while American and European consumers worry about exposing their children to Chinese-made toys coated in lead, Chinese workers, often as young as 16, face far more serious hazards. Here in the Pearl River Delta region near Hong Kong, for example, factory workers lose or break about 40,000 fingers on the job every year, according to a study published a few years ago by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. Pushing to keep big corporations honest, labor groups regularly smuggle photographs, videos, pay stubs, shipping records and other evidence out of factories that they say violate local law and international worker standards. In 2007, factories that supplied more than a dozen corporations, including Wal-Mart, Disney and Dell, were accused of unfair labor practices, including using child labor, forcing employees to work 16-hour days on fast-moving assembly lines, and paying workers less than minimum wage. (Minimum wage in this part of China is about 55 cents an hour.) In recent weeks, a flood of reports detailing labor abuse have been released, at a time when China is still coping with last year's wave of product safety recalls of goods made in China, and as it tries to change workplace rules with a new labor law that took effect on Jan. 1. No company has come under as harsh a spotlight as Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, which sourced about $9 billion in goods from China in 2006, everything from hammers and toys to high-definition televisions. In December, two nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, documented what they said were abuse and labor violations at 15 factories that produce or supply goods for Wal-Mart — including the use of child labor at Huanya Gifts, a factory here in Guangzhou that makes Christmas tree ornaments. Wal-Mart officials say they are investigating the allegations, which were in a report issued three weeks ago by the National Labor Committee, a New York-based NGO. Guangzhou labor bureau officials said they recently fined Huanya for wage violations, but also said they found no evidence of child labor. A spokesman for Huanya, which employs 8,000 workers, denied that the company broke any labor laws. But two workers interviewed outside Huanya's huge complex in late December said that they were forced to work long hours to meet production quotas in harsh conditions. "I work on the plastic molding machine from 6 in the morning to 6 at night," said Xu Wenquan, a tiny, baby-faced 16-year-old whose hands were covered with blisters. Asked what had happened to his hands, he replied, the machines are "quite hot, so I've burned my hands." His brother, Xu Wenjie, 18, said the two young men left their small village in impoverished Guizhou Province four months ago and traveled more than 500 miles to find work at Huanya. The brothers said they worked 12 hours a day, six days a week, for $120 to $200 a month, far less than they are required to be paid by law. When government inspectors visit the factory, the young brothers are given the day off, they said. A former Huanya employee who was reached by telephone gave a similar account of working conditions, saying many workers suffered from skin rashes after working with gold powders and that others were forced to sign papers "volunteering" to work overtime. "It's quite noisy, and you stand up all day, 12 hours, and there's no air-conditioning," he said. "We get paid by the piece we make but they never told us how much. Sometimes I got $110, sometimes I got $150 a month." In its 58-page report, the National Labor Committee scolded Wal-Mart for not doing more to protect workers. The group charged that last July, Huanya recruited about 500 16-year-old high school students to work seven days a week, often 15 hours a day, during peak production months for holiday merchandise. Several students interviewed at the Guangzhou Technical School, less than two miles from Huanya, confirmed that classmates ages 16 to 18 had spent the summer working at the factory. Some high school students later went on strike to protest the harsh conditions, the report said. The students also told labor officials that at least seven children, as young as 12 years old, were working in the factory. "At Wal-Mart, Christmas ornaments are cheap, and so are the lives of the young workers in China who make them," the National Labor Committee report said. Jonathan Dong, a Wal-Mart spokesman in Beijing, said the company would soon release details of its own investigation into working conditions at Huanya. Labor rights groups have also criticized Disney and Dell. Officials of Disney and Dell declined to comment on specific allegations, but both companies say they carefully monitor factories in China and take action when they find problems or unfair labor practices. "The Walt Disney Company and its affiliates take claims of unfair labor practices very seriously and investigates any such allegations thoroughly," the company said in a statement. "We have a strong commitment to the safety and well-being of workers, and fair and just labor standards." Many multinationals were harshly criticized in the 1990s for using suppliers that maintained sweatshop conditions. Iconic brand names, like Nike, Mattel and Gap, responded by forming corporate social responsibility operations and working with contractors to create a system of factory audits and inspections. Those changes have won praise in some quarters for improving worker conditions. But despite spending millions of dollars and hiring thousands of auditors, some companies acknowledge that many of the programs are flawed. "The factories have improved immeasurably over the past few years," says Alan Hassenfeld, chairman of the toy maker Hasbro and co-chairman of Care, the ethical-manufacturing program of the International Council of Toy Industries. "But let me be honest: there are some bad factories. We have bribery and corruption occurring but we are doing our best." Some factories are warned about audits beforehand and some factory owners or managers bribe auditors. Inexperienced inspectors may also be a problem. Some major Western auditing firms working in China even hire college students from the United States to work during the summer as inspectors, an indication that they are not willing to invest in more expensive or sophisticated auditing programs, critics say. Chinese suppliers regularly outsource to other suppliers, who may in turn outsource to yet another operation, creating a supply chain that is hard to follow — let alone inspect. "The convoluted supply chain is probably one of the most underestimated and unrecognized risks in China," says Dane Chamorro, general manager for Greater China at Control Risks, a risk-consulting firm. "You really have to have experienced people on the ground who know what they're doing and know the language." Many labor experts say part of the problem is cost: Western companies are constantly pressing their Chinese suppliers for lower prices while also insisting that factory owners spend more to upgrade operations, treat workers properly and improve product quality. At the same time, rising food, energy and raw material costs in China — as well as a shortage of labor in the biggest southern manufacturing zones — are hampering factory owners' ability to make a profit. The situation may get worse before it improves. The labor law that took effect on Jan. 1 makes it more difficult to dismiss workers and creates a whole new set of laws that experts say will almost certainly increase labor costs. Yet it may become more difficult for human rights groups to investigate abuses. Concerned about the growing array of threats to profitability, as well as embarrassing exposés, factories are heightening security, harassing labor rights groups and calling the police when journalists show up at their gates. At the center of the problem is a labor system that relies on young migrant workers, who often leave small rural villages for two- or three-year stints at factories, where they hope to earn enough to return home to start families. As long as life in the cities promises more money than in rural areas, they will brave the harsh conditions in factories in this and other Chinese cities. And as long as China outlaws independent unions and proves unable to enforce its own labor rules, there is little hope for change. "This is a problem that has been difficult to solve," Liu Kaiming, the director of the Institute on Contemporary Observation, which aids migrant workers in nearby Shenzhen, said of sweatshop labor. "China has too many factories. The workers' bargaining position is weak and the government's regulation is slack." There is little that any Western company can do about those issues, no matter how seriously they take corporate social responsibility — other than leaving China.
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| McCain gets the good news. Too Tough to Die By John Dickerson
Posted Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2008, at 10:24 P.M. E.T. John McCain was looking at a television that appeared to be in the same credenza that he'd stood in front of eight years ago in a suite at the Nashua Crowne Plaza. The AP had called the election for him, but he didn't look like he believed it. He wanted to hear it from the television. When he did, McCain showed no visible emotion. His wife Cindy's eyes filled with tears, but McCain did little more than play with the green rubber band around his left hand. A cheer erupted in the room filled with many of the same advisers who had been there eight years ago. "Great news," said McCain, finally turning to kiss his wife Cindy who wore a jeweled McCain 2008 pin on the lapel of her ruby red jacket. McCain's speechwriter and co-author Mark Salter leaned over to me and smiled, "Too tough to die." He was supposed to die last summer after a brutal staff shakeup and spending almost all the money he'd raised. To revive himself, he rented a cheaper, smellier bus than he'd driven around when he was the high-flying front runner. He returned to New Hampshire for an endless round of town halls of the kind that had led to his surprise victory in 2000. "We sure showed them what a comeback looks like," said McCain in his acceptance speech. Conventional wisdom was wrong. McCain did not lose a big share of independents to Barack Obama. As many independents voted in the GOP primary as did in 2000. McCain led his rivals with more than a third of their backing. Proving he hasn't lost his appeal to middle-of-the-road voters will help his argument that he's the most electable Republican in November. He also won Republican voters. Winning in the GOP—particularly in the face of Romney's attacks on immigration and tax cuts—will help him argue that he is also a party favorite. For Mitt Romney, the night was another tough blow. New Hampshire was supposed to give him his second win in the discarded momentum strategy that had him sealing the nomination after two early wins. The Olympics may have been easier to rescue. "He can't sell himself," said McCain's ally Lindsey Graham, summing up Romney's problem. As McCain's advisers planned for the concession call to Mitt Romney he took a call from his oldest son, a cadet at the Naval Academy: "Jack Boy. Boy we won," he said into the cell phone. "Ways to go. Ways to go." "Okay now back to your studies." Immediately afterwards, Governor Huckabee called. To get some privacy, McCain backed into the bathroom off of the living room and shut the door. Back in the living room of the suite, McCain returned to the television screen and we watched the returns from the Democratic race. "Boy, this Clinton-Obama race is interesting isn't it?" he said to me, as he squinted into the screen. Aides were scurrying to find his speechwriter's laptop. The acceptance speech they'd written for him included this line: "I want to congratulate Senator Obama tonight on his impressive victory and I salute his supporters who worked so hard to achieve their success and believe so passionately in the promise of their candidate." They had to edit that one out. Was he happy? another reporter asked him. "I'm very happy," he said showing no visible evidence of it. The room swarmed with his blogging daughter Meghan and her friends, but McCain kept returning to the pose he'd held since hearing the results, both hands grasping the lapels of his blue suit. McCain retired to the bedroom to sit on the bed and practice. When he returned he was inching back to his normal cut-up mood. He pretended to read the speech: "Despite the best efforts of the liberal commie media, I was able to overcome…no, no, we're going to try to talk about big themes." When Mitt Romney came on the television to give his concession speech, McCain asked for the volume to be turned down. No one did it. "Well I won the silver again," said Romney. McCain screwed up his mouth a little, rolled his eyes and said, "See, that's why I wanted the television off." McCain flies to Michigan tomorrow and then ends the day in South Carolina. The last time he flew there after winning the New Hampshire primary in 2000, it was as an insurgent out to destroy the GOP establishment. Now McCain heads to the state with no clear establishment opponent and plenty of establishment support. One of the state's senators, Lindsay Graham, a McCain's ally then and now, reflected on the change as he sat in the corner drinking bottled water. "We're not going to put up with what happened last time," he said. "We're going to have a structure we didn't have before. I'm going to call some people tonight and see if they'll come over." Earlier in the night he'd joked they'd need flack jackets and helmets to handle the onslaught from Romney. By the time he had left to give his acceptance speech, McCain had rolled it to the diameter of a pencil. At this moment eight years ago, his daughter Meghan was drinking Shirley Temples and his youngest son, Jimmy, was a little kid playing dancing around the room. Now Meghan is old enough to have champagne. And Jimmy is a Marine fighting in Iraq. John Dickerson is Slate's chief political correspondent and author of On Her Trail. He can be reached at slatepolitics@gmail.com.
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| Unemployment Sounds Warning About Economy January 5, 2008 The unemployment rate surged to 5 percent in December as the economy added a meager 18,000 jobs, the smallest monthly increase in four years, the Labor Department reported on Friday. Economists viewed the report as the most powerful indication to date that the United States could well be falling into a recessionary downturn. Evidence of widening unemployment heightened anticipation that the Federal Reserve would further cut interest rates this month, perhaps by an unusually large half a percentage point, in a bid to prevent the economy from sliding into the muck. "This is unambiguously negative," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. "The economy is on the edge of recession, if we're not already engulfed in one." A recession is typically defined as an extended period of at least several months during which economic activity shrinks and unemployment rises. The swift deterioration in the job market resonated as a warning sign that troubles once confined to real estate and construction are spilling into the broader economy, threatening the ability of American consumers to keep spending with customary abandon. On Wall Street, the report led to a big sell-off that sent the Dow Jones industrial average plunging nearly 2 percent. As the presidential race heated up, Democrats seized upon the bleak job numbers to indict Republican-led economic policies. "This morning's jobs report confirms what most Americans already knew," Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, said in a statement. "President Bush's economic policies have failed our country's middle class." President Bush cautioned that "we can't take economic growth for granted" and said he would work with Congress to be "more diligent" on protecting the economy. Speaking to reporters at the White House after a meeting with his economic advisers, Mr. Bush warned that "the worst thing the Congress could do is raise taxes on the American people." The lone consolation for investors, workers and the public at large was that the bad news seemed severe enough to prod the Fed to push its benchmark rate below its current 4.25 percent when policy makers meet at the end of the month. Lower interest rates decrease borrowing costs and encourage banks to lend more freely, spurring spending, hiring and investment. The Fed has already eased rates three times since September in a bid to inject confidence into jittery markets. But analysts cautioned that central bankers may now feel constrained against further easing: inflation is growing, particularly as oil hovers near $100 a barrel. Lower interest rates, over time, can generate the seeds of inflation, and could make an already weak dollar worth less against foreign currencies. "The Fed is trying to juggle a two-sided sword," said Ryan Larson, senior equity trader at Voyageur Asset Management. "They're trying to fight inflation moving higher and they're trying to fight a slowdown in growth." In an effort to encourage lending, the Fed has been pumping cash through the banking system by auctioning off loans at discounted rates. On Friday, it said it would expand a pair of auctions scheduled for this month, offering $30 billion. Some economists said the markets and other analysts were making too much of a lone jobs report that could yet be revised. "The stock and bond markets are going into panic mode," said Michael Darda, chief economist at MKM Partners, a research and trading firm in Greenwich, Conn. "We're going to have a slowdown, but I don't think we're going to have a recession." While filings for jobless benefits have been rising in recent weeks, the pace has not been swift enough to justify such a sharp jump in the unemployment rate, Mr. Darda added. For months, the economy had managed to grow vigorously despite worrying developments, from the unraveling of the housing industry to turmoil in the credit markets. Through it all, economists marveled at the resilience of the labor market, suggesting that as long as the economy kept creating jobs by the tens of thousands each month, Americans would keep spending and growth would carry on. But the jobs report for December suggested that the negatives dogging the economy finally appear to be dragging it down. "There's no mystery as to why the unemployment rate went up," said Robert A. Barbera, chief economist at the research firm ITG. "The mystery is why it took so long." December's addition of 18,000 jobs to nonfarm payrolls was an abrupt drop from the 115,000 created in November — a figure revised on Friday from an initial estimate of 94,000. It put the annual rate of job growth at its lowest since 2004. Some areas of the economy continued to expand, according to the report. Government jobs grew, and health care added 28,000 jobs. Food services added 27,000. But that growth was largely reversed by pain elsewhere. Retailing lost 24,000 jobs in December. Financial services lost 7,000. Construction shed another 49,000 jobs. Even commercial construction, which some have suggested could compensate for woes among home builders, lost 17,000 jobs. Over all, private sector jobs slid by 13,000. Despite a weak dollar, which has helped compensate for disappointment at home by lifting American sales abroad, the nation shed 31,000 manufacturing jobs in December. For the third consecutive month, wages grew slower than the pace of inflation, cutting into the real income of many workers. Among rank-and-file workers, who make up more than four-fifths of the labor force, average hourly earnings rose 3.7 percent last year, below the 4.3 percent rise in 2006. Job growth has been slowing steadily for two years. In 2005, the economy generated 212,000 new jobs a month, according to the Labor Department. Last year, the pace dropped to 122,000. The spike in the unemployment rate, which was 4.7 percent in November, suggested that the deterioration of the job market is now accelerating. Last year, companies fretted about business prospects amid falling housing prices and tightening credit. Many stopped hiring, but large-scale layoffs were rare. But now, some appear to have concluded that they can no longer tough it out. "December's bleak jobs report represents the siren call that this business cycle is just about over," declared Bernard Baumohl, managing director at the Economic Outlook Group, in a note to clients. "We're about to tilt over to the other side of the economic curve and begin the downsizing." In Penacook, N.H., the tilt came during the Christmas season: Riverside Millwork, a supplier of windows, doors and stair parts, laid off 43 people. That added to a wave of layoffs that has winnowed the staff from 225 to 40 since October 2005, when home building began its decline. "We've cut just about everything that we can possibly cut," said Larry Byer, the company's human resource manager. "When you don't have assets to sell or to keep you going, the bodies have to go." In calculating the rate of job growth, the Labor Department relies upon a sampling of payroll data and an extrapolation of how many jobs have been created and destroyed. An accompanying survey of households, used to calculate the unemployment rate, presented an even bleaker picture, showing that the number of Americans saying they were working plunged by 436,000 in December — the worst number in five years. The trend was pronounced for teenagers, blacks and Hispanics, with unemployment among those groups jumping 0.6 percentage point, triple the increase for whites. The household survey is notoriously volatile and treated with skepticism. But unlike the payroll data, it is not subject to revision, other than for seasonal factors, making it a better indicator when the economy is on the cusp of change, Mr. Barbera said. Between December 2005 and December 2006, the household survey showed jobs increasing by 2.2 percent. Over the last year, jobs grew less than 0.2 percent. "Every time we've gotten down to this level since 1956, there's been a recession," Mr. Barbera said. The risk is that the weakening job market will swell from a symptom of malaise to a cause. As fewer jobs are created, spending power could dry up. Faced with declining business, employers could further trim payrolls. As unemployment grows, more homeowners could fall behind on mortgages, leading to more losses at banks, and more layoffs. "The risk of a vicious cycle setting in now is very high," Mr. Zandi said. "The job market's operating at stall speed. Either it picks up soon or it quickly unravels." Edmund L. Andrews contributed reporting.
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| It’s Time for Roger Clemens to Face the Legal Posse January 5, 2008 Sports of The Times
The posse appears to be gaining ground on Roger Clemens. On Friday, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform announced that it would hold hearings to clarify information contained in the report by George J. Mitchell on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball. Some of that information has been challenged by Clemens. On Jan. 15, Commissioner Bud Selig; Donald Fehr, the executive director of the players union; and Mitchell, a former senator, are scheduled to appear before the committee. Brian McNamee, Kirk Radomski, Andy Pettitte, Chuck Knoblauch and Clemens have been asked to appear a day later. Lawyers for Clemens and McNamee, the trainer who told Mitchell's investigators that he injected Clemens multiple times with steroids and human growth hormone, said their clients intended to appear. Who will ever forget the last Congressional circus? There was Mark McGwire not wanting to talk about the past; Rafael Palmeiro swearing up and down that he never, ever used steroids; and Sammy Sosa suddenly unable to speak or understand English. Will Clemens tell the truth, or nibble at the edges? Perhaps he'll show up and speak in tongues. That's what he has been doing for the last few days in response to McNamee's eyewitness account that Clemens used performance-enhancing drugs. In a video two weeks ago, Clemens said McNamee did not inject him with steroids and human growth hormone. On Thursday, Clemens fine-tuned his denial. According to a news release about Clemens's interview with "60 Minutes" that will be broadcast Sunday, he told Mike Wallace that McNamee had injected him with a painkiller and with vitamin B12. Sounds like the Barry Bonds overshift. Critics rolled their eyes when Bonds said he thought he had received flaxseed oil from his trainer. "Of course he knew," critics said. "How could he not know?" Bonds was under oath before a grand jury when he made his statements. Clemens is using the same rationale. Are we rolling our eyes now? These Congressional hearings are fine but, with all due respect to the House of Representatives, I'd like to know the complex legal reasons the superagent Jeff Novitzky is not on a plane to Katy, Tex., to pay a visit to Clemens. Novitzky is the I.R.S. agent whose dogged pursuit brought down some of the world's finest athletes. He has been particularly tenacious in pursuing Bonds. He has been described as a methodical investigator and compared to Eliot Ness. He reportedly sifts through garbage in pursuit of an indictment. He helped bring down Marion Jones and has Bonds facing perjury charges. Jones, who pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents, gave back her five Olympic medals and faces sentencing next week. Now that Clemens has emerged as the defiant whale of baseball's steroid scandal, why isn't Novitzky, or another federal agent, hot on the trail? Why isn't Novitzky pounding on Clemens's door, saying, "Let's talk"? Once Clemens is engaged by a federal agent, his words would assume a new meaning. He will be obliged to tell the truth or face the type of legal liability that ultimately brought down Jones: lying to a federal agent. Why are federal agents reluctant to pursue Clemens, who is, after all, challenging a government-produced witness? McNamee signed an agreement with federal prosecutors, promising to tell the truth in exchange for not facing criminal charges. In an e-mail message, the United States attorney's office in San Francisco, which prosecuted the Balco case with help from Novitzky's evidence, had no comment. "The discretion in enforcing false statements given to government officials is very broad and therein lies the inconsistency," said José F. Anderson, a professor of law at the University of Baltimore, who specializes in litigation and was a former public defender. "How long will it be before someone decides there is enough to bring Clemens into the criminal justice process?" The larger question for everyone in baseball should be: How do we end this nightmare? The integrity of a multibillion-dollar baseball industry has been compromised. The greatest hitter, the greatest pitcher and so many players in between have been implicated in a scandal. "At the end of the day, you had a whole industry that perjured itself by looking the other way," Anderson said. Referring to Bonds, he added: "You're trying one man as a symbol for all the offenses of the others. You're picking and choosing among the guilty who will be punished." Mitchell himself has suggested that baseball should move on. But for that to happen, everyone involved has to give up something, and I'm not sure that can happen. Prosecutors have to give up some of the glory, baseball has to accept a permanent stain, Selig must climb off his high horse. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens will be judged by the court of public opinion. "Everybody's got to kick in a piece, everybody's got to ante up," Anderson said. I'd still like to see Novitzky board that plane to Katy, Tex.
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| Fruitcake Might Be a Better Gift 
Joel Castillo January 5, 2008 What's Online Fruitcake Might Be a Better Gift By DAN MITCHELL WITH the holiday season now behind us, the nation is awash in gift cards. The Tower Group, a research firm, estimates that gift card sales totaled $97 billion in 2007, well above sales of $83 billion in 2006. The retail industry's "hush-hush secret" is that issuers of gift cards make an enormous amount of money from "breakage" — the "free money that retailers get when gift cards go unused or underused," said Peter Morris of The Business Shrink blog. The Tower Group estimates that breakage amounted to $7.8 billion last year. It is not clear how much of this breakage is a result of people losing or forgetting they have the cards, and how much is from people receiving cards for stores where they do not shop. For the latter group, there are several options online for trading in unwanted cards. "But not all are created equal," warns The Bachelor Guy blog, which looks at three of them. The sites — CardAvenue.com, PlasticJungle.com and Swapagift.com — each allow buying, selling and trading of gift cards. Fees vary widely, and each offers various additional services, like allowing users to pay bills in exchange for their cards or to trade them for universal gift cards issued by credit card companies (similar to a stored-value card). Gift cards have largely replaced gift certificates, which had long been a popular option for unimaginative or busy gift givers. But they (and, by extension, gift cards) "make lousy gifts," according to Scott Young, writing at LifeHack.org. The people who buy them, he writes, are "willing to trade money, for a less useful and more restrictive form of money at a one-to-one ratio." He does allow that the cards are popular largely because "sending cash is still a faux pas by many people's standards." Some state governments, meanwhile, have noticed the vast amount of money tied up in breakage, and they want their take. Maine, in particular, is claiming 60 percent of the value of unused gift cards under that state's laws governing unclaimed property. The theory is that retailers' markups average 40 percent, so the remainder amounts to a windfall when the cards are not used. Retailers, predictably, object, and accuse Maine of unfairly using them to shore up its anemic state budget. EYE ON HOLLYWOOD Nikki Finke, the salty veteran Hollywood journalist, is "the most trusted news source on the Hollywood writers' strike," according to The New York Observer. After decades working for media outlets like The Associated Press, The Los Angeles Times and The New York Post, Ms. Finke is now the proprietor of the Web site Deadline Hollywood Daily, which is hosted by LA Weekly. There, according to Doree Shafrir of The Observer, she has "demonstrated that one determined reporter — with none of the support or backing of a media outfit, but also none of the entangling alliances — can, in fact, beat the big guys at their own game." ODDITIES MARKET Probably the most famous item ever sold on eBay was a grilled cheese sandwich supposedly depicting an image of the Virgin Mary. It sold in 2004 for $28,000. It was chosen as No. 1 in a list of the "10 Most Extraordinarily Peculiar eBay Purchases of All Time," according to Julius Vortemizzi, writing on Webupon. Also included is a vampire-killing kit, a Doritos chip in the shape of a pope's hat and a jar that, according to the seller, contained a ghost. E-mail: whatsonline@nytimes.com. |
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| Warner Backs Blu-ray, Tilting DVD Battle 
Yuriko Nakao/Reuters With Warner Brothers' backing, Sony's Blu-ray high-definition format now has about 70 percent of the DVD market locked up. January 5, 2008 Warner Backs Blu-ray, Tilting DVD Battle LOS ANGELES — The high-definition DVD war is all but over. Hollywood's squabble over which of two technologies will replace standard DVDs skewed in the direction of the Sony Corporation on Friday, with Warner Brothers casting the deciding vote in favor of the company's Blu-ray discs over the rival format, HD DVD. In some ways, the fight is a replay of the VHS versus Betamax battle of the 1980s. This time, however, the Sony product appears to have prevailed. "The overwhelming industry opinion is that this decides the format battle in favor of Blu-ray," said Richard Doherty, research director at the Envisioneering Group, a market research firm in Seaford, N.Y. Behind the studio's decision are industrywide fears about the sagging home entertainment market, which has bruised the movie industry in recent years as piracy, competition from video games and the Internet, and soaring costs have cut into profitability. Analysts predict that domestic DVD sales fell by nearly 3 percent in 2007, partly because of confusion in the marketplace over the various formats. HD DVD, however, is not dead. Two major studios, Paramount Pictures and Universal Pictures, have deals in place to continue releasing their movies exclusively on HD DVD, as does DreamWorks Animation. Warner Brothers, part of Time Warner, will also continue to release its titles on both formats until the end of May. But by supporting Blu-ray, Warner Brothers, the largest player in the $42 billion global home entertainment market, makes it next to impossible for HD DVD to recover the early momentum it achieved. While the specifics of the Blu-ray and HD DVD skirmish might be of interest only to insiders, the consequences of deciding a winner are not. Consumers have been largely sitting on the sidelines, waiting to buy high-definition players until they see which will have the most titles available. Retailers have been complaining about having to devote space to three kinds of DVDs. And the movie business has delayed tapping a lucrative new market worth billions. High-definition discs sell for a 25 percent premium. "Consolidating into one format is something that we felt was necessary for the health of the industry," Barry M. Meyer, the chief executive of Warner Brothers, said in a telephone interview. "The window of opportunity for high-definition DVD could be missed if format confusion continues to linger." In addition to Sony, a consortium of other electronics makers back Blu-ray. For Sony, Warner's decision is a chance to rewrite history: the company faltered in its introduction of Betamax in the consumer market in the 1980s. Many analysts say the HD DVD players now risk becoming the equivalent of Betamax machines, which died out in large part because it became harder for consumers to find Betamax movies as studios shifted allegiance to VHS. With Warner on board, Blu-ray now has about 70 percent of the market locked up; Walt Disney, 20th Century Fox, MGM, Lionsgate and, of course, Sony are all on Blu-ray's team. Warner Brothers has some of the bigger releases in 2008, including "Speed Racer," the Batman sequel "The Dark Knight" and the sixth Harry Potter installment. "This doesn't necessarily kill the HD DVD format, but it definitely deals it a severe blow," said Paul Erickson, an analyst at the NPD Group's DisplaySearch. "When a consumer asks a store clerk which format to buy, that clerk is now going to have a hard time arguing for HD DVD." In a prepared statement, Toshiba said it was "quite surprised" and "particularly disappointed" by Warner's decision. "We will assess the potential impact of this announcement with the other HD DVD partner companies," the company said. Universal Pictures declined to comment. Warner Brothers has been courted for months by both sides. Toshiba dispatched Yoshihide Fujii, the executive in charge of its HD DVD business, to the studio three times in recent months, according to Time Warner executives who were granted anonymity because the negotiations were confidential. Sony has aimed even higher: Howard Stringer, the conglomerate's chief executive, has leaned on Jeffrey Bewkes, the new chief executive of Time Warner. Money was an issue. Toshiba offered to pay Warner Brothers substantial incentives to come down on its side — just as it gave Paramount and DreamWorks Animation a combined $150 million in financial incentives for their business, according to two executives with knowledge of the talks who asked not to be identified. Kevin Tsujihara, president of the Warner Brothers Home Entertainment Group, declined to comment on whether any payments were offered for support of Blu-ray. "This market is absolutely critical to our future growth," he said in a telephone interview. "You couldn't put a number on that." For his part, Mr. Meyer said, "We're not in this for a short-term financial hit." Which high-definition technology is better has been the subject of intense debate in Hollywood and electronics circles for years. HD DVD players have been much cheaper than Blu-ray machines, but Blu-ray discs have more storage space and more advanced protections against piracy. Both versions deliver sharp resolution. Consumers were inundated with marketing from both sides during the recent holiday season. Wal-Mart, as part of a temporary promotion, offered Toshiba players for under $100. Sony and its retailing partners, including Best Buy, responded by dropping prices on Blu-ray players, although not to the same level. Blu-ray players can now be purchased for under $300. Still, Blu-ray was emerging as a front-runner as early as August. Blu-ray titles have sharply outsold HD DVD offerings — by as much 2 to 1, according to some analysts — and some retailers like Target started stocking only Blu-ray players. Blockbuster said last summer that it would carry Blu-ray exclusively. "We've been monitoring the situation with consumers for a while now and they have clearly made their choice," Mr. Meyer said. "We followed."
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| Put Buyers First? What a Concept This article leaves out one very interesting question. Does anyone think that perhaps the customer service representative dealing with Mr. Nocera had any clue that he might have been a very influential cloumnist with The New York Times?. I do not wish to appear cynical in any way, however, I believe that Amazon most likely has some information collected on its members, and occupation just might be one of the profile entries in the Amazon registration form. It is a pretty standard question. If anyone could suggest what exactly is the company policy at Amazon in circumstances such as these I would appreciate a comment to clarify this article. Happy New Year, Michael 
Jens-Ulrich Koch/Agence France-Presse—Getty Images Shelves of books at an Amazon warehouse in Bad Hersfeld, Germany. The company often ships items free. January 5, 2008 Talking Business Put Buyers First? What a Concept My Christmas story — the one I've been telling and retelling these last 10 days — began on Friday, Dec. 21. It was early in the morning, and I had awoken with the sudden, sinking realization that a present I had bought for one of my sons hadn't yet arrived. It wasn't just any present either; it was a PlayStation 3, a $500 item, and a gift, I happened to know from my sources, that he was hoping for. Like most things I buy online, the PlayStation had come from Amazon.com. So I went to the site and tracked the package — something, thankfully, that is a snap to do on Amazon. What I saw made my heart sink: the package had not only been shipped, it had been delivered to my apartment building days earlier and signed for by one of my neighbors. I knocked on my neighbor's door, and asked if she still had the PlayStation. No, she said; after signing for it, she had put it downstairs in the hallway. Now I was nearly distraught. In all likelihood, the reason I hadn't seen the package earlier in the week is because it had been stolen, probably by someone delivering something else to the building. Even if that wasn't the case, the one thing I knew for sure was that it was gone — for which I could hardly blame Amazon. Nonetheless, I got on the phone with an Amazon customer service representative, and explained what had happened: the PlayStation had been shipped, delivered and signed for. It just didn't wind up in my hands. Would Amazon send me a replacement? In my heart of hearts, I knew I didn't have a leg to stand on. I was pleading for mercy. I shudder to think how this entreaty would have gone over at, say, Apple, where customer service is an oxymoron. But the Amazon customer service guy didn't blink. After assuring himself that I had never actually touched or seen the PlayStation, he had a replacement on the way before the day was out. It arrived on Christmas Eve. Amazon didn't even charge me for the shipping. My son was very happy. So, of course, was I. It has been years since I looked in on Amazon. Once upon a time, of course, it was a highflying Internet stock, one of the handful of Internet companies — along with Yahoo, eBay and AOL —whose stock only seemed to go in one direction: up. Henry Blodget made his bones, in no small part, by being a screaming Amazon bull. Then came the bust, and Wall Street began to see Amazon in a decidedly different light. It was just another retailer, the bears said, that happened to sell goods online — and had immense, unanticipated infrastructure and technology costs. Its founder and chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, spent huge sums of money on such "frills" as free shipping, which depressed its operating margins. Indeed, those margins — which got as low as 3 percent — were more akin to Wal-Mart's than that of a big-time tech company. At one point, in mid-2000, a bond analyst named Ravi Suria made his bones by predicting that the company could run out of cash. The stock dropped into single digits. So when I looked up Amazon's stock price after my little Christmas miracle, I was amazed to see that it had risen around 140 percent last year. (It closed yesterday at $88.79.) The company grew somewhere around 35 percent in 2007 (the final numbers aren't in yet), with revenue likely to come in around $15 billion, and well over $1 billion in free cash flow. Its margins had risen to around 6 percent, and it consistently made money. When I spoke to analysts and investors, they had all kinds of reasons for Amazon's performance last year. "They finally reached a point where their R&D spending was not expanding as fast as their revenues," said Citigroup's Mark S. Mahaney. He and others also talked about Amazon's success in international markets, its fast-growing (and high margin) merchant market, which allows merchants to sell goods alongside Amazon, and its rapidly expanding Web services business. Mostly, though, the investing community pointed to those healthier margins as the main reason for the stock's run-up. Legg Mason's legendary fund manager, Bill Miller, who has made a small fortune for his investors by betting big on Amazon, told me that "Wall Street is almost fanatically focused on margin expansion and contraction." But I couldn't help wondering if maybe there wasn't something else at play here, something Wall Street never seems to take very seriously. Maybe, just maybe, taking care of customers is something worth doing when you are trying to create a lasting company. Maybe, in fact, it's the best way to build a real business — even if it comes at the expense of short-term results. It is almost impossible to read or see an interview with Mr. Bezos in which he doesn't, at some point, begin to wax on about what he likes to call "the customer experience." Just a few months ago, for instance, he appeared on Charlie Rose's talk show to tout Amazon's new e-book device, the Kindle. Toward the end of the program, Mr. Rose asked the chief executive an open-ended question about how he spent his time, and Mr. Bezos responded with a soliloquy about his "obsession" with customers. "They care about having the lowest prices, having vast selection, so they have choice, and getting the products to customers fast," he said. "And the reason I'm so obsessed with these drivers of the customer experience is that I believe that the success we have had over the past 12 years has been driven exclusively by that customer experience. We are not great advertisers. So we start with customers, figure out what they want, and figure out how to get it to them." Anybody who has spent any time around Mr. Bezos knows that this is not just some line he throws out for public consumption. It has been the guiding principle behind Amazon since it began. "Jeff has been focused on the customer since Day 1," said Suresh Kotha, a management professor at the University of Washington business school who has written several case studies about Amazon. Mr. Miller noted that Amazon has really had only one stated goal since it began: to be the most customer-centric company in the world. In this, it has largely succeeded. Millions of people instinctively go to Amazon when they want to buy something online because they have come to trust the company in a way they trust few other online entities. Amazon's technology, its interface, its one-click buying service — they are all incredibly easy to use. Its algorithms offer "suggestions" for further buying that actually appeal to its customers. Its Amazon Prime program — for a $79 annual fee you get two-day free shipping — is enormously popular. Unlike what happens at certain other technology companies, when you have a problem, the customer service telephone number isn't hard to find. It is even willing to correct mistakes that it didn't make, as I discovered over Christmas. All of this, however, comes at a price. Indeed, as I've written before, customer service isn't cheap. Certainly, a fair amount of the hundreds of millions of dollars Amazon has spent on R&D has gone toward developing, say, the Kindle, but a good deal of it has also gone toward improving the customer experience. Amazon is willing to lose money on some of its most popular items, like the latest Harry Potter novel. And even with Amazon Prime, it must surely swallow millions of dollars in shipping costs. Indeed, in a presentation to analysts in late November, the company's chief financial officer, Thomas J. Szkutak, showed one slide that read, "Over $600 Million in Forgone Shipping Revenue." And that was just for one year. Wall Street, however, has never placed much value in Mr. Bezos' emphasis on customers. What he has viewed as money well spent — building customer loyalty — many investors saw as giving away money that should have gone to the bottom line. "What makes their core business so compelling is that they are focused on everything the customer wants," said Scott W. Devitt, who follows Amazon for Stifel Nicolaus & Company. "When you act in that manner many times Wall Street doesn't appreciate it." What Wall Street wanted from Amazon is what it always wants: short-term results. That is precisely what Dell tried to give investors when it scrimped on customer service and what eBay did when it heaped new costs on its most dedicated sellers. Eventually, these short-sighted decisions caught up with both companies. But Mr. Bezos refused to give in. "He was spending his time on long-term value creation," Mr. Miller said. There aren't many chief executives who can so easily ignore the entreaties of the investment community, but Mr. Bezos turned out to be one of them. Of course it helps that he owns over 100 million shares of the stock — and is the company’s single largest shareholder. And it also helps that his dogged pursuit of a better customer experience has turned out to be exactly right. Yes, it's true that its international business has been growing rapidly, but that's not the only reason Amazon is back in high-growth mode. Amazon says it has somewhere on the order of 72 million active customers, who, in the last quarter, were spending an average of $184 a year on the site. That's up from $150 or so the year before. Amazon's return customer business is off the charts. According to Forrester Research, 52 percent of people who shop online say they do their product research on Amazon. That is an astounding number. There is simply no question that Mr. Bezos's obsession with his customers — and the long term — has paid off, even if he had to take some hits to the stock price along the way. Surely, it was worth it. As for me, the $500 favor the company did for me this Christmas will surely rebound in additional business down the line. Why would I ever shop anywhere else online? Then again, there may be another reason good customer service makes sense. "Jeff used to say that if you did something good for one customer, they would tell 100 customers," Mr. Kotha said. I guess that's what I just did. |
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| Britney Spears in Hospital After Standoff 
KCBS-TV, via Associated Press Britney Spears being carried to an ambulance outside her house in Los Angeles late Thursday. January 5, 2008 Britney Spears in Hospital After Standoff By THE NEW YORK TIMES LOS ANGELES — Britney Spears was strapped to a gurney late Thursday night after a three-hour standoff involving her two toddler sons, Kevin Federline, a court-appointed child monitor, police officers, paramedics and a locked bathroom door. She was rolled out of her home in the hills near Mulholland Drive as photographers swarmed and helicopters hovered, and taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center "for her own welfare," as one police spokeswoman put it. In plain terms, Ms. Spears was in lockdown on a 72-hour involuntary psychiatric hold for treatment and evaluation, the authorities said later, speaking on condition of anonymity because of federal privacy laws. And by Friday afternoon she'd been stripped of the right even to visit with her sons. Thursday's ordeal came at the end of a day that began with Ms. Spears showing up for barely a quarter-hour of a scheduled two-hour deposition in her custody fight with Mr. Federline, her ex-husband. He had been given temporary full custody of their sons, Sean Preston, 2, and Jayden, 1, and was seeking to make it permanent. Ms. Spears, 26, whose personal life has doubtless made more money for the celebrity tabloids, news shows and Web sites than she ever made as a singer, spent time with the boys later in the day and was scheduled to return them to Mr. Federline's bodyguard at 7 p.m. at her home in the Summit, a gated enclave of multimillion-dollar homes just off Mulholland where it meets Coldwater Canyon Drive. But after the court-appointed monitor had already put the older boy in the car, Ms. Spears barricaded herself in a bathroom with Jayden and refused to come out, according to a member of Mr. Federline's camp. The police arrived at 8, and, The Los Angeles Times reported, a police supervisor said Ms. Spears had been "incoherent and arguing with officers in a way that made no sense." Paramedics arrived about 10:30, and Ms. Spears was taken from her home before 11 as photographers mobbed the scene, peering through the ambulance windows to snap shots that circulated on the Internet showing Ms. Spears smiling as if posing one instant, appearing distraught and disheveled the next. Her son Sean Preston was turned over to Mr. Federline at her home, but Jayden was returned to his father at the hospital after the boy had been taken there in a second ambulance. It was unclear if he was treated or for what. Outside the hospital, meanwhile, fame-seekers and flamboyant fans gathered like fireflies, expressing hope that her downward spiral be brought to a halt before she winds up like Anna Nicole Smith. By Friday afternoon, Mr. Federline's lawyer, Mark Vincent Kaplan, had persuaded Commissioner Scott Gordon of Los Angeles Superior Court, who is overseeing the custody fight, to award Mr. Federline sole legal and physical custody of their children and to suspend Ms. Spears's visitation rights, a court spokeswoman said. A hearing is set for Jan. 14. Ms. Spears's lawyer, Sorrell Trope, said he ultimately expected her to regain shared custody of the boys.
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| Noontime Web Video Revitalizes Lunch at Desk 
Ruby Washington/The New York Times Will Coghlan, left, and Rob Millis produce a three-minute daily Webcast, Political Lunch, and upload it just before noon. January 5, 2008 Noontime Web Video Revitalizes Lunch at Desk In cubicles across the country, lunchtime has become the new prime time, as workers click aside their spreadsheets to watch videos on YouTube, news highlights on CNN.com or other Web offerings. The trend — part of a broader phenomenon known as video snacking — is turning into a growth business for news and media companies, which are feeding the lunch crowd more fresh content. In some offices, workers coordinate their midday Web-watching schedules, the better to shout out punch lines to one another across rows of desks. Some people gravitate to sites where they can reliably find Webcasts of a certain length — say, a three-minute political wrap-up — to minimize both their mouse clicks and the sandwich crumbs that wind up in the keyboard. "Go take a walk around your office" at lunchtime, said Alan Wurtzel, head of research for NBC. "Out of 20 people, I'm going to guarantee that 5 are going to be on some sort of site that is not work-related." The midday spike in Web traffic is not a new phenomenon, but media companies have started responding in a meaningful way over the last year. They are creating new shows, timing the posts to coincide with hunger pangs. And they are rejiggering the way they sell advertising online, recognizing that noontime programs can command a premium. In 2007, a growing number of local television stations, including WNCN in Raleigh, N.C., and WCMH in Columbus, Ohio, began producing noon programming exclusively for the Web. Among newspapers, The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk, Va., and The Ventura County Star in California started posting videos at lunchtime that have young journalists as hosts and are meant to appeal to 18- to 34-year-old audiences. The trend has swept across large as well as small independent sites. Yahoo's daily best-of-the-Web segment, called The 9 and sponsored by Pepsi, is produced every morning in time for lunch. At MyDamnChannel.com, a showcase for offbeat videos, programmers have been instructed to promote new videos around noon, right when the two-hour traffic spike starts. "Based on the traffic I'm seeing," said Miguel Monteverde, executive director of AOL Video, "our nation's productivity is in question." From an apartment in Greenwich Village, Rob Millis and Will Coghlan are hosts and producers of a three-minute daily Webcast, Political Lunch, done around 10 a.m., followed by an hour and a half of editing, in time for uploading just before noon. Political Lunch, which was introduced in September and appears on several Web sites, is viewed 10,000 to 20,000 times a week, with a peak in traffic from 1 to 3 p.m. "It's an Internet version of appointment viewing," Mr. Millis said. One man who takes his midday video schedule seriously is Jason Spitz, a merchandise manager for a major record label in Los Angeles. He trades links to videos with his friends all day — usually low-budget sketch comedy bits from FunnyOrDie.com or CollegeHumor.com — and stockpiles them to watch during lunch breaks. He and his colleagues like to look at the same videos at the same time from their separate desks, turning the routine into a communal activity. "The clips are shorter than a full 30-minute TV show, so we can cram several small bites of entertainment into one lunch break," Mr. Spitz said. "The funniest moments usually become inside jokes among my co-workers." Noah Lehmann-Haupt, the founder of an upscale car rental company in New York, said that video snacking on short clips is "a good excuse to stay at my desk during lunch, which I prefer since it keeps the momentum of the day going." He often watches segments from "The Daily Show," now that Comedy Central has put eight years' worth of episodes online for free viewing. Plus, the format leaves both hands free to consume the day's takeout meal. "I can't exactly surf while eating, and it's healthy to step away from e-mails and work for a few minutes a day," he said. Some content plays better over lunch. CNN.com, which draws an average of 69 million video plays each month, tends to promote lighter videos in the middle of the day. ("Cloned cats glow in the dark" and "Bulldog straps on skateboard" were among the most popular on a recent weekday.) At NBC.com and other network Web sites, shorter videos draw more lunchtime traffic than longer ones, which are more often downloaded at night. For that reason, sites like NBC.com emphasize short-form highlights during the day and entire half-hour or hourlong shows in the evening. From an advertiser's perspective, the Web is a more flexible medium than television, because technology makes it easy to monitor people's behavior and adjust programming accordingly. Better still, marketers have found that consumers are up to 30 percent more likely to make a purchase after viewing an advertisement at lunchtime than at other times of the day. "Not only is advertising volume and Internet use increasing during the 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. time period, but people are actually buying and purchasing and reacting to advertising," said Young-Bean Song, vice president for analytics at Atlas Solutions, a unit of Microsoft that helps companies with digital marketing campaigns. Sticking to a set schedule turns out to be almost as important on the Web as it is on television. At blip.TV, a video-sharing site, Mike Hudack, the chief executive, encourages his producers to post videos at the same time each day or week. "Continuity and consistency is incredibly important," Mr. Hudack said. "If you want to attract a loyal audience, you have to give them what they expect when they expect it."
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| A Tale of Trigger A Christmas Story 
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times Maureen Dowd December 26, 2007 Op-Ed Columnist A Tale of Trigger When consumerism curdles, it's tempting to become an emotional Marxist about Christmas. Not Karl. Groucho. "Now the melancholy days have come," Groucho Marx wrote to pal and fellow comic Fred Allen on Dec. 23, 1953. "The department stores call it Christmas. Other than for children and elderly shut-ins, the thing has developed to such ridiculous proportions — well, I won't go into it. This is not an original nor novel observation, and I am sure everyone in my position has similar emotions. Some of the recipients are so ungrateful. "For example, yesterday I gave the man who cleans my swimming pool $5. This morning I found two dead fish floating in the drink. Last year I gave the mailman $5. I heard later he took the five bucks, bought two quarts of rotgut and went on a three-week bender. I didn't get any mail from Dec. 24th to Jan. 15th. ... For Christmas, I bought the cook a cookbook. She promptly fried it, and we had it for dinner last night. It was the first decent meal we had in three weeks. From now on I am going to buy all my food at the bookstore." I found Groucho's grouchy letter in Caroline Kennedy's "A Family Christmas," a selection of songs, poetry, prose, letters and a list of the questions most frequently asked of Macy's Santa. ("Q: Are you lactose intolerant? A: No, Santa likes all kinds of milk, except buttermilk, although he will use buttermilk in cakes and pancakes.") The book includes the solemn and sardonic, including this verse from Calvin Trillin, yearning to escape the shopping zoo and endless loop of Der Bingle crooning and "Jingle Bells" jingling: "I'd like to spend next Christmas in Qatar. Or someplace else that Santa won't find handy. Qatar will do, although, Lord knows, it's sandy." As a little girl, Caroline had the advantage of being able to ask the bloodhounds on the White House switchboard to get Santa on the line. "The fact that he had the same soft Southern accent common to many White House workers of the day escaped me completely," she writes dryly. She includes a letter her father, as president, sent to Michelle Rochon, a little girl in Michigan. "I was glad to get your letter about trying to stop the Russians from bombing the North Pole and risking the life of Santa Claus," J.F.K. wrote, noting that he shared her concern with Soviet atmospheric testing. "You must not worry about Santa Claus. I talked with him yesterday, and he is fine." Ms. Kennedy writes that she continues the literary tradition of her mother. Jackie wrote Christmas poems for her mother, and Caroline and John wrote poems for Jackie. As I read her book, it struck me that everyone must have a holiday tale they could write up and paste into the back of "A Family Christmas." Mine would be about Trigger. When I was little, I got one of those wooden horses that bounced on springs for Christmas. I loved him and rode him every day. One morning, I came down to the porch and the horse was gone. My mom explained that a poor woman and her son had walked by, and the little boy had stopped and stared longingly at the horse. My mom's world was turned upside down when she lost the father she adored at 12, so she had a soft spot for children who hurt. On a police widow's pension, she was always mailing a few dollars off to St. Jude's or to children she had read about who were hungry or needed an operation. When she told me that she had given my horse to another child — a stranger — I was crushed. Whenever we fought for the next 16 years, I reminded her of her perfidy. On my 21st birthday, I came home to find a bouncing horse with a handwritten sign in its mouth. "Hi. I'm back!" It was signed: "Trigger." I brought the horse of a different era to live with me, as a rebuke about how long it took me to appreciate one of my mom's favorite sayings: "Don't cry over things that can't cry over you." Her lesson was lovely: that materialism and narcissism can only smother life — and Christmas — if you let them. In a piece reprinted in the Kennedy anthology, Henry van Dyke writes: "Are you willing ... to own, that probably the only good reason for your existence is not what you are going to get out of life, but what you are going to give to life; to close your book of complaints against the management of the universe and look around you for a place where you can sow a few seeds of happiness ... to make a grave for your ugly thoughts and a garden for your kindly feelings ...? Then you can keep Christmas."
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| Voting for a Smile
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times Maureen Dowd January 6, 2008 Op-Ed Columnist Voting for a Smile CONCORD, N.H. The Hillary forces at the Plymouth Church caucus in Des Moines weren't averse to bribes. They were passing out See's chocolates to Richardson supporters. And they weren't averse to threats. "My wife told me I'd have to join them or I'd be sleeping on the couch tonight," said Ed Truslow, a compact 68-year-old manufacturing representative. He was still wearing his Chris Dodd sticker when he lumbered over to his wife's side. A Clinton organizer slapped a Hillary sticker over the offending Dodd sticker, and with a frantic cheeriness told him: "Hillary now, right? God bless!" They weren't averse to bending the rules. When they realized that they might not have enough people to get even one Hillary delegate, they sneaked out of their assigned room to Red-Rover their neighbors over, before they'd been officially counted themselves. It was understandable that Hillary's "Golden Girls" acolytes would freak out when they saw the throngs of young Obama hopemongers swarming the caucuses. As one Dodd supporter said, looking for her little Dodd corner, "I'm lost in the Obamas." A caucusgoer drily noted that it did not seem the most propitious harbinger for Hillary that the fateful evening began with a threat to withhold connubial bliss. But that's the way the tough cookie crumbled Thursday night. The Obama revolution arrived not on little cat feet in the Iowa snow but like a balmy promise, an effortlessly leaping lion hungry for something different, propelled by a visceral desire among Americans to feel American again. The Bushes always self-consciously and swaggeringly put themselves "on the American side," as Poppy used to say, implying that their rivals were somehow less American. But many Americans can no longer see themselves in the warped values of the Bush White House or the pathetic paralysis of Congress or the disapproving gaze of the world. They want a different looking glass. So they rolled the dice and, as The Chicago Tribune's Mike Tackett put it, "voted for a smile." I interviewed three Republicans in the Obama section of the caucus who were ready for the red state, blue state merger. They said they didn't want Hill and Bill back in the White House, and that John McCain was too much of a yes man for W., who had betrayed Republicans with his handling of the Iraq war and his fiscal irresponsibility. Hillary's aides were grumbling last week that Obama had no rationale to offer but himself. Perhaps that was true when he started. People usually run for president because somebody tells them they should and then graft on the reasons afterward. But on Thursday, Obama's vague optimism and smooth-jazz modernity came together in a spectacular fusion with the deep yearning of Democrats who have suffered through heartbreaking losses in the last two elections with uninspiring candidates. Often unable to surf the electricity he sparked over the last year, Obama has now put on his laurel wreath and dropped his languid pose, tapping directly into what he calls the "fire burning" across the country — the dream of a cool, smart, elegant, reasonable, literary, witty, decent "West Wing" sort of president who won't bankrupt us or endanger us or co-opt our rights or put a black hood on the Constitution. "I want to go before the world and say, America's back," he told cheering Democrats in Milford, N.H., adding: "We are one nation. We are one people. And our time for change has come." Even though Obama was wooing the young demographic so coveted by Hollywood, he took a page from J.F.K. and avoided the casual look last week. There were no jeans or snow boots. Just dark suits, stylish ties and dress shoes. By the time she got to New Hampshire, Hillary was reduced to urging voters not to buy into "false hopes." At a hangar in Nashua, with chatty Bill and chatless Chelsea, Hillary tried to purloin more of the Obama message. Besides saying the word "change" as often as possible, she said she was particularly reaching out to young people to help them "reclaim the future." She claimed that she disliked the red state, blue state terminology — "We are one country," she said, echoing Obama — even as she added that she should be the nominee because she's the best one "to withstand the Republican attack machine." What she doesn't mention is that she knows how to fight off the Republican attack machine because she and her husband were so adept at revving it up. Listening to Hillary and Obama evokes the famous scene in the classic "The Night of the Hunter," when Robert Mitchum, whose fingers are tattooed with "LOVE" on his right hand and "HATE" on his left, has a wrestling match with his hands to see which emotion triumphs. In the movie, love does, but it's a close call.
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| Women Are Never Front-Runners January 8, 2008 Op-Ed Contributor By GLORIA STEINEMCorrection appended. THE woman in question became a lawyer after some years as a community organizer, married a corporate lawyer and is the mother of two little girls, ages 9 and 6. Herself the daughter of a white American mother and a black African father — in this race-conscious country, she is considered black — she served as a state legislator for eight years, and became an inspirational voice for national unity. Be honest: Do you think this is the biography of someone who could be elected to the United States Senate? After less than one term there, do you believe she could be a viable candidate to head the most powerful nation on earth? If you answered no to either question, you're not alone. Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House. This country is way down the list of countries electing women and, according to one study, it polarizes gender roles more than the average democracy. That's why the Iowa primary was following our historical pattern of making change. Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women (with the possible exception of obedient family members in the latter). If the lawyer described above had been just as charismatic but named, say, Achola Obama instead of Barack Obama, her goose would have been cooked long ago. Indeed, neither she nor Hillary Clinton could have used Mr. Obama's public style — or Bill Clinton's either — without being considered too emotional by Washington pundits. So why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one? The reasons are as pervasive as the air we breathe: because sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was; because anything that affects males is seen as more serious than anything that affects "only" the female half of the human race; because children are still raised mostly by women (to put it mildly) so men especially tend to feel they are regressing to childhood when dealing with a powerful woman; because racism stereotyped black men as more "masculine" for so long that some white men find their presence to be masculinity-affirming (as long as there aren't too many of them); and because there is still no "right" way to be a woman in public power without being considered a you-know-what. I'm not advocating a competition for who has it toughest. The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together. That's why Senators Clinton and Obama have to be careful not to let a healthy debate turn into the kind of hostility that the news media love. Both will need a coalition of outsiders to win a general election. The abolition and suffrage movements progressed when united and were damaged by division; we should remember that. I'm supporting Senator Clinton because like Senator Obama she has community organizing experience, but she also has more years in the Senate, an unprecedented eight years of on-the-job training in the White House, no masculinity to prove, the potential to tap a huge reservoir of this country's talent by her example, and now even the courage to break the no-tears rule. I'm not opposing Mr. Obama; if he's the nominee, I'll volunteer. Indeed, if you look at votes during their two-year overlap in the Senate, they were the same more than 90 percent of the time. Besides, to clean up the mess left by President Bush, we may need two terms of President Clinton and two of President Obama. But what worries me is that he is seen as unifying by his race while she is seen as divisive by her sex. What worries me is that she is accused of "playing the gender card" when citing the old boys' club, while he is seen as unifying by citing civil rights confrontations. What worries me is that male Iowa voters were seen as gender-free when supporting their own, while female voters were seen as biased if they did and disloyal if they didn't. What worries me is that reporters ignore Mr. Obama's dependence on the old — for instance, the frequent campaign comparisons to John F. Kennedy — while not challenging the slander that her progressive policies are part of the Washington status quo. What worries me is that some women, perhaps especially younger ones, hope to deny or escape the sexual caste system; thus Iowa women over 50 and 60, who disproportionately supported Senator Clinton, proved once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age. This country can no longer afford to choose our leaders from a talent pool limited by sex, race, money, powerful fathers and paper degrees. It's time to take equal pride in breaking all the barriers. We have to be able to say: "I'm supporting her because she'll be a great president and because she's a woman." Correction: An earlier version of this Op-Ed stated that Senator Edward Kennedy had endorsed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. He has not made an endorsement in the 2008 presidential race. Gloria Steinem is a co-founder of the Women's Media Center. |
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