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1001 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 21, 2007 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Trial Begins For Ex-Chief Of Hollinger
BYLINE: By RICHARD SIKLOS
SECTION: Section C; Column 5; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1212 words
DATELINE: CHICAGO, March 20
Two wildly different portraits of Conrad M. Black were presented to the jury in opening arguments Tuesday at the
criminal trial against the former newspaper baron and three colleagues.
In the version put forward by a prosecutor, Mr. Black is a thief who is different from a bank robber only in that his
methods involve artfully worded memorandums and he wears suits and ties.
Jeffrey H. Cramer, an assistant United States attorney, began his opening statement to the jury by saying, ''You are
sitting in a room with four men who stole $60 million.''
In the view of Mr. Black's defense lawyer, however, he is a law-abiding entrepreneur who has been smeared by
the accusations that he and three former executives looted the newspaper company Mr. Black built and ran.
''This isn't a story about a theft by Conrad Black,'' Edward M. Genson told the jury. ''This is a story about theft
from him.''
Mr. Black and the other defendants -- Jack A. Boultbee, Mark S. Kipnis and Peter Y. Atkinson -- are accused of
helping themselves to unauthorized bonuses. Mr. Black is also individually facing charges of abusing company perquisites, racketeering and obstruction of justice.
In laying out its prosecution against Mr. Black, now a Briton who gave up citizenship in his native Canada to become Lord Black of Crossharbour, Mr. Cramer portrayed the defendant as someone who betrayed the trust of directors
and the public shareholders. They owned the majority of the equity in Hollinger International, the company Mr. Black
built over three decades.
During his 90-minute opening statement, Mr. Cramer sought to educate the jury about the global newspaper empire Mr. Black built. Mr. Cramer spoke of the web of companies Mr. Black controlled, and the way in which, Mr.
Cramer said, Mr. Black misused so-called noncompete agreements to skim millions from the company as it sold more
than $3 billion worth of newspapers in the United States and Canada from 1998 to 2001.
In one instance, he said, the executives received money for signing agreements that they would not compete with a
subsidiary of Hollinger International -- in effect, agreeing not to compete with themselves.
Mr. Kipnis, a company lawyer who arranged many of the payments at the heart of the case, did not receive any of
the payments but received $150,000 in bonuses.
''His price was just a little lower,'' Mr. Cramer said.
At one point, Mr. Cramer stood across from the table where Mr. Black was seated, stared at him, and angrily described Mr. Black as having ''decided how much of the shareholders' money he would take.''
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Trial Begins For Ex-Chief Of Hollinger The New York Times March 21, 2007 Wednesday
Mr. Black's stern expression did not change but his face turned slightly red as he stared straight ahead.
It was clear from Mr. Cramer's statement that the case against Mr. Black would rely heavily on testimony from
Hollinger's star-studded board -- which was hand-picked by Mr. Black -- as well as by Mr. Black's former partner, F.
David Radler, who has pleaded guilty to fraud and agreed to testify for the prosecution.
In the last week, Mr. Radler has also agreed to pay more than $100 million to settle civil litigation with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Sun-Times Media Group, as Hollinger International is now called, stemming
from allegations of fraud.
In particular, Mr. Cramer said the former audit committee of the Chicago-based Hollinger International will offer
critical testimony.
Its members included James R. Thompson, the former Illinois governor and United States attorney; Richard Burt,
a former United States ambassador to Germany; and Marie-Josee Kravis, an economist who is the wife of the financier
Henry Kravis.
''The audit committee members will tell you they were never given full and accurate disclosure,'' Mr. Cramer said.
Mr. Radler, he added, will give ''an inside look at how they went about stealing $60 million; Radler will tell you
how it worked.''
The $60 million was lower than a figure of more than $80 million that had been used in the indictment against Mr.
Black and the others, and seemed to reflect a decision by the government to no longer challenge one payment made to
Mr. Black.
In his opening, Mr. Genson depicted Mr. Black as a tireless businessman and author who hobnobbed with the rich
and famous and a man for whom there was no distinction between his personal life and his business interests.
Perhaps in an attempt to defuse at least the tone of some evidence, Mr. Genson described Mr. Black as being egotistical and arrogant and prone to oratorical flourishes.
In one e-mail message the jury was shown by the prosecution, Mr. Black described queries from shareholders
about his pay as an ''epidemic of shareholder idiocy.''
Another e-mail message to Mr. Radler referred to the ''splendid conveyance of the noncompetition agreements
from which you and I profited so well and deservedly.''
But Mr. Genson said that Mr. Black's florid style did not mean he was a criminal, and he noted that there was no
accounting scandal or bankruptcy at Hollinger International the way there was at Enron.
''His life is different than ours -- it's not better, it's just different,'' Mr. Genson said of Mr. Black. ''You can't allow
the sparkle of wealth to blind you as to the facts of this case.''
At one point, the lawyer joked that one goal over the course of the trial was to get Mr. Black -- who sat slouching
and grim throughout much of the proceedings and during jury selection last week -- to sit straight in his chair.
Referring specifically to the idea that Mr. Black misled members of Hollinger's board, Mr. Genson said these are
''not people you could go in and trip and bully.''
He spent much of his presentation trying to distance Mr. Black from Mr. Radler, whom he characterized as a liar
who had turned against his longtime partner to assure himself a more lenient prison sentence that he could be able to
serve in Canada.
One of the biggest questions in the case is whether the jury will accept that portrayal or will instead accept the
prosecution's view that even though Mr. Radler was his hatchet man, Mr. Black knew exactly what he was doing.
Mr. Genson also pointed out that Mr. Black oversaw the company's newspaper interests in Britain and Canada,
while Mr. Radler oversaw the company's ownership of The Jerusalem Post and its United States papers, which at one
point included 400 community newspapers and The Chicago Sun-Times.
While Mr. Cramer told the jury that the buyers of several groups of small-town newspapers would be testifying
that they did not ask for the agreements that funneled millions to the defendants, Mr. Genson argued that those same
newspaper buyers would also testify that they never knew Mr. Black and dealt only with Mr. Radler.
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Trial Begins For Ex-Chief Of Hollinger The New York Times March 21, 2007 Wednesday
Similarly, Mr. Genson said, it was Mr. Radler's responsibility to obtain the approval for the noncompete payments
from the audit committee.
The trial will also include accusations that Mr. Black abused perquisites. These include charges that Mr. Black
stole money from the company by using the company jet to fly to Bora Bora for a vacation with his wife and refused to
pay for it and that he defrauded the company on the purchase of a Park Avenue apartment. Mr. Genson said he would
disprove all the accusations.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: ORGANIZED CRIME (92%); JUSTICE DEPARTMENTS (90%); LAWYERS (89%); COVENANTS
NOT TO COMPETE (89%); FRAUD & FINANCIAL CRIME (78%); ETHICS (74%); ROBBERY (72%); SHAREHOLDERS (69%); JURY TRIALS (90%) Accounting and Accountants; Ethics; Securities and Commodities Violations; Racketeering and Racketeers ; Frauds and Swindling; Bonuses
COMPANY: SUN-TIMES MEDIA GROUP INC (54%)
ORGANIZATION: Hollinger International Inc; Hollinger International Inc
TICKER: SVN (NYSE) (54%)
PERSON: Conrad M Black; Richard Siklos; Jack Boultbee; Mark Kipnis; Peter Atkinson; Jeffrey H Cramer; Edward
M Genson
GEOGRAPHIC: UNITED STATES (93%); CANADA (90%); NORTH AMERICA (79%)
LOAD-DATE: March 21, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1002 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 21, 2007 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Add a Dash of Green and the Dish Is Done
BYLINE: By Florence Fabricant
SECTION: Section F; Column 2; Dining, Dining Out/Cultural Desk; FOOD STUFF; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 198 words
A finishing touch on a dish in a restaurant is often a scattering of tiny leaves, or microgreens, packing intense flavor.
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Add a Dash of Green and the Dish Is Done The New York Times March 21, 2007 Wednesday
Now home cooks can add this same professional grace note with fresh snippets of baby plants direct from the refrigerator. Lauri Roberts, an entrepreneur in Warwick, R.I., has started a company called Farming Turtles (''I wanted a
name that was funny and memorable,'' she said) to grow nine kinds of microgreens.
They are sold in plastic tubs, growing in soil. Tuck them into the refrigerator and cut with scissors to use on all
sorts of dishes.
They are called salad toppers, but they have other uses, like garnishing fillets of fish, dressing up sandwiches and
wraps, floating on soups and showering on pasta and risotto.
Basil and cilantro are deeply flavorful. Arugula and a blend called Firecracker Zest pack plenty of spice. The onion, with its tiny black seeds, tastes richly oniony.
Amaranth, carrot, baby red cabbage and an Asian blend are the other varieties, all $4.99 each and available at
D'Agostino supermarkets in New York City and Westchester County. Dave's Marketplace stores in Rhode Island and
Eastside Marketplace in Providence also sell them.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: GROCERY STORES & SUPERMARKETS (85%); RESTAURANTS (78%) Cooking and Cookbooks
COMPANY: D'AGOSTINO SUPERMARKETS INC (55%)
ORGANIZATION: Farming Turtles (Co)
PERSON: Florence Fabricant
GEOGRAPHIC: PROVIDENCE, RI, USA (57%); NEW YORK, NY, USA (65%) RHODE ISLAND, USA (93%);
NEW YORK, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (93%)
LOAD-DATE: March 21, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo (Photo by Tony Cenicola/The New York Times)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1003 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 20, 2007 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
National Briefing West: California: Man Indicted In Fire At Wine Warehouse
BYLINE: AP
Page 5
National Briefing West: California: Man Indicted In Fire At Wine Warehouse The New York Times March 20, 2007
Tuesday
SECTION: Section A; Column 1; National Desk; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 162 words
Federal prosecutors announced a 19-count indictment against a San Francisco Bay Area wine entrepreneur in an
October 2005 fire that destroyed a warehouse and millions of dollars' worth of bottled wine. The charges against the
businessman, Mark Anderson, include arson, tax evasion, mail fraud, using a fake name and interstate transportation of
fraudulently obtained property. They are the first stemming from the fire, which burned the Wines Central warehouse
on Mare Island, a former naval base in Vallejo, about 30 miles northeast of San Francisco. It destroyed the inventories
of more than 80 vintners, worth about $100 million. Mr. Anderson had stored wine at the warehouse but had removed
most of it after being asked to do so by business managers several months before the fire. He had been under investigation partly because he was at the warehouse when the fire erupted. The federal public defender in Sacramento, Matthew
C. Bockmon, declined to comment on the case.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: FIRES (90%); ARSON (90%); JUSTICE DEPARTMENTS (88%); GENERAL WAREHOUSING (88%);
WAREHOUSING & STORAGE (88%); INVESTIGATIONS (87%); TAX FRAUD (73%); ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES (72%); PUBLIC DEFENDERS (50%); INDICTMENTS (91%) Fires and Firefighters; Arson
PERSON: Mark Anderson
GEOGRAPHIC: SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA (91%); SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, CA, USA (92%); SACRAMENTO, CA, USA (79%) CALIFORNIA, USA (93%) UNITED STATES (93%) San Francisco (Calif)
LOAD-DATE: March 20, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1004 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 18, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Headline News
BYLINE: By BOB SHACOCHIS.
Bob Shacochis' next novel, ''The Woman Who Lost Her Soul,'' will be published in 2008.
SECTION: Section 7; Column 1; Book Review Desk; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 1314 words
Page 6
Headline News The New York Times March 18, 2007 Sunday
SURVEILLANCE
By Jonathan Raban.
258 pp. Pantheon Books. $24.
To whom shall we entrust the rendering of this moment and its attendant verities -- the artist or the correspondent,
the purveyors of fictions or the gatherers of facts? And who gets to play gatekeeper in this game? The question, both
plot device and intellectual premise, animates ''Surveillance,'' the gripping new novel by Jonathan Raban, a British writer who for years has embedded himself in America, earning acclaim for his fresh-eyed travelogues and journalism.
Once upon a time the question could be swatted away -- you're talking apples and oranges -- but not anymore.
Boundaries have corroded, shapes blurred, genres intermarried. Fabrications are as efficacious as facts.
When we read the Times Op-Ed columnist Bob Herbert on anger -- ''The anger quotient is much too low,'' he
wrote recently, addressing the political mood in the country -- and then Raban's observations on the same subject, we
find ourselves at the center of a murky debate about the current status of fiction versus nonfiction that occupies much of
the thematic space in Raban's novel. ''Tad was angry,'' Raban writes. Tad Zachary is a 50ish, gay, H.I.V.-positive, professional actor in Seattle. ''He was angry with himself, angry with the presidency, angry with the nation, angry with the
century. That much was rational, justifiable. ... Decent people now were angry people, and what America needed at this
low moment in its history was more anger, not less.'' Tad, however, doesn't seek ''to rescue the administration from its
folly: he wanted to see it blown to atomic dust or drowned in a sack.'' Here, at least, the anger quotient, considerably
more heated than congressional oversight hearings on the Iraq war, is much too high. +
At the place where Herbert and Raban intersect, do their words complement or cancel one another out, enhance or
diminish the force of Herbert's analysis or Raban's make-believe? This is precisely the sort of human algebra that Raban
bends his characters around throughout the book, to fascinating yet irresolute effect. Opinions appear to converge on a
single truth, but each character has read the thermometer differently, the disparity in this case perhaps explained by the
fact that ''Surveillance'' leans out from today's headlines to sniff at a horizon that is within walking distance, a Seattle
that might not be 2007 yet edges no further into the calendar than 2008. An overly familiar America, accurately portrayed and perforce underimagined. What's new? One hardly needs a crystal ball: national identity cards, stone-faced
soldiers manning checkpoints, an economy in the pits, intensified global warming. Bush still seems to be president, the
nation remains divided, Iraq is Iraq. There have been no new terrorist attacks upon the homeland, although extravagant
stagings of emergency and disaster drills, spiffed up with actors like Tad, are disruptively common.
The drama at hand is mostly atmospheric, the texture of society itself, the quotidian pressures inflated by a ubiquitous sense of dread for what might one day wake us up -- not from the nightmare but into the nightmare. Yet the lives
Raban zeroes in on are essentially stable, comfortable, urban middle-class or nouveau riche, their profiles instantly recognizable as our own in the cultural mirror.
Tad, the eternally aggrieved leftist, cherishes the one good, sane thing in his life -- the postmodern family he has
created with the tenants across the hall, Lucy Bengstrom and her 11-year-old daughter, Alida, in their slightly seedy
downtown apartment building. Over the years he has become Alida's surrogate father and Lucy's platonic lover and domestic task-sharer. Lucy, an overweight, boomer-aged single mom and a ''model bourgeois liberal'' who believes in neither evil nor certitude, is a freelance writer for A-list magazines (Tina Brown kept her on a monthly retainer in the '90s)
although the assignments have dwindled sufficiently of late for her to be grateful when she gets a timely call from GQ
asking her to track down the reclusive literary sensation of the season, a retired history professor named August Vanags,
who lives on an island in Puget Sound. Vanags, who claims to have been born in Latvia on the eve of World War II, has
written a best-selling memoir (yes, Spielberg's making the movie) about his childhood, which included time in both
Hitler's and Stalin's camps. He is one of two immigrants who bookend ''Surveillance'' -- the second is a ruthlessly ambitious Chinese landlord -- and their true identities remain uncertain throughout the narrative.
What happens then among these five is a replay of the polarized polemics any sentient citizen has been exposed to
throughout the past six years. Vanags, a former Kissinger aide during the Nixon administration, is a charming but unrepentant neocon who seems to be channeling Charles Krauthammer; Tad is to the diatribe born. The savantish 11-yearold interjects naive, untested idealism; the landlord provides the rapacious entrepreneurial spirit that vacuums capitalism clean of conscience. Agnostic, skeptical Lucy listens and referees. She is a watcher who, like the author himself,
has placed us all under benign surveillance and, given the conflicting evidence, is understandably reluctant to draw conclusions.
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Headline News The New York Times March 18, 2007 Sunday
Which returns us to the tricky question ''Surveillance'' forces upon its readers: In the courtroom of history, who
gets to testify as a credible witness? Bush is the author of his own legacy, certainly, but how do we sort out his narrative
from the one we ourselves create as a nation, especially in light of those among us who falsify, spin or otherwise revise
to suit agendas that spawn parallel realities?
There's plenty of talk in ''Surveillance'' about who reads what and why. Vanags distrusts The New York Times and
favors The Wall Street Journal. Tad listens to Al-Jazeera and scours the European press for the ''real'' story. Alida hates
fantasies but loves Agatha Christie. The Chinese landlord, contemptuous of novels, gulps down books about Sam Walton. For Lucy, the writer, the more alien the world she reads about, the happier she is.
We might assume then that she'd be unhappy reading ''Surveillance,'' which is a bit like reality TV, both authentic
and artificial. One begins to wonder, as I believe the author intends us to, if the contemporary moment is not ''better''
delivered by the news cycle and the unceasing slosh of cyberflotsam and citizen-journalists with videophones than by
literature. The very relevance of ''Surveillance'' to the present moment, in a culture where nearly every surface is hyperreflective, threatens to amplify the noise and weariness of the day and, paradoxically, actually drown the novel's own
relevance out.
To his credit, Raban seems to understand the gamble and make the most of it, though not without an occasional
misstep -- most noticeably the tendency of characters to stagger beneath the metaphorical load. What the book offers in
its auditing of the national dialogue contains no surprises. The talking heads talk. The characters also bloom into their
bodies, lives and loves. The insufferable weather turns nostalgically clement. We look in the mirror -- here we are -- and
look away, puzzled or embittered or cocksure.
It's during the denouement of the deceptively modest plot that the big message is delivered, the long-awaited
apocalyptic swipe brought to us by ... well, the Other Player in the mix. The novel unmasks itself as an elaborate, ingenious frame for a discourse on the nature of writing, and a platform from which to administer a strong kick of cosmic
reality to the backside of mankind's roiling affairs. We're tossed onto the stage of a profound truth, where literature outperforms anything else.
Good morning, Seattle. Welcome to New Orleans.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: BOOK REVIEWS (92%); NOVELS & SHORT STORIES (90%); EDITORIALS & OPINIONS (90%);
LITERATURE GENRES (78%); NON FICTION LITERATURE (78%); MARRIAGE (54%); GLOBAL WARMING
(50%); NATIONAL IDENTITY CARDS (50%); JOURNALISM (76%); LITERATURE (78%); WRITERS & WRITING (77%); IRAQ WAR (62%) Books and Literature; Reviews
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (57%) Bob Shacochis; Jonathan Raban
GEOGRAPHIC: SEATTLE, WA, USA (92%) WASHINGTON, USA (92%) UNITED STATES (93%); IRAQ (79%)
LOAD-DATE: March 18, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo (Photo by Andy Martin)
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Review
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1005 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
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Russ Whitney Wants You to Be Rich The New York Times March 18, 2007 Sunday
The New York Times
March 18, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Russ Whitney Wants You to Be Rich
BYLINE: By RANDALL PATTERSON.
Randall Patterson, who lives in Asheville, N.C., has written for The New York Times Magazine, New York and
Mother Jones.
SECTION: Section 6; Column 1; Key; Pg. 104
LENGTH: 4129 words
Among the promises made after midnight to people who want to believe them, amid ads for the cream that will
make you look young again and the ''motionless exercise'' system that will melt away your fat comes the voice from the
television that asks, ''Are you among the thousands living paycheck to paycheck, just getting by, making payments on
debts and credit cards?''
And ''Have you ever wondered how it would feel being rich?''
Visions of wine-sipping then fill the screen, of golf-playing, of sailboats sailing into the sunset. Strolling down a
dock, a smart-looking fellow in a bright polo shirt and khaki shorts turns to the camera and says, ''With real estate,
there's no question you can amass the most amount of money in the least amount of time.''
This is Russ Whitney, ''who started out working in a slaughterhouse for $5 an hour,'' the announcer tells us, ''and
turned $1,000 in borrowed money into a personal wealth of $4.7 million -- in only 18 months!'' He has since devoted
himself to helping others, the spot continues, and ''on this important television special,'' Whitney will show you how to
build wealth -- ''even with only a part-time effort!''
He is displayed standing before a rather plain-looking house. What would he do if he had ''no money and no
credit''? Why, he'd go out and find a ''horrible''-looking house like this one and buy it ''with literally no money ... no
banks involved.'' Then ''we do a little paint and clean-up, and we turn this right over for a $15,000 profit.''
If you happen to doubt any of this, there is testimony from a woman who recently collected seven ugly houses in
six months, thus replacing her yearly income, and from a man who says Russ Whitney ''changed my life.'' And, too,
there is the former slaughterhouse worker himself, telling you again, amid swells of elevator music, that real estate is
the fastest way to wealth for ''folks like you and me.''
By this time, however, Whitney has switched into the future tense, and it becomes clear he is not actually going to
reveal any of his wealth-building techniques until you attend one of his ''truly unique'' workshops. Not only is admission
to this ''special, limited-seating event'' free, but Whitney will also give you, ''absolutely free,'' his special Russ Whitney's
Building Wealth Entrepreneur Start-Up Kit -- ''a $199 value.'' In other words, he will pay you to attend, so how could
you not? ''You have everything to gain by attending!'' ''Call now!'' ''Operators are standing by.'' And so on.
In this way, a sorting process begins. Most people are not awake after midnight to avail themselves of such opportunities. Of those who are, a smaller number shop for answers in infomercials. Fewer still reach for the phone. Those
who do call and who attend the first Whitney workshop find that it is mainly a sales event for another workshop. The
fraction that agree to pay a few hundred dollars proceed to the second hotel workshop, where they discover yet another
sales event, or what sounds from the description of participants like a Holy Ghost revival. A powerful speaker stokes
passions until, one by one, about 20 percent of the audience rise from their seats -- the number is reliable, according to
the company -- and consent to pay thousands of dollars each to learn how to get rich through real estate.
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Russ Whitney Wants You to Be Rich The New York Times March 18, 2007 Sunday
In staging some 4,700 free events a year, Whitney Information Network attracts some 280,000 people, of whom
22,000 go on to enroll as students in advanced courses. Last November at the Clarion Hotel in Louisville, Pat Yarbrough, a 56-year-old custodian at the University of Louisville, became one of them. ''Fast money,'' she explained later,
''that's all I'm interested in.'' At the front of the conference room, a nice man had taught her how to raise her credit-card
debt limit, she said, and when she made her way with a cane to the back, a nice clerk showed her what she could buy:
three-day courses with names like Rehabbing for Profit and Keys to Creative Real Estate Financing. The courses cost
$4,995 each, but less if you bought more. Yarbrough chose four, including the Millionaire U Real Estate Training. She
had $130,000 in debt, some of it on her seven credit cards, and the clerk helped her to add $18,000 to it.
A month later, the custodian from Louisville joined an electrician from Baltimore, an unemployed longshoreman
from Delaware, a roofing contractor from New Jersey and an elderly doctor from Sebastian, Fla., at Russ Whitney's
Wealth Intelligence Academy, where they were welcomed as ''advanced students,'' ''the creme de la creme,'' and promised that all would be revealed.
Cape Coral, Fla., is bright sun, a jungle of strip malls -- the sort of town where a wealth intelligence academy fits
right in. ''Good morning, everybody!'' Whitney called out to his sales staff on a bright day in December. ''Are we having
fun yet?'' He was tanned and moussed; at 51, he looked like a million bucks. ''Good morning,'' he greeted a secretary.
''How are you?'' When she began complaining of cold symptoms, Whitney cut her off: ''You don't have cancer, do you?
You're doing great!'' After lunch, he played basketball in the lobby, pushing down one of his executives and driving to
the hoop. Late afternoon found Whitney in his office, chatting on the phone with Robert Kiyosaki, the author of ''Rich
Dad, Poor Dad,'' about whether to go on safari together -- or as Whitney put it, ''whether I should go out and kill things
with you.''
To look at Whitney now, you don't have to wonder how it feels to be rich. He has been all over television talking
about it. He's spoken of it to countless audiences, written about it in several books, including ''Millionaire Real Estate
Mentor,'' a BusinessWeek best seller. (Last fall, Whitney also appeared in New York City as a panelist at a New York
Times-sponsored event, the Great Read in the Park.) His rags-to-riches tale has been worn smooth, but he knows it's a
good story, and nothing else quite conveys his exceptional pluck.
After a ''very miserable'' childhood, he begins again, he developed an association with some shady characters. ''I
pretty much became a car thief,'' he says. ''I was damn good at it, too -- steal a car in 15 seconds.'' But Whitney wasn't
too good at crime to avoid getting caught for second-degree robbery, and it was only after a year and a half in prison
that he wound up, in 1976, at the slaughterhouse in Albany.
''I was a piece of dung,'' he remembered. Many people live with that feeling, but Whitney wasn't about to, and he
reached for the first of several texts that changed him -- a Zig Ziglar volume on positive thinking. The book told him
that happiness basically depends on a denial of reality, that ''if you're going to be a positive guy, have a good attitude,''
he said, ''you've got to say things like 'super!' and 'fantastic!' '' Whitney had just gotten out of prison and thought this
was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard. He wanted to be happy, though, and so tried to believe it and was soon wandering the slaughterhouse saying ''super'' and ''fantastic.'' The longer he tried to see the bright side, the more he thought he
actually did.
Within three months of arriving at the slaughterhouse, Whitney had convinced a woman there to marry him for
richer, for poorer. Within a year, he'd decided he was far too smart to go on killing hogs for life and was meant instead
for ''something big.'' Whitney began shopping among the get-rich-quick schemes advertised in the backs of magazines.
He had spent hundreds of dollars on such offers before he came upon another book that changed him: William Nickerson's ''How I Turned $1,000 Into $3 Million in Real Estate in My Spare Time.''
''Everything clicked,'' Whitney said. He saw that real estate was an investment he could control. Its value over the
long term generally rose, and could in fact be forced up. If he combined ''a sensible, mathematical approach with the
proper exit strategy,'' Whitney said, he would know in advance of a deal whether he would profit. ''And the book said
you can be a millionaire in time,'' he recalled, ''and I thought, Shoot, I can do that. I mean, I got it! I understood that
concept. And from that point on, my sole focus was to become a millionaire.''
His first deal in Schenectady was a ''steal.'' In another, he extracted ''exceptional terms'' from a 65-year-old widow.
After making the purchase, Whitney would rise early and take his baby daughter with him to the property, while his
wife worked at the slaughterhouse. All day he would paint and clean, not returning until night for his own slaughterhouse shift. This schedule went on for years. ''Hustle is heaven if you're a hustler,'' he wrote in his first book, but Whit-
Page 10
Russ Whitney Wants You to Be Rich The New York Times March 18, 2007 Sunday
ney's life was difficult enough that eventually he felt the need for stronger medicine than Zig Ziglar or William Nickerson could offer.
A third book that changed him was the Bible. Whitney says he reads it ''for wisdom and forgiveness'' for 15
minutes every morning after his workout. Without the Bible, he asked me, ''how would you know not to steal?'' Without
the Bible, he said, ''I'd be doing a whole lot of not looking in the mirror.'' He seems to have hesitated in his faith only
once, when he read in Matthew, Mark and Luke that ''it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a
rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.'' Whitney could understand the words only as they appeared: it seemed the
Bible frowned on wealth-building almost as much as upon stealing. ''I was trying to figure that out,'' he remembered,
when his Baptist preacher intervened to explain, no, no -- certain passages of the Bible must not be taken literally. A
rich man must try harder to get into heaven, it's true, but the preacher told him, ''God wants you to be successful.''
Whitney says he has gone on to hundreds of real estate deals, contributing to his Baptist church all the while. He
had been investing in real estate for seven years when, ''by the age of 27,'' according to the official bio, ''he was one of
America's youngest self-made millionaires.'' Whitney moved his family from New York to Cape Coral, a ''very positive,
beautiful place,'' he says. Now he seems to have what rich people are supposed to -- a Ferrari, a company plane, ''probably close to the biggest house in town,'' he says -- and he happily puts his net worth at ''oh, I would say in excess of
$100 million for sure.'' All Whitney really wants is more. ''I'm an opportunist,'' he explains. ''I'm a businessman.''
The one regret he mentions is that he ever put faith in get-rich-quick schemes. So many were just ''a lot of hype
and baloney,'' Whitney says, and it was to tell the truth about what real estate had done for him that he wrote his first
book. Whitney Information Network is now a public company that employs roughly 475 people and that took in about
$160 million in revenue in 2005, according to its annual report, all on the promise that anyone might become rich like
Whitney, if he will only do as Whitney has done. The difference, though, between Whitney and those who come to
WIN is that he bought his first real estate book for just $10, and they pay up to $54,000 a head for the full course package. When I asked if he would have enrolled in his school when he was starting out, Whitney said no. Then he added, ''I
shouldn't say that,'' and began trying to take it back.
Millionaire U is the three-day real estate training course designed to ''put you on the fast track to success.'' The
conference room at Whitney headquarters gradually filled in mid-December with blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians,
Haitians and Jamaicans. As Whitney said later: ''We had America in there. We had America at Millionaire University.''
The students sat without talking beneath fluorescent lights, about 40 midnight loners waiting as though for a test.
''Real estate is a people-person business,'' the instructor told them, so get introduced. Gladstone from Fort Lauderdale
stood to say he was a physician's assistant ''tired, very tired'' of 16 years of 16-hour days; for this and other courses, he
had paid Whitney $14,000 and hoped to increase his cash flow. Terrin from Delaware was a single parent and unemployed longshoreman whose car had recently been repossessed; he had paid Whitney $20,000 to teach him ''how to not
make mistakes.'' Before coming here, Pat Yarbrough, the custodian from Louisville, had given a different get-rich guru
$24,000; that plan didn't work, but she was convinced this would be different. Probably the most educated man in the
room was Havelock Thompson, the elderly doctor from Sebastian, Fla. He had spent his career caring for indigents -''doing more good than making money.'' After buying a $53,000 package from Whitney, he expected to gross $1 million
in the next two years, which no one there seemed to think unrealistic. They were all hoping to make a change in their
lives.
Pacing before them was Tracie Taylor, a sleek African-American woman in red lipstick and dark business suit.
''How many of you want to be millionaires?'' she called out. When every hand shot up, Taylor told them she hoped they
would raise their goals; millionaires have become passe. Getting rich, as she explained it, seemed mainly a matter of
positive thinking. ''Our challenge is not real estate investing,'' the broker said, ''but changing your belief systems.'' Immediately she got to work.
She told the students that they were solutions-oriented individuals and that the solution they were oriented toward
was money. The economy is divided, Taylor said, between the rich and the poor, ''and you can choose which side you
want to be on.''
She advised the students to cease identifying with the poor. There are more people making a little than there are
making a lot, and those people, she said, need places to live. Expect to become landlords, she told the class. The neighborhoods they should expect to work in -- ''good cash-flow areas'' -- are indicated by the presence of laundromats, pawn
shops and any boulevard bearing the name Martin Luther King, she told them on a tour of one such neighborhood. To
find deals, she recommended keeping an ear out for death, divorce, job loss, any kind of despair. ''Situations,'' she whis-
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Russ Whitney Wants You to Be Rich The New York Times March 18, 2007 Sunday
pered with a grin; they tend to create motivated sellers. One must approach them gently. It's important to be positive, to
look as though you care about someone's situation -- and it's absolutely essential that you not care. When you make your
lowball offer, you'll have to stand firm; when tenants don't pay the rent, you'll have to evict. ''The cardinal rule of real
estate is don't get emotionally attached,'' Taylor instructed. ''Here's what you get attached to: ROI.'' Return on investment.
The students solemnly wrote her instructions down. Much of what was said clashed with the instincts of Dr.
Thompson, who said he couldn't imagine himself as a landlord, ''screwing in light bulbs for people less fortunate'' or, in
any case, making money without doing good. ''My conscience wouldn't allow it,'' he added, but he seemed one of only a
few with that problem. As the course went on, the challenge for most students appeared not to be changing their belief
systems but learning the rudiments of real estate.
Taylor knew early that her class of advanced students was strictly remedial. Assessing them, she found that only 8
of 40 had invested in real estate before. The infomercial had talked of buying and quickly selling houses, and those who
enrolled seemed largely unaware of the real estate slump.
Taylor introduced a hard-charging mortgage broker who began moving rapid-fire through nonconforming NINAs
and no docs, PITI reserves and the 28/36 rule. At last, she looked up: ''Everyone's shaking their heads like they know
this,'' she said. And she rolled right on.
''The second calculation is the same as the first ... the balance is divided by ... the rate is 12 percent so ... and that's
how you get a blended rate ... and what if it's an adjustable rate ... negative amortization, but I prefer not to be negative
so let's say deferred interest ... and ... we're done. Any questions?''
There wasn't a one. ''You guys are too quiet!'' the broker said.
Then came another banker. He was talking carefully about regulations, financing, exotic mortgages when a voice
rang out: ''We want to know how to find the deal when you drive around!'' It was a Haitian man from Brooklyn. ''Talk to
the real estate guy,'' the banker said. ''I'm the banker.'' But the man only replied, ''We want to know how to find the deal
when you drive around!''
They were eager to be good students, but blurted out terrible answers. ''Where did you guys study math?'' Taylor
asked. Later, she realized that not one student could even name the world's richest man. ''People with goals are the ones
who succeed,'' she lectured, and she assigned her class the homework of compiling a hundred goals. The next day, when
she asked all who had completed the homework to stand, the doctor rose, stunned to find himself alone. ''Why are you
surprised?'' Taylor asked him.
Yarbrough the custodian, meanwhile, sat fanning herself with her notebook, asking for words to be defined, concepts repeated. She said she wasn't getting much out of the presentations. She was mainly waiting, she admitted, for that
lesson on how to buy houses without money.
Taylor at last felt obliged to tell the class that ''real estate investing is not a get-rich-quick scheme.'' They would
have to work hard, and they would have to get informed. ''All the data's yours for the taking,'' she said. And that must
surely have been the most confusing lesson, because it was exactly contrary to what the students had been told at the
sales event. Information was supposed to be hard to come by, available only at high cost. What had they paid for, after
all? Why had they come all this way to the Wealth Intelligence Academy?
In his official company biography, Whitney says that ''his greatest achievement is the success of his students.'' The
immediate effect of becoming a Whitney student, though, is not to get rich, but poorer. The infomercial addresses people who are ''just getting by, making payments on debts and credit cards.'' Among the first lessons Whitney instructors
teach is how to raise the limits on their credit cards, and then how to plunge deeper into debt buying Whitney courses.
Documents his company submits to the Securities and Exchange Commission show that as chief executive, Whitney took home $1.6 million in salary and bonus in 2005. Minutes after telling me that he would not, when starting out,
have enrolled in his school, he tried to explain that he would ''probably have progressed a whole lot faster'' if he had. He
would have bought the $24,000 ''platinum package,'' he said, adding, ''Would have took a platinum for sure.'' Perhaps it
would have meant going into debt, but that makes sense to him. He was unabashed that his instructors help students put
the cost of those courses on credit cards. Don't most colleges help to arrange student loans? ''Of course they do,'' he said.
Compared with the cost of college, his school is ''a bargain,'' Whitney added, and ''when you think about it, too, the
business we're in, that money comes back very fast.''
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Russ Whitney Wants You to Be Rich The New York Times March 18, 2007 Sunday
In his book ''Millionaire Real Estate Mentor,'' Whitney claims to have ''helped thousands of people become
wealthy.'' On Whitney's Web site, the volume of ''success stories'' appears to support the claim -- but when you read the
stories, many are nothing more than testimonials of good will. I asked the company for examples of students who became wealthy thanks to what they learned. After many weeks, the company gave me a list of seven people, three whose
success had prompted Whitney to hire them as mentors for new students and two others who were doing business with
Whitney. Six of the seven returned calls; three claimed they had become millionaires. The impression they left is that
some Whitney students do indeed become wealthy, but that they are the exceptions.
The company recently reported that it was under investigation by the S.E.C. and the United States attorney for the
Eastern District of Virginia. The Florida and Kansas attorneys general are looking into Whitney's company for deceptive advertising, and they are not the first to have done so. Perhaps the most revealing case was brought by the state of
Tennessee and settled in 1997. Promoting a seminar, Whitney had placed newspaper ads, according to court records,
that read, ''Millionaire Swears Under Oath He Can Show Any Nashville Area Resident How to Get Rich in a Year.'' The
attorney general objected that Whitney had ''not in fact made any such statement under oath'' and seems to have been
astonished when Whitney ''informed the state that this claim is simply 'advertising language.' '' ''In fact,'' the attorney
general wrote in the complaint, ''Mr. Whitney has informed the state that in making his claim that he can show any
Nashvillian how to become 'rich' in a year, he did not necessarily mean that anyone would become 'rich' financially, but
'rich' in a spiritual sense.''
The state dropped the case after Whitney agreed never again to advertise unlikely results from use of a Whitney
product in Tennessee without disclosing that such results would be ''rare, highly unusual, exceptional or atypical and not
to be expected by the average person.'' If Whitney still wished to advertise that he could help people get rich, he would
also have to disclose that his ''use of the term 'rich' does not refer to financial success but is intended to refer to other
standards.''
Whitney says now that while he consented to pay costs and fees of $9,500 in Tennessee, he admitted no wrongdoing -- and that the Tennessee attorney general quoted him out of context. In an e-mail he wrote that ''every claim in our
ads can be documented'' and that with altered ads, the company continues to do business in Tennessee and would be
shown to be in full compliance with all laws in Florida and Kansas.
His work is ''God-driven,'' Whitney insists. How many of his students become materially wealthy, he claimed not
to know. But even for those who don't, he said, the training still has value. Spiritual value, in other words. ''We help
people build self-confidence,'' Whitney explained. ''We help them believe in themselves again.'' The students who come
to him, ''some of them, you know, couldn't work,'' he said, and then they start ''thinking on their own,'' and Whitney
watches as they ''break out from more conventional America'' and recognize, ''Holy cow, I can be somebody!'' He added,
''That doesn't necessarily mean be somebody wealth-wise.''
Toward the end of the class, Taylor told her students that most of them would become financially independent.
''Many of you will become multimillionaires,'' she said. Hoping to become somebody wealth-wise, Yarbrough signed up
for yet more classes. Her purchases added another $11,500 to her debt, but she reasoned, ''If I make the money they say
I will, it won't make any difference.''
On the last day of the course Taylor rather grandly introduced ''my mentor, my friend, Mr. Russ Whitney!'' Whitney came bounding in carrying a water bottle, as though fresh from his workout. As a teacher, he told me, his reward is
the gratification he feels when greeting students who are learning how to change their lives. The students quickly surrounded Whitney and proceeded to gratify him with hugs and handshakes and photos. Dr. Thompson patted him on the
back. Yarbrough got his autograph. A nurse from New Jersey said she was ''so touched'' to learn that Whitney's a Christian, and Whitney answered, ''Let me tell you, I've been blessed to handle God's money.''
He was soon strutting before them, saying again that real estate is ''the simplest way to make a lot of money'' but
warning them to be careful out there, because ''people don't always have your best interests in mind.'' In fact, he said ''in
9 out of 10 cases they don't.'' And that's why they needed more education -- to learn what they could expect.
''We've got a lot of classes,'' he went on. ''You probably think they're expensive.''
''They are expensive!'' Yarbrough called out from the front of the class.
Whitney turned to regard her. Yarbrough stared back at him. He began to insist that his profit margins were reasonable, that he wasn't gouging anyone, but Yarbrough quickly stopped him. ''Let me say,'' she replied, ''that if we didn't
want to be here, we wouldn't be here. Nobody twisted our arms.''
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Russ Whitney Wants You to Be Rich The New York Times March 18, 2007 Sunday
Whitney couldn't help but snort. He said he'd fire the salesman who didn't twist arms, and everybody had a good
laugh.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: REAL ESTATE (90%); WAGES & SALARIES (90%); WEALTHY PEOPLE (89%); MARKETING &
ADVERTISING (78%); ANIMAL SLAUGHTERING & PROCESSING (76%); TELEVISION PROGRAMMING
(72%) Real Estate; Finances; Frauds and Swindling; Prices (Fares, Fees and Rates); Suits and Litigation; Advertising
and Marketing; Real Estate; Credit and Money Cards; Housing
ORGANIZATION: SECURITIES & EXCHANGE COMMISSION (59%) Securities and Exchange Commission;
Whitney Information Network
PERSON: Randall Patterson; Russ Whitney
GEOGRAPHIC: FLORIDA, USA (78%) UNITED STATES (78%) Tennessee
LOAD-DATE: March 18, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: Millionaire Hopefuls -- Students in a Whitney course ride a bus (left) to Fort Myers, Fla., where
they visit a house (right) offered as an example of an investment property. Whitney (center) addresses a Millionaire U
class. (Photograph By Brent Humphreys/Redux, For The New York Times)(pg. 105)
At the Wealth Intelligence Academy -- Students pay $4,995 for advanced courses. As chief executive of the company,
Whitney earned $1.6 million in 2005. (Photograph By Brent Humphreys/Redux, For The New York Times)(pg. 106)
(Photographs by Brent Humphreys)(pg. 102)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1006 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 18, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
What Are The Amoral House Flippers, Charming Jerks, Snotty Buyers
And Greedy Sellers Of The New Property Shows Really Trying To Teach
Us?
BYLINE: By Rob Walker.
Rob Walker writes the Consumed column for The New York Times Magazine and is working on a book about consumer behavior.
SECTION: Section 6; Column 1; Key; TV LAND; Pg. 92
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What Are The Amoral House Flippers, Charming Jerks, Snotty Buyers And Greedy Sellers Of The New Property
Shows Really Trying To Teach Us? The New York Times March 18, 2007 Sunday
LENGTH: 4099 words
What makes a house a home is a topic suitable for poetry. But a house or a home is always something else. It is
property. Does this fact contain poetry? Probably not. But it does contain entertainment. It's a form of television entertainment I'd never paid the slightest bit of attention to until I got involved in buying property myself, which happened
right around the time that the long housing boom was unraveling last year. Previously invisible to me, these entertainments were, for months, the only things I wanted to watch. Buying, selling, updating, restoring and ''flipping'' for quick
profits -- it all ran together, but I watched even when I couldn't remember if the title of a certain show was ''Flip This
House'' or ''Flip That House.''
It turned out these were two different shows, and with every ''pain of U.S. housing slump'' headline, the inventory
of real estate entertainment looked a little more glutty. It made me ponder this curious genre's fate. Like sunny sellers'
agents, television executives and producers assured me that such shows had a post-housing-bubble future that was already in the works. I looked for signs of what that might mean as I watched, and pondered just what it was I was tuning
in to see. HOW TO EXPRESS THE SELF
In the distant world of 1980, episodes of ''This Old House'' began appearing nationally on PBS stations, documenting the restoration of an 1860 Victorian in Boston. Long, calm, detailed and earnest, the project carried the warm glow
of education and New England do-goodism. In time, ''This Old House'' became a franchise (multiple shows, books, a
magazine); its original star, a builder named Bob Vila, left in a dispute over endorsement deals and became a brand unto
himself. The Thoughtful Improvement ethic -- or at least the phrase ''do it yourself'' -- became a trendy idea.
Entertainment is supposed to be better in the hundreds-of-channels present than it was in 1980, but of course new
places for expressing ideas do not guarantee new ideas. The upshot is that what used to be a concept for a show is now
the basis for a genre, in the form of dozens of shows, entire channels, a category. The HGTV channel went on the air in
1994 and is now in more than 91 million homes; it's owned by Scripps Networks (which also owns DIY Network, Food
Network and Fine Living). HGTV is a soft, warm, pleasant place where nice ladies make quilts during the day and nice
young couples redecorate at night and lots of ''tips'' are shared. Here the home is an expression of the self: Michael
Dingley, senior vice president for programming and content strategy, says the channel aims to ''provide ideas and inspiration, to make the home better.'' He continues, ''And I don't mean home as in the sense of four walls, but also home in a
more emotional kind of way, more abstract.''
In 1999, the channel started ''House Hunters,'' which is now on five nights a week and is among its most popular
shows. On each episode, the hostess, a genial automaton called Suzanne Whang -- always shown wandering through
some anonymous suburban environment -- gives us a chipper sketch of the house hunter and his or her desires (the
software engineer seeking a shorter commute, the single mom looking for space, the tedious young English prof who
wants to have poets over more often, etc.) and three available choices. She remains in her undisclosed location as we
follow the hunter through the houses, scrutinizing pros and cons, while canned music plays just audibly enough to subtly suggest that something is happening. The episodes conclude with a decision, and usually a coda about how it all
worked out perfectly.
In part, ''House Hunters'' simply recreates the way that property functions as entertainment in the real world: like
scanning the real estate pages for new listings and going to open houses, it's a part of the mildly voyeuristic pastime of
''seeing what's out there,'' of taking a peek at how other people live, a crash course on the market in Chicago or Atlanta
or elsewhere.
Along with HGTV's home design shows, Dingley maintains, such programming demystifies property, and has
''enlightened and empowered consumers.'' He uses the phrase ''relevant entertainment.'' On ''House Hunters'' you may
learn that $379K gets you a surprisingly nice 3 BR, 2000 SF, 1927 Craftsman in Seattle. But by and large these happy
families are all the same: enlightened and empowered to congratulate themselves for having the same instinct for which
wallpaper is ''dated'' and which mantle has ''a lot of character'' that everybody on all the other shows has.
Meanwhile, much is left out. Buyer's remorse, for instance, never materializes. Almost all of the property shows
avoid one of the screaming issues of real-life real estate, which is the neighborhood. No one mentions crime statistics,
lousy school systems or proximity to homeless shelters or Superfund sites. In an episode of ''House Hunters,'' a cute
young New Jersey couple move to the shore, specifically to Asbury Park, which Whang brightly calls ''a majestic
boardwalk town.'' Have you ever been to Asbury Park? She adds that the place was made famous by the songs of Bruce
Springsteen, and that's true. For instance, it inspired ''My City of Ruins.''
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What Are The Amoral House Flippers, Charming Jerks, Snotty Buyers And Greedy Sellers Of The New Property
Shows Really Trying To Teach Us? The New York Times March 18, 2007 Sunday
HGTV, Dingley explains, is not a ''mean-spirited'' place. ''We're not a snarky, mean, nasty brand.'' Perhaps the
channel offers shelter from gloomy homeowner news. ''For most folks, a home is not only the most expensive investment in their lives, it's also the most personal,'' he says, and a rockier housing market sharpens the viewers' interest in
''making the right, prudent decision.'' That said, its ''relevant'' programming has been expanding to encompass a bit more
of the things that have dominated property entertainment on those networks that are a little less concerned about how
mean-spiritedness might affect the brand: namely, money and drama. HOW TO BE GREEDIER
The American entertainment consumer surely seeks enlightenment on matters of taste and style, but also on that
other key aspect of the self, net worth. The soaring stock market of the late 1990s made CNBC almost as popular as
CNN, supposedly because we'd become an enlightened and empowered nation of investors, but really because bull market geniuses loved watching a game they never seemed to lose. Tanking markets cleared up the difference between personal finance and rollicking fun, and CNBC's viewership retreated to niche levels. The Thoughtful Improvement ethic
of ''This Old House'' and the Something for Nothing ethic of Nasdaq-as-sporting-event come together in the form of the
flip shows. Don't make a home, don't invest in a house -- flip a property: how much money, how fast, for how little effort, can be extracted from a shabby, crumbling residence? Booyah! -- as CNBC throwback Jim Cramer might shout -now you've got something.
TLC has included home-related programming since 1997 (starting with Bob Vila's post-''This Old House'' project,
''Bob Vila's Home Again''). And its show ''Trading Spaces'' -- in which neighbors redecorate each other's homes -- was a
home-entertainment milestone. The network began airing ''Flip That House'' in 2005. Every half-hour episode features a
different ''flipper,'' some experienced, some with no particular background in real estate or construction but with an interest in what (on television at least) sounds like easy money. We learn the purchase price, tour the generally ramshackle property, and listen to an overview of planned updates and renovations. Usually a demolition montage follows: carpets ripped out, off-trend cabinetry smashed to pieces with a sledgehammer. Episodes involving experienced flippers
tend to go rather smoothly, and I suppose the instructional payoff for the viewer comes in the form of tips. These generally involve granite countertops, Brazilian cherry wood floors, travertine tile. Often, the tips are communicated in the
form of orders issued to the stoic head of some all-Hispanic construction crew, who simply nods.
The profit motive obliterates home-ness and all other topics. An episode involving a guy named Hay, who is ''in
the entertainment industry,'' and restores houses in the area once known as South Central Los Angeles so he can rent
them, begins: ''The 1992 riots tore the city apart. But now it's become an attractive destination for house flippers, hoping
to turn their property into profit.'' He goes over budget, and we learn to use angled paint brushes. When he's done, the
real estate agent says he can get $1,600 a month for the place.
The vague idea of learning from the pros animates ''Flip That House'' rival ''Flip This House,'' which runs on A&E.
''We're constantly looking to evolve the shelter brand,'' executive producer Michael Morrison informs me. ''And one of
the trends in real estate, obviously, is house flipping.'' ''Flip This House'' also made its debut in 2005, and rather than an
endless series of flippers, revolves around recurring sets of real estate pros. The first season followed Trademark Properties, based near Charleston, S. C. and run by Richard C. Davis. The second season has focused on two different realty
teams, one in San Antonio and one in Atlanta. ''Flip This House'' episodes each last an hour, and what's added to the mix
of tips are basic elements of drama. Most notably, the stars get more full-fledged character treatment.
The San Antonio shows are the serialized adventures of Armando and David Montelongo, who are brothers, and
their wives. The series works more because the people happen to be entertaining than because they happen to work in
real estate. Armando in particular has just the sort of polarizing charisma that can carry a show. A charming jerk, he
lowballs subcontractors, bullies an unpaid intern and taunts his wife with a fistful of roaches grabbed from the kitchen
of one nasty property he has acquired, pausing now and again to reflect on the all-American success story of his life so
far.
In one episode, for no obvious reason, the brothers and their wives compete, flipping two houses at once to see
who can make more money. By the time girls in bikinis arrive to distract one team's subcontractors with free beer, the
Enlightened Improvement ethic has been reduced to occasional text popping up on the screen making neversubstantiated assertions about how much ''value'' a new fence or windows supposedly add to the final sales price.
Davis of Trademark Properties will be back on television soon enough, as it happens, with a new show over on
TLC. It's called ''The Real Deal,'' and it will, as he describes it, be firmly about the business of real estate. Davis is a
creature relatively rare in entertainment but commonplace in real life: The Southern hustler, who doesn't care what
slow-witted stereotypes you read into his accent as long as he gets your money. Davis -- still involved in a lawsuit
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What Are The Amoral House Flippers, Charming Jerks, Snotty Buyers And Greedy Sellers Of The New Property
Shows Really Trying To Teach Us? The New York Times March 18, 2007 Sunday
against A&E that he filed after the channel decided to use those other groups in the second season of ''Flip This House''
-- sounds flat-out thrilled about the end of the housing bubble.
Seven years ago, real estate was dominated by ''A players'' like him. Eventually, ''you got to the point where you
got your F players in the game--and making money!'' Now that that's over, ''it becomes survival of the fittest, and cash
becomes king,'' he says, and the banks start telling loan-seeking F players to go back to their day jobs. He believes that
this will be good not only for Trademark, but for his show. ''Flip This House,'' he says, ignored the important point that
the key to his business isn't mere remodeling prowess; it's knowing how to find properties that are a bargain to begin
with. The premise of his show is that he is an inspiring, visionary entrepreneur, and a down market will only make that
clearer. ''That's when I'll entertain you the most,'' he says. ''My most dramatic deals are always in a down market. That's
when it gets really crazy, and really fun.'' HOW TO ENJOY THE MISFORTUNE OF OTHERS
Watching other people make money because they're smarter than I am doesn't actually sound like that much fun,
but there's little danger of it on another flip show on TLC that I found perversely gripping, ''Property Ladder.'' All reality
shows rise and fall on casting, and despite the show-opening tease (''Want to make more money in a few months than
you did last year?''), here the producers seem bent on finding ''real estate rookies'' capable of catastrophe. One episode
involved lunkhead buddies who got interested in house-flipping through an infomercial. In another, a newly married
couple more or less disintegrate over the course of an ill-fated, months-long flip fiasco. Shouting matches feature prominently in nearly every installment.
Like ''Flip That House,'' the show focuses on a different project every week. The twist is an expert named Kirsten
Kemp (billed as a veteran house flipper, she also, somewhat curiously, happens to have a bit-part acting resume that
includes appearances on ''JAG'' and ''Married With Children''), who shows up periodically to give advice and pass
judgment. My favorite episode involved a Simi Valley couple who bought a ''wrecked'' and ''abandoned'' house for
$435,000 and not only planned to flip it for $600,000 after putting in $50,000 worth of renovations over 10 weeks, but
pledged to do so in an eco-friendly manner. ''We're really supporting the planet this way,'' the wife cheerfully explains,
wearing an unconvincing smile that stays frozen on her face through the many disasters that follow.
Kemp openly scoffs at the particulars of their budget and makes a face when told about plans for a solar panel.
She tells them they're better off putting French doors in the master bedroom -- that way they will actually add some value. Perhaps what ensues can be characterized as advice. The smiling wife buys eco-trendy bamboo flooring but ''violated her green ideals,'' as the near-mocking narrator puts it, when tiles made from recycled material prove too expensive.
They also blow off some ''energy efficient'' windows in favor of the French doors that Kemp suggested, and of course
they give up on the solar panel scheme as time runs short and their spending balloons. And when Kemp returns toward
the end of the show, they inform her (big smile from the wife here) that not only did they opt not to install air conditioning, but they're going to sell the house themselves so they won't have to pay a real estate agent's fee.
Kemp is TV-attractive, articulate and informed, but her most fascinating quality is her two-faced snakiness. She
hugs her amateur charges, softens her stern advice and raised eyebrows with compliments and smiles - and then, alone
with the camera, coldly enumerates how they blew it. In this case, Simi Valley's summer highs average 91 degrees, and
the for-sale-by-owner approach just proves that in addition to being naive, the eco-flippers are greedy. It will end up
costing them money, she announces. And indeed, the show closes with a montage of months passing with no offer; an
end note says they finally went with a listing service, and found a buyer, after more than six months. Cackling on my
sofa, I'm pleasantly blase about where I stand in the property zeitgeist. Aside from inspirational business savvy or handy
news you can use, here's another thing that's entertaining: schadenfreude. HOW TO ESCAPE REALITY
Property shows seem so profoundly American -- it is our manifest destiny to own a 4,000-square-foot place in a
good school district within five years of obtaining a college degree -- it's a disappointment to learn that the contemporary property entertainment model is largely an import. ''Hot Property,'' which first aired on Channel 5 in Britain in
1997, involved a prospective home buyer looking at three houses. The original ''Property Ladder'' runs on Channel 4.
Fenton Bailey is one of the founders of World of Wonder Productions, which creates programming for both the
American and British markets. He's British, and he lives in Los Angeles. Not everything works in both markets. A
World of Wonder show that aired in Britain, ''Housebusters,'' addressed the problems of various homeowners -- can't
make friends in the neighborhood, can't seem to save any money since moving -- by bringing in supernatural types like
a ''geopathic stress'' expert, an electromagnetics guy, a feng shui advocate, a psychic and even a witch. Americans, he
says, seem uninterested in home solutions that are less tangible than, say, buying a plasma-screen television, and Bravo
passed on a United States pilot.
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What Are The Amoral House Flippers, Charming Jerks, Snotty Buyers And Greedy Sellers Of The New Property
Shows Really Trying To Teach Us? The New York Times March 18, 2007 Sunday
But the markets also have much in common. The key to property drama, Bailey says, is the key to all drama:
transformation. ''Very little of what's on television is about accepting who you are and being happy with it. The old you,
the threadbare you -- no one wants to know about that.'' If anything, he says, the British housing market has been even
more overheated than the United States market, and got that way earlier. And finally, he says, ''The destiny of television
is to put everything on television,'' so housing shows had to happen at some point.
''Buildings and interiors have been only something the very rich can enjoy,'' Bailey continues. ''They formed an
elite pastime that's been absolutely democratized by television.'' World of Wonder also happens to be responsible for
''Million Dollar Listing,'' which ran on Bravo last year and probably made real estate more entertaining than any other
single show, not least because it took place in Malibu, a world well beyond the reach of most of the democratized audience.
Over the course of six episodes, ''Million Dollar Listing'' deconstructed transactions and failed transactions in
astonishing detail, giving a more complete version of the harrowing mix of emotions and egos and half-truths of the
property drama. Getting suitable access to so many buyers, sellers and agents consumes a great deal of time, and Bailey
says the first season of ''Million Dollar Listing'' took nearly a year to complete; a second season is being cast now. Bailey doesn't sound worried about what effect the housing slump might have on the show, and it's easy to see why. ''Million Dollar Listing'' deals with falling property values by unfolding in the borderline freak show of high-dollar Southern
California, with characters who make Armando Montelongo look like a cream puff as they whine and wheedle in the
never-ending sunlight of this promised land. By now we are far from ''This Old House,'' where an earnest discussion of
cabinet installation might last three or four minutes and include the phrase ''medium density fiberboard with a thermofoil wrap.'' The only practical bit that I picked up from ''Million Dollar Listing'' was the superiority of ''whitewater''
ocean views to regular old ocean views. You can't get any further away from everyday reality without actually making
things up.HOW TO OBLITERATE THE SELF
''Many citizens set out to buy a house because of an indistinct yearning, for which an actual house was never the
right solution to begin with and may only be a quick (and expensive) fix that briefly anchors and stabilizes them, never
touches their deeper need, but puts them in the poorhouse anyway.'' So observes Frank Bascombe, narrator of Richard
Ford's novel ''The Lay of the Land.'' Bascombe drifted into realty in Ford's earlier novel ''Independence Day,'' and while
he may have done so in order ''to keep something finite and acceptably doable on my mind and not disappear,'' he is
perhaps the wisest observer of property drama we are likely to have.
The agony of property, for example, is rarely more visceral than in the long episode in ''Independence Day'' in
which Bascombe deals with a Vermont couple whose problems will most likely not be solved by a new home in New
Jersey. ''The realty dreads,'' in his view, are never about lost money or the wrong house, but ''in the cold, unwelcome,
built-in-America realization that we're just like the other schmo, wishing his wishes, lusting his stunted lusts, quaking
over his idiot frights and fantasies, all of us popped out from the same unchinkable mold.'' Thus when Bascombe successfully leads clients ''toward a feeling of finality and ultimate rightness,'' he achieves an outcome that is ''not poetry
but generalized social good with a profit motive.''
Television, however, differs from literature in the following way. The dramatic shows, for all their tears and
shouting matches, in the end, read as harmless, campy cartoons. It's the happy shows full of smiles and high-fives -- the
ones that loudly promise us that you need not worry about unchinkable molds when you can consider how much airier
the living room will feel if you simply move that sofa -- where, every so often, thin cracks in the happy facade can reveal things wholly unintended.
One of HGTV's newer hits, for instance, is the perfectly upbeat ''Designed to Sell.'' A relatively winning host
named Clive introduces us to someone who is having trouble selling a home and brings in experts to improve things as
much as possible for $2,000. One step in the process involves the homeowners watching a videotape of a real estate
agent walking from room to room, enumerating what they've done wrong. The basic lessons recur over and over: reduce
clutter, define the space, brighten up this bedroom, do something about the dated window treatments, and please, American house sellers, pack away your myriad collections of weird figurines immediately. What we learn, in other words, is
that despite the supposed home-design revolution, you people have not gotten the point.
Clive and a rotating crew of design experts soften the blow by reminding the homeowners, and us, just what the
point is: money. ''More light, more space . . . more money,'' one designer announces. Replace this ''losing-money lime''
color with a ''money-making mushroom'' hue, Clive advises, and ''Top dollar!'' he says, many times. So the homeowners
shrug off the remarks about their grandmotherly decor by smiling and saying, for instance, ''Ka-ching!' Or in one episode, huddling with the design team and chanting, ''One, two, three -- money!''
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What Are The Amoral House Flippers, Charming Jerks, Snotty Buyers And Greedy Sellers Of The New Property
Shows Really Trying To Teach Us? The New York Times March 18, 2007 Sunday
A remarkably similar show called ''Sell This House,'' on A&E, stars Tanya Memme, a high-energy party girl type
who favors plunging necklines and has no obvious skills, and a bulbous-muscled bear named Roger, identified as a
''home design consultant.'' In this version, the flummoxed homeowner listens to the snide, videotaped remarks of random prospective home buyers. The most crushing episode involved a faultlessly polite Southern woman whose wallpaper looked to be 31 years old for the simple reason that she had never stopped liking it. Other features of her long time
home include shag carpeting, a mind-boggling menagerie of tchotckes and a mailbox done over to resemble a fish. The
videotaped critiques are much what you'd expect, with the added insult of some ill-mannered oaf saying that the place
''smells like old people.''
''I will admit,'' this sweet woman tells Tanya Memme, ''I did cry.'' She knows full well that her things might seem
idiosyncratic -- but they are her things. And she cannot for the life of her see what difference that makes. ''If they buy
the house, there won't be any of this stuff here,'' she says, reasonably. ''That was my version.''
Here we learn the ultimate lesson of these shows: You can look at a free-standing building wherein some persons
reside, and you can spin house-or-home poetry out of that all day long. But at the end of that day, property is what it is.
Your home can look like an expression of you, but your property needs to look like a Pottery Barn catalog. Your wallpaper decisions may have expressed your individuality when you made them, but you are not an individual anymore,
and no one wants to think about you. Stop expressing yourself. This place you live needs to look, in fact, like the total
obliteration of ''you,'' because selling property is about someone else's dreams of self-expression and taste.
Tanya and Roger rip up the carpet and consign to storage every object that means anything to the nice Southern
lady. When the show ends, Tanya brightly informs us that prospective buyers are giving it ''a second look.'' In other
words, it hasn't sold. One imagines the dignified and bewildered owner imprisoned there still, looking around at the
catalog pages that have become, not so much her home, but merely the place where she lives.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: POETRY (90%); TELEVISION INDUSTRY (90%); LITERATURE GENRES (89%); REAL ESTATE
(78%); HOUSING MARKET (78%); RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY (78%); TELEVISION PROGRAMMING (77%);
PUBLIC TELEVISION (77%); NETWORK TELEVISION (74%); ETHICS (71%) Housing; Television; Television;
Television
COMPANY: FOOD NETWORK (50%)
PERSON: Rob Walker
GEOGRAPHIC: BOSTON, MA, USA (54%) NORTHEAST USA (70%); MASSACHUSETTS, USA (54%) UNITED STATES (70%)
LOAD-DATE: March 18, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos (Illustratons by Todd St. John)(pgs. 91,93,94,95)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1007 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
Page 19
Paradise, In Contract The New York Times March 18, 2007 Sunday
March 18, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Paradise, In Contract
BYLINE: By Somini Sengupta.
Somini Sengupta is chief of The New York Times's South Asia bureau.
SECTION: Section 6; Column 1; Key; Pg. 97
LENGTH: 3109 words
One afternoon in December, Roy Patrao peered through a sturdy iron gate and scanned the gnarled roots of a tree
embracing the ruin of an old stone house. Only a shell of the house survived, with thick columns holding up a portico. A
window shutter made of seashells and slatted wood was visible amid the overgrown bush. On this plot of land, Patrao
saw his dream.
He would build a villa here, with cool limestone floors and a modern kitchen. The upstairs windows would open
to a view of the river that meandered through the village. In the backyard, he pictured a family gathering around the
barbecue, as they might on a summer's evening in Southern California, where Patrao once lived. But this time, the domestic scene would take place in Goa, the sliver of a state on India's western coast.
The site was perfect. On the adjacent property was a paddy field, which by law was off limits to construction. The
river view was a bonus, for in the real estate business, river views are nearly as lucrative as Goa's legendary ocean
views, which have become virtually impossible to attain. The village itself, called Aldona, was long on Goan charm,
surrounded by rolling hills with the beaches of the Arabian Sea less than an hour's drive away. Across the road from the
old house stood a small white chapel. The fishmonger did the rounds each morning. The charm factor was sweetened by
local lore: Patrao told me there were tales of two ghost sightings in the house.
Patrao hadn't bought the plot yet, but he was already picturing that this would be the first of 10, maybe 20, houses
that he would build across Goa. He would use his own money and that of friends, who likewise would be banking on
the appeal of Goa's lore. One day, he imagined, a community of Indian-Americans like him might spend holidays in
their Goan homes or eventually retire here. He was born in Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay), but when he spoke
of homecoming, he meant Goa.
Goa, like much of India, is in the midst of a real estate frenzy, and Patrao, a man nearly 60, a veteran of the construction business in California and New York, is nothing if not an entrepreneur. His ambitions were fueled as much
by his canny business sense as by Goa's enticements. The houses he imagined building would sell for at least $180,000,
he reckoned, or more than twice the investment in the land and construction costs. Real estate, he figured, was the way
to go in India. ''One billion people. Limited land supply. It's a no-brainer,'' he concluded.
With that plan in mind, Patrao and his girlfriend, Sundiv Kaur, known as Sunny, were devoting their days and
nights to the quest for land. They drove from village to village, eyeing ruins and plots, inspecting views, making drawings and, in the evenings, plotting their findings on a flowchart to see how well the math worked.
Theirs was also a personal venture. Goa is where they both came to recover from their old lives. Both had left
their previous marriages -- she in Singapore, he in the United States. They met in Goa, became friends, fell in love,
rented an apartment together and decided to put down new roots. One day, they said, they would build themselves a
house in Goa. ''This is a second-chance place, baby,'' was Patrao's verdict.
As Patrao drove through Aldona on the warm December afternoon, Kaur sat next to him, quietly smiling. The next
morning, they planned to put down money on their dream ruin.
In popular culture, Goa has long embodied qualities hard to find in India -- it is quaint, laid-back, libertine -- and
its real estate boom may be more about mythology than location. It is the kind of place, you repeatedly hear, where a
woman can go out of the house in shorts, or where people are reasonably tolerant of a situation like Patrao's living with
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Paradise, In Contract The New York Times March 18, 2007 Sunday
Kaur, who, at 34, is much younger, and not even his wife. An acquaintance of mine in Delhi who owns a house in Goa
put it bluntly: If you want to get out of India, come to Goa.
Goa has long been a crossroads of East and West. It was conquered by the Portuguese in the early 16th century,
just after Vasco da Gama reached India (he landed a bit farther south) and effectively planted the flag for European rule
in India. Chilies came to India through Goa, after the Portuguese ferried them from the Americas, and forever changed
Indian food. The echoes of Portuguese rule are still felt in the houses with their frescoed walls and wraparound porches.
In a 1964 essay called ''Goa the Unique,'' Graham Greene wrote, ''Outside Goa one is aware all the time of the interminable repetition of the ramshackle, the enormous pressure of poverty, flowing, branching, extending like flood
water.'' In Goa, he recalled attending a party where he was offered a Benzedrine tablet at 4 a.m.
Sudhir Kakar, a psychoanalyst and novelist, says that in the Indian mind Goa has long signified freedom, particularly of the sexual kind. It is an association advanced by Hindi movies of another era, he said, in which Goan women
were often portrayed as sexually available and Goan men as drunks. ''Goa is associated with free sensuality,'' he said by
way of explaining its real estate lure. ''That I think is a very big attraction -- and the keeping up with the Joneses. It's a
party place, a place to let go of your inhibitions.'' Kakar himself let go of his two homes -- renting out one in ''aggressive'' Delhi, in his words, the other in ''cold'' Berlin -- and moved to Goa four years ago. He and his wife, Katharina, set
about restoring an old Portuguese-era house.
The makeover of Goa into an upscale vacation spot -- the Hamptons, if you will, for the upwardly mobile Indian -began in the late 1960s, when hippies came to conquer Goa's beaches. Over time, it became a mandatory stop on the
Israeli post-military-service circuit. A string of five-star resorts opened in the 1990s. Onetime visitors, both Indian and
foreign, began restoring old houses. Then, over the past few years, as private airlines added new flights to Goa, affluent
urban professionals from Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and elsewhere began coming in droves. The economy was soaring.
People suddenly had money to invest. They started buying Goan real estate.
The Goa phenomenon has been fueled by India's economic rise. There is more money swirling around than ever
before, including more foreign investment for real estate. Drive along any major highway in India and you are likely to
see earth being moved day and night, laborers carrying cement on their heads, steel pilings pointing up to the sky like so
many skinny fingers of ambition. Once unremarkable small towns now see a rush of high-rise apartment blocks under
construction. Erstwhile fields of wheat and mustard are fenced off, with giant billboards announcing the arrival of new
townships.
There is a genuine demand for some types of development: office buildings are absorbed in cities like Bangalore
as quickly as they are built. But there's also a breathless quality to some of the forecasts. One report from Deutsche
Bank of Germany predicted in January that 600 malls would be under way across India in the next three years. In recent
months, in an apparent effort to temper soaring real estate prices, Indian banks have gradually raised interest rates on
home loans.
In Goa, the boom started, naturally, with tycoons. Eight years ago, Vijay Mallya, who owns Kingfisher Beer, hired
Dean D'Cruz, one of Goa's best-known architects, to design what Mallya dubbed the Kingfisher Villa, spilling down to
the Arabian Sea. ''When people walk into my house, I want them to go weak in the knees,'' is how D'Cruz recalled his
instructions.
Somewhat less wealthy seekers followed, but their real estate fantasies burned just as hot. Gated communities with
clubhouses and pools began to go up. Hillsides were carved out for condominiums. Cashew groves were cut for a road.
Recently, some of the country's biggest developers have put forward plans for apartments, golf courses, hotels, shopping
malls and a software park.
Prices have swiftly climbed into the stratosphere. In April of last year, DLF Universal, one of India's largest builders, bought a patch of land near the capital, Panaji, for more than $1,100 a square yard. Just two years ago, the state
government, which owned the land, could not dispose of the property for a sixth of that price. DLF plans to build a mall
and office complex on the site.
This construction has not been greeted with universal joy. Last fall, after the Goan state government approved a
five-year regional plan that opened new swaths of land to development, some of it hillsides with coveted views of river
and sea, residents of laid-back Goa were roused to action. Builders welcomed the plan as relief from what they deplored
as overly stringent restrictions on construction, including a ban on buildings taller than the nearest coconut palm. But
critics in Goa, who included D'Cruz, saw it as an open invitation to destruction. Where would all the garbage go? Where
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Paradise, In Contract The New York Times March 18, 2007 Sunday
was the clean drinking water for all the newcomers when the village wells were running dry or salty? Goa's ecology
would be destroyed, the critics cried, its magic would be gone.
Protests were organized, and a campaign, called Save Goa, was established. One protest in December drew thousands of people to Panaji. Amateur photographers fanned across the state snapping pictures of supposedly illegal construction. The Catholic Church put its weight behind the campaign. Save Goa took state officials to court. ''Paradise
Lost,'' its Web site warned.
By mid-January, the campaign could claim a substantial victory. The government of Goa, ruled by the Congress
Party, voted to scrap the regional plan and draft a new one. Menino Peres, the director of the department of information
and publicity, said it was because of the ''sentiment of large numbers of people in Goa, and on environment and congestion considerations.''
Roy Patrao watched the controversy closely, and not without self-interest. He regarded the debate as unnecessarily
polarized. In the anti-development lobby he saw tendencies of Nimby-ism. But during the week of the big protest in
Panaji, he sent me an e-mail message saying he was glad he had refrained from big projects and what he called ''controversial lands.''
''I had a powerful feeling that something smelled here -- and that I did not want to be part of the stench,'' he wrote.
''Having said that, I also believe that many of the luminaries of Goa feel slighted because $(lsquo$)outsiders' want to
develop mega-projects in Goa. They want Goa to remain as it always was. I feel they would like to be the ones in
charge.''
Spread across 140 acres along a wooded ridge on the edge of the water some 11 miles from Aldona, Aldeia de
Goa, a lavish gated community, bears little resemblance to the rest of India. Irvine, Calif., might be a closer cousin.
There are no potholes. There are street lamps and around-the-clock water from the tap. Sewage is treated and not left to
fester in a septic tank. Terraced lawns lead down to a clubhouse under construction, along with a gym, tennis courts and
a swimming pool. A five-star hotel will be built on the beach. Where the ridge bends, a section has been cleared for the
construction of another cluster of bungalows and condominiums. The views face west onto the widening mouth of the
Zuari River as it pours into the Arabian Sea.
The rest of the hill tells you what Aldeia de Goa once was -- shrubs and trees formerly zoned as orchard land
where no development was allowed. The developers argued for a rezoning many years ago and managed to relax Goa's
strict coastal regulations for the patch of beach where they are putting up the hotel. They convinced local authorities that
since the property abuts the mouth of the Zuari, the 200-meter buffer that applies to hotel construction on the seacoast
should not apply; they have been allowed to build closer to the water.
Aldeia is the postcard for a new Indian aspiration -- the country house, which had been the province of Indian
blue-blood families, and even for them it meant a cottage in the hills, bought from the departing British. In Aldeia,
completed houses can go for as much as $700,000. Prices of bungalow plots have more than doubled in two years. All
told, about half of the roughly 250 properties in Aldeia have been bought by people from Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. The rest are Indians who live abroad. ''Invest in the lifestyle you deserve,'' the cover of the sales brochure declares.
The owners at Aldeia also include local officials who at one point or another have smoothed the way for building
permits and rezoning. Among them is Goa's most famous politician, Atanasio Monserrate, who until recently served as
the minister for town and country planning and was a chief architect of the repealed regional plan. One of his most controversial acts of rezoning was to allow for a road to be built through paddy fields in order to connect two of his houses.
At Aldeia, he has a corner plot with a prime view of the water. Monserrate declined several requests for an interview,
but in December, when a private Indian television news station, NDTV, asked him about charges of graft, Monserrate
said flatly that such accusations were impossible to prove. He resigned in January, saying that he had been unfairly
blamed for the new regional plan.
One afternoon a few months ago, a few miles north of the capital, Dean D'Cruz drove across a narrow bridge and
pointed to mangroves that had recently gone up for sale. We were headed to check on a hotel in Calangute that D'Cruz
had designed, and along Aguada Bay he showed me a gentle slope that leads down to the water. It had been shaved off,
and a new house was under construction; D'Cruz suspected it was a violation of the coastal regulations.
As we continued our drive north to Morjim, where there has been a flurry of real estate deals, we saw a bulldozer
burrowing a road through a wooded hill. These activities distress many Goans. Kalu Ganesh Shetgaonkar, the 75-yearold patriarch of an extended family of 60 in Morjim, said he regularly wards off buyers and brokers who come to in-
Page 22
Paradise, In Contract The New York Times March 18, 2007 Sunday
quire about his property on the hill. There's nothing up there, not even water, Shetgaonkar said -- just cashew trees. ''It's
our ancestors' land,'' his son, Ganesh Kalu, injected. ''Why should we sell it? We didn't buy it.''
As attached as many Goans are to their ancestral lands, the money can't always be so easily declined. Saba Bhiva
Shetgaonkar, another Morjim resident, said he was compelled to sell 1,200 square yards of his cashew hills, so poor and
indebted had the family become. The sale paid for the weddings of some of his eight daughters. Shetgaonkar said he
would have to dispose of another parcel soon, for the weddings of his two youngest daughters. His only consolation was
that prices had nearly quadrupled since he last sold.
As an architect and a Goa native who grew up in Mumbai, D'Cruz has had a front-row seat to the transformation
of Goa. A few years ago, he designed a house for a friend from Mumbai, who in turn sold it for a small fortune and
asked D'Cruz to design a dozen more. D'Cruz has since built his share of hotels and private houses, even some small
apartments. He welcomed the settlers who came to rescue the crumbling Portuguese-era houses.
''It's nice to see people buy in villages, because the old houses are crumbling,'' D'Cruz said. ''A fair number of people restore them nicely. But they don't participate in the community. It helps architecturally. It doesn't necessarily help
the community.''
Lately he has also reluctantly come to see tourism as better fuel for Goa's economy than the rush to build private
houses. At least, he says, tourism creates a few more jobs. What scares him, he says, is the specter of sprawl on these
hills. He sent a text message to my cellphone on the day of a vital court hearing on the regional plan. ''Pray for us,'' he
said.
Roy Patrao and Sunny Kaur were keenly aware of the roiled waters they were entering as they searched for perfect
plots on which to build. They would build small. They would win over the neighbors.
On the December afternoon I spent with them, having given up finding anything close to the coast, they were in a
village not far from Aldona, inspecting an overgrown plot of land that appeared to have been used as a public toilet.
''Roy, you should come see this,'' Kaur called out from the bushes. Through the brush, you could make out a winding river, snaking through paddy fields. The village was still undiscovered, in real estate terms, and so the plot was still
reasonably priced -- about $50 a square yard. A dilapidated house that stood next door, Patrao guessed, would go on the
market as soon as construction started on this plot. ''It's gentrification,'' he said. ''Remember TriBeCa?''
They drove down to the river. There was a white cross, decorated with a garland of marigold and a daub of yogurt,
an emblem of the entangled Christian and Hindu practice common in Goa.
As they were learning, Goan real estate was also entangled in its own particular ways. It is not easy to confirm
which lands are actually zoned for construction, nor to get a clean title deed, nor even to follow building codes. A local
builder told Patrao that if he built by the rules, government inspectors would get mad. ''They make their money from
$(lsquo$)mistakes,' '' he told me.
That afternoon, they drove on to Aldona, to show me the old house behind the gate. ''The ruin I've got my eye on,''
Kaur said, eyes twinkling.
They would reorient the house, turning an overgrown front garden into the backyard. They would keep the portico
on the side. The slatted seashell windows, they weren't sure about. They could easily double their investment, they said,
even with the bribes they assumed they would need to pay to local officials for building permits. They had already increased their initial bid on the plot. They expected the owner's blessings the next day.
But then, the reality of Goan real estate hit them. First, their broker told them the owner had chosen another buyer.
Then the buyer backed out, because, as Patrao explained, two of the owner's sisters refused to relinquish their claim on
the family property. Under Goan law, which dates back to Portuguese times, the sisters could lay claim at any point in
their lifetimes, bungling any future owner's plans. Six weeks later, the place was still on the market. The agent said the
asking price had nearly doubled. The family, he reckoned, would eventually sell.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: REAL ESTATE (89%); CONSTRUCTION (88%); BEACHES (77%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (72%);
CONSTRUCTION COSTS (67%) Housing
Page 23
Paradise, In Contract The New York Times March 18, 2007 Sunday
PERSON: Somini Sengupta
GEOGRAPHIC: MUMBAI, INDIA (90%) CALIFORNIA, USA (92%); GOA, INDIA (90%); NEW YORK, USA
(79%); INDIAN OCEAN (79%) INDIA (92%); UNITED STATES (92%) India; Goa (India) ; India
LOAD-DATE: March 18, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: At Another Crossroads -- Goa has long been a mix of East and West. Now the ornate style of old
Goa meets the rebar and concrete of the new. (Photographs By Olivo Barbieri For The New York Times)(pgs. 96,97)
No Taller Than the Nearest Palm -- Builders can get around such old-fashioned restrictions, and new construction looms
over a church in Mapusa, a town in northern Goa. (Photograph By Olivo Barbieri For The New York Times)(pg. 99)
To the Sea -- The region was once a bohemian getaway, with many beaches like this one in southern Goa. Today the
Indian version of the Hamptons crowd is putting its money into condos and renovations.
To the Hill -- A country house is no longer just for Indian blue bloods. The sales brochure for the new gated community Aldeia de Goa, above, declares, ''Invest in the lifestyle you deserve.'' (Photographs By Olivo Barbieri For The New
York Times)(pgs. 100,101)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1008 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 18, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Daring to Bet That Americans Would Take a Shine to Imports
BYLINE: By BARNABY J. FEDER
SECTION: Section 12; Column 4; Automobiles; MOTORING; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1191 words
FOR more than a year, my father has been driving around Boulder, Colo., in a Toyota Prius. This might seem like
an odd development for a man whose career as a foreign car dealer was defined in many ways by a bitter lawsuit with
Toyota in the 1960s, but it spotlights some of the reasons Toyota is poised to pass General Motors as the world's largest
carmaker.
My father, Richard W. Feder, was Toyota's first dealer in San Francisco when the Japanese company returned to
the United States in 1964 with the Corona compact after analyzing why Americans had rejected its underpowered
Toyopet in the late 1950s.
That Feder-Toyota relationship did not last long -- Dad did not buy into the company's drive to increase sales rapidly at the expense of near-term profits -- but he never stopped admiring Toyota's focus on improving quality. When the
company eventually expanded its engineering efforts into hybrid technology and other advances that represented the
kind of forward thinking Dad loved in European cars, he was ready to become a customer.
Page 24
Daring to Bet That Americans Would Take a Shine to Imports The New York Times March 18, 2007 Sunday
Given the globalization of business, it may seem inevitable in hindsight that Toyota and other foreign carmakers
have emerged as big forces in the economy, with factories scattered around the United States. But that development,
unimaginable when Dad's generation returned home from World War II, still seemed far-fetched in the 1960s when he
began selling Toyotas. It was not until 1978 that Volkswagen became the first foreign carmaker to open an American
factory in the postwar era. Dad entered the business in 1955 as a partner in a struggling BMW-Mercedes dealership. A
year later he bought control of the new-car side of the business, which he renamed Executive Motors.
Max Hoffman, a New York-based distributor of European cars, and other pioneers like Kjell Qvale, a Norwegian
immigrant who brought Volkswagen and numerous British marques to San Francisco, had mapped the niches where
entrepreneurs could survive in the import-car business: Old World prestige (Rolls-Royce, Bentley), fun and speed
(MG, Porsche) and extreme practicality (Volkswagen). The common thread among import customers was a taste for
novelty.
Mr. Qvale said that pioneering dealers had to demonstrate years of business success before American banks would
support loans or leases attached to the imports.
''We even struggled getting people to insure them,'' said Mr. Qvale, who is now 86.
Executive Motors started out in a small building on Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco's auto row, as a Mercedes,
Maserati and BMW dealership; Citroen was soon added. Dad's landlord was the gentlemanly Ellis Brooks, whose
mammoth Chevrolet dealership up the street showcased all that seemed impregnable about the domestic car industry.
After a few years Executive Motors moved to a small showroom on the west flank of Nob Hill to save on rent. But Dad
was confident about the future.
''You could see what was going to happen to G.M., Ford and Chrysler,'' Dad said recently. ''They had already ceded quality and innovation to the imported cars.''
An oversimplification from a biased source? Sure, but Executive Motors provided a window on the social and
economic forces that fueled the success of importers like Toyota -- and the failures of others.
In addition to the early relations with Mercedes and BMW and the ties to Citroen that lasted until that French
company left the United States in 1974, Executive Motors sold Rover and Land Rover. It brought Saab to San Francisco
before that Swedish carmaker was ready to support an official dealership by acquiring two-stroke models in Denver. It
took a pioneering stab at Subaru, which Dad dropped after its models at the time (with two-stroke engines in the rear of
the cars) proved unsellable.
In addition, Executive Motors enjoyed the dubious, unprofitable distinction of dealing in such obscure marques as
Glas (''the poor man's Porsche''), Stanguellini (a racing car that never made a successful transition to consumer sports
car) and the Janus (a microcar from Zundapp, a German motorcycle maker, with a mid-mounted engine and a body almost identical at the front and the rear).
And Dad -- who else? -- was the San Francisco dealer for Amphicar, which for all its innovative features performed dismally as both a car and as a boat.
All in all, the track record was long on color and short on shrewdness. Still, just as Dad anticipated when he chose
Toyota over the simultaneous opportunity to become San Francisco's first Datsun dealer, the Corona began to catch on.
Its four doors and design touches struck buyers as a step up from Volkswagen. And its reliability offered better value
than shoddy domestic compacts like the Nash Rambler. The smaller Corolla also looked promising when it arrived in
1968. But when Toyota pressed Dad to move back to Van Ness and bet his future on high-volume sales at lower profit
margins, Dad was not willing to take that risk. ''I thought it was premature,'' he said recently.
In truth, the time might never have seemed right to him for such a move. His heart belonged to imports at the leading -- or, all too often, outer -- edge of design, especially Citroen. Once a car and the customers seeking it became less
than exotic, Dad seemed to lose his taste for selling it.
Toyota did not waste long arguing with him about its prospects. It set up a competing dealer. The relatively small
sum it had to pay Dad to end the subsequent litigation was probably a sound business investment.
The outcome made it clear that Dad was not on the path of import titans like Mr. Qvale, who ended up owning
more than 100 dealerships. And it underscored how rapidly the world of imports was changing. Toyota came to Dad
Page 25
Daring to Bet That Americans Would Take a Shine to Imports The New York Times March 18, 2007 Sunday
because it had little choice. When Honda moved into San Francisco less than a decade later, its first dealership went to a
prominent Pontiac dealer.
Meanwhile, Executive Motors puttered into the 1980s as an extreme example of the sometimes offbeat enterprises
that gave the imported car business its first foothold in the United States. The wealth it produced was mostly stories,
like run-ins with the California Highway Patrol over the Amphicar's lighting (''But it's exactly what the Coast Guard
requires,'' was Dad's successful defense in court) or dealings with unconventional customers (Note to Jack Casady, bass
player for the Jefferson Airplane at the time he bought a Citroen: Dad's under the impression that you still owe him
money, but I think we're all square because you got us into the Wally Heider Studio one night when both the Airplane
and the Grateful Dead were recording.)
Naturally, I emerged from such an upbringing with an endearingly strange car -- a 1971 Citroen Dyane, a larger,
slightly more powerful version of the flimsy 2CV.
Today, though, I drive a Toyota Sienna van. And Peter Watkins, Dad's longtime accountant and salesman, recently replaced his Toyota-made Scion with a Prius. ''Once they came back, there was never a year when Toyota put out a
bad car,'' Mr. Watkins said. ''The sickening part of what happened to Ford and G.M. is that they have good cars now, but
nobody trusts them.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: AUTOMOBILE MFG (90%); AUTOMAKERS (90%); MOTOR VEHICLES (92%); AUTOMOTIVE
MFG (90%); NEW CAR DEALERS (89%); AUTOMOTIVE SECTOR PERFORMANCE (78%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (75%); GLOBALIZATION (77%); IMMIGRATION (77%); ENTERPRISE GLOBALIZATION (71%);
WORLD WAR II (50%); INTERNATIONAL TRADE (71%) Automobiles; International Trade and World Market;
Foreign Cars
COMPANY: VOLKSWAGEN AG (85%); GENERAL MOTORS CORP (58%); OLD WORLD BAKERY (52%);
TOYOTA MOTOR CORP (92%)
TICKER: VWP (PAR) (82%); VWB (BRU) (82%); VWA (AMS) (85%); VOW (FRA) (85%); VKW (LSE) (85%);
GMR (LSE) (57%); GMP (PAR) (58%); GM (NYSE) (58%); TYT (LSE) (92%); TM (NYSE) (92%); 7203 (TSE)
(92%); VW (SWX) (85%); VOA (PAR) (85%); 7659 (TSE) (85%); GMB (BRU) (58%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS336111 AUTOMOBILE MANUFACTURING (92%); SIC3711 MOTOR VEHICLES & PASSENGER CAR BODIES (85%); NAICS336112 LIGHT TRUCK & UTILITY VEHICLE MANUFACTURING (92%);
SIC3714 MOTOR VEHICLE PARTS & ACCESSORIES (57%)
PERSON: Barnaby J Feder
GEOGRAPHIC: CALIFORNIA, USA (93%); COLORADO, USA (92%); NEW YORK, USA (79%) UNITED
STATES (95%); NORWAY (79%)
LOAD-DATE: March 18, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: PIONEER -- Richard Feder helped establish Toyota in San Francisco. (pg. 6)
FRENCH CONNECTION -- Richard Feder, right, loves innovative cars. From left, his children Timothy, Leslie and
the author with a Citroen wagon the family drove cross-country. (Photo by Michal E. Feder)(pg. 1)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
Page 26
Down The Middle The New York Times March 18, 2007 Sunday
1009 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 18, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Down The Middle
BYLINE: By ANNA BERNASEK
SECTION: Section 6; Column 1; Key; BY THE NUMBERS; Pg. 26
LENGTH: 800 words
For the past few years we've been flooded with national housing-market statistics -- chronicling a boom, predicting
a bust. But as any homeowner knows, national numbers don't tell you much about what's happening in the local housing
market. For that you have to go deeper. ''What's striking if you look closer is that different patterns emerge,'' says Jonathan J. Miller, chief executive of the New York-based real estate appraisal and consulting firm Miller Samuel Inc. ''In
New York, for instance, we're finding bidding wars in some markets and prices dropping in others.''
One way to understand where the housing slump has been hitting is to break the market down according to different price tiers. Judging by local data supplied by brokers (national data don't provide a detailed breakdown), it seems
that so far it has struck hardest in the middle. In Miami-Dade County for instance, where condominiums represent about
two-thirds of the market and single-family homes one-third, the average price of a condo in the $600,000 to $800,000
range (the middle of the middle tier) was down 1 percent in November 2006 compared with November 2005. At the
high end, with most properties ranging from $2 million to $4 million, the average price rose 15 percent over the same
period. And at the lower end, for condos between $400,000 and $600,000, the average price rose 2 percent.
The trend is similar in New York. In Manhattan, with its concentration of extremely high-priced properties, the
weak middle has been in the range of $2 million to $4 million. Prices of apartments in that range fell an average of 7
percent in November 2006, compared with the previous November. During the same period, the average price of apartments costing more than $10 million rose by 5 percent, and of those under $1 million more than 8 percent. In Chicago,
though, the market has been less variable. The average price of a single-family home in the middle -- the $600,000-to$800,000 range -- fell 1 percent in November 2006, compared with the previous year, while the top (homes above $1
million) also dropped 1 percent. But the bottom end, those properties below $400,000, remained flat.
''Weakness in the market has been concentrated in certain segments,'' says Mark Zandi, chief economist of
Moody's Economy.com. ''We're not witnessing the entire housing market in metro areas caving in.''
So why is the middle taking the blow? Perhaps because those factors that appear to be causing the slump -- overbuilding and concerns about affordability -- have weighed most heavily on that sector. Demand in the middle-price tiers
has been supported by historically low interest rates and resulting high affordability, but not by significant gains in income. As rates began their rise and affordability began to decrease, the demand for housing in the middle price range
began to fall.
Prices at the top, by contrast, have been driven by changes in wealth. In recent years wealth creation in the United
States has been spectacular for many at the high end. Fueled by a boom in investment income, low taxes and demand
from wealthy foreign buyers, the high end of the housing market has continued to experience strong price gains. ''That's
the market where we're seeing bidding wars,'' Miller says. In Miami, for instance, developers are still betting on the high
end to perform well. Frank McKinney, a developer of oceanfront properties from Palm Beach to Miami, is going ahead
with several single-family home developments priced above $20 million. ''If you look at the ultrawealthy class, it's expanding exponentially,'' he says.
Page 27
Down The Middle The New York Times March 18, 2007 Sunday
High-end markets in cities like Chicago, Denver and San Diego have been less robust, but that's because the
wealthy in those markets tend to be doctors, lawyers and small entrepreneurs, and they haven't experienced the outsize
gains of the very rich who work in fields like finance.
At the low end, the market has held up well nationwide. But there's an important reason for that, too: the availability of credit. The deciding factor for many first-time home purchasers is not home prices or interest rates; it's whether
they can get a mortgage at all. And aggressive lending has been a booming business, allowing even people with a weak
credit history or limited resources to borrow to buy a house or apartment.
That may be about to change, though. A group of regulators, including the Federal Reserve, is expected to announce tighter lending requirements for the sub-prime housing market in coming weeks. ''Anyone could get a loan up
until the end of last year,'' says Zandi, the Moody's economist. ''But that's changing rapidly. And that will take the wind
out of the sails of the lower end of the market.''
So watch out. Not too long from now we may be looking at another soft spot.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: REAL ESTATE (91%); RESIDENTIAL CO-OWNERSHIP (90%); HOUSING MARKET (90%); CONDOMINIUMS (90%); RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY (90%); PRICE INCREASES (89%); PRICE CHANGES (89%);
TRENDS (78%); REAL ESTATE APPRAISALS (73%) Housing; Prices (Fares, Fees and Rates); Real Estate; Housing
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (84%) Anna Bernasek
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (90%); MIAMI, FL, USA (87%) NEW YORK, USA (93%); FLORIDA,
USA (93%) UNITED STATES (93%) Manhattan (NYC); Chicago (Ill); Miami-Dade County (Fla)
LOAD-DATE: March 18, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Graph: ''PRICE PEAKS AND VALLEYS'' shows real estate prices from November 2005-November 2006.
(Sources by Manhattan: Miller Samuel Inc.
miami-Dade county: Coldwell Banker
chicago: Coldwell Banker)
(Infographic By Catalogtree)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1010 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 17, 2007 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
Pining for Irish Soil? Now You Can Buy It By the 12-Ounce Bag
BYLINE: By COREY KILGANNON
Page 28
Pining for Irish Soil? Now You Can Buy It By the 12-Ounce Bag The New York Times March 17, 2007 Saturday
SECTION: Section A; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 908 words
DATELINE: SPEONK, N.Y., March 14
Part of being Irish in America is a nostalgia for the old sod. The rich, dark dirt holds centuries of farming and famine and fighting. For millions of immigrants and generations of descendants, it is the essence of their heritage: the subject of great poets, the wealth of Irish kings.
And now, all of that can be had for a few dollars per pound, shipped to your doorstep with some shamrock seeds
on the side.
Straight from the Auld Sod Export Company in County Tipperary -- well, via a warehouse in this eastern Long Island town filled with 12-ounce plastic bags labeled ''Official Irish Dirt.'' Pat Burke, one of two Irishmen who founded
the company last year to capitalize on the sentimental symbolism of Irish soil to Americans, said it had shipped $2 million worth to the United States since November, when it started its Web site, officialirishdirt.com.
''Every time we'd have a pint with the Yanks, or even the Irish who've moved to the States, they always got around
to talking about, 'If only I had a bit of dirt, just to have the feel of the old country, just a little bit of Ireland to throw on
the casket,' '' Mr. Burke, 27, a silver-tongued entrepreneur, said by telephone from Ireland.
''There's a saying that when the Irish came to America, they brought their churches, schools and music, but the only thing they couldn't bring was the soil. Now we can send it over to them at an affordable price,'' Mr. Burke said.
Indeed, for the St. Patrick's Day season, the 12-ounce bag that normally goes for $15 is available at four bags for
$20 through the rest of March, shamrock seeds included.
One recent afternoon, a team of Hispanic employees was furiously preparing the bags, which carried the image of
a little Irish farmer in a green vest and cap and were labeled ''Guaranteed Irish.'' Mr. Burke said the soil was often tossed
atop coffins or sprinkled on grass over grave sites. Funeral directors and florists have ordered pounds of the stuff, as
have wholesalers in China, who have indicated that their customers were attracted by the legend of Irish luck. He said
he had persuaded the Irish prime minister, Bertie Ahern, to use his dirt and seeds in the bowl of shamrocks he planned
to present to President Bush for St. Patrick's Day.
''We figure, if everyone's Irish on St. Pat's in America, that's a huge market,'' Mr. Burke said.
For some, it is more than a novelty. An 87-year-old lawyer in Manhattan, originally from Galway, recently bought
$100,000 worth of the dirt to fill in his American grave, yet undug. A native of County Cork spent $148,000 on seven
tons to spread under the house he was having built in Massachusetts.
''He said he wanted a house built on Irish soil so he can feel like he is home in old Ireland when he walked around
his house in Massachusetts,'' Mr. Burke said.
Ken Biegeleisen, a Manhattan doctor, said he bought a bag in December after his mother-in-law died and put it
next to her ashes on a shelf. ''We figured she'd like to have a little Irish soil near her.''
The company started digging up the dirt in September from a two-acre field it purchased in Cahir, a small Tipperary village, and has since bought or rented other plots to keep up with demand. Mr. Burke said his original notion, to
gather dirt in each of Ireland's 32 counties and market it by county, proved too expensive.
Mr. Burke, an agricultural scientist from County Tipperary, said he had devised and patented a method to treat the
soil so it would satisfy agricultural and customs authorities' restrictions on imports and be free of pests or disease.
The Department of Agriculture has issued a permit to import the Irish soil, said Melissa O'Dell, a spokeswoman
with the department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. She said the only other such permit is issued for Israeli soil. (HolyLandEarth.com offers Israeli dirt at $20 for a 16-ounce bag.)
Some 40 million Americans claim Irish ancestry, and Enterprise Ireland estimates annual sales of Irish gifts at
more than $200 million. Mr. Burke and his business partner, Alan Jenkins, a 65-year-old from County Cork who owns a
chain of gyms for women, are hardly alone in trying to capitalize on the nostalgia.
Page 29
Pining for Irish Soil? Now You Can Buy It By the 12-Ounce Bag The New York Times March 17, 2007 Saturday
Colleen Roberts said she has sold more than 100 bags of dirt since January from IrishFinds.com, her online gift
shop. At BuyIreland.com, one can get a square foot of a field in ''rural Ireland'' for $49.99 -- or, at least, a deed, a map
and photographs.
On Irishsmoke.ie, $18 brings three pounds of Irish bog, also known as turf or peat, cut from Donegal fields, to
burn in a fireplace or on a grill, something Jim Gallagher thought up one night when he ran out of charcoal during a
barbecue and thought himself too drunk to drive to the store. ''I cut up some peat and put it in the barbecue, and everyone said, 'This is amazing,' '' recalled Mr. Gallagher, a native of Pleasantville, N.Y., now living in County Donegal, who
also sells incense and torches that smell like peat. ''It's the aroma of home,'' he said by telephone from Ireland.
Adrian Flannelly, who comments on Irish culture and politics on his New York radio program, initially thought
the Irish soil idea ''seemed like one of the daftest things you could imagine.''
''At least, it's not offensive like green beer and plastic hats and 'Kiss Me, I'm Irish' T-shirts,'' he said. ''It's like nonalcoholic beer: It may not do much for you, but it's not going to harm anyone.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: ENTREPRENEURSHIP (90%); HISPANIC AMERICANS (78%); INTERNET & WWW (73%);
PLASTIC FILM SHEETS & BAGS (70%); FUNERAL HOMES & SERVICES (70%); EXPORT TRADE (70%);
CEMETERIES (60%); LAWYERS (50%); PRIME MINISTERS (50%); CAUCASIAN AMERICANS (73%) IrishAmericans; Nostalgia; Soil; Famine; Computers and the Internet
COMPANY: CNINSURE INC (63%)
ORGANIZATION: Auld Sold Export Co
TICKER: CISG (NASDAQ) (63%)
PERSON: BERTIE AHERN (51%); ANN LIVERMORE (51%) Corey Kilgannon; Pat Burke
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (79%) NEW YORK, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (95%); IRELAND
(94%); CHINA (79%) Ireland; County Tipperary (Ireland); Speonk (NY); Ireland
LOAD-DATE: March 17, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1011 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 17, 2007 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
Popularity Might Not Be Enough
BYLINE: By DAN MITCHELL
Page 30
Popularity Might Not Be Enough The New York Times March 17, 2007 Saturday
SECTION: Section C; Column 1; Business/Financial Desk; WHAT'S ONLINE; Pg. 5
LENGTH: 692 words
LET'S say you wanted to build an advertising-supported online media business that took in $50 million a year in
revenue. How many users would you have to attract to get there?
Probably too many for most people to even try, if the numbers run by Jeremy Liew, a venture capitalist at Lightspeed Venture Partners, are accurate. On his blog (lsvp.wordpress.com), Mr. Liew determined that even the type of site
that can get the largest advertiser payments per user would have to be immensely popular before it made that kind of
money.
The analysis is ''sobering,'' wrote Tim O'Reilly, the chief executive of O'Reilly Media, a publisher of computer
books. ''This may be why more entrepreneurs are going for low-investment sites that don't need an exit but provide
'lifestyle businesses' for their owners,'' he wrote on Radar, his company's blog (radar.oreilly.com).
That is, rather than seek venture financing and hire a staff, it may be better for one or two people to create a relatively simple site -- say, a hobbyist blog for guitar enthusiasts -- and use a service like Google AdWords to, hopefully,
make enough money to live on.
But to make $50 million with a big staff-produced content-rich guitar site, sponsored by, say, Fender and Gibson,
a site would have to generate more than 200 million page views a month, Mr. Liew estimated.
A site aimed at a specific demographic, like teenagers or Asian-Americans, would need to generate 800 million
page views a month, by Mr. Liew's reckoning.
And for a general-interest site, the ad rates go even lower, so traffic would need to be much higher to generate $50
million -- about four billion page views a month, which would put it in the top 10 of all the sites on the Web.
All of which is to say that even though advertisers are flocking online, there is still a long way to go before they
start paying the kind of rates they pay to traditional media outlets.
There are other options, of course, including charging for subscriptions, or, as Mr. O'Reilly pointed out, aggregation. He noted how outfits like Weblogs Inc. and Gawker Media create multiple sites, ''publishing blogs like they were
books, with some expected to succeed and others to fail.'' And independent sites can be brought together in a network,
like FM Publishing, which sells ads for dozens of sites.STEMMING THE VIDEO TIDE -- Online video may soon
overwhelm the Internet, creating problems for Internet service providers and potentially for users. Help could come
from new technology being developed for peer-to-peer networks, according to Wade Roush, writing for Technology
Review (technologyreview.com).
I.S.P.'s are wary of peer-to-peer networks not only because of their use for piracy, but also because they hog
bandwidth and turn users into distributors of content who don't pay anything extra for the burdens they place on the
system. But Mr. Roush examines new technologies that could make such networks more efficient and could allow
I.S.P.'s to identify the biggest bandwidth users and charge them accordingly.
That second idea might make advocates of ''network neutrality'' a little nervous, since it would let I.S.P.'s favor
some content providers over others. But Hui Zhang, the computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University who developed the technology, says such concerns are overblown.
''Of course, we don't want the service providers to dictate what they will carry on their infrastructure,'' he said. ''On
the other hand, if P2P users benefit from transmitting and receiving more bits, the guys who are actually transporting
those bits should be able to share in that.''SUPER SUERS -- It became even clearer this week that the Recording Industry Association of America isn't overly worried about the public relations aspects of its fight against file-sharers. In one
case, according to court papers, five big record companies are suing a Florida man who is largely paralyzed from a
stroke (recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com). In another, record companies are suing a Georgia family who say
they cannot possibly have downloaded any music because they don't own a computer (vnunet.com). DAN MITCHELL
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
Page 31
Popularity Might Not Be Enough The New York Times March 17, 2007 Saturday
SUBJECT: BLOGS & MESSAGE BOARDS (90%); VENTURE CAPITAL (90%); ONLINE CONTENT & INFORMATION SERVICES (90%); INTERNET & WWW (89%); INTERNET VIDEO (78%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP
(78%); RECRUITMENT & HIRING (67%); COMPUTER NETWORKS (62%); INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS
(60%); ASIAN AMERICANS (50%); PUBLISHING (78%) Terms not available from NYTimes
GEOGRAPHIC: UNITED STATES (54%)
LOAD-DATE: March 17, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Drawing (Drawing by Chris Gash)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1012 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 17, 2007 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
Out to Make 6:31 A.M. Fashionable
BYLINE: By TRACIE ROZHON
SECTION: Section C; Column 1; Business/Financial Desk; SATURDAY INTERVIEW; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 675 words
Melissa Payner, the chief executive of Bluefly.com, a publicly traded company that calls itself ''the ultimate hookup for the fashion obsessed,'' seems herself to be obsessed, or at least intent, on giving Bluefly an identity. With several
racy advertisements under her designer belt, Ms. Payner vows to make her Web site for discount clothing the hippest,
coolest place to shop.
Although revenue increased 31 percent year over year in the fall of 2006, to $16.3 million, and gross profit increased by one-third in the same period, the company's operating loss doubled. The stock price seems to be stuck below
$2 a share, but somebody likes it: the Soros Fund Management of George Soros still holds a sizable chunk. Ms. Payner
says she has no knowledge of any attempt to buy Bluefly.
A former chief executive of Spiegel, the catalog retailer, Ms. Payner, 48, talked recently about the perils of Web retailing, and of what she called the misperceptions about her own company.
Following are excerpts:Q. What was your goal when you took over?A. My first job was to refocus the company,
to develop a reason why people would want to come to Bluefly.Q. Bluefly's stock has fallen to about $1. Doesn't that
worry you?A. The reason Bluefly survived the Internet crash was that the core idea was great: selling designer clothes at
a value; we say usually at least 40 percent off. But there needed to be a real strategy, something to create an emotional
connection, to engender brand loyalty. Q. Mr. Soros still has a big stake in Bluefly, but last June he cut his ownership to
39 percent, from 80 percent. What happened?A. The Soros team had been interested in the Internet start-ups and invest-
Page 32
Out to Make 6:31 A.M. Fashionable The New York Times March 17, 2007 Saturday
ed in Bluefly from the beginning. After I came aboard, we decided we wanted more cash to expand, and we ended up
recapitalizing. Two other investors -- Maverick and Prentice -- each put up 24 percent and the Soros holdings now stand
at 39 percent. Soros is still very interested in the company.Q. What has changed since the days of the start-ups?A. In the
'80s, people bragged about how much they paid; they paid top dollar. In the '90s, people started bragging about how
little they paid, what a bargain they got.Q. How do you stay on trend, while getting merchandise cheap enough to be
called a bargain?A. We go to shows, and only buy what's right for the season. We want the same things the best department stores get. We'll then know enough to tell the designers ''These particular silhouettes won't sell; you can sell
them to a discounter.'' Q. A discounter like T.J. Maxx?A. And like Loehmann's.Q. So how do you operate?A. We go
into the market and buy every day. We post new buys on our site at 6:31 a.m. We list 150 styles a day, except during the
launch. Then we do more. The spring launch took place on Feb. 28.Q. What are the hottest trends for spring?A. Navy
and white is one. Eyelet and crochet is another.Q. But why would the designers let you sell their latest merchandise for
less than the department stores at the same time? I understand that there is a Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress on the
site now that was selling in Bergdorf's at the end of last summer. That was presented to me as an example of how some
of your merchandise is dated.A. Well, then, there are some brands, not a lot, but a few, where designers say, ''I will sell
you my spring line in the following November.'' That's O.K. because it's such a strong brand we can put it into the resort
category. If it's Diane von Furstenberg, why would we ever say no?Q. So why do you think some people think your
fashions are passe, that you don't in fact carry the trendiest stuff? A. People must have their alarms set for 7 a.m., because that stuff disappears fast, and that may be why. Our e-mails are barely out, and the latest things are gone.Q.
What's your average ticket price?A. About $105.Q. Has the number of shoppers gone up?A. Yes. Traffic is up 30 percent in the last year. I'm trying to manage a turnaround. The company never had a profitable year; that's why they hired
me.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: RETAILERS (90%); INTERNET & WWW (90%); STARTUPS (86%); FASHION & APPAREL (78%);
ENTREPRENEURSHIP (78%); INTERNET RETAILING (76%); COMPANY LOSSES (73%); COMPANY PROFITS (71%); MAIL ORDER RETAILING (68%); BRANDING (68%); BRAND EQUITY (64%) Retail Stores and
Trade; Computers and the Internet; Sales; Company and Organization Profiles
COMPANY: T J MAXX (50%)
ORGANIZATION: Bluefly.com
PERSON: GEORGE SOROS (84%) Melissa Payner; Tracie Rozhon
LOAD-DATE: March 17, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Melissa Payner
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Interview
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1013 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
Page 33
Gas-Powered Footwear's Fate Shows Frustrations of Russian Inventors The New York Times March 17, 2007 Saturday
March 17, 2007 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
Gas-Powered Footwear's Fate Shows Frustrations of Russian Inventors
BYLINE: By ANDREW E. KRAMER
SECTION: Section C; Column 2; Business/Financial Desk; These Boots Were Made for 22 M.P.H.; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1384 words
DATELINE: UFA, Russia
Being a star engineering student at the top-notch science university here wasn't enough to exempt Viktor K. Gordeyev from his physical education class.
Mr. Gordeyev, a specialist in airplane piston engines, sweated it out with everyone else, running laps in lumbering
heavy boots in this town in the foothills of the Ural Mountains.
He vowed to find an easier way. Eventually, he found one -- or at least came close. Mr. Gordeyev invented a gasoline-powered boot that looks like pogo sticks that strap to your shins, and they work on the same principle as the aircushioned basketball shoe.
But rather than being dismissed as a crackpot invention, his boots -- which use tiny pistons -- became classified as
a Russian military secret until 1994.
Now, they have been held up as a symbol of both Russia's deep and rich scientific traditions and the country's inability to convert that talent into useful -- and commercial -- merchandise outside of the weapons business.
Many government officials, Russian scientists and economists are focusing these days on the need to generate new
sources of growth to diversify the country's economy away from oil -- the unsteady source of Russia's recent prosperity.
And there is a growing consensus that entrepreneurialism has promise but faces serious obstacles, including no
vibrant mechanism to bring together venture capitalists, inventors and entrepreneurs to develop viable commercial
products.
In February, President Vladimir V. Putin implored the country's most prominent businesses to branch out and invest in innovation and science. German O. Gref, the minister of economic development, often says Russia's scientific
base distinguishes it from other emerging market economies in India, China and Brazil, even though Russia is often
compared to them.
But as part of a series of pointed articles, the Russian edition of Popular Mechanics magazine argued that Mr.
Gordeyev's thwarted attempt to commercialize the shoes is a symbol of the country's failure to tap its considerable scientific talent for profitable business ideas.
The dream Mr. Gordeyev conceived in 1974 to run faster and jump higher without getting tired might never have
become a popular option for commuters or even caught on as a sport. But unlike the Segway, the American-invented
self-balancing scooter, it never had a chance.
Instead, the boots became a military secret, as generals envisioned soldiers running swiftly and effortlessly alongside armored vehicles.
The boots were declassified in 1994, and Mr. Gordeyev and his partners imagined growing rich by selling their
invention to a lazy public. Instead, the company went out of business in 2006.
Like the boots, Russian scientists are still trying to gain traction in the capitalist world. A company in Saratov
making a novel transport airplane with no tail, called the ''flying saucer,'' never got off the ground.
Russia also has other examples of good ideas later bungled in the process of commercialization. The Russian inventor of the Tetris video game was unable to patent his invention, and thus lost out on huge amounts of money. Rus-
Page 34
Gas-Powered Footwear's Fate Shows Frustrations of Russian Inventors The New York Times March 17, 2007 Saturday
sian engineers invented submersible pumps for oil wells, but failed to invest in their development; now Russian companies buy Western models from Halliburton.
And, in contrast to the United States, venture capital firms and start-up companies in Russia have not congregated
near technology universities. Russian computer programmers, successful in Silicon Valley, are best known at home for
hacking.
''Venture capital firms are starting to work here, but as a rule, if something comes to their attention it is an exception,'' said Igor R. Belousov, a Hewlett-Packard executive who coordinates the company's research at Russian universities.
Meanwhile, natural resources account for 80 percent of Russia's export revenue; crude oil and natural gas alone
account for 65 percent.
To encourage foreign companies to invest in cities rich in scientific talent, Mr. Gref's ministry is setting up technology parks with tax breaks in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod and Novosibirsk.
In another example, Boris V. Gryzlov, the speaker of Parliament, said in February that his political party, United
Russia, should help Russian inventors find markets for their ideas. The program is called the Idea Factory.
Like so much else in Russia these days, it envisions a big role for the Kremlin in venture capital; some 30 committees would recommend scientists for state grants. That approach is not surprising, given the country's history of channeling industrial innovation into its military -- the first home of Mr. Gordeyev's shoes.
For now, though, the boots remain a curiosity, without the wider distribution their owners hoped for.
''Everything that would happen in an engine happens when you step down'' in the boots, said Rustam D. Enikeev,
the dean of the faculty of internal combustion at the Ufa State Aviation Technical University.
A step down compresses air in the shoe as in a typical sneaker, said Mr. Enikeev, who was a designer on the project. But then, a tiny carburetor injects gasoline into the compressed air and a spark plug fires it off. Instead of fastening
a seat belt, the institute's test runner, Marat D. Garipov, an assistant professor of engineering, strapped on shin belts at a
recent demonstration. Then he flicked an ignition switch.
Before running down a university corridor, he jumped in place a few times to warm up the engine. Mr. Garipov
then ran laps for about 10 minutes, going about 12 miles per hour, with the two-stroke boots emitting small puffs of
exhaust.
A test runner once topped out at 21.7 miles per hour, despite the risk of being sent off-balance.
The tanks in the shoes hold a third of a cup of gasoline each and will take the runner three miles; that means the
boots get about 70 miles per gallon.
But even after years of research, gasoline-assisted running remains dangerous.
''The worst situation is when the spark fires as the runner just lands, and the force of the blast is absorbed by his
body,'' Mr. Garipov explains flatly.
The two powerful engines tend to throw a wearer off balance or cause knees to buckle.
Mr. Gordeyev, the inventor, now 61 and retired, disagrees that the boots are dangerous and still has visions of
their mass adoption. ''We've been running in them for years and we haven't had one trauma,'' he said in a telephone interview. ''The latest version operates smoothly. It will become a device for moving humanity. It's a means of personal
transportation.''
First, the institute tried to interest the Soviet Army.
''We ran in the corridor of the general staff building, in front of the generals'' and the minister of defense, Mr. Enikeev said. ''They liked it, and were even a little frightened.''
An order came down for the paratroop command to test the boots, and the design became classified. This gave the
university access to government laboratories in Moscow, including those of the space agency.
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Gas-Powered Footwear's Fate Shows Frustrations of Russian Inventors The New York Times March 17, 2007 Saturday
One result of the Russian space agency testing was a calculation that the energy in calories used to move the twopound boot at a run would exceed the energy input from the gasoline engine. That meant, it was more tiring to run with
the motorized footwear than without it, undermining the original rationale.
Only if the weight could be reduced to below 2 pounds per boot would the wearer have a net energy gain. So far
they have failed at this.
After the shoes were declassified in 1994, when capitalism was beginning to sweep across Russia, the inventors
decided to market the boot.
A former student, Anfis G. Saibakov, formed a company called Ekomotor to design a user-friendly version. He
imagined people might want to commute in the boots, as they do on bicycles or rollerblades. None of this happened.
When Mr. Saibakov demonstrated the boots at Disney World in Florida in 1998, safety came up as a concern, he
said, and the company lacked money to fine-tune the product.
''They don't have characteristics that would allow an ordinary person to use them,'' Mr. Saibakov said glumly, admitting that running in the shoes would always mean ''taking certain risks.''
''They should work like a Kalashnikov,'' he said. ''Reliable in anybody's hands.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: PHYSICAL EDUCATION (90%); FOOTWEAR (90%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (90%); ECONOMIC
NEWS (87%); PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT (78%); EMERGING MARKETS (74%); ARMED FORCES (74%);
MOUNTAINS (72%); ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (72%); VENTURE CAPITAL (70%); BASKETBALL (75%)
Terms not available from NYTimes
COMPANY: CNINSURE INC (65%)
TICKER: CISG (NASDAQ) (65%)
PERSON: VLADIMIR PUTIN (54%)
GEOGRAPHIC: RUSSIA (98%); INDIA (79%); GERMANY (79%); BRAZIL (79%); CHINA (79%); SOUTH
AMERICA (79%)
LOAD-DATE: March 17, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: Marat D. Garipov's boots have tanks that hold a third of a cup of gasoline each, meaning the boots
get about 70 miles per gallon. (Photographs by Joseph Sywenkyj for The New York Times)(pg. C1)
The original boot conceived by Viktor K. Gordeyev is at Ufa State Aviation Technical University.
''The worst situation,'' according to Marat D. Garipov, ''is when the spark fires as the runner just lands, and the force of
the blast is absorbed by his body.'' With two powerful engines at work, balancing is difficult.
Marat D. Garipov, an assistant professor of engineering, demonstrates the boots by flicking an ignition switch. Before
running down a corridor, he jumped in place a few times to warm up the engine. He then ran laps for about 10 minutes,
going about 12 miles per hour, with the two-stroke boots emitting small puffs of exhaust. A test runner once topped out
at 21.7 miles per hour, despite the risk of being sent off-balance. (Photographs by Joseph Sywenkyj for The New York
Times)(pg. C9)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
Page 36
Awaiting A Compromise On YouTube The New York Times March 17, 2007 Saturday
1014 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 17, 2007 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
Awaiting A Compromise On YouTube
BYLINE: By JOE NOCERA
SECTION: Section C; Column 1; Business/Financial Desk; TALKING BUSINESS; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1681 words
''Viacom is so ticked off at YouTube,'' my son Nick informed me not long ago. ''It's just so obvious.''
Nick, who is a senior in high school, knew this not because he reads the business pages; like most 17-year olds, he
doesn't. He knew it because he is a YouTube fanatic, and has a keen understanding of the rhythms of the online video
site. For months, he had been able to watch clips of ''The Daily Show With Jon Stewart'' or ''The Colbert Report'' on
YouTube -- shows that were produced by Viacom's Comedy Central channel.
Suddenly, though, he couldn't get access to them. They had disappeared from YouTube, as had most of Viacom's
other copyrighted fare, like ''SpongeBob SquarePants'' and ''South Park.'' Clearly, something was up. Viacom was, indeed, upset with YouTube.
So upset that this week Viacom filed a $1 billion copyright infringement suit against YouTube and its parent, the
mighty Google, which last year bought the tiny start-up for a jaw-dropping $1.65 billion. At that point, YouTube was a
fledgling company with no profits and negligible revenue. But it had already become the site for posting -- and watching -- short user-generated digital videos. Most of the videos on YouTube really are generated by users -- there are lots
of spoofs and home videos and the like on the site. But there are also plenty of users who are ''generating'' content by
slapping up shows, or portions or shows, that are owned by the big media companies like Viacom. Shows like, well,
''The Daily Show With Jon Stewart'' and ''The Colbert Report.''
At first glance, the Viacom lawsuit may seem like a carbon copy of the music industry's fight against Napster in
the late 1990s. Old-line industry sees new threat from the Internet and tries to sue it into oblivion. But it's not. In that
earlier case, the music industry won the battle only to lose the war. Although the courts decisively ruled that Napster
was infringing copyrights owned by the big music companies, that decision didn't exactly eliminate the practice of stealing copyrighted music from the Internet. All it meant, in practical terms, was that youths had to find other, more shadowy sites to use to download music. Pandora's box having been opened, it couldn't be shut again.
The Viacom suit is about something a good deal more complicated. Just as getting music from the Internet is here
to stay, so is downloading videos. All the big media companies understand that. They all realize that the Internet has
created potential new methods for distributing their shows -- and that creates both great possibilities and great pitfalls.
They all fully understand that they are not going to be able to litigate YouTube off the face of the earth.
The fact that Google owns YouTube gives the small company leverage Napster never had.
So the big media companies are all grappling with how to deal with YouTube. Ultimately, they all want money for
their content, no matter how it is distributed or by whom.
Some companies, like CBS, have decided that honey catches more flies than vinegar. Its approach has been to
play nice with YouTube, and do small deals in the hopes that it can eventually work out something big. (It is putting
March Madness on YouTube, for instance, in a deal sponsored by Pontiac.) Others, like Time Warner, while deeply
annoyed with YouTube, are continuing to negotiate. The company's patience is wearing thin, however.
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Awaiting A Compromise On YouTube The New York Times March 17, 2007 Saturday
But Viacom has decided that the only way to deal with Google and YouTube is to sue. In talking about its suit,
Viacom officials use phrases like the sanctity of copyright, and they speak harshly about what they see as Google's and
YouTube's willful misuse of their property. But really, their goal isn't all that different from CBS and Time Warner.
Viacom wants money for its content. The only real question is whether this suit will get it for them.
''Google respects copyright,'' insisted Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google. In fact, he told me a few days
after the suit was filed, ''we need copyright to be effective because we don't make our own content.'' In Mr. Schmidt's
opinion, even though YouTube doesn't prevent users from posting copyrighted material on the site, that doesn't mean
the company is ignoring the law. On the contrary. ''We are governed by a law called the D.M.C.A., and we are in compliance with that,'' he said.
One of Mr. Schmidt's great qualities is that he always sounds like the voice of sweet reason. You come away from
an interview with him wondering how anyone could possible think that ''Do No Evil'' Google could be less than fully
engaged in protecting the copyrights of others. As Mr. Schmidt points out, the Viacom suit came ''in the context of a
business negotiation'' in which the two companies were trying to work out a deal. From Google's point of view, the lawsuit is little more than effort to gain some increased leverage in the negotiations. And it most certainly is that.
But when you look at it a little more closely, you realize that it is also about those initials Mr. Schmidt used a few
paragraphs ago. D.M.C.A. stands for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a 1998 law that governs how Internet companies are supposed to handle copyrighted material. At its core, the lawsuit is about whether the D.M.C.A. should favor
Google's approach to copyrighted material, or Viacom's.
Paradoxically, the law was originally intended to help the big media companies, which, in the wake of Napster,
were terrified that they were losing their ability to control their copyrighted material. But it also had an important sop to
Internet service providers: it said that they shouldn't be held responsible if people used their service to post copyrighted
content. What they had to do, however, was promise to remove such content immediately when a copyright holder
complained.
This is what Mr. Schmidt means when he says that YouTube is abiding by the law. YouTube doesn't police its site
because its doesn't have to, under its interpretation of the D.M.C.A. But whenever a copyright holder complains, it removes the offending material. The reason you don't see much Jon Stewart on YouTube anymore is that Viacom has
been complaining -- a lot.
But from Viacom's point of view, it is ridiculous that it should bear the onus of finding the offending material and
asking YouTube to remove it. ''To say that the D.M.C.A. protects a company like YouTube when they systematically
show copyrighted material is an extremely twisted interpretation,'' said Philippe P. Dauman, Viacom's chief executive.
According to Viacom, YouTube has allowed tens of thousands -- nay, well over 100,000 -- of its copyrighted clips to be
posted on the site. The company claims it is spending more than $100,000 a month hunting them down and asking that
they be removed. Can this really be the intention of the law?
One provision of the D.M.C.A. is that in order to be held harmless for copyrighted content, an Internet company
has to have no knowledge that the content is on the site. Google, of course, says that it has no idea whether material on
YouTube is being posted illegally or not. But here's where Viacom goes completely ballistic. Surely, it says, YouTube
knows that Viacom's material is on the site -- everyone knows how popular Jon Stewart is to YouTube viewers. ''If you
are aware of copyrighted material being put up and you are profiting from it, then you have an affirmative duty to do
something about it,'' Mr. Dauman said. He also complained that Google was willing to filter copyrighted content -- but
only with companies that cut deals with it.
One of the things you realize when you begin to talk to people who care about copyright law is how fervent they
can get. For much of the technorati, Viacom is a dinosaur that doesn't understand the new world -- or the power of
YouTube to act as a marketing vehicle for their shows.
''YouTube has become a brilliant promotional platform for video content,'' said Roger McNamee, the technology
investor. ''How can it be bad that all the Comedy Central stuff is on there?'' Lawrence Lessig, the law professor at Stanford who specializes in copyright issues, said that YouTube ''allows people to signal what is interesting and what is valuable.'' If Viacom, he went on, ''thought about how to leverage the value instead of trying to stop it, they would be better
off.''
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Awaiting A Compromise On YouTube The New York Times March 17, 2007 Saturday
But from the Viacom side, the issue is simple: It's their property, and they should get to decide who to give it to
and how much to charge for it. ''The law says this is our material,'' said Michael Fricklas, a company lawyer. ''Google is
saying, 'We'll take it and then we can have a business discussion.' ''
The problem for both sides is that copyright law is not nearly as black and white as Google and Viacom are making it out to be. It is filled with compromises and ambiguity. People have always been able to use small amounts of copyrighted material without asking permission, for instance. And though both sides insist that the law is on their side, it is
impossible to know right now how a judge might ultimately rule.
Which is where the real danger lies for both sides. Victory would be sweet, but losing could be disastrous. If
Google wins, YouTube will never have to pay much to anyone for copyrighted content, and companies like Viacom will
wind up either handing over their material or continuing to ask that it be removed -- again and again and again. Smaller
companies -- not to mention the artists themselves -- will probably have less control over their own work. If Viacom
wins, YouTube will no longer be able to allow copyrighted content to be posted -- which will surely hurt its business
prospects. And it will make it more dangerous for any Internet site to use copyrighted material -- even when it is legal to
do so.
That's why, as adamant as they sound now, it is highly likely that Google and Viacom will figure out a way to settle their dispute -- and in so doing set an example for everyone else trying to figure this out. Sometimes, a little ambiguity isn't such a bad thing.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: INTERNET SOCIAL NETWORKING (90%); MOVIES & SOUND RECORDING SECTOR PERFORMANCE (89%); MUSIC INDUSTRY (89%); COPYRIGHT LAW (73%); ENTERTAINMENT & ARTS (89%); INTERNET & WWW (89%); RECORD INDUSTRY (88%); COPYRIGHT (89%); INTERNET AUDIO (87%); RECORD REVENUES (87%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (77%); INTERNET VIDEO (76%); RECORD PRODUCTION &
DISTRIBUTION (74%); INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW (73%); SUITS & CLAIMS (73%); COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT (73%) Terms not available from NYTimes
COMPANY: VIACOM INC (91%); GOOGLE INC (55%)
TICKER: VIA (NYSE) (91%); GOOG (NASDAQ) (55%); GGEA (LSE) (55%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS515210 CABLE AND OTHER SUBSCRIPTION PROGRAMMING (91%); NAICS512110
MOTION PICTURE AND VIDEO PRODUCTION (91%); SIC7812 MOTION PICTURE & VIDEO TAPE PRODUCTION (91%); SIC4841 CABLE & OTHER PAY TELEVISION SERVICES (91%); NAICS518112 WEB
SEARCH PORTALS (55%); SIC8999 SERVICES, NEC (55%); SIC7375 INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SERVICES
(55%); NAICS515210 CABLE & OTHER SUBSCRIPTION PROGRAMMING (91%); NAICS512110 MOTION
PICTURE & VIDEO PRODUCTION (91%); NAICS519130 INTERNET PUBLISHING & BROADCASTING &
WEB SEARCH PORTALS (55%)
PERSON: JON STEWART (84%)
LOAD-DATE: March 17, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Eric Schmidt, Google's chief, says his company ''respects copyright.'' (Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
Page 39
Big Changes At Big Sur The New York Times March 16, 2007 Friday
1015 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 16, 2007 Friday
Late Edition - Final
Big Changes At Big Sur
BYLINE: By FINN-OLAF JONES
SECTION: Section F; Column 1; Escapes; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1708 words
DRIVERS passing through Big Sur on Highway 1 between Los Angeles and San Francisco are inevitably awed by
the duel of sea and sky played out against the rugged Santa Lucia Mountains. Indeed, the pristine slopes facing Highway 1, a designated American National Scenic Byway, are some of the most rigidly protected in the country, guarded
by a phalanx of agencies that range from the Monterey County Resource Management Agency to the California Coastal
Commission.
But turn down one of the dozens of private roads along the coast, and you'll discover teams of builders laying
stone walls and installing hot tubs at multimillion-dollar properties, trucks full of building supplies groaning up the
steep switchbacks and poles set up on the hillsides with orange plastic netting fluttering between them like Tibetan
prayer flags.
There's a mini-construction boom happening in Big Sur, local real estate agents say. And, these days, more than
half the homes in the region are owned by part-time residents who live mainly in Los Angeles or around San Francisco
Bay.
''For the past six years we've been seeing a lot of fund managers and dot-commers coming in who want to buy a
slice of heaven,'' said Robert Carver, an architect whose firm, Carver & Schicketanz, specializes in Big Sur. ''Contractors here have been so busy that folks are importing outside contractors, and builders from as far away as New York.''
Big Sur's epic landscapes, studded with redwood forests, hot springs and misty coves, have attracted metaphysical
types for at least three generations. ''It was here in Big Sur I first learned to say Amen!'' the novelist Henry Miller wrote
in ''Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch'' after settling here in 1944.
Even so, more than a quarter of the properties along the coastline have changed hands the last decade, said Martha
Diehl, a member of Monterey County's planning commission, altering the region's demographics. In 2005, building
permit applications submitted to Monterey County were up about 50 percent from five years before.
Perhaps one of the biggest surprises for anyone who has watched how the Hamptons or Palm Beach have developed is the complete lack of large housing or even fencing around the pricey acreage being bought up by wealthy city
dwellers seeking second homes. ''You don't move to Big Sur if you want to host a lot of people,'' said Mr. Carver, citing
his clients' disinterest in Aspen-size mansions. ''This has always been a place to go to for solitude.''
Peter Mullin agrees. ''I read, I hike, I sit in the hot tub and watch nature in all its glory,'' said Mr. Mullin, a Los
Angeles-based entrepreneur who has spent the last decade converting a 30-year-old cabin into a magnificent, yet understated, weekend home.
Clinging to a rock shelf suspended between the waves and Highway 1, Mr. Mullin's retreat is an interconnected
series of wood pavilions that have Asian touches -- right down to a koi pond that surrounds the front entrance. Despite
the spectacular construction, the place has just enough beds for Mr. Mullin and his family.
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Big Changes At Big Sur The New York Times March 16, 2007 Friday
''The freewheeling hippie feeling of Big Sur has modified,'' he said. ''But the big swells of the sea are raining on
you. And you still have to know where your candles are for the power outages. Most newcomers cherish the scenery
there, and they try to blend in.''
EVEN so, the change is noticeable. ''My neighbors are a lot different now than when I moved here,'' said Monique
Bourin, who has lived in Big Sur for 20 years. ''The flower children and counterculture types who came here in the '60s
and '70s without any money were suddenly sitting on top of multimillion-dollar properties, and a lot of them moved.
The buy-in for a coastal plot is now around $3 million.''
Ms. Bourin, who was helped by her late husband, has spent the last two decades building a house in an isolated
highland valley facing the sea. ''We were hippies who were going to homestead and build our house with our own two
hands,'' she said, indicating a pile of lumber outside her front door, awaiting a new project. ''It's been a lot of work, but
I'm almost done.''
Her cedar and redwood home rises out of a ravine near Pfeiffer Beach like a vision from the Whole Earth Catalog,
complete with stained-glass windows and a well-tended vegetable garden. It has solar power and a water cistern so that
it's entirely self-contained, right down to an 1893 wood-burning stove salvaged from the Los Alamos, N.M., train station.
On the hills surrounding her home, sculptural modernistic dwellings that range in value from $2.5 million to $6
million are replacing the simple wooden cabins and modest bungalows that once made up most of the housing here.
Orange flagging across the ravine indicates another structure about to be built on a neighboring property.
A gleaming BMW convertible parked on the dirt road in front of Ms. Bourin's homestead gives a hint to the mixed
feeling she might have about all the changes going on in Big Sur; she has become a successful local real estate broker.
(By the way, if her house were for sale, she said, she'd price it at $3.7 million.)
Given all the newcomers, some fear that Big Sur is becoming another Aspen or Sedona, where the wealthy have
bought into the local counterculture lifestyle while indelibly altering it.
''People think of gentrification as something that happens in downtown neighborhoods,'' said Chris Calott, an Albuquerque-based urban planner who has been camping in Big Sur for more than 30 years. ''But now we're seeing it happen on an unprecedented scale in rural areas all over the country. The questions facing Big Sur are the same ones facing
the Hamptons, Taos, Marfa and other bucolic destinations that become popular with urban elites. Can a place be considered 'preserved' if the local store now has a fantastic imported cheese section, but you have to drive an hour to buy
twine?''
Ms. Diehl, the planning commissioner, who has lived in the area for 20 years, said, ''We don't want a Disney or
Colonial Williamsburg Big Sur -- we want to keep it real. The only people who can go through the process are people
who can afford it, and that brings social costs.''
Michelle Rizzolo understands the problem well. ''We can't find any place for our employees to live,'' said Ms. Rizzolo, who left the kitchen of the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills to open the funky Big Sur Bakery & Restaurant on a lot
she shares with a gas station tucked off a wooded knoll on Highway 1. ''In fact, when we started this place, we all had to
sleep on the floor of the bakery.''
Although two of the area's biggest employers, the Post Ranch Inn and the Ventana Inn & Spa, have housing for
their employees, on weekday mornings workers from Salinas, an inland city an hour's drive away, are crammed in cars
and trucks going south on Highway 1 to their jobs in Big Sur.
While Big Sur is changing, it isn't so easy to tear down an old cabin and build a modern house. The region has
some of the country's strictest building laws, officials and contractors say, and new construction tends to be limited to
existing building footprints. There are rigid standards regarding water and natural preservation.
''I usually tell clients to count on one, or even two, years between buying the property and putting the first shovel
in,'' said Jay Auburn, who procures building permits for Carver & Schicketanz. ''You have to factor in an additional 5 to
10 percent of construction costs just for getting over the regulations.''
Two Carver & Schicketanz clients, Zachary Treadwell, a Los Angeles-based screenwriter, and his wife, Langka,
recently built a 1,500-square-foot sod-roofed retreat half-buried in a windy hillside 600 feet above the Pacific and only
accessible by a steep and winding private road in the narrow canyon that leads to Pfeiffer Beach. The road was only
Page 41
Big Changes At Big Sur The New York Times March 16, 2007 Friday
blacktopped last December. Ms. Bourin, the real estate agent, estimated that the Treadwell property would go on the
market at $6 million.
As is typical with most new construction in Big Sur, not even a fence delineates where the Treadwells' land ends
and public space begins. The home, a glass-and-rock cube with a stone-lined in-ground hot tub, appears Zen-like in its
simplicity. Yet the effort involved in the logistics and regulatory hurdles the Treadwells had to overcome seems akin to
the building of the Pyramids. Even choosing the grass for the roof was complicated.
''Some of the oak grass is considered endangered,'' said Fred Ballarini, one of the naturalists hired to help shepherd
the Treadwells through some 18 different presentations to the Monterey County Resource Management Agency. ''We
were required to replant three times the amount of the grass that was affected by the construction nearby.''
The biggest hurdle for getting a building permit is keeping new construction invisible from Highway 1 and other
areas of public access. ''General rule of thumb is if you can see it, you can't build it,'' said Dale Ellis, director of the
management agency. Hence the rise of flagging scaffolds that outline proposed construction throughout Big Sur's back
roads -- erected so regulators can determine the visual impact of new construction.
FOR the Treadwells, the effort has paid off. During a recent visit, coyotes and a wildcat scurried along the patio
while midway to the vast horizon a line of migrating gray whales spouted like sea locomotives.
When the sun set, the glass house seemed suspended by invisible threads between the starry sky and the pounding
surf below. Highway 1 and any other sign of civilization were hidden behind the hills that had merged into the night.
Despite the sweeping view of the California coast, one could be the last person on earth. ''All that matters is that the
miraculous becomes the norm,'' Henry Miller wrote -- and every weekend, that possibility exists for the Treadwells and
other denizens of Big Sur.
''It was a major thing, getting all the permits,'' Ms. Treadwell said as her three small children played outside in the
steaming hot tub. ''But we knew that when we got into this, and we're fine with it. Even with all the building going on,
we think the magic of this place is going to be preserved.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: CONSTRUCTION (90%); MOUNTAINS (90%); COASTAL AREAS (89%); LAND USE PLANNING
(89%); FORESTS & WOODLANDS (77%); COUNTIES (76%); REAL ESTATE (76%); CONSTRUCTION SECTOR
PERFORMANCE (75%); COUNTY GOVERNMENT (71%); MUTUAL FUNDS (71%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP
(71%); REAL ESTATE AGENTS (71%); CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS & COMPONENTS (70%); BUILDING
PERMITS (70%); NOVELS & SHORT STORIES (63%) Housing; Housing
PERSON: Finn-Olaf Jones
GEOGRAPHIC: LOS ANGELES, CA, USA (94%); SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA (93%); SAN FRANCISCO BAY
AREA, CA, USA (79%) CALIFORNIA, USA (95%); NEW YORK, USA (79%); XIZANG, CHINA (56%) UNITED
STATES (95%); CHINA (56%) Big Sur (Calif) ; California
LOAD-DATE: March 16, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: THE GRASS CEILING -- Like anyone who builds in Big Sur, Zachary and Langka Treadwell had
to satisfy a lot of California and local environmental regulations. Their hillside home, a cube of glass and rock, has a
sod roof. (Photo by Noah Berger for The New York Times)(pg. F1)
DISCRETE DESIGN -- The Treadwells have views 600 feet above the Pacific from their bedroom and terrace, but the
house is relatively invisible to the outside world.
NATURAL HABITAT -- Peter Mullin spent a decade building a home that clings to the rock.
CHANGES -- Monique Bourin, a real estate broker, has been in Big Sur for 20 years.
FLIP SIDE -- Michelle Rizzolo says the boom is pushing her employees out of Big Sur. (Photographs by Noah Berger
for The New York Times)(pg. F8) Map of California highlighting Big Sur. (pg. F8)
Page 42
Big Changes At Big Sur The New York Times March 16, 2007 Friday
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1016 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 16, 2007 Friday
Late Edition - Final
Future of UBS Executive Part of Wall Street Chatter
BYLINE: By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN and MICHAEL J. de la MERCED; Julia Werdigier contributed reporting.
SECTION: Section C; Column 5; Business/Financial Desk; Street Scene; Pg. 7
LENGTH: 453 words
Kenneth D. Moelis, the president of UBS's investment bank in New York, is threatening to leave the firm, according to people briefed on the matter.
Credited with turning UBS from a small Swiss bank into a Wall Street powerhouse over the last five years, Mr.
Moelis has told colleagues and friends that he has begun looking for opportunities elsewhere, these people said.
He has floated the idea of starting his own advisory firm or private equity shop, or possibly joining another bank,
but it remains possible that Mr. Moelis could stay at the company and may be angling for more authority, they said,
speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak about personnel matters.
Rohini Pragasam, a UBS spokeswoman, said that Mr. Moelis was still with the firm and declined to elaborate.
Speculation about Mr. Moelis has spread throughout the company and across Wall Street in recent days. On
Wednesday, a protege of Mr. Moelis, Jeffrey A. McDermott, who is one of three global co-heads of investment banking, said that he would leave on June 30 after six years at the firm.
In an internal memo, UBS said that Mr. McDermott, who is based in New York, was leaving ''to pursue outside
entrepreneurial opportunities.''
The loss of Mr. Moelis would be a blow for UBS, which ranked first in advising initial public offerings globally
and seventh in advising on global mergers and acquisitions last year, according to the research firm Thomson Financial.
Around Wall Street, Mr. Moelis is known for his long list of big clients and for a long history in investment banking, including high-profile stints at Drexel Burnham Lambert, which he left in 1990 after the firm filed for bankruptcy,
and Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, where he ran the Los Angeles office.
But Mr. Moelis has had frequent confrontations with UBS's managers in Switzerland, who he believes have not
used the balance sheet aggressively enough, especially as the private equity market has grown.
He has been embarrassed by instances in which he committed loans to clients, only to be told by his Swiss bosses
that he could not make the transaction.
Mr. Moelis and Mr. McDermott joined UBS in 2001 as part of a sweeping transformation of the firm by John P.
Costas, then the chief executive of the investment bank and now the head of UBS's hedge fund, Dillon Read Capital
Management.
Page 43
Future of UBS Executive Part of Wall Street Chatter The New York Times March 16, 2007 Friday
Once he arrived at UBS, Mr. Moelis hired 70 investment bankers during his first three months, pulling in talent
from competitors like Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse.
Among them was Mr. McDermott, who was then a managing director and co-head of investment banking for the
industrial large-capitalization group at Salomon Smith Barney.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: BANKING & FINANCE (90%); INVESTMENT BANKING (90%); PRIVATE EQUITY (89%); ENTERPRISE GLOBALIZATION (78%); INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERINGS (78%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (78%);
MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS (50%); BUSINESS INSOLVENCY & BANKRUPTCY (73%); ANNUAL FINANCIAL RESULTS (70%); RANKINGS (65%); HEDGE FUNDS (50%); MERGERS (76%) Biographical Information
COMPANY: UBS AG (92%); THOMSON FINANCIAL (66%); CREDIT SUISSE SECURITIES USA LLC (53%);
MORGAN STANLEY (51%); SALOMON SMITH BARNEY HOLDINGS INC (50%); SMITH BARNEY HOLDINGS INC (50%); MCDERMOTT WILL & EMERY LLP (85%); CREDIT SUISSE GROUP AG (57%)
ORGANIZATION: Ubs Ag
TICKER: UBSN (SWX) (92%); UBS (NYSE) (92%); UBS (LSE) (92%); MS (NYSE) (51%); NQE (AMEX) (50%);
8657 (TSE) (92%); CSGN (SWX) (57%); CS (NYSE) (57%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS522110 COMMERCIAL BANKING (92%); SIC6029 COMMERCIAL BANKS, NEC (92%);
NAICS523120 SECURITIES BROKERAGE (51%); SIC6211 SECURITY BROKERS, DEALERS, & FLOTATION
COMPANIES (51%); NAICS551111 OFFICES OF BANK HOLDING COMPANIES (57%); NAICS524126 DIRECT
PROPERTY & CASUALTY INSURANCE CARRIERS (57%); NAICS523920 PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT (57%)
PERSON: Kenneth Moelis; Rohini Pragasam; Andrew Ross Sorkin; Michael J De La Merced; Julia Werdigier
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, USA (93%) UNITED STATES (93%); SWITZERLAND (79%); CENTRAL EUROPE (58%)
LOAD-DATE: March 16, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1017 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 16, 2007 Friday
Late Edition - Final
China Approves Property Law, Strengthening Its Middle Class
BYLINE: By JOSEPH KAHN
Page 44
China Approves Property Law, Strengthening Its Middle Class The New York Times March 16, 2007 Friday
SECTION: Section A; Column 1; Foreign Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1047 words
DATELINE: BEIJING, Friday, March 16
After more than a quarter-century of market-oriented economic policies and record-setting growth, China on Friday
enacted its first law to protect private property explicitly.
The measure, which was delayed a year ago amid vocal opposition from resurgent socialist intellectuals and oldline, left-leaning members of the ruling Communist Party, is viewed by its supporters as building a new and more secure
legal foundation for private entrepreneurs and the country's urban middle-class home and car owners.
But delays in pushing it through the Communist Party's generally pliant legislative arm, the National People's Congress, and a ban on news media discussion of the proposal, raise questions about the underlying intentions and the governing style of President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, experts say.
Despite a high level of interest among intellectuals and businessmen and the unexpected decision last year to
withdraw the measure from the legislative agenda at the last minute, neither leader has spoken about the matter publicly.
Mr. Wen's two-hour address to the nation on the opening day of the annual two-week legislative session last week
did not mention property rights.
The measure could not pass the legislature, which acts under the party's authority, without the active support of
the top leadership. Yet the conspicuous silence of Mr. Hu and Mr. Wen appears to be a form of tribute to the influence
of current and former officials and leading scholars who argue that China's economic policies have fueled corruption
and enriched the elite at the expense of the poor and the environment.
''My own view is that the leftist voices that have emerged are not going to disappear because we have a property
law,'' said Zhu Xueqin, a historian and government expert who supports the law. ''On the contrary, they are stronger now
than they have been in some time.''
The leadership did not so much overcome opposition to the property law as forbid it. Unlike in 2005, when leaders
invited broad discussion about property rights, the latest drafts of the law were not widely circulated. Several leftleaning scholars, who favor preserving some elements of China's eroded socialist system, said they had come under
pressure from their universities to stay silent.
When one financial magazine, Caijing, defied the Propaganda Department's ban on reporting on the matter and
published a cover story last week, it was ordered to halt distribution and reprint the issue without the offending article,
people associated with the magazine said.
While the law's final wording -- and the nature of any compromises necessary to build a consensus to pass it -remain unclear, many mainstream scholars and business people have welcomed it.
Several said they also approved of the way Mr. Hu and Mr. Wen had handled the opposition.
''I think the low-key approach was the best way to get this law passed,'' said Mao Shoulong, a public policy expert
at People's University in Beijing. ''The point is to enact a new law, not to pick a fight.''
Mr. Zhu agreed. ''Their style is to say less and do more,'' he said.
But the leadership's strategy did not resolve the underlying tensions. Hundreds of scholars and retired officials
signed a petition against the law, which they said ''overturns the basic system of socialism.''
The petition claimed the law did too little to distinguish between private property gained legally through hard
work and public property that falls into private hands through corruption. They also argued that China could not give
state-owned property and private property the same legal status and still call itself socialist.
Supporters of the law dispute the assertion that it will protect the ill-gotten gains of corruption, arguing that it will
protect only legal property. In the past, Chinese have bought and sold property freely, but doing so in a legal vacuum.
Supporters say they hope the law strengthens the rights of property holders, especially middle-class homeowners.
Page 45
China Approves Property Law, Strengthening Its Middle Class The New York Times March 16, 2007 Friday
China's urban middle class has fueled a real estate boom, even though all land is owned by the state and purchasers trade only the right to use property on the land for up to 70 years. The disposition of property after that term expires
is one of many unsettled issues.
But proponents of the law tend to remain quiet on the broader complaint that China's pretense of socialism has become more and more hollow. Leftists do not seem likely to give up their offensive.
They scored an important victory recently when online petitions and an intensive campaign in the state-run news
media appear to have prompted a leading American private equity company, the Carlyle Group, to scale back its
planned investment in one of China's largest construction machinery manufacturers, Xugong Group. The investment
had become a test of China's willingness to sell majority stakes in core industrial companies to foreign investors.
Amid this tussle, Mr. Hu and Mr. Wen appear to have sought a middle ground. In public statements, Mr. Hu has
promoted a ''harmonious society'' that does a better job of distributing wealth equitably and alleviates some of the excesses of pollution and corruption that have accompanied rapid growth.
Mr. Wen has focused mainly on lifting rural incomes and increasing social spending. Those approaches have addressed some concerns of people on the left. But in practice, the two leaders have also sought to keep faith with business
leaders and the rising middle class. Under their leadership, state-run banks have sold shares to foreign investors and
overhauled bank management systems with the help of foreign consultants.
As well as approving the property law, the legislature revised a corporate tax, ending an advantage foreign investors enjoyed over local companies for more than two decades.
Mr. Wen and Mr. Hu have so far steered relatively small amounts of government revenue into the country's rudimentary social welfare system. And they continue to invest heavily in infrastructure and industrial expansion, helping
the economy expand even faster than in the 1990s.
Those measures, along with the property law, suggest that they will not casually abandon the pro-growth policies
that have made China a leading economic power.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: POLITICS (90%); PROPERTY LAW (90%); PUBLIC POLICY (90%); LEGISLATIVE BODIES (90%);
LEGISLATORS (90%); ECONOMIC NEWS (89%); ECONOMIC POLICY (89%); LEGISLATION (78%); TRENDS
(78%); FREEDOM OF SPEECH (78%); ETHICS (78%); DELAYS & POSTPONEMENTS (77%); APPROVALS
(77%); POLITICAL PARTIES (76%); HEADS OF STATE & GOVERNMENT (76%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP
(76%); FREEDOM OF PRESS (74%); HISTORY (73%); PRIME MINISTERS (73%); MIDDLE INCOME PERSONS
(75%) Law and Legislation; Economic Conditions and Trends; Ethics; Freedom of the Press; Freedom of Speech and
Expression; Privatization
COMPANY: CNINSURE INC (93%)
TICKER: CISG (NASDAQ) (93%)
PERSON: HU JINTAO (92%); WEN JIABAO (91%) Joseph Kahn; Hu Jintao (Pres); Wen Jiabao (Prime Min)
GEOGRAPHIC: BEIJING, CHINA (58%) NORTH CENTRAL CHINA (58%) CHINA (95%) China; China; China
LOAD-DATE: March 16, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
Page 46
The Stylist Who Would Be Star The New York Times March 15, 2007 Thursday
1018 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 15, 2007 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
The Stylist Who Would Be Star
BYLINE: By RUTH LA FERLA
SECTION: Section G; Column 3; Thursday Styles; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1616 words
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES
RACHEL ZOE strums her moods like the strings of a guitar. Her tone, dulcet when she talks about the women she
has dressed -- Hollywood nymphets like Keira Knightley and Mischa Barton -- turns raspy when she catalogs her woes.
There is the jackhammer pounding from the construction site opposite her house in the Hollywood hills; there is the
walk-in closet that cannot begin to contain her personal wardrobe, its contents spilling into three adjacent rooms. But
Ms. Zoe, a celebrity stylist almost as famous as the stars she dresses, coaxes out a plangent chord on the subject that
most vexes her: the rude gossip that trails her wherever she goes.
''It's like being punished by your parents for something you didn't do,'' she said last week, in response to rumors
that have variously portrayed her as a taskmistress who foists diet-drug cocktails on her clients to whittle them into
sample sizes, and as suffering herself from an eating disorder that has ravaged her tiny frame. Most grievous, in her
view, is the talk that she ceaselessly schemes to upstage her clients by thrusting herself at the camera with the likes of
Ms. Barton, Ms. Knightley and Nicole Richie (who deserted Ms. Zoe last month for a rival stylist).
Snatching the spotlight ''was never my intention,'' Ms. Zoe insisted over Diet Cokes and brownies on her palmshaded patio. ''I never set out to be in the public eye.''
In recent months Ms. Zoe has parlayed her fame (or notoriety), her talents and a readily identifiable Rachel Zoe
look -- a studiedly disheveled distillation of vintage clothes and current designs -- into a multitentacled fashion career.
The latest red-carpet stylist to affix her name to a product line, Ms. Zoe, who began as a stylist for YM magazine in the
1990s, stands to eclipse them all.
In the last year, L'Wren Scott, who dresses Nicole Kidman and Ellen Barkin, introduced her own fashion label.
Patricia Field, the costume designer for ''Sex and the City'' and ''The Devil Wears Prada,'' now markets her own line; and
Andrea Lieberman, who dresses Faith Hill and Mary J. Blige, designs jewelry for Mouawad and consults on L.A.M.B.,
the sportswear collection conceived by her client Gwen Stefani.
As for Ms. Zoe, she juggles projects. She is at work on a handbag collection, her second, for Leiber, formerly Judith Leiber.
''She is one of those rare personalities in this business who can make a name for herself, and in this case almost
brand herself,'' said Frank Zambrelli, the president of Leiber and Ms. Zoe's collaborator in the bags' design. Baroque in
their styling, they sell for about $2,500 to $9,000.
Charlie Corwin, a Hollywood producer who with Jamie Patricof is developing a television pilot with Ms. Zoe,
calls her one of the world's most influential fashion personalities. ''More so than in the past,'' he said, ''the fashion industry today is largely driven by celebrities. Rachel is the conduit to that. And certain members of the old guard in fashion
are probably feeling threatened by that.''
Page 47
The Stylist Who Would Be Star The New York Times March 15, 2007 Thursday
Ms. Zoe, who reportedly commands up to $6,000 a day for talking her clients out of their dungarees and baseball
caps (a figure she would not confirm), acknowledged that the gossip stings. ''Over the last year I've learned to develop a
really thick skin,'' she said.
But the whiff of scandal that clings to her is an integral part of the Zoe mystique. Cinco Calfee, the senior manager for strategic marketing at Samsung, which is featuring Ms. Zoe in a print campaign for its BlackJack cellphone, said
that her controversial image has been a boon. ''It only raises her profile,'' Ms. Calfee said. Among potential Samsung
customers, ''she's getting a lot of attention. People who didn't know who she was a year ago know her now.''
Ms. Zoe, who styled spring 2007 advertising campaigns for Leiber and the Jimmy Choo shoe brand, has simultaneously been working on staff uniforms for the Thompson Hotel in Beverly Hills, in collaboration with Jenni Kayne, a
Los Angeles designer.
She consults for Piperlime.com, a Web site selling shoes that is run by the Gap, and performs a similar service for
Revolveclothing.com, a popular shopping site that features Ms. Zoe's styling tips. She is writing a guide, ''Style A to
Zoe,'' to be published by Warner Books in October.
Although confidentiality agreements prohibit her from talking about her plans, she said she is about to complete
arrangements to style or design for at least two well-known luxury brands. Her agent, Todd Shemarya, confirmed that
Ms. Zoe will be a creative consultant for Halston, the legendary fashion house, which this week was bought by the film
producer Harvey Weinstein and a private equity group. She will help put together a creative team for the house.
PUBLICLY hiring a stylist to design or market a fashion label is a departure for the fashion industry. A half-dozen
years ago, stylists were all but invisible -- service personnel hovering behind the scenes, shrouded in sweats and darting
to center stage only to pin a stray seam.
Today they are the boldface names. ''They're walking down the carpet, sitting in the front rows at fashion shows
and invited to fabulous parties'' said Bonnie Fuller, the editorial director of American Media, which publishes Star magazine. ''They're living the celebrity lifestyle.''
In Ms. Zoe's case, the pictures seem to tell the tale. Last fall she appeared in Harper's Bazaar celebrating her 35th
birthday party at Social Hollywood, a club on Sunset Boulevard, partying with intimates like Debra Messing, MaryKate Olsen, Ms. Knightley, Ms. Barton and Ms. Richie.
She is routinely seen in celebrity gossip magazines like Star, toting supersize handbags and wearing alien-style
specs. She hobnobs with her clients -- her ''girls,'' as she calls them -- in much the same way that Halston socialized with
Liza Minnelli in the 1970s and early '80s, outfitting her, then escorting her to Studio 54.
Ms. Zoe stands to profit from similar associations. Socializing with the stars ''gives the stylist a certain cachet of
being in the know,'' said Dana Telsey, an independent retail analyst. Stylists like her ''do have the ability to make a name
for themselves,'' Ms. Telsey said, and to transform their personal wattage into a valuable marketing tool. She added that
the phenomenon, while ''still in its infancy,'' bears watching nonetheless.
To Ms. Zoe's detractors, especially her peers, the phenomenon rankles.
''It's shocking to see a stylist get as much publicity as her clients,'' said Wayne Scot Lukas, who has dressed Janet
Jackson and Meryl Streep. Mr. Lukas, who sells a sportswear collection on HSN shopping channel, said that for a stylist
like Ms. Zoe to ''step away from her primary role as caretaker and actively seek out the flashbulbs is the kiss of death.''
He suggested that her angling for the spotlight would cost Ms. Zoe clients.
Not so, she maintained. Aside from Ms. Richie, whom she declined to discuss, ''I haven't lost anyone,'' she said.
Ms. Zoe both caters to and circulates among Hollywood's hard-partying set, young actresses who are the subject
of continual rumors in the tabloids and on the Web. As their stylist, she has been caught in the cross hairs, portrayed as
a controlling ''older sister,'' as dependent on drugs as some of her clients. Those rumors, Ms. Zoe said, ''not only have no
merit, they are so opposite of reality.''
Sounding by turns wounded and willful, she added: ''I've never touched a drug in my life. Until recently, I didn't
even know what crystal meth was. And I haven't known the name of a diet drug since Dexatrim in the '80s. The only
person I've told to lose weight is my mom.''
Page 48
The Stylist Who Would Be Star The New York Times March 15, 2007 Thursday
Mr. Weinstein, who has known Ms. Zoe for years, called her ''the straightest, most conservative person I know.
Socially she is boring. The most I've seen Rachel do at any party or event is have a glass of white wine.''
Some suggest Ms. Zoe is vulnerable in part because she has forged relationships with clients that some of them
find oppressive. Inexperienced in the ways of style, they appear to have refashioned themselves in her image -- Zoebots,
as rival stylists call them -- dressed in look-alike Grecian draped gowns and Mod-inspired minis.
Ms. Zoe concedes that she has a hard time keeping professional and personal relationships apart. ''I nurture these
girls,'' she said of her clients and styling assistants. ''We're like family. I don't know how to do it any other way. We
laugh, we fight, we let our guards down. If we bond, we have to hang out.''
She has even enlisted her husband, Rodger Berman, an investment banker turned awards-show entrepreneur, as a
collaborator. ''He goes to the shows in Europe with me,'' she said. ''And here at home, my girls have done whole fashion
shows for him.''
Her relationships come from the heart, she said, her style sense ''from the gut.'' Mr. Zambrelli of Leiber is impressed by her radar. ''She brings almost a prescient sense of where the market is going to be, and of where peoples'
tastes are,'' he said.
Ms. Zoe has a personal affinity for vintage pieces, which she mixes with pristine Gucci, Hermes and Chanel. Pulling a leopard-spot Saint Laurent coat from her closet, she gushed: ''My mother gave me this. It's fabulous, isn't it? I
wore it the very first hour.''
Her makeup, too, owes a debt to the old-school glamour of an Edie Sedgwick or Brigitte Bardot. ''I'm always going to have a smoky eye and a matte lip,'' she said. Then, in the next breath, she unabashedly contradicted herself. ''I'm
going to head toward a polished lady look,'' she mused. ''I'm feeling Grace Kelly. I like to mix it up.
''It's about change, isn't it?''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: FASHION & APPAREL (89%); CELEBRITIES (90%); FASHION DESIGNERS (89%); EATING DISORDERS (52%); WEIGHT LOSS DRUGS (68%) Apparel; Celebrities
PERSON: KEIRA KNIGHTLEY (92%); NICOLE KIDMAN (52%); GWEN STEFANI (51%) Rachel Zoe; Ruth La
Ferla
GEOGRAPHIC: LOS ANGELES, CA, USA (91%) CALIFORNIA, USA (91%) UNITED STATES (91%)
LOAD-DATE: March 15, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: PHOTO OP -- Rachel Zoe, above, and, at near left, with Lindsay Lohan, Nicky Hilton, Nicole
Richie. Her studiedly disheveled look influences clients. (Photos by Kristyn O'Reilly/Retna Ltd., top
John Shearer/WireImage.com)(pg. G1)
NAME GAME -- For Rachel Zoe, brand extension includes being featured in an advertisement for a Samsung cellphone, designing handbags for Leiber and staff uniforms for a hotel in Beverly Hills.
EQUAL FOOTING -- Ms. Zoe, right, at her studio in Los Angeles, sharing a moment with Anne Hathaway, top left,
and Mischa Barton. (Photos by Misha Erwitt for The New York Times, above
Evan Agostini/Getty Images, left)(pg. G5)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
Page 49
Avon Comes Calling With a New Campaign The New York Times March 15, 2007 Thursday
1019 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 15, 2007 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
Avon Comes Calling With a New Campaign
BYLINE: By STUART ELLIOTT
SECTION: Section C; Column 1; Business/Financial Desk; MEDIA: ADVERTISING; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 1002 words
REMEMBER the perky commercials that began with the ringing of a doorbell followed by the words ''Avon calling''? Now, years later, Avon wants to ring billions of doorbells at the same time with the largest campaign in its 121year history.
The campaign, now getting under way, carries the upbeat theme ''Hello tomorrow.'' The ads are the first work
from a new Avon creative agency, Soho Square in New York, part of the WPP Group, which has been developing the
campaign since September 2005.
''It was a journey in getting there,'' said Elizabeth Smith, executive vice president at Avon Products in New York,
who is president for Avon North American and global marketing.
''It was not a matter of, 'Gee, I love that brand,' '' she added, explaining what the campaign is meant to accomplish,
but rather an effort to express that Avon ''is the company that best understands and empowers women.''
The campaign seeks to recruit sales representatives to join the more than five million who already work for Avon,
as well as to build morale among employees of the company, which recently went through layoffs.
The campaign also has a worldwide scope, in keeping with a recent reorganization of Avon by Andrea Jung, its
chief executive, to make more decisions along global lines in areas like marketing.
To reflect the ambitious nature of the campaign, Avon plans to increase ad spending this year to $340 million,
compared with $250 million in 2006 and $135 million in 2005.
''We feel wonderful about the message,'' Ms. Smith said, ''and we're backing it up with the dollars.''
A marketing expert said that the campaign might still fall short.
''The issue remains as to whether Ms. Jung can use this effort to enthuse and energize her five million sales representatives,'' said Peter Sealey, a former marketing executive for companies like Coca-Cola.
''Maybe she can rally the troops,'' said Mr. Sealey, who is adjunct professor of marketing at the Drucker School of
Management at Claremont Graduate University, but he said the real issue was what he called a conflict between relying
on a sales force and embracing the opportunity to sell in a more ''pervasive and personal'' way, through the Internet.
The campaign has an online component, at avon.com, where Avon has been selling products for the last decade,
along with television commercials, print advertisements and brochures.
There is also a cause-marketing element. Avon is founding a Hello Tomorrow Fund and pledges to donate money
through it to organizations in 18 countries that help women in areas like business development and community service.
The campaign has a broader reach than the sales force and company employees, Ms. Smith said. It is also intended
to burnish the Avon brand image among consumers as well as help sell Avon products like lipsticks, skin lotions, fragrances and moisturizers.
Page 50
Avon Comes Calling With a New Campaign The New York Times March 15, 2007 Thursday
''Avon is one of those classic brands that everyone knows,'' said Nicola Bell, client services director at Soho
Square, ''but they've come to a point in time when they needed to re-energize the brand across all audiences.''
After research by the agency determined that Avon had to ''look for a more fresh, contemporary expression of its
values in terms of empowering and supporting women,'' Ms. Bell said, a decision was made to speak in an optimistic
tone as epitomized by the ''Hello tomorrow'' theme.
''The category is full of advertising that can sometimes make women feel a little guilty about the way they look
and be a bit judgmental,'' Ms. Bell said. ''We're saying, 'Look to the future with optimism, look at aging with confidence.' ''
The idea that a women's beauty and skin care brand can take a positive approach, in contrast to the typical pitch
for the category, is gaining popularity. For example, a sibling agency of Soho Square, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, has
been lauded for ads for the Dove brand sold by Unilever, which can be seen online at Web sites that include dove.com
and campaignforrealbeauty.com.
The initial two commercials in the Avon campaign, looking to recruit sales representatives, feature actual saleswomen, the company says. In one spot, the women are extremely enthusiastic, making statements like ''I love my job,''
''I love the fact that Avon sells itself'' and ''Anyone can do this.''
In the other spot, the tone is more measured. The saleswomen make statements like ''We do business online now.''
One praises Avon for introducing ''new products that fit into your life, not the other way around.'' Another describes
how the money she makes helps put her children through college.
Ms. Smith said the two points of view were deliberate, to appeal to different types of prospective sales representatives.
''Some people have more pragmatic reasons,'' she added, and ''some have more entrepreneurial vision.''
The commercials, as well as the rest of the campaign, were tested in Avon markets, including Brazil, China and
Poland, Ms. Smith said, and ''to a country it worked on the same emotional level.''
The campaign is at least the third recent effort for a marketer that uses ''Hello'' as a welcoming word.
The minitrend may have started with ads last summer for Level vodka, sold by V&S Vin & Sprit, which carry the
headline ''Hello delicious.''
Next came a commercial for the Apple iPhone, which began appearing during the Academy Awards show on Feb.
25. The spot features snippets from movies and TV shows in which stars like Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Gleason and
Robert Redford answer the telephone. The commercial, which can also be watched on apple.com, ends with the words
''Hello'' and ''Coming in June'' onscreen.
Typically, such convergence is coincidental, according to a leading Madison Avenue creative executive, who said
it could be difficult to trace sources of inspiration.
''Maybe it's the planets,'' said Sal DeVito, creative director at DeVito/Verdi, known for campaigns for advertisers
like Daffy's, Legal Sea Foods and New York magazine. ''It's happened to us a few times.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: MARKETING & ADVERTISING (91%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING AGENCIES (90%); SALES
FORCE (89%); SALES & SELLING (89%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING SERVICES (89%); COSMETICS &
TOILETRIES (73%); COSMETICS (78%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING EXPENDITURE (76%); GRAPHIC
DESIGN SERVICES (76%); SALES MANAGEMENT (72%); MARKETING PLAN (71%); TELEVISION ADVERTISING (71%); LAYOFFS (67%); WORKPLACE MORALE (67%); ARMED FORCES (67%); COLLEGE & UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS (65%); BUSINESS EDUCATION (88%); BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT (69%) Cosmetics
and Toiletries; Advertising and Marketing
COMPANY: WPP GROUP PLC (57%); COCA-COLA CO (52%); AVON PRODUCTS INC (90%); WPP PLC (57%)
ORGANIZATION: Avon Products Inc; Soho Square (Ad Agency)
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Avon Comes Calling With a New Campaign The New York Times March 15, 2007 Thursday
TICKER: WPPGY (NASDAQ) (57%); WPP (LSE) (57%); KO (NYSE) (52%); AVP (NYSE) (90%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS541830 MEDIA BUYING AGENCIES (57%); NAICS541820 PUBLIC RELATIONS AGENCIES (57%); NAICS541810 ADVERTISING AGENCIES (57%); NAICS541613 MARKETING CONSULTING
SERVICES (57%); SIC8743 PUBLIC RELATIONS AGENCIES (57%); SIC8742 MANAGEMENT CONSULTING
SERVICES (57%); SIC7319 ADVERTISING, NEC (57%); SIC7311 ADVERTISING AGENCIES (57%); NAICS312111 SOFT DRINK MANUFACTURING (52%); SIC2086 BOTTLED & CANNED SOFT DRINKS & CARBONATED WATER (52%); NAICS454390 OTHER DIRECT SELLING ESTABLISHMENTS (90%); NAICS325620
TOILET PREPARATION MANUFACTURING (90%); SIC5963 DIRECT SELLING ESTABLISHMENTS (90%);
SIC2844 PERFUMES, COSMETICS, & OTHER TOILET PREPARATIONS (90%)
PERSON: ANDREA JUNG (67%); MICHAEL MCMAHON (53%) Stuart Elliott
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, USA (93%) UNITED STATES (93%); NORTH AMERICA (79%)
LOAD-DATE: March 15, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: The ''Hello tomorrow'' ads for Avon are the first work from a new creative agency, Soho Square in
New York, part of the WPP Group, which has been developing the campaign since September 2005.
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1020 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 15, 2007 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
Countering the Big-Bank Trend
BYLINE: By JAMES FLANIGAN.
E-mail: jamesflanigan@nytimes.com
SECTION: Section C; Column 1; Business/Financial Desk; ENTREPRENEURIAL EDGE; Pg. 5
LENGTH: 1272 words
''A small bank is the vein that carries blood to the heart,'' said Edward Carpenter, chairman of Carpenter & Company, an investment bank that in 33 years has organized the founding of 708 banks in California and across the United
States.
Mr. Carpenter, 58, is passionate about the need for community banks, by which he means locally owned banks
created with $16 million to $30 million in capital from investors and operating with a state or federal charter.
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Countering the Big-Bank Trend The New York Times March 15, 2007 Thursday
Carpenter & Company, based in Irvine, Calif., organizes an average of 15 banks a year by recruiting investors and
executives, raising money and guiding the proposed bank through the regulatory process.
Community banks keep financing flowing to local entrepreneurs and family companies, Mr. Carpenter said, at a
time when mergers have reduced the number of banks in the nation to 7,402 at the end of last year from 14,411 banks in
1977.
The consolidation, in his eyes, has given rise to the need for the more personal touch found in local banks. Mr.
Carpenter's ideal is a bank founded by some 25 to 50 organizers who put up risk capital. A typical bank, he said, will
have 12 directors, including top executives and other pillars of the community, and managers who have experience in
banking.
''They raise $20 million to start the bank and plan on having $200 million in deposits and $150 million in loans in
the third year. With an average loan of $1 million, all they have to do is generate 150 loans in three years,'' said Mr.
Carpenter, who has a master's degree in business administration from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Business is brisk these days at Carpenter & Company because the number of banks being formed in California is
greater than the number being absorbed by other banks in mergers, according to the California Bankers Association in a
joint study with Carpenter & Company. Entrepreneurs and investors are attracted to banking for several reasons,
among them the fact that companies are being created in all industries.
The United States has 26 million independent businesses, according to the Census Bureau, up from 21 million in
1990. Banks of every category, from national giants to regional powerhouses to local community banks, are devoted to
serving the needs of small to medium-size companies: those with 100 or fewer employees and annual revenue ranging
from a few million to $50 million.
Banks formed with Carpenter & Company's assistance illustrate aspects of the entrepreneurial trend. Coronado
First Bank, for example, is focused on its local market. Coronado is an island city of 15,000 people in San Diego Bay
that is renowned for its naval base and resort hotels. The bank opened in 2005, thanks to the efforts of Thomas C. Stickel, a businessman and former trustee of the California State University system.
Mr. Stickel, who lives in Coronado, said he was disturbed when the city's local bank was acquired by San Diego
investors in 2002 and merged into a larger banking company.
''So I attracted a good group of organizers and directors, including our local hero, retired Vice Adm. Edward H.
Martin, and Gerald R. Sanders, who is now mayor of San Diego,'' Mr. Stickel said. Admiral Martin, a prisoner of war in
Vietnam, was a cellmate in Hanoi of Senator John McCain of Arizona.
Mr. Stickel attracted $13 million in capital and a chief executive, Bruce A. Ives, who said he saw Coronado First
Bank as capable of growing to $250 million in assets serving local businesses and residents.
How can a small community bank realistically compete with branches of larger institutions?
''Technology,'' Mr. Stickel said. These days with computerized services that banks can buy from outside vendors
and Internet banking, ''our technology is competitive with anybody's.''
More ambitious is 1st Enterprise Bank in Los Angeles and Orange County, founded last year by K. Brian Horton,
president, and John C. Black, chief executive, who were recruited by Mr. Carpenter. Both had worked for 1st Business
Bank, a bank for entrepreneurs that had grown to $3 billion in assets and was acquired in 1998 by the Mellon Financial Corporation.
Mr. Horton and Mr. Black worked at Mellon until 2005, when they went out on their own and with Mr. Carpenter's help raised $27.5 million to open 1st Enterprise Bank last July. ''We'll take this to a $1 billion assets bank by catering to clients in Los Angeles and Orange Counties,'' Mr. Horton said.
Ethnic group banking is a growth industry. ''There are 12 Hispanic-led banks being organized in the United States,
7 of them in California,'' Mr. Carpenter said. They include Banco Tepeyac, which is being organized by a former Citibank official, Emilio Sanchez-Santiago, and 80 investors from Mexico and the United States who are putting up $18
million.
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Countering the Big-Bank Trend The New York Times March 15, 2007 Thursday
Pending approval of a state charter, Tepeyac will open its doors as a retail bank in Huntington Park, a heavily Latino city of 62,000 in Los Angeles County. Its name in the Nahuatl language, derives from the hill of Tepeyac outside
Mexico City, the site of the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Another example is an effort by Kevin Rosenberg, managing partner of an executive search firm, to start a bank.
Mr. Rosenberg wanted to expand office space for his 40-year-old company, BridgeGate, and asked his bank for a loan.
He was turned down, and so he is starting a formal effort to raise capital for a bank he has named Access Business
Bank.
With all the small banks starting, it would be easy to overlook that the largest lender to small business is Bank of
America, with 4.9 million small-company clients. Bank of America, with $1.46 trillion in assets and the nation's secondlargest banking company, behind Citigroup, has a small-business division devoted to serving companies with $2.5 million or less in annual revenue. It made 13,000 Small Business Administration loans last year through its 5,800 branches
nationwide.
''We make loans of $100,000 and less every day,'' said Mark Hogan, president of the bank's small-business banking unit. ''And we provide online management for payroll and invoicing services for small companies on a 24-hour, seven-day basis.''
Christopher D. Myers, chief executive of CVB Financial, which owns Citizens Business Bank of Ontario, Calif.,
agrees that large banks offer international and sophisticated cash management services that are beyond the abilities of
most small banks. But even in local markets, size matters, Mr. Myers said. Over 34 years, he has taken Citizens Business Bank from a single office to 33 cities in Southern and Central California and $6 billion in assets.
Last month, the bank agreed to a $35 million deal with First Coastal Bank of Manhattan Beach, extending Citizens
reach to the coastal cities. ''Now we are local bankers in 42 locations,'' Mr. Myers said. He sees competition heating up
for community banks. ''Founders may have to wait longer for their good returns,'' he said.
One attraction of community banks is that founders can make a good return on their money over five to seven
years. In fact, that is what Mr. Carpenter intended. He worked in the early 1970s for Security Pacific, a Los Angeles
bank that acquired others. (Security Pacific was itself acquired by Bank of America in 1992). Mr. Carpenter saw takeovers and layoffs and did not like it.
''This dislocation of corporate America really bugged me,'' he recalled in an interview. ''I saw my friends losing
jobs and I thought I can help them found their own banks and hire other friends as senior officers and never treat their
people the way they were treated. ''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: BANKING & FINANCE (90%); COMMUNITY BANKS (90%); INVESTMENT BANKING (90%);
ENTREPRENEURSHIP (89%); TRENDS (88%); VENTURE CAPITAL (78%); SMALL BUSINESS (78%);
FUNDRAISING (76%); FAMILY COMPANIES (73%); BANKING & FINANCE ASSOCIATIONS (73%); HOTELS
& MOTELS (73%); RESORTS (70%); UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATION (63%); CENSUS (50%); MERGERS
(88%); BUSINESS EDUCATION (86%) Banks and Banking; Banks and Banking
ORGANIZATION: Carpenter & Co; Coronado First Bank
PERSON: Thomas C Stickel; James Flanigan
GEOGRAPHIC: CALIFORNIA, USA (95%); PENNSYLVANIA, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (95%) California
LOAD-DATE: March 15, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Edward H. Martin, a retired vice admiral, was an organizer of Coronado First Bank, which opened
in October 2005 in Coronado, Calif. It had total assets of $31.2 million at the end of last year. (Photo by Sandy Huffaker
for The New York Times)
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Countering the Big-Bank Trend The New York Times March 15, 2007 Thursday
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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March 15, 2007 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
Co-Head of Global Investment Banking Will Leave UBS
BYLINE: By Bloomberg News
SECTION: Section C; Column 4; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 158 words
Jeffrey A. McDermott, one of three global heads of investment banking at UBS, will leave June 30 after six years at
the bank, according to a company memo.
Mr. McDermott, 48, is leaving ''to pursue outside entrepreneurial opportunities,'' according to a memo sent to
employees yesterday.
The memo's contents were confirmed by Rohini Pragasam, a spokeswoman in New York, who declined to comment further.
UBS's global investment banking division, which advises clients on takeovers and equity and debt underwriting, is
jointly led by Mr. McDermott, J. Richard Leaman III and Alexander Wilmot-Sitwell, who is based in London. Mr.
Leaman and Mr. Wilmot-Sitwell will continue as co-heads of the division, the memo said.
UBS, based in Zurich, is Switzerland's biggest bank and was the No. 2 underwriter of equity offerings globally
last year, behind Goldman Sachs, and the seventh-ranked adviser on global takeovers, according to data compiled by
Bloomberg.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: INVESTMENT BANKING (91%); BANKING & FINANCE (90%); FOREIGN INVESTMENT (90%);
GLOBALIZATION (90%); INVESTMENT UNDERWRITERS (88%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (72%); RANKINGS
(66%) Biographical Information; Suspensions, Dismissals and Resignations
COMPANY: GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP INC (90%)
ORGANIZATION: Ubs Ag
TICKER: GS (NYSE) (90%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS523930 INVESTMENT ADVICE (90%); NAICS523920 PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT (90%);
NAICS523110 INVESTMENT BANKING & SECURITIES DEALING (90%); SIC6289 SERVICES ALLIED WITH
THE EXCHANGE OF SECURITIES OR COMMODITIES, NEC (90%); SIC6282 INVESTMENT ADVICE (90%);
SIC6211 SECURITY BROKERS, DEALERS, & FLOTATION COMPANIES (90%)
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Co-Head of Global Investment Banking Will Leave UBS The New York Times March 15, 2007 Thursday
PERSON: Jeffrey A McDermott; J Richard III Leaman; Alexander Wilmot-Sitwell
GEOGRAPHIC: LONDON, ENGLAND (53%); ZURICH, SWITZERLAND (51%) NEW YORK, USA (90%)
UNITED STATES (90%); SWITZERLAND (66%); ENGLAND (53%); UNITED KINGDOM (53%)
LOAD-DATE: March 15, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1022 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 14, 2007 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Start-Up Fervor Shifts to Energy In Silicon Valley
BYLINE: By MATT RICHTEL
SECTION: Section A; Column 1; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1544 words
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO, March 13
Silicon Valley's dot-com era may be giving way to the watt-com era.
Out of the ashes of the Internet bust, many technology veterans have regrouped and found a new mission in alternative energy: developing wind power, solar panels, ethanol plants and hydrogen-powered cars.
It is no secret that venture capitalists have begun pouring billions into energy-related start-ups with names like
SunPower, Nanosolar and Lilliputian Systems.
But that interest is now spilling over to many others in Silicon Valley -- lawyers, accountants, recruiters and publicists, all developing energy-oriented practices to cater to the cause.
The best and the brightest from leading business schools are pelting energy start-ups with resumes. And, of
course, there are entrepreneurs from all backgrounds -- but especially former dot-commers -- who express a sense of
wonder and purpose at the thought of transforming the $1 trillion domestic energy market while saving the planet.
''It's like 1996,'' said Andrew Beebe, one of the remade Internet entrepreneurs. In the boom, he ran Bigstep.com,
which helped small businesses sell online. Today, he is president of Energy Innovations, which makes low-cost solar
panels. ''The Valley has found a new hot spot.''
Mr. Beebe said the Valley's potential to generate change was vast. But he cautioned that a frenzy was mounting,
the kind that could lead to overinvestment and poorly thought-out plans.
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Start-Up Fervor Shifts to Energy In Silicon Valley The New York Times March 14, 2007 Wednesday
''We've started to see some of the bad side of the bubble activity starting to brew,'' Mr. Beebe said.
The energy boomlet is part of a broader rebound that is benefiting all kinds of start-ups, including plenty that are
focused on the Web. But for many in Silicon Valley, high tech has given way to ''clean tech,'' the shorthand term for
innovations that are energy-efficient and environmentally friendly. Less fashionable is ''green,'' a word that suggests a
greater interest in the environment than in profit.
The similarities to past booms are obvious, but the Valley has always run in cycles. It is a kind of renewable gold
rush, a wealth- and technology-creating principle that is always looking for something around which to organize.
In this case, the energy sector is not so distant from other Silicon Valley specialties as it might appear, say those
involved in the new wave of start-ups. The same silicon used to make computer chips converts sunlight into electricity
on solar panels, while the bioscience used to make new drugs can be employed to develop better ethanol processing.
More broadly, the participants here say their whole approach to building new companies and industries is easily
transferable to the energy world. But some wonder whether this is just an echo of the excessive optimism of the Internet
boom. And even those most involved in the trend say the size of the market opportunity in energy is matched by immense hurdles.
Starting a clean technology firm is ''not like starting an online do-it-yourself legal company,'' said Dan Whaley,
chief executive of Climos, a San Francisco company that is developing organic processes to remove carbon from the
atmosphere. ''Scientific credibility is the primary currency that drives the thing I'm working on.''
Just what that thing is, he would not specify. For competitive reasons, Mr. Whaley declined to get into details
about his company's technology. His advisory board includes prominent scientists, among them his mother, Margaret
Leinen, the head of geosciences for the National Science Foundation.
In the last Silicon Valley cycle, Mr. Whaley's help came from his father. In 1994, he did some of the early work
from his father's living room on GetThere.com, a travel site. It went public in 1999 and was bought by Sabre for $750
million in 2000.
This time around, entrepreneurs say they are not expecting such quick returns. In the Internet boom, the mantra
was to change the world and get rich quick. This time, given the size and scope of the energy market, the idea is to
change the world and get even richer -- but somewhat more slowly.
Those drawn to the alternative-energy industry say that they need time to understand the energy technology, and
to turn ideas into solid companies. After all, in contrast to the Internet boom, this time the companies will need actual
manufactured products and customers.
''There are real business models and real products to be sold -- established markets and growing economics,'' said
George Basile, who has a doctorate in biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley and specializes in energy
issues.
Mr. Basile has just stepped into the fray himself. In January, he became the executive adviser for energy issues at
Bite Communications, a San Francisco public relations firm with scores of technology clients that is now working to
attract energy start-ups.
The sudden interest of lawyers, accountants and other members of the wider Valley ecosystem strikes some as opportunistic.
''There's a large amount of bandwagon-jumping right now,'' said Mark Hampton, chief executive of Blanc & Otus,
a technology-oriented public relations firm whose clients have included TiVo, Sybase and Compaq. Still, he understands the interest of relative newcomers: ''There's a huge opportunity.''
They are all, plainly, following the money. In the first three quarters of 2006, venture capital firms put $474 million into a broad range of Silicon Valley start-ups in energy storage, generation and efficiency, according to Cleantech
Venture Network, an industry trade group. Energy was by far the fastest-growing area of interest, and the amount was
on par with what was put into telecommunications and biotechnology.
Yet the amount of money involved is still relatively small compared with the boom years. Over all, venture funding last year was still less than a third of the nearly $34 billion venture capitalists invested in the region in 2000, the
peak of the bubble, according to the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy, based in Palo Alto.
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Start-Up Fervor Shifts to Energy In Silicon Valley The New York Times March 14, 2007 Wednesday
''This is not 2000. It doesn't feel like 2000 on the street,'' said Stephen Levy, the center's director. But, he said,
''there's no doubt there's a buzz.''
Mr. Levy said that Silicon Valley was getting a lift from the public's interest in finding energy sources and from
government involvement in creating subsidies and policies that promote such sources. Still, he said, the ventures are
clearly risky.
''We'll have a sense very quickly -- within two to four years -- whether any of this venture capital has produced
any products or services that are market-worthy,'' Mr. Levy said.
Apart from the profit motive, many here say they are driven by more unselfish concerns: cleaning up the atmosphere and creating energy independence for the United States. One of the phrases heard most often in the industry is:
''Do well by doing good.'' Al Gore, with his warnings of global warming, has been a Valley darling of late.
''The resumes I'm getting now are almost identical to the ones I got seven years ago for CarsDirect.com,'' said Larry Gross, chief executive of Altra , a company he founded in Los Angeles that is producing ethanol and developing
fuels made from plants. ''The quality, the schools, the work experience, the enthusiasm for wanting to fix something.''
Mr. Gross in 1991 helped found Knowledge Adventure, which made educational software, making him one of the
many tech alumni in the energy world. For that company, he said he attracted around $20 million in venture capital; he
has received $245 million for Altra. Mr. Gross said investors and entrepreneurs are drawn to energy by what drew
them to hardware and software: the chance for huge growth in volatile markets.
Mr. Gross is the brother of Bill Gross, a technology-era icon whose business incubator Idealab spawned many
successful start-ups, including Citysearch and WeddingChannel. Bill Gross is now chief executive of Energy Innovations, the solar panel start-up based in Pasadena, Calif., with Mr. Beebe as president.
Mr. Beebe said there were profound similarities between the Internet boom and the miniboom in energy. For one,
he said, just as the Internet promised to decentralize computing and put control in the hands of users, the Silicon Valley
version of energy innovation intends to decentralize the industry by making power generation more local -- like solar
panels on rooftops.
In 1998, Mr. Beebe was a co-founder of Bigstep and raised $75 million in venture funding. At its peak, the company had 150 employees, with most of them laid off during the bust. The company was later sold for less money than it
raised -- hardly a dot-com success. So does Mr. Beebe have the track record to make a solar energy company profitable?
''I face that question on a regular basis,'' he said. ''Only my actions will be able to answer it.'' But he added that he
felt confident about the political and market conditions for energy start-ups. He said the entrenched oil, coal and gas
companies could not ultimately compete with the more efficient and environmentally friendly concepts Silicon Valley
envisions.
''The idea of them turning a supertanker is an apt analogy,'' he said. ''They cannot take us over, they can only try to
resist.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: AUTOMOTIVE FUELS (90%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (90%); INTERNET & WWW (90%); SOLAR
ENERGY (90%); ELECTRIC POWER PLANTS (89%); ENERGY EFFICIENCY & CONSERVATION (89%); RENEWABLE ENERGY (78%); WIND ENERGY (77%); ALCOHOLS (77%); SMALL BUSINESS ASSISTANCE
(77%); ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT (77%); ETHYL ALCOHOL MFG (77%); ENERGY & UTILITY SECTOR
PERFORMANCE (77%); ENVIRONMENTALISM (77%); ETHANOL (77%); SMALL BUSINESS (74%); MICROPROCESSORS (74%); ELECTRIC POWER INDUSTRY (74%); COMPUTER CHIPS (74%); PATENTS (72%);
HYDROGEN ENERGY (72%); AUTOMOTIVE TECHNOLOGY (72%); SEMICONDUCTOR MFG (72%); BIOFUELS (72%); ALTERNATIVE FUEL VEHICLES (72%); VENTURE CAPITAL (71%); HYDROGEN POWERED
VEHICLES (57%); ENVIRONMENT & NATURAL RESOURCES (61%); RESUMES & CURRICULA VITAE
(90%); BUSINESS EDUCATION (69%) Energy and Power; Industry Profiles; Energy Efficiency; Solar Energy; Inventions and Patents; Computers and the Internet; Electric Light and Power; Energy and Power
ORGANIZATION: Energy Innovations (Co)
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Start-Up Fervor Shifts to Energy In Silicon Valley The New York Times March 14, 2007 Wednesday
PERSON: ANN LIVERMORE (55%) Andrew Beebe; Matt Richtel
GEOGRAPHIC: SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA (79%); SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, CA, USA (93%) CALIFORNIA, USA (93%) UNITED STATES (93%) Silicon Valley (Calif); California
LOAD-DATE: March 14, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Andrew Beebe, president of Energy Innovations, said the excitement over energy could lead to
overinvestment and poor planning by businesses. (Photo by J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times)(pg. C4)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1023 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 13, 2007 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
Good Cop and Bad Cop On Security Program's Case
BYLINE: By JOE SHARKEY.
E-mail: jsharkey@nytimes.com
SECTION: Section C; Column 1; Business/Financial Desk; ON THE ROAD; Pg. 9
LENGTH: 803 words
O.K., Steven Brill, we've got some questions, Joe Brancatelli and I: Bad cop, good cop. Take a seat. Which Mr.
Brill did, though in the conference room of his own offices in Manhattan.
I'm the good cop. I maintain that Mr. Brill's Registered Traveler program makes sense for frequent travelers,
though I've expressed qualms about the hurdles put up by the Transportation Security Administration. So far, those hurdles have prevented the program from offering much more than a special security checkpoint and a biometric identity
card.
Mr. Brancatelli, the publisher of Joesentme.com, a business travel Web site, is the bad cop who has called the program an idea ''whose time has come and gone without actually having arrived.''
Mr. Brill, the journalist, media entrepreneur and founder of Court TV, is a true believer, of course. His company,
Verified Identity Pass Inc., opened a version of the program under the Clear brand name in Orlando, Fla., in July 2005,
and has recently opened checkpoints in Indianapolis, Cincinnati and San Jose, Calif., as well as Terminal 7 at Kennedy
International Airport. Next month, Terminals 1 and 4 at Kennedy and Terminal B at Newark Liberty International Airport will be added.
Still, the program -- with competing versions being developed by Unisys and others -- hasn't rolled out at nearly
the pace originally predicted. One reason is that the Transportation Security Administration has taken longer than ex-
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Good Cop and Bad Cop On Security Program's Case The New York Times March 13, 2007 Tuesday
pected in approving various technologies that will offer members time-saving benefits, like not having to remove their
shoes and coats.
Mr. Brill's program has 40,000 members, mostly in Orlando. Skeptics like Mr. Brancatelli have suggested he
made a bad bet against an intractable bureaucracy.
Mr. Brill disagreed. ''I've looked at this from the perspective of someone who had an idea to launch a cable channel featuring cameras in the courtroom when most states didn't allow cameras in the courtroom,'' Mr. Brill said of starting Court TV in 1991. It was later sold to Time Warner, and described by Wired Magazine as ''the law's interface to the
public.''
In 2003, Mr. Brill wrote a book, ''After: The Rebuilding and Defending of America in the Sept. 12 Era,'' that addressed matters like threats and risks and how to confront them. He said that the Registered Traveler program then came
to mind.
''I just kept saying to myself, 'this is such a good idea, and it's so logical that it ought to happen,' '' he said. ''So, I
decided to do it.''
He was aware, he said, that creating the program would be ''a long haul that depends on a lot of different pieces
falling into place, some of which are very difficult, like changing bureaucracies' views of the world.''
In Congressional testimony in November 2005, Mr. Brill said that ''if the T.S.A. mapped a clear blueprint'' offering obvious benefits at the checkpoints, ''we and our competitors would likely be rolled out at 30 or 40 of the largest 50
airports within six months.'' Since then, many news accounts critical of the slow rollout have omitted the ''if'' in Mr.
Brill's 2005 statement.
The ''if'' still hasn't fully arrived. ''There was nothing deceptive or even speculative about that statement,'' Mr. Brill
said.
But, Mr. Brancatelli said: ''If you were doing my job as a columnist, wouldn't you say, 'why doesn't this guy see
what I see?' And what I see is a bureaucracy that doesn't want you and will do anything it can to stop you.''
To which Mr. Brill responded, ''Where does it say I don't see that? Do I have any doubt that there are lots of people at T.S.A. who would just as soon see this program go away? No.''
But, he said, that the 40,000 members are an influential ''constituency'' and that the signals he gets from top government security officials are that the new technology will be approved after thorough evaluation.
The biggest hurdle so far came in Orlando, when Clear began using a long-awaited Secure Registered Traveler
Kiosk developed by GE Security, which integrates explosives detection, shoe scanning and biometric identification. But
the machines, which were expected to routinely clear most travelers' shoes, instead rejected more than 50 percent for
containing metal, thus negating one of the major advertised benefits.
What Mr. Brill calls Version II of the kiosk technology is now being designed, under federal review, to differentiate ''O.K. metal versus dangerous metal,'' he said. If approved, ''you could go from clearing 60 to 70 percent of the shoes
to clearing 95 percent.'' He said he expected Version II to be approved and to expand to other airports in a month or so.
The Registered Traveler rollout, meanwhile, slowly chugs along. Yesterday, Mr. Brill's company announced that
it expected to begin operations at the airport in Albany in about two months.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: AIRPORTS (91%); SPECIAL INVESTIGATIVE FORCES (90%); TRAVELER SAFETY & SECURITY
(90%); AVIATION SECURITY (89%); BIOMETRICS (76%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (75%); INTERNET &
WWW (74%); LAW COURTS & TRIBUNALS (73%); CABLE TELEVISION (68%); AIRLINES (66%) Airlines and
Airplanes; Identification Devices; Security and Warning Systems; Airports; Computers and the Internet
COMPANY: LIBERTY INTERNATIONAL PLC (55%)
ORGANIZATION: US TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION (84%) Transportation Security Administration; Verified Identity Pass (Co); Josentme.com
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Good Cop and Bad Cop On Security Program's Case The New York Times March 13, 2007 Tuesday
TICKER: LII (LSE) (55%)
PERSON: Joe Sharkey; Steven Brill; Joe Brancatelli
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (92%); ORLANDO, FLORIDA, USA (92%); SAN JOSE, CA, USA (79%);
INDIANAPOLIS, IN, USA (79%) NEW YORK, USA (92%); FLORIDA, USA (92%); NEW JERSEY, USA (79%);
CALIFORNIA, USA (79%); INDIANA, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (92%)
LOAD-DATE: March 13, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Drawing (Drawing by Chris Gash)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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The New York Times
March 13, 2007 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
The Death of Geography?
SECTION: Section A; Column 1; Editorial Desk; Pg. 18
LENGTH: 392 words
A handshake can still trump a videoconference. The energy services giant Halliburton announced on Sunday that it
will move its corporate headquarters and its chief executive, David Lesar, from the old boomtown of Houston (Texas)
to the rising boomtown of Dubai (United Arab Emirates). The move sends the message that even in the new economy,
some of the old rules still apply, including that location matters.
Halliburton's name will forever be linked in many Americans' minds to its former chief executive, Vice President
Dick Cheney, and a $16 billion contract to support American military operations in Iraq, which has led to investigations
into overbilling and the mishandling of taxpayer dollars. While Capitol Hill critics may not like the company, they don't
want to see its back either. Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, called the move ''an insult to
the U.S. soldiers and taxpayers who paid the tab for their no-bid contracts and endured their overcharges for all these
years.''
The company will remain incorporated in Delaware, other executive officers will stay put in Houston, and, the
company insists, there will be no tax benefits from its move. Halliburton -- which is spinning off its embattled military
contracting subsidiary -- says it wants to focus on energy. And as the saying goes, it's going where the oil is.
That stands in conflict with the popular notion that the wired world has made geography irrelevant. But all the
Blackberry devices and Internet phone calls in the world can't make up for in-person interactions. That's not just for oldeconomy companies like Halliburton either. Silicon Valley continues to act as a leading incubator for high-tech startups. Once you have a critical mass of software engineers and venture capitalists attending the same happy hours, a cer-
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The Death of Geography? The New York Times March 13, 2007 Tuesday
tain ferment takes place. News spreads fast in person, not just on MySpace. As a result, a city with a strong concentration of companies and a trained labor force -- like New York in finance -- can maintain its position within an industry.
That's no argument for complacency by policy makers. It is easy to imagine, for instance, that Halliburton might
not have deemed this particular move necessary without the visa problems that visiting businesspeople have been having, particularly those with Muslim-sounding names.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: DEFENSE CONTRACTING (90%); EDITORIALS & OPINIONS (90%); COMPANY RELOCATIONS
(90%); RELOCATIONS (78%); OIL SERVICES INDUSTRY (78%); CORPORATE RESTRUCTURING (78%); INTERNET SOCIAL NETWORKING (64%); MUSLIMS & ISLAM (77%); NEW ECONOMY (76%); CONTRACTS &
BIDS (75%); STARTUPS (75%); DEFENSE INDUSTRY (75%); LEGISLATIVE BODIES (75%); ARMED FORCES
(75%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (74%); INVESTIGATIONS (74%); LABOR FORCE (71%); OIL & GAS FIELD
EQUIPMENT MFG (65%); PETROLEUM PRODUCTS (64%); RELIGION (63%); ENGINEERING (62%); VENTURE CAPITAL (62%); TERRORISM (59%); COMPUTER SOFTWARE (64%) Editorials; Relocation of Business;
Terrorism; Visas; Security and Warning Systems; Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline; Islam
COMPANY: HALLIBURTON CO (94%)
ORGANIZATION: Halliburton Co
TICKER: HAL (NYSE) (94%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS541330 ENGINEERING SERVICES (94%); NAICS213112 SUPPORT ACTIVITIES FOR OIL
& GAS OPERATIONS (94%); NAICS213111 DRILLING OIL & GAS WELLS (94%)
PERSON: DICK CHENEY (57%); PATRICK LEAHY (56%); DAVID J LESAR (91%)
GEOGRAPHIC: HOUSTON, TX, USA (93%); DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (91%) TEXAS, USA (93%);
DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (93%) UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (94%); UNITED STATES (93%); IRAQ
(79%) Dubai
LOAD-DATE: March 13, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Editorial
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1025 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 12, 2007 Monday
Late Edition - Final
Page 62
As Mobile Phones Grow More Complex, Carriers Insist on Fewer Operating Systems The New York Times March 12,
2007 Monday
As Mobile Phones Grow More Complex, Carriers Insist on Fewer Operating Systems
BYLINE: By ERIC SYLVERS
SECTION: Section C; Column 1; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 10
LENGTH: 656 words
DATELINE: MILAN, March 11
Two operating systems run more than 95 percent of the world's computers, but dozens of systems are behind the 2.5
billion mobile phones in circulation, a situation that has hampered the growth of new services, industry executives and
independent specialists say.
''There are too many operating systems already and more are coming on stream, making things complicated for
smaller software companies,'' said Tony Cripps, a senior analyst with the telecommunications consulting firm Ovum in
London.
Mobile phone carriers are watching with more than passing interest because the new applications they are counting
on to increase revenue and profit may make it to only a limited number of phones as software developers struggle to
keep up with the different operating systems.
Having multiple systems is also time-consuming and costly for the carriers, which must configure the phones they
sell.
Vodafone, the world's largest mobile phone company in terms of revenue, has been leading a push to limit the
number of operating systems, declaring in November that it would eventually sell only phones that ran on Microsoft's
Windows Mobile, Symbian Series 60 or Linux. For more than a year, NTT DoCoMo of Japan has concentrated on
Symbian, a privately held British-based company in which Nokia of Finland has a nearly 50 percent stake, and Linux.
''What Vodafone did by choosing a few was inevitable,'' a Symbian executive vice president, Andy Brannan, said.
Arun Sarin, the Vodafone chief executive, said last month: ''We need to reduce the number of operating systems
on phones. I'm not saying bring it down to one, but several. With fewer operating systems, it will be easier for content
delivery.''
Most mobile phone manufacturers use internally developed software to run their simpler phones. But smart
phones, high-end devices that have access to the Internet and send e-mail, run on operating systems created by other
companies. Mr. Brannan said that in the future, only the most basic phones would run on operating systems developed
by the phone makers.
Last year, two-thirds of smart phones sold ran on Symbian's operating system, an increase of about four percentage points from 2005, according to Canalys, a consultant and market research firm based near London. Microsoft was
second last year with a 14 percent market share, slightly less than the year before, followed by Research in Motion,
which makes the BlackBerry, with 7 percent, and Linux, with 6 percent, according to Canalys.
Having so many operating systems makes it expensive to make software, said Faraz Hoodbhoy, the chief executive of PixSense, whose software helps users of camera phones save and share multimedia content.
''It's not like with computers, where anybody who has an Internet connection can download your software,'' he
said. ''The barrier to innovation is higher in the mobile world.''
What operating system a software developer decides to concentrate on first will most likely depend on what geographic area and type of user it is trying to attract, Mr. Cripps, the Ovum analyst, said. Windows Mobile is stronger in
North America and with business users, while Symbian is dominant in Europe and with nonbusiness customers.
But despite the moves by Vodafone, DoCoMo and other service providers, the huge size of the mobile phone
market will ensure that smaller operating systems survive, Mr. Cripps and several executives said.
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As Mobile Phones Grow More Complex, Carriers Insist on Fewer Operating Systems The New York Times March 12,
2007 Monday
Fabrizio Capobianco, chief executive of Funambol, an open-source software company based in Redwood City,
Calif., that has developed a highly popular e-mail program for mobile devices, said, ''I don't see convergence of the operating systems happening anytime soon.''
Citing Apple's new phone, Mr. Capobianco, who began as a technology entrepreneur in Italy, added, ''Vodafone
is trying to standardize by going with three operating systems, but now the iPhone is coming, so they will have to have
at least four.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: COMPUTER OPERATING SYSTEMS (92%); SOFTWARE MAKERS (90%); WIRELESS INDUSTRY
(90%); TELECOMMUNICATIONS EQUIPMENT (90%); TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES (90%); WIRELESS TELECOMMUNICATIONS CARRIERS (90%); TELECOMMUNICATIONS EQUIPMENT MFG (89%);
TELECOMMUNICATIONS (78%); WIRELESS & BROADCAST EQUIPMENT MFG (78%); MARKET SHARE
(76%); PRIVATELY HELD COMPANIES (76%); CONSULTING SERVICES (76%); MARKET RESEARCH (76%);
COMPANY PROFITS (70%); INTERNET & WWW (85%); MARKET RESEARCH FIRMS (60%); TELECOMMUNICATIONS SECTOR PERFORMANCE (90%); MARKET RESEARCH & ANALYSIS (76%); MOBILE & CELLULAR TELEPHONES (92%); COMPUTER SOFTWARE (90%) Telephones and Telecommunications; Cellular Telephones; Computers and the Internet; Computer Software
COMPANY: VODAFONE GROUP PLC (92%); RESEARCH IN MOTION LTD (55%); MICROSOFT CORP (55%);
NTT DOCOMO INC (91%); VODAFONE D2 GMBH (92%)
TICKER: VOD (NYSE) (92%); VOD (LSE) (92%); RIMM (NASDAQ) (55%); RIM (TSX) (55%); MSFT
(NASDAQ) (55%); NDCM (LSE) (91%); NDCA (LSE) (55%); DCM (NYSE) (91%); 9437 (TSE) (91%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS517212 CELLULAR AND OTHER WIRELESS TELECOMMUNICATIONS (92%); SIC4812
RADIOTELEPHONE COMMUNICATIONS (92%); NAICS334111 ELECTRONIC COMPUTER MANUFACTURING (55%); SIC3571 ELECTRONIC COMPUTERS (55%); NAICS511210 SOFTWARE PUBLISHERS (55%);
SIC7372 PREPACKAGED SOFTWARE (55%); NAICS517212 CELLULAR & OTHER WIRELESS TELECOMMUNICATIONS (92%); NAICS517210 WIRELESS TELECOMMUNICATIONS CARRIERS (EXCEPT SATELLITE) (92%); NAICS517110 WIRED TELECOMMUNICATIONS CARRIERS (92%)
PERSON: ARUN SARIN (54%) Eric Sylvers
GEOGRAPHIC: LONDON, ENGLAND (72%) ENGLAND (72%); UNITED KINGDOM (72%)
LOAD-DATE: March 12, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1026 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 12, 2007 Monday
Correction Appended
Late Edition - Final
Page 64
20 Students Who Work Hard and Dream Big Win Times Scholarships The New York Times March 12, 2007 Monday
Correction Appended
20 Students Who Work Hard and Dream Big Win Times Scholarships
BYLINE: By FERNANDA SANTOS
SECTION: Section B; Column 2; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1196 words
To Feruz Erizku, the grimness of the Andrew Jackson Houses in the South Bronx has been a source of both despair
and drive. In the morning, as she makes her way to school, Ms. Erizku stares at the cigarette butts on the elevator floor,
smells the marijuana that wafts from some apartment doors, strolls past young men who seem void of purpose. She
wonders: Is this the end of the road?
''If I want to get out of this place,'' Ms. Erizku said one recent morning, ''I have to do well in school.'' Ms. Erizku,
17, moved here from Ethiopia with her mother and two siblings in 1997, unable to speak English but full of expectations for a better life.
She has gone on to earn a place in the National Honor Society at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, join a
program for aspiring scientists sponsored by the University of Vermont, log 100 hours of community service at the Park
Slope Senior Center, where her father works, and earn early admission to Princeton University, which she will attend
this fall. She also scored 630, out of a possible 800, on her verbal SAT and earned a 96.1 cumulative grade-point average, the second highest in a graduating class of 763.
Ms. Erizku has capped her impressive resume with another achievement: winning a college scholarship from The
New York Times.
She and 19 other high school seniors will receive a four-year scholarship of up to $30,000, a six-week summer job
at The New York Times Company and a laptop computer. The students are also paired with mentors from The Times
and offered advice during their time in college from Roger Lehecka, an educational consultant and former dean of students at Columbia College, the undergraduate liberal arts school at Columbia University.
Some 1,300 students from about 300 public, private and parochial schools in New York City applied for the
scholarships this year. A two-month preselection process whittled that number to 157, and then, in late January, a group
of editors and reporters from The Times, as well as former scholarship recipients, selected 37 finalists. The winners
were chosen last month after a weeklong round of interviews.
''The extreme hardships these kids have been subjected to have not pushed them down a spiral of self-pity, and
that's just special,'' said Eda Pepi, a member of the selection committee and a Times scholar in 2002 who graduated
from Harvard University last spring. ''Their stories are testament of all the potential that kids have at that age, and of
their amazing willingness to dream, to hope and to have faith that you can accomplish things, no matter how hard life
might be.''
(Another past scholarship winner, Anahad O'Connor, participated in the selection for the second consecutive year.
Mr. O'Connor, 25, is a Yale University graduate and a reporter for The Times.)
Bianca Farrell, 18, who lives at the Frederick Douglass Houses on the Upper West Side and is graduating in the
spring from Aquinas High School in the Bronx, said she hopes to move to Japan after college to design video games,
which have been her passion -- and obsession -- since she got her first PlayStation at the age of 8. During winter break
this year, Ms. Farrell, who has earned early admission to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, used a few books
and Web sites to teach herself the 46 characters of Japan's hiragana writing system, which is full of loops and curves
and is the first one learned by Japanese children in school.
''I can read it well,'' she said with pride. ''I might have to go to the dictionary here and there to find out what the
characters mean, but once college starts, I should be fluent.''
Having lost her father to gun violence while she was a toddler, Ms. Farrell was brought up by her mother, who
gave up her own chance at higher education after her daughter was born.
Page 65
20 Students Who Work Hard and Dream Big Win Times Scholarships The New York Times March 12, 2007 Monday
Correction Appended
''When I was young, my mother made education the No. 1 priority in my life. She taught me how to read with
'Hooked on Phonics.' She pushed me to keep up with my homework,'' Ms. Farrell said. ''She'd always say, 'People can
take anything from you, but never your education.' That's been my motto ever since.''
Another of this year's winners, Harmain Khan, 17, of Staten Island, was a sophomore when he joined a scientific
research team from Williams College probing reptilian teeth from an archaeological dig in India to reconstruct the prehistoric environment and migration patterns of crocodiles. His work earned him first place in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair last year, among other honors, and was scheduled for publication in ''The Journal of Human
Evolution.''
The research required Mr. Khan to spend eight hours commuting to a lab in Nassau County. He used the time to
study Russian and write his physics and lab papers. Mr. Khan tackled homework during lunch and free periods, he said,
because he devotes a few hours each day to helping his mother, who has cancer and lupus, with household chores.
In the spring, Mr. Khan will be graduating from Staten Island Technical High School with a 98.0 grade-point average and gearing up to study biochemistry and, later, medicine in college, preferably at Harvard. Mr. Khan, who was
born in Pakistan, hopes one day to join Doctors Without Borders and care for the poor when disaster strikes.
He set that goal last year, he said, after traveling to his native country to deliver supplies to victims of the 2005
earthquake. He bought the items with $6,000 he raised in New York by knocking on doors and holding food sales at
mosques.
The New York Times College Scholarship Program started in 1999, when six students received awards. Since
then, it has helped pay for the college educations of 180 young New Yorkers.
The scholarships are funded by The New York Times Company Foundation, contributions from readers and an
endowment started with a grant from the Starr Foundation.
The program also recognizes teachers who inspired the scholarship winners. Each student is allowed to nominate a
mentor for a $3,000 award provided by Kathleen and Ernest Abrahamson. Mr. Abrahamson is an engineer who has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to send students to college.
Ms. Erizku, the Ethiopian immigrant, said the scholarship is the first step in her plan to give her family the life
they dreamed of when they settled in their new country. Her father was the first to arrive in the United States, fleeing
political persecution. Ms. Erizku, her mother and siblings joined him two years later, moving into a neighborhood of
immigrants on the northern end of the Bronx where everyone talked about the future with hope.
With their modest income -- Ms. Erizku's mother is a housekeeper and her father a custodian -- and with relatives
to support back home, the family had to move into public housing to stay afloat. Suddenly, Ms. Erizku said, the poverty
they had fought to escape in Ethiopia once again defined their existence.
She strived to learn English and whatever else she could. She devoured scientific journals, listened to teachers and
learned from neighbors.
''Victory is sweeter,'' she said, ''when you're at the bottom and have to claw your way to the top.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: STUDENTS & STUDENT LIFE (90%); EDUCATION (90%); SCHOLARSHIPS & GRANTS (90%);
ACADEMIC ADMISSIONS (77%); EDUCATION SYSTEMS & INSTITUTIONS (77%); PRIVATE SCHOOLS
(72%); SENIOR CENTERS & CLUBS (72%); INTERVIEWS (69%); UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATION (67%);
COLLEGE & UNIVERSITY ADMISSIONS (72%); RESUMES & CURRICULA VITAE (89%); COLLEGES &
UNIVERSITIES (72%) Colleges and Universities; Scholarships and Fellowships; New York Times College Scholarship Program
COMPANY: NEW YORK TIMES CO (82%); HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS (51%); PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS (55%)
ORGANIZATION: UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT (56%); NATIONAL HONOR SOCIETY (56%); PRINCETON
UNIVERSITY (55%) New York Times
Page 66
20 Students Who Work Hard and Dream Big Win Times Scholarships The New York Times March 12, 2007 Monday
Correction Appended
TICKER: NYT (NYSE) (82%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS516110 INTERNET PUBLISHING & BROADCASTING (82%); NAICS515210 CABLE &
OTHER SUBSCRIPTION PROGRAMMING (82%); NAICS511110 NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS (82%); SIC8999
SERVICES, NEC (82%); SIC2721 PERIODICALS: PUBLISHING, OR PUBLISHING & PRINTING (82%); SIC2711
NEWSPAPERS: PUBLISHING, OR PUBLISHING & PRINTING (82%); NAICS519130 INTERNET PUBLISHING
& BROADCASTING & WEB SEARCH PORTALS (82%)
PERSON: Fernanda Santos
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (94%) NEW YORK, USA (94%) UNITED STATES (94%) New York City
LOAD-DATE: March 12, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
CORRECTION-DATE: April 17, 2007
CORRECTION: Because of an editing error, an article on March 12 about the latest New York Times Scholars misstated the profession of Ernest Abrahamson, who along with his wife, Kathleen, has donated hundreds of thousands of
dollars to the scholarship program. (The error first appeared in an article on March 14, 2002, about that year's Times
Scholars.) Mr. Abrahamson is an entrepreneur and the chairman of a manufacturing company; he is not an engineer.
Mr. Abrahamson pointed out the error last week.
GRAPHIC: Photo: Times Scholarship winners, first row, from left, Amanda Nadal, Jahmil Eady, Sana Khalid, Stacey
Murray, Feruz Erizku, Emilyn Sosa and Sarah Taslima
center row, Ernest Meadows, Jayson Jones, Davia Steeley, Evans Amoah, Joanne Nurse, Sonal Noticewala and
Michelle Reyes
back row, Bianca Farrell, Reginald Askew, Harmain Khan, Dorothy Luczak, Luis E. Soto and Imad Harsouni. (Photo
by Ruby Washington/The New York Times)(pg. B4)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1027 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 11, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
A 19th-Century Turn
BYLINE: By GEOFFREY WOLFF.
Geoffrey Wolff, a novelist and biographer, is the Berthold Leibinger fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.
SECTION: Section 7; Column 1; Book Review Desk; Pg. 1
Page 67
A 19th-Century Turn The New York Times March 11, 2007 Sunday
LENGTH: 1273 words
HEYDAY
By Kurt
Andersen.
622 pp.
Random House. $26.95.
It perhaps strikes anyone who has read an ambitious historical novel -- and certainly strikes anyone who has had the
audacity to try to write one -- that the enterprise represents the triumph of hope over experience, a suspension of hardwon, armoring caution, a Peter-Pannish faith in ... well, faith. How daunting it must be to get it right: facts and artifacts,
syntax and slang, costumes and customs, fads and prices, conventional wisdoms and bright ideas. And if such a novel
were to aspire to be a bulging monster, teeming with extravagantly vivid characters going about their coincidentally
intersecting lives with amplified voices, wearing garish clothes, committing melodramatic vices, loving (and hating)
with the fervor of characters from a comic opera, then such fiction would seem perfectly ill-suited to a writer and observer known heretofore as the wised-up, sardonic, founding co-editor of the late Spy magazine. As a columnist (for New York magazine)
and a radio commentator, Kurt Andersen should react to the emotions described by gee whiz like a fox to a bunny wabbit.
Andersen's previous novel -- ''Turn of the Century'' (1999) -- is, like ''Heyday,'' lengthy and episodic, but it owes
its flensing spirit to the examples of Tom Wolfe's ''Bonfire of the Vanities'' and ''The Way We Live Now,'' by Anthony
Trollope It keeps a sharp eye focused on hypocrisy, self-interest, preening, sharp practice and overreaching.
''Heyday,'' by contrast, cries huzzah for over-the-top ambition. It's a band-concert of a novel, a parade in honor of
overreaching. Set in 1848 -- that hugely eventful year in Europe, the pre-Civil War United States, Mexico and the California gold fields -- it never quits exclaiming, Gosh! How about that! Who'd a thunk it? It's a mighty busy and messy
story, jumping among the urban settings of Gotham, Paris, London, Chicago and San Francisco; evil is afoot and brutality the quotidian, but ''Heyday'' is also a sweet book, with a tropism toward redemption and happy endings.
The protagonist, connected to every subordinate character by sometimes flimsy networks of chance, is Benjamin
Knowles, younger son of a newly rich Lancashire mill owner and entrepreneur. During his visit to a friend in Paris
during the 1848 uprising that brought down the July Monarchy, the friend is believed to have been killed, and Benjamin
is inadvertently an accomplice to the death of a militiaman. A principal weapon used during the mortal mayhem is the
beak of a stuffed penguin, which suggests why at least one advance review of ''Heyday'' has described the novel as a
''parody'' of Victorian melodrama.
It is in fact an homage to Dickens, Dumas and Hugo, reviving as a central plot device the relentless quest of Inspector Javert, in ''Les Miserables,'' for the hide of Jean Valjean. Benjamin is hunted throughout ''Heyday'' by the elder
brother of the slain militiaman, Drumont, a Corsican rumored to be the bastard son of Napoleon by his prostitute mother. Prostitution -- in New York and San Francisco -- provides a wealth of material and moral calculus for Andersen's
characters, the most successful of whom is Polly Lucking, a social-climbing nascent feminist, part-time unsuccessful
actress and part-time wildly successful hooker in a New York brothel.
Benjamin, fleeing from Paris to England, and from England sailing to New York to seek adventure and fortune in
the New World -- looking for a ''permanent place to live in a more suitably ... American way. Whatever that meant'' -meets Polly (unprofessionally) and falls in love. This brings him together with Polly's brother, Duff, a survivor of the
Mexican War suffering so acutely from post-traumatic stress disorder that he is not only a firefighter but a firebug, not
only a sentimental idealist but a murderer. None of this, believe me, is played for laughs, although New York's 19thcentury brutality and coarseness approach comedy in their grotesqueness. (A noteworthy passage regards a fellow firefighter, Fatty Freeborn, a bully and rapist, who eats for dinner the sheep he has loved to death during the cocktail hour.
Ameliorating this bestiality are two episodes detailing the attempted rescue of ''imperiled pets'' -- a puppy bobbing
downstream in one scene, a kitty trapped in a burning whorehouse in the other.)
Page 68
A 19th-Century Turn The New York Times March 11, 2007 Sunday
Benjamin also falls in with Timothy Skaggs, friend to Duff and Polly, a Dartmouth dropout and black-sheep son
of a New Hampshire mayor, an alcoholic daguerreotype photographer and journalist, a friend of Walt Whitman, who
roams New York on the lookout for all that is novel and unexpected. This gives Andersen, seeing omnisciently through
the eyes of his principal characters, opportunity to observe what's astir, what has just been invented, what is in and what
out. I was once asked by a grade-school kid whether toilet paper had been invented when I was a little boy; in much the
same spirit of wonder, Andersen -- generally through Benjamin or Timothy Skaggs --is besotted with the products of
research masking as observation. Thus, when Skaggs was a boy ''friction matches did not exist. ... Photography was a
fantasy. There were no one-penny newspapers, no private shops selling meats and fruits, no baseball, and precious few
theaters or foreigners.''
Andersen is so keen to observe the wonders of his world that his characters seem able to see as clearly at night as
at noon, and if his novel's back is broken by the weight of its minutiae, its flow dammed by the debris of its detail, there
is something moving, a stirring spirit, in the energy of its amazement. Like her author, Polly Lucking is agog at what's
on display at a New York department store; ''she did enjoy looking at gold.''
Gold, and the early days of the California gold rush, dominate the final third or so of ''Heyday'' (a terrific title,
with its multiple exclamatory suggestions dominated by an exhortation). Polly and Benjamin, Duff and Timothy -- leading a wagon train of trailing characters, including the avenging hound Drumont -- find their misadventuresome ways to
the golden rivers of Northern California. There the four cobble together a kind of commune, and pan laboriously for just
enough precious grit and pebbles to keep them at it.
''Heyday'' tries also to be a novel of ideas, gamely providing mouthpieces to test theories of political unrest, economy and evolution, free will versus security. Darwin walks on as a character, and Engels enjoys the enthusiasm of Benjamin. Manifest Destiny is deplored, the notion of the Noble Savage mocked and embraced. Again and again Duff specifies that ''destruction and creation are the cycle of life.'' Andersen declared in a recent interview that our ''elective'' invasion of Iraq was on his mind as he invoked our earlier war against Mexico, and that the ''commune stuff'' in his novel
''reminded me of the late '60s.''
But ''Heyday'' roars awake, unexpectedly, while Polly and Benjamin drudge wordlessly together on the river, panning ''with their labor of 20 minutes'' a ''decent week's wage'' back in the world. ''There were still fortunes to be made in
California. But now luck had become occasional and scarce, like luck in most places at most times.'' Now their output,
pretty impressive despite the absurdly inflated cost of living, wasin decline. ''Yet Ben had Polly, thank heavens. Hadn't
he? She was all that he required. Wasn't she?''
In the end, the answer to both questions will be yes, in thunder. The dead shall be raised, the evildoers vanquished.
But those questions will resonate, to Andersen's credit.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: NOVELS & SHORT STORIES (91%); PROFILES & BIOGRAPHIES (90%); BOOK REVIEWS (91%);
HISTORY (89%); PARAMILITARY & MILITIA (62%); LITERATURE (78%); WRITERS & WRITING (78%)
Books and Literature; Reviews
COMPANY: NEW YORK MAGAZINE (55%)
PERSON: Geoffrey Wolff; Kurt Andersen
GEOGRAPHIC: SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA (76%); LONDON, ENGLAND (66%); PARIS, FRANCE (66%)
CALIFORNIA, USA (76%) UNITED STATES (76%); FRANCE (67%); MEXICO (67%); ENGLAND (66%); UNITED KINGDOM (66%); EUROPE (72%)
LOAD-DATE: March 11, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Drawings (Drawing by Barbara deWilde)(pg. 1)
(Photo by Barbara deWilde)(pg. 8)
Page 69
A 19th-Century Turn The New York Times March 11, 2007 Sunday
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Review
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1028 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 11, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Dubai on a Budget? No, It's Not a Mirage
BYLINE: By MICHELLE HIGGINS
SECTION: Section 5; Column 1; Travel Desk; PRACTICAL TRAVELER A BARGAIN EMIRATE; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 1057 words
DUBAI on a budget sounds like an oxymoron. The most ostentatious of the seven city states of the United Arab
Emirates, Dubai is where travelers go to find a self-proclaimed seven-star hotel, indoor skiing and artificial islands
springing up from the seas in the shape of palm trees. A stay at that ''seven-star'' hotel, the sail-shaped Burj Al Arab,
starts at more than $2,000 a night.
Yet now a number of budget hotel chains are moving into this playground for the rich. Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou,
the serial entrepreneur who founded the budget airline easyJet, was in Dubai two weeks ago to break ground on the
first of six easyHotels to be built in the emirate.
The hotels, based on the easyHotel model introduced in Europe in 2005, will have rooms a little bigger than those
in existing easyHotels -- but still small, around 160 square feet, with just the basics, including a bed, a shower, a flatscreen television and an Internet connection. Prices won't be announced until the opening, but are expected to be around
250 to 300 dirhams, or about $67 to $80 a night at 3.75 dirhams to the dollar.
InterContinental Hotels plans to open its first Holiday Inn Express in Dubai this summer; with 244 rooms, the hotel will be significantly larger than its counterparts in the United States.
Ibis, an economy brand of Accor, the giant French hotel company, which already has one hotel in Dubai, plans to
expand with a 480-room hotel there in December and a 365-room hotel in 2008. The existing Ibis World Trade Center
Dubai, linked to the International Exhibition Center and Convention Center of Dubai, has rooms from around 70 euros,
$95 a night at $1.35 to the euro. And Whitbread's budget brand, Premier Travel Inn, Britain's biggest hotel chain, is
building a 300-room hotel at the Dubai Investments Park. Room rates are expected to be in the 400-dirham range.
The extreme emphasis on luxury in Dubai over the last decade is precisely why the market for budget travel is
wide open. While most hotel guests continue to stay at high-end places, statistics show a growing demand for lowerpriced accommodations.
The number of guests who stayed in five-star luxury hotels in Dubai increased just 10 percent, to nearly 2 million,
in 2005 from the previous year, according to the latest statistics available online from the Dubai Department of Tourism
and Commerce Marketing. By contrast, the number staying in one-star, limited-service hotels jumped 32 percent in that
same time, to about 600,000.
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Dubai on a Budget? No, It's Not a Mirage The New York Times March 11, 2007 Sunday
It's not only hotels that have taken notice of the budget traveler. Anticipating a shift toward more economical vehicles in the next few years, Hertz is adding small cars like the Honda Jazz hatchback and Toyota Yaris to its Dubai
fleet -- cars that rent for about $55 a day, compared with $110 for a mid-size vehicle or $220 for an S.U.V.
''The place has gotten very expensive,'' said Bob Farrow, general manager of Hertz Car Rental in Dubai. ''Everybody would love to drive a big car on vacation, but they want to pay for a small one.''
Five years ago, small cars made up just 10 percent of the fleet at his outlet, but in the next year or so, Hertz plans
to increase that to about 25 percent.
While more travel companies are catering to budget travelers in Dubai, for now it can still be difficult to find the
cheaper alternatives. A call asking about budget options a couple of weeks ago left a spokeswoman flummoxed at the
New York office promoting Dubai tourism.
''We really focus on the high end,'' she said. ''Truly, it's a luxury market.''
The head office in Dubai wasn't much more help. Asked by e-mail about typical rates and recommendations for
travelers on tight budgets, Mohamed Abdul Mannan, a spokesman for the Dubai Department of Tourism and Commerce
Marketing, replied with just one line -- a Web address for an online article about the recent easyHotels announcement of
plans to build there.
The spectacle of modern Dubai is a product of many years of intensive development. Once a fishing and pearldiving village, it grew into a modest commercial city in the 19th century and wasn't transformed into a metropolis until
the last couple of decades. Even as Dubai's reputation as a luxury travel destination took off, savvy travelers continued
to score deals -- although less remarkable ones as time went on -- even without the new influx of budget chains.
''My wallet has seen the changes,'' said Jesse Long, 34, a photographer in Brooklyn who has been traveling to Dubai on business for the last five years. Hotels where he used to stay for $30 or $40 a night are now charging four times
more, he said, ''and they haven't really improved anything.''
To get the best deal, Mr. Long stays in the central Bur Dubai district, where modestly priced accommodations can
still be found, particularly along Khalid Bin Waleed Road. Last month, he stayed at the Hotel Ascot
(www.ascothoteldubai.com) in that area for about $130 a night and dined at nearby Indian restaurants for less than $5 a
meal.
For discounted hotel accommodations, he recommends www.wired-destinations.com.
It's also possible to find a bargain by consulting the tourism desk at the airport, but to avoid any confusion later, be
sure to get the terms in writing, including the rate and any incentives, like free breakfast.
Ramadan, the ninth month of the Muslim lunar calendar, when people of Muslim faith fast from dawn to dusk, can
be a good time to find bargains since hotels tend to be less crowded and may be more willing to negotiate on price.
(This year, the start of Ramadan, which varies slightly by region, begins around Sept. 12.)
While working hours are slightly altered and many restaurants are closed much of the day, there is an air of festivity after dark, said Daniela Bonanno, a sales manager at Absolute Travel in New York who has visited Dubai during
Ramadan. ''After sunset, everyone celebrates because that's when they can eat,'' Ms. Bonanno said.
Shops and malls stay open longer, and hotels and restaurants offer special Iftar buffets to break the fast.
If you're on a budget, you might want to avoid traveling during the wildly popular Dubai Shopping Festival,
which typically runs from late December through January, when you'll face high rates as you compete for rooms with
crowds of well-heeled travelers.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: HOTELS & MOTELS (92%); HOTEL CHAINS (89%); TOURISM DEVELOPMENT (78%); TRAVEL
HOSPITALITY & TOURISM (78%); LODGING INDUSTRY SECTOR PERFORMANCE (77%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (76%); CONSTRUCTION (74%); MOTOR VEHICLES (73%); CURRENCIES (71%); BRANDING
(69%); AIRLINES (69%); INTERNET & WWW (67%); STATISTICS (66%); COMMERCE DEPARTMENTS (64%)
Travel and Vacations
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Dubai on a Budget? No, It's Not a Mirage The New York Times March 11, 2007 Sunday
COMPANY: ACCOR SA (54%)
TICKER: AC (PAR) (54%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS722110 FULL-SERVICE RESTAURANTS (54%); NAICS721110 HOTELS (EXCEPT CASINO
HOTELS) AND MOTELS (54%); NAICS561510 TRAVEL AGENCIES (54%); SIC7011 HOTELS & MOTELS
(54%); SIC5812 EATING PLACES (54%); SIC4724 TRAVEL AGENCIES (54%); NAICS721110 HOTELS (EXCEPT CASINO HOTELS) & MOTELS (54%)
PERSON: Michelle Higgins
GEOGRAPHIC: DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (97%) DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (97%) UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (99%); UNITED STATES (79%); EUROPE (79%) Dubai
LOAD-DATE: March 11, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Drawing (Drawing by Monika Aichele)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1029 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 11, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
For City With Everything Else, Design Hotels
BYLINE: By ANDREW YANG
SECTION: Section 5; Column 1; Travel Desk; JOURNEYS SHANGHAI; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 1433 words
IN recent years, Shanghai has witnessed the appearance of all the accoutrements that befit a quickly growing, cosmopolitan city, with high-end restaurants like Jean Georges and flagship fashion boutiques such as Armani and Dolce &
Gabbana popping up in the city's more affluent sections.
Until now, one kind of establishment has eluded the city: the boutique hotel. But a new wave of these hotels are
opening this year, providing yet another lure to entice the young international travelers who are already flocking to this
city, whose transformation is occurring at breathtaking speed.
While the label ''boutique'' has evolved in recent years to describe hotels of almost any size that feature a modern
design concept, three new establishments -- Jia Shanghai, the Mansion Boutique Hotel and M Suites -- will epitomize
the term.
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For City With Everything Else, Design Hotels The New York Times March 11, 2007 Sunday
Jia Shanghai, an outpost of the popular Philippe Starck-designed Hong Kong hotel, will have 55 rooms, while the
Mansion Hotel, in a renovated French villa-style manor, will have just 30 rooms. M Suites, part of a new development
on Suzhou Creek, with just 24 rooms, is the most boutique of them all.
With major brands racing to open locations in the city -- among them the W, Park Hyatt, the Peninsula and the
Mandarin Oriental -- these new establishments represent just a small percentage of the available rooms in the city's vast
hospitality landscape. Yet the appeal, in terms of buzz and prestige, is tremendous.
In April, Jia Shanghai is to open at 931 West Nanjing Road, (86-21) 6217-9000. Its arrival in Shanghai has been
noted in the local press and in international travel publications like Travel & Leisure, and in guidebooks such as the
Luxe city-guide series. With just about no hotel experience, Yenn Wong, the 28-year-old Singaporean entrepreneur
behind the Jia concept, opened Jia Hong Kong in 2003 with the boutique-hotel originator himself, Mr. Starck, and created a runaway success that was also Hong Kong's first designer boutique property. (Ms. Wong has opted to go with the
Australian firm Hecker Phelan & Guthrie to design the Shanghai hotel.)
''There are a lot of frequent travelers now, and there are more choices,'' she said. ''Even with Philippe Starck, we
downplayed the design of the rooms, and made it more comfortable. And that worked very well.''
Jia, which means ''home'' in Chinese, is based on a hotel-as-domestic space concept, where rooms feel like apartments. ''This concept is something we are going to translate to all our other properties,'' she said. Another branch of Jia
is to open in Krabi, Thailand, next year.
Located within a former apartment building, Jia Shanghai will feature an Italian restaurant on the second floor to
be managed by the celebrity chef Salvatore Cuomo, the entrepreneur who has a chain of high-end and mid-priced Italian restaurants throughout Japan. Eventually, a bar and lounge will open on the roof. The interiors will be a series of
modern but warm spaces, with touches like timber-paneled walls, a minimal style with hints of chinoiserie, and funky
accents like Gio Ponti chairs and sofas by Antonio Citterio.
The hotel is entered with a private key card, a move the hotel says is intended to give guests a sense of privacy as
well as exclusivity. ''We think there's a niche for this kind of product,'' said Daniel Ong, the hotel's general manager,
noting that the rates for the hotel are in the mid-range, with rack rates around $275 a night -- and sometimes lower -making it more affordable to a younger crowd who are not on corporate accounts.
That same fashionable crowd has also been flocking to the Pier One development, along the city's Suzhou Creek.
Not too far away from the gallery district, the former Union Brewery has been renovated into a night-life playground,
which includes a huge supper club on the ground floor, a rooftop bar and -- sandwiched in between -- M Suites, at 88 Yi
Chang Road, (86-21) 5155-8399, or www.msuites.com.cn.
Set in a re-landscaped public park, the hotel, which opened in January, features a range of accommodations, from
single rooms at 980 yuan (about $130 at 7.9 yuan to the U.S. dollar) to the Empress Suite at 2,888 yuan. While the design is meant to be modern and sleek -- with large flat-screen TVs, and circular beds in some rooms -- it's similiar to
what's offered at W hotels.
Like the other entrepreneurs, Miao-Miao Jiang, M Suites' executive director, was also quick to emphasize the
lack of designer hotels in Shanghai. ''Not many others have done it here,'' she said. ''So I don't think we have too many
competitors. Also, who else can be near the downtown business center, with a park, underground parking spaces and a
boating dock?'' Indeed, the hotel does feature these amenities, but its location, in a largely industrial area on the edge of
the city center, puts it in an unconventional category.
If both Jia and M Suites were meant to reflect Shanghai's desire for modern amenities, the Mansion Hotel, at 82
Xinle Road, (86-21) 5403-9888, in the heart of the city's French Concession district, is a complete throwback to the
swinging Shanghai of the 1920s.
Situated in a French manor-style house that was once the home of a notorious Chinese mob boss, the Mansion Hotel has been rehabilitated from a largely abandoned shell that as recently as last spring had badly sagging wood floors.
With its gut renovation completed last month, this charming five-story limestone structure has been painstakingly restored into a 30-room property that feels more like a member's club for the Fortune 500 set.
Right before the hotel's partial opening last month, its developer, Lu-Jun Yin, cranked an old Columbia gramophone from 1910, and instantly the cavernous lobby, with its 15-foot ceilings, filled with a 1920s recording of the Beijing opera singer Mei Lanfang.
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For City With Everything Else, Design Hotels The New York Times March 11, 2007 Sunday
''We wanted to make this hotel part of the story we want to tell about old Shanghai,'' he said, noting the other classic vintage antiques housed in the new glass cases all throughout the hotel's lobby. Every detail of the hotel reflects the
building's former grandeur, said Mr. Yin, now the chief executive officer of Boutique Hotels International, which is
behind the development of the Mansion Hotel. In the French Concession on Xinle Road, a trendy corridor that includes
coffee shops, wine bars and independent fashion boutiques, the Mansion Hotel is discreetly tucked behind a gated
courtyard that has a manicured garden with a small pond.
Trying to create a hospitality experience steeped in history was an idea Mr. Yin first explored when he was general manager of Xintiandi several years ago, and opened 88 Xintiandi, the complex's signature hotel. While that project
was in a new building surrounded by old shikumen, or traditional Shanghai courtyard houses, the idea had stayed with
him ever since. ''I really think it's a new way to retain the city's character,'' Mr. Yin said.
Because of the crowd that the hotel hopes to attract -- corporate executives and other elite travelers -- the hotel is
commanding possibly the highest rates anywhere in Shanghai, with $550 for a basic room to $880 for suites. Each room
has 15-foot ceilings and a large Jacuzzi.
The Mansion's rooftop has been renovated into a bar, which looks out over the low rooftops of the French Concession. Since the hotel is small, Mr. Yin said, the public facilities, such as the first-floor lounge, the private dining rooms
and the rooftop, are available primarily to guests staying at the hotel. Special key cards for entry will be issued to select
friends and associates of the hotel, giving the Mansion a clubhouse-like feel.
While all of these new boutique hotels seem to signal the city's rising glamour among international travelers, these
properties have all arrived, seemingly simultaneously, because of a shared belief that the market is finally ready.
''Until now, the need has not been fulfilled,'' said Ms. Wong, of Jia Shanghai. ''The people who will stay with us
are not people who will normally stay in megahotels. They are a discerning lot.''
The success of these establishments will depend on their personalities, she noted, and to a degree the personalities
of their developers.
Ms. Wong said the recent wave of boutique hotels may be just the beginning. Already, there is talk about other
properties around the city, including another location in the French Concession and another vacant site on the riverfront
Bund district that is under development.
''In the next few years,'' she predicted, ''there will be a boom in boutique hotels.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: CITY LIFE (90%); HOTELS & MOTELS (90%); RESTAURANTS (89%); FULL SERVICE RESTAURANTS (78%); TRAVEL HOSPITALITY & TOURISM (77%); CLOTHING & ACCESSORIES STORES (77%)
Hotels and Motels
COMPANY: BOUTIQUE HOTELS (56%); MANDARIN ORIENTAL MANILA (55%); GLOBAL HYATT CORP
(55%)
PERSON: Andrew Yang
GEOGRAPHIC: SHANGHAI, CHINA (92%) EAST CHINA (91%); JIANGSU, CHINA (51%) CHINA (92%);
HONG KONG (91%); THAILAND (50%) Shanghai (China); China
LOAD-DATE: March 11, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: A suite at the Mansion Hotel and the building behind its walled courtyard. The hotel is in a former
mobster's mansion. The Jia Shanghai (in a former apartment building), where comfort is not sacrificed for design. (Photographs by Qilai Shen for The New York Times)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
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For City With Everything Else, Design Hotels The New York Times March 11, 2007 Sunday
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1030 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 11, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
A New Battery Takes Off In a Race to Electric Cars
BYLINE: By JASON PONTIN.
Jason Pontin is the editor in chief and publisher of Technology Review, a magazine and Web site owned by M.I.T.
E-mail: pontin@nytimes.com.
SECTION: Section 3; Column 1; Money and Business/Financial Desk; SLIPSTREAM; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 1347 words
VROOOOM! Or, rather, much more softly: brmmm.
A123Systems, a start-up in Watertown, Mass., says it has created a powerful, safe, long-lived battery. If the cell
fulfills the ambitions of its maker, that softer sound will be the future of automobiles.
To date, all-electric vehicles have failed because their batteries were inadequate. General Motors' futuristic EV1 car
of the late 1990s was doted upon by environmentally conscious drivers who admired its innovative engineering, but
because the car used large, primitive nickel metal hydride batteries, its range was limited, its acceleration degraded as
the batteries weakened with age, and its two-seat layout was not very comfortable for big, corn-fed North Americans.
''The problem came down to usability,'' said Nick Zelenski, G.M.'s chief vehicle engineer. ''You had to plan your
life around when you were going to charge the EV1.'' G.M. built only 1,117 of the experimental cars because it believed
that American drivers would not buy such an affront to the national ideal of the open road.
Now, G.M. is planning two plug-in hybrid vehicles. Like the Toyota Prius and other available hybrids, the G.M.
models will supplement their electric motors with power from internal combustion engines. What's different is that most
of the power for daily commuting will come from battery packs that can be recharged from ordinary household sockets.
The new models are expected to have a range of at least 40 miles without using their gas engines. While that is less than
the range of the all-electric EV1, the hybrid nature of the new models will give them far greater total range.
G.M. says that the extra cost for the battery packs mean that plug-in hybrids will sell for thousands of dollars more
than comparable, non-electric vehicles. But the average driver, going 40 miles a day, would also save $450 a year if
gasoline were $2 a gallon. Because the median daily travel of the average American car is 33 miles (well within the new
model's electric range), the cars would achieve 155 miles to the gallon, and many drivers would fill up with gasoline
only every few months.
G.M. hopes to begin selling the first car, a plug-in hybrid version of the Saturn Vue sport utility, as soon as 2009.
The second, the Chevrolet Volt, which exists only as a concept-model prototype, is a startling departure from traditional
automotive design. The Volt's internal combustion engine is not attached to the drive train as current hybrids are. In the
case of the Volt, it is used only to recharge the vehicle's batteries. In short, the Volt would function as a true electric car,
with the insurance of an internal combustion engine -- and not coincidentally it is also designed as a recognizably conventional American compact, seating five, which could drive hundreds of miles to Mother's at Thanksgiving.
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A New Battery Takes Off In a Race to Electric Cars The New York Times March 11, 2007 Sunday
''The real breakthrough is with the new batteries, which offered us energy density -- which in turn provided us
with a reliable, high-powered package in a relatively small space,'' Mr. Zelenski said.
G.M. selected A123Systems (along with its partner Cobasys) to develop batteries that might be used for the Saturn
Vue, he said, and it is considering awarding A123Systems a similar contract for the Volt concept car, to take advantage
of the company's remarkable new rechargeable lithium batteries.
Rechargeable lithium batteries have been used in laptop computers and mobile phones since the early 1990s.
(Their common name, ''lithium ion batteries,'' is a tautology, since all batteries conduct electric current by allowing the
passage of ions between two electrodes.) But despite their lightness, rechargeable lithium batteries -- which often use a
compound of highly reactive cobalt oxide -- have hitherto been thought impractical for transportation because they are
insufficiently powerful and might, if pierced, jarred or overheated, explode or burst into flames.
A123Systems batteries are different. Yet-Ming Chiang, a professor of materials science and engineering at M.I.T.
and a co-founder of A123Systems, described their advantages: ''Used in a hybrid vehicle, our batteries deliver faster
acceleration than any other batteries of the same size,'' Professor Chiang said. ''And the chemical stability of the cathode
material greatly improves safety as well as extending battery life.''
The history of A123Systems offers a lesson in entrepreneurial adaptability. When Professor Chiang and two others founded the company in 2002, it was devoted to a radical business proposition: it hoped to develop a technique
where component materials would ''self assemble'' into a practical lithium battery. ''Imagine sprayable batteries, conforming to the shape of a device or an appliance,'' Professor Chiang said. ''They could also be deposited in very small
volumes to power micro and nano devices.''
But self-assembling batteries, despite their intriguing potential, proved intractably hard to develop -- or, at least,
more expensive and less sure than the immediate commercial possibilities of a rechargeable lithium battery with novel
applications. ''It just wasn't working,'' said Bart Riley, another of the co-founders, and A123's vice president for research
and development. (The third co-founder is Ric Fulop, now vice president for business development, who has also participated in the start-up of five other companies.)
By late 2003, the company had abandoned self-assembly for another, less alchemical but still dramatic technology. In place of cobalt oxide, it used a commonplace substance, iron phosphate, but assembled it in a novel, nanostructure -- the particles used were 100 times smaller than conventional oxides and eight orders of magnitude more conductive than conventional phosphates. The new combination offers high power, stability and longevity.
Shifting to the new technology seems to have been a wise, if hard, decision. Today, A123Systems, a privately held
venture, has raised more than $102 million in funding from a variety of investors including Sequoia Capital, Motorola
and General Electric. It has 250 employees in China, Taiwan, South Korea and the United States. Apart from its developmental work with G.M., it manufactures the batteries that drive Black & Decker and DeWalt professional power
tools.
According to David Vieau, A123Systems' chief executive, the company enjoys ''hundreds of millions of dollars''
in contracts.
The former commitment to self-assembly is preserved only in the company's nerdy name, derived from an equation called the ''Hamaker force constant,'' which is used to calculate attractive and repulsive forces at nano-dimensions,
and which begins ''A123''
While A123Systems still hopes to return to self-assembling batteries one day, it remains focused for now on the
future of transportation. In this, the company's founders and senior officers mix business acumen with a kind of millennial fervor: they sincerely believe that their rechargeable lithium batteries could reduce the carbon emissions that contribute to global warming.
These plug-in hybrids ''will cut gasoline demand over 70 percent for most drivers, and carbon emissions by 50
percent, which will have a significant effect on the environment,'' Mr. Vieau said. Driving a plug-in hybrid powered by
batteries from A123, most drivers would seldom use their gasoline engines. And while the electricity that charged the
batteries would derive mostly from carbon dioxide-producing power plants, burning gasoline is the most polluting
transportation energy of all, according to a 2005 study by the Argonne National Laboratory.
A123Systems' ambition is to apply a new technology, born from original science, to solve a difficult problem. The
company's chairman is Gururaj Deshpande, the entrepreneur who also is a co-founder and chairman of Sycamore
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A New Battery Takes Off In a Race to Electric Cars The New York Times March 11, 2007 Sunday
Networks. As he explained: ''This company can play a role in reducing our dependence on oil and in cleaning up the
environment. Any company that gets to contribute to those efforts in whatever measure would have done good in the
world.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: AUTOMOTIVE TECHNOLOGY (92%); ENGINEERING (90%); MOTOR VEHICLES (90%); ELECTRIC VEHICLES (91%); NEW PRODUCTS (89%); NEW CAR MODELS (89%); SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES
(78%); AUTOMAKERS (90%); CONCEPT CARS (77%); AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY & ENVIRONMENT (77%);
HYBRID VEHICLES (90%); AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING (76%) Automobiles; Batteries; Electric and Hybrid
Vehicles; Prices (Fares, Fees and Rates); Commuting; Engines; Automobiles
COMPANY: GENERAL MOTORS CORP (58%)
ORGANIZATION: General Motors Corp; A123systems (Co); Saturn Division of General Motors Corp
TICKER: GMR (LSE) (57%); GMP (PAR) (58%); GM (NYSE) (58%); GMB (BRU) (58%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS336112 LIGHT TRUCK & UTILITY VEHICLE MANUFACTURING (58%); NAICS336111
AUTOMOBILE MANUFACTURING (58%); SIC3714 MOTOR VEHICLE PARTS & ACCESSORIES (57%);
SIC3711 MOTOR VEHICLES & PASSENGER CAR BODIES (57%)
PERSON: Jason Pontin
GEOGRAPHIC: MASSACHUSETTS, USA (93%) UNITED STATES (93%); NORTH AMERICA (79%)
LOAD-DATE: March 11, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: From left, Yet-Ming Chiang, Bart Riley, Ric Fulop and David Vieau of A123Systems, with rechargeable lithium batteries at the company's headquarters in Watertown, Mass. The Chevy Volt prototype, below, was
conceived to use such batteries. (Photo by Rick Friedman for The New York Times)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1031 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 11, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Now Ticking Big Ben For Men
BYLINE: By JULIE EARLE-LEVINE
SECTION: Section 6; 'T'; Column 3; T: Men's Fashion Magazine; THE REMIX; Pg. 74
Page 77
Now Ticking Big Ben For Men The New York Times March 11, 2007 Sunday
LENGTH: 110 words
Time for a new watch? Dent -- the British clockmaker famous for creating the Big Ben tower in London as well as
timepieces for luminaries like King Edward VI and Charles Darwin -- has a new line of watches for the common man.
Frank Spurrell, the founder of Watch Magazine, and Twysden Moore, a London nightclub entrepreneur and watch
fetishist, acquired the label after assuring the original owner that they were not going to make tacky plastic alarm
clocks. Expect instead a classic square-face ticker inspired by Big Ben and a round homage to an 1848 ship chronometer used by the Royal Navy in the world wars. Go to www.dentwatches.com. JULIE EARLE-LEVINE
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: CLOCK & WATCH MFG (90%); NAVIES (85%); BRITISH MONARCHS (90%) Watches and Clocks
ORGANIZATION: Dent (British Co)
PERSON: Julie Earle-Levine
GEOGRAPHIC: LONDON, ENGLAND (91%) UNITED KINGDOM (73%); ENGLAND (91%)
LOAD-DATE: March 11, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo (Photograph by Don Ashby (3)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1032 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 11, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
If Life Imitates Art, He's in Big Trouble
BYLINE: By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
SECTION: Section 14WC; Column 1; Westchester Weekly Desk; BOOK BUSINESS; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 750 words
DATELINE: RYE BROOK
WHEN Matthew Klein sat down to write his thriller ''Con Ed,'' he had little taste for the standard heroes of the genre. Grizzled cops, feisty pathologists and clever lawyers left him cold. So he took a flier and made his lead character a
con man -- albeit a likable one.
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If Life Imitates Art, He's in Big Trouble The New York Times March 11, 2007 Sunday
His protagonist, Kip Largo, has just been released from prison and is trying to go straight. But when his grown son
shows up in deep debt, Kip decides to bail him out by pulling off one last scam. He pretends to be a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who starts a high-tech software company that predicts the stock market. Throw some nasty members of the
Russian mob, a wealthy Las Vegas developer and a few sexy women into this $20 million stock-manipulation scheme,
and you've got Mr. Klein's new novel, to be released by Warner Books on Tuesday. (A book party will be held from 5 to
7 p.m. on Saturday at the Rye Free Reading Room, 1061 Boston Post Road.)
Mr. Klein, who grew up in Westchester and lives in Rye Brook, is certainly qualified to write about the huge
amounts of money that flowed through Silicon Valley at the height of the Internet bubble. The 38-year-old author was
one of those archetypal whiz kids who started several technology companies during the boom. He is quick to point out,
however, that his familiarity with scams is only a product of ''armchair research.''
Self-described as ''freakishly tall'' -- he is 6 foot 7 -- Mr. Klein projects an air of both deep ambition and selfeffacement. He shares with his more rough-hewn protagonist a somewhat forlorn sense of humor and a penchant for big
ideas.
Even during his college days at Yale, Mr. Klein revealed an entrepreneurial bent. He began a business delivering
local restaurant food to students in their dorm rooms, and arranged with the university bursar for students to bill food
directly to their parents' accounts. After graduating in 1990, he went on to Stanford Business School.
''I always thought I wanted to run a business,'' Mr. Klein said. ''I know myself, and I'm really unemployable in the
classical sense. I don't listen to people, and I think I know the answers, so that makes me think I should do stuff on my
own.''
He dropped out of business school just one quarter shy of graduating. He had been running a small software company in his apartment in Palo Alto, Calif., and venture capitalists approached him to run the business full time. The
company, Release Software, was a personal information manager that could be opened and downloaded remotely, a new
concept in 1994.
That business didn't pan out, but Mr. Klein soon moved to a second venture, TechPlanet. His idea was to create a
national brand of quality-controlled computer service technicians. At one point Mr. Klein had raised $40 million in venture capital, had 400 employees and was spending $1 million a day. So confident was he that he personally guaranteed
the company debt. But problems arose. It turned out that few computer system installations were standard. Jobs were
complicated, and the company had to hire talented technicians and pay them accordingly. The business kept expanding,
with no eye toward profitability. Investors pulled out, and ultimately the venture became what Mr. Klein described as ''a
very public, spectacular failure.''
Lawyers and creditors hounded him. It took him years to dig out. But he is nothing if not resilient, and Mr. Klein
came up with yet another idea. His new company, Collective2, audits various algorithmic stock-trading services, tracking their results, and offers a marketplace for those who want to trade using them. Once the company was up and running, he turned his attention to writing ''Con Ed.''
Writing a novel and writing computer software, he said, aren't as different as one might think. ''There's a lot of
aesthetics involved in both, but the elegance of a piece of computer software is sort of private; only the coders know,''
he said. ''The talent lies in the judgment, and I think you need that in writing software and writing novels.''
So Mr. Klein is running a business with software that aims to predict the stock market at the same time that he has
written a book about a con artist who runs a company that claims to predict the stock market? Might that make customers a little nervous?
''I hadn't really thought of it that way,'' Mr. Klein said, laughing. ''I think companies pretty much stand on their
own, and if you can make money for someone, they're willing to overlook pretty much anything.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: LITERATURE GENRES (90%); BOOK REVIEWS (90%); STUDENTS & STUDENT LIFE (89%);
SOFTWARE MAKERS (89%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (89%); EDUCATION (85%); NOVELS & SHORT STORIES (78%); VENTURE CAPITAL (75%); RESTAURANTS (61%); WRITERS & WRITING (78%); LITERATURE
(78%); BUSINESS EDUCATION (85%); COMPUTER SOFTWARE (89%) Books and Literature; Biographical Information
Page 79
If Life Imitates Art, He's in Big Trouble The New York Times March 11, 2007 Sunday
COMPANY: CONSOLIDATED EDISON INC (58%); GRAND CENTRAL PUBLISHING (56%)
TICKER: ED (NYSE) (58%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS221210 NATURAL GAS DISTRIBUTION (58%); NAICS221122 ELECTRIC POWER DISTRIBUTION (58%); SIC4924 NATURAL GAS DISTRIBUTION (58%); SIC4911 ELECTRIC SERVICES (58%)
PERSON: Matthew Klein; Kate Stone Lombardi
GEOGRAPHIC: SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, CA, USA (91%) CALIFORNIA, USA (91%) UNITED STATES
(91%)
LOAD-DATE: March 11, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: DOUBLE THREAT -- Matthew Klein, author and serial tech entrepreneur. (Photo by Suzanne
DeChillo/The New York Times)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1033 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 11, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
He Asks You to Just Make More Room for Yourself
BYLINE: By MARCELLE S. FISCHLER.
E-mail: lijournal@nytimes.com
SECTION: Section 14LI; Column 1; Long Island Weekly Desk; AUTHOR; Pg. 5
LENGTH: 766 words
DATELINE: BROOKVILLE
IF Stuart R. Levine is obsessed with productivity, it's not just about business; one of his goals is ''to take back the
weekend,'' he says.
Keeping conversations on track, shutting out distractions and not letting others waste his time are lessons that Mr.
Levine, the chairman and chief executive of Stuart Levine & Associates, a consulting and leadership development firm
in Jericho, learned from decades of working with managers and executives.
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He Asks You to Just Make More Room for Yourself The New York Times March 11, 2007 Sunday
The payoff for thinking clearly and making the best use of his time at work, he said, is having more time to spend at
home here with Harriet, his wife of 24 years, and his children, Jesse, 23, and Elizabeth, 21, when they are off from work
and college.
Not that Mr. Levine is necessarily lounging around the house. An ultraorganized, no-nonsense sort, he spent his
Sundays for nearly a year writing his third book, ''Cut to the Chase and 99 Other Rules to Liberate Yourself and Gain
Back the Gift of Time,'' published in December (Currency/Doubleday). It is a straight-to-the-punch-line collection of
100 rules to help people gain financial security and find more balance between their work and personal lives.
''If you think clearly, then you are able to ensure your financial stability and success, and if you act effectively,
then you are able to achieve balance,'' Mr. Levine said on a recent weekday morning, dressed in a suit and sitting in
front of his living-room fireplace as flames licked the logs that he had cut from a fallen tree on his three-acre property.
In his case, balance includes his other passions: arranging cut flowers in vases all over the house, puttering in his
garden, taking a guitar lesson or enjoying a glass of merlot from his wine cellar.
Mr. Levine, who grew up in Bethpage, was making $12,000 a year teaching ecology at a junior high school in
Plainview when, at age 24, he decided to run for the New York State Assembly. He was elected in 1972. When he was
defeated two years later, he went into business, eventually joining Dale Carnegie & Associates, and rising through the
ranks to chief executive.
Ten years ago, tired of endless globe-trotting and wanting to be home with his children at night, he started his own
company.
A silver-haired 59, Mr. Levine starts each day by having a bowl of Cheerios, reading the newspapers and doing
some stretching exercises.
After that, he is raring to go. ''I explode out of the blocks every morning,'' he said. He advocates getting in to the
office early and getting home on time.
''Organizing your life applies professionally and personally,'' he said.
If the workday is supposed to start at 8:30, he said, most people ''drift in around 9:30 a.m.,'' have a cup of coffee,
schmooze about the politics of the day, ''and before you know it they are an hour behind the curve, an hour and a half
behind the curve.''
Meetings shouldn't last more than 10 minutes, he said. He turns off his Blackberry during dinner and keeps it out
of the bedroom after 11 p.m.
The new book had its origins in his appearance three years ago on the ''Today'' show on NBC for a previous book,
''The Six Fundamentals of Success: The Rules for Getting It Right for Yourself and Your Organization'' (Currency/Doubleday, 2004). Just before he went on the air, Mr. Levine recalled, Matt Lauer confided: ''You know what makes
me crazy? People that ask for a five-minute meeting and an hour later they are still in my office.''
Mr. Levine had often heard clients expressing a similar frustration. ''What became very clear to me was that people are working very hard and they were struggling with how to get results and become more productive,'' he said.
He said he created the book as a road map to help others.
''Every conversation, every meeting has to have a clearly defined purpose,'' Mr. Levine said. Activity should not
be confused with accomplishment.
His rules are bluntly worded. One, advocating honesty, is, ''Tell them if the baby is ugly.''
Another is, ''Avoid toxic people.''
''I want to enjoy my life and I want to be productive,'' he said. ''I can't do it if I have people that are distracting me
and whining all day long, if they spend too much time talking about the small-pea politics about what is going on in the
office.''
His organizational skills are applied at home as well as in the office. During family discussions when his children
were teenagers, he would take a flip chart into the family room to illustrate the cost of living, for example.
''I told them, 'You have to listen, because people pay Dad a lot of money for this,' '' he said.
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He Asks You to Just Make More Room for Yourself The New York Times March 11, 2007 Sunday
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: CHILDREN (89%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (78%); BOOK REVIEWS (74%); LITERATURE (73%)
Biographical Information; Books and Literature
COMPANY: DALE CARNEGIE & ASSOCIATES INC (52%)
ORGANIZATION: Levine, Stuart, & Associates
PERSON: Marcelle S Fischler; Stuart Levine
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (79%)
LOAD-DATE: March 11, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: ROAD MAP -- Stuart R. Levine offers his rules for getting the most out of life. (Photo by Phil Marino for The New York Times)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1034 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 11, 2007 Sunday
Correction Appended
Late Edition - Final
Crisis Looms In Mortgages
BYLINE: By GRETCHEN MORGENSON
SECTION: Section 1; Column 5; National Desk; NEWS ANALYSIS; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 2651 words
On March 1, a Wall Street analyst at Bear Stearns wrote an upbeat report on a company that specializes in making
mortgages to cash-poor homebuyers. The company, New Century Financial, had already disclosed that a growing number of borrowers were defaulting, and its stock, at around $15, had lost half its value in three weeks.
What happened next seems all too familiar to investors who bought technology stocks in 2000 at the breathless
urging of Wall Street analysts. Last week, New Century said it would stop making loans and needed emergency financing to survive. The stock collapsed to $3.21.
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Crisis Looms In Mortgages The New York Times March 11, 2007 Sunday Correction Appended
The analyst's untimely call, coupled with a failure among other Wall Street institutions to identify problems in the
home mortgage market, isn't the only familiar ring to investors who watched the technology stock bubble burst precisely
seven years ago.
Now, as then, Wall Street firms and entrepreneurs made fortunes issuing questionable securities, in this case
pools of home loans taken out by risky borrowers. Now, as then, bullish stock and credit analysts for some of those
same Wall Street firms, which profited in the underwriting and rating of those investments, lulled investors with upbeat
pronouncements even as loan defaults ballooned. Now, as then, regulators stood by as the mania churned, fed by lax
standards and anything-goes lending.
Investment manias are nothing new, of course. But the demise of this one has been broadly viewed as troubling, as
it involves the nation's $6.5 trillion mortgage securities market, which is larger even than the United States treasury
market.
Hanging in the balance is the nation's housing market, which has been a big driver of the economy. Fewer lenders
means many potential homebuyers will find it more difficult to get credit, while hundreds of thousands of homes will go
up for sale as borrowers default, further swamping a stalled market.
''The regulators are trying to figure out how to work around it, but the Hill is going to be in for one big surprise,''
said Josh Rosner, a managing director at Graham-Fisher & Company, an independent investment research firm in New
York, and an expert on mortgage securities. ''This is far more dramatic than what led to Sarbanes-Oxley,'' he added,
referring to the legislation that followed the WorldCom and Enron scandals, ''both in conflicts and in terms of absolute
economic impact.''
While real estate prices were rising, the market for home loans operated like a well-oiled machine, providing
ready money to borrowers and high returns to investors like pension funds, insurance companies, hedge funds and other
institutions. Now this enormous and important machine is sputtering, and the effects are reverberating throughout Main
Street, Wall Street and Washington.
Already, more than two dozen mortgage lenders have failed or closed their doors, and shares of big companies in
the mortgage industry have declined significantly. Delinquencies on loans made to less creditworthy borrowers -known as subprime mortgages --recently reached 12.6 percent. Some banks have reported rising problems among borrowers that were deemed more creditworthy as well.
Traders and investors who watch this world say the major participants -- Wall Street firms, credit rating agencies,
lenders and investors -- are holding their collective breath and hoping that the spring season for home sales will reinstate
what had been a go-go market for mortgage securities. Many Wall Street firms saw their own stock prices decline over
their exposure to the turmoil.
''I guess we are a bit surprised at how fast this has unraveled,'' said Tom Zimmerman, head of asset-backed securities research at UBS, in a recent conference call with investors.
Even now the tone accentuates the positive. In a recent presentation to investors, UBS Securities discussed the potential for losses among some mortgage securities in a variety of housing markets. None of the models showed flat or
falling home prices, however.
The Bear Stearns analyst who upgraded New Century, Scott R. Coren, wrote in a research note that the company's
stock price reflected the risks in its industry, and that the downside risk was about $10 in a ''rescue-sale scenario.'' According to New Century, Bear Stearns is among the firms with a ''longstanding'' relationship financing its mortgage operation. Mr. Coren, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment.
Others who follow the industry have voiced more caution. Thomas A. Lawler, founder of Lawler Economic and
Housing Consulting, said: ''It's not that the mortgage industry is collapsing, it's just that the mortgage industry went wild
and there are consequences of going wild.
''I think there is no doubt that home sales are going to be weaker than most anybody who was forecasting the market just two months ago thought. For those areas where the housing market was already not too great, where inventories
were at historically high levels and it finally looked like things were stabilizing, this is going to be unpleasant.''
Like worms that surface after a torrential rain, revelations that emerge when an asset bubble bursts are often unattractive, involving dubious industry practices and even fraud. In the coming weeks, some mortgage market participants
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Crisis Looms In Mortgages The New York Times March 11, 2007 Sunday Correction Appended
predict, investors will learn not only how lax real estate lending standards became, but also how hard to value these
opaque securities are and how easy their values are to prop up.
Owners of mortgage securities that have been pooled, for example, do not have to reflect the prevailing market
prices of those securities each day, as stockholders do. Only when a security is downgraded by a rating agency do investors have to mark their holdings to the market value. As a result, traders say, many investors are reporting the values of
their holdings at inflated prices.
''How these things are valued for portfolio purposes is exposed to management judgment, which is potentially arbitrary,'' Mr. Rosner said.
At the heart of the turmoil is the subprime mortgage market, which developed to give loans to shaky borrowers or
to those with little cash to put down as collateral. Some 35 percent of all mortgage securities issued last year were in
that category, up from 13 percent in 2003.
Looking to expand their reach and their profits, lenders were far too willing to lend, as evidenced by the creation
of new types of mortgages -- known as ''affordability products'' -- that required little or no down payment and little or no
documentation of a borrower's income. Loans with 40-year or even 50-year terms were also popular among cashstrapped borrowers seeking low monthly payments. Exceedingly low ''teaser'' rates that move up rapidly in later years
were another feature of the new loans.
The rapid rise in the amount borrowed against a property's value shows how willing lenders were to stretch. In
2000, according to Banc of America Securities, the average loan to a subprime lender was 48 percent of the value of the
underlying property. By 2006, that figure reached 82 percent.
Mortgages requiring little or no documentation became known colloquially as ''liar loans.'' An April 2006 report
by the Mortgage Asset Research Institute, a consulting concern in Reston, Va., analyzed 100 loans in which the borrowers merely stated their incomes, and then looked at documents those borrowers had filed with the I.R.S. The resulting
differences were significant: in 90 percent of loans, borrowers overstated their incomes 5 percent or more. But in almost
60 percent of cases, borrowers inflated their incomes by more than half.
A Deutsche Bank report said liar loans accounted for 40 percent of the subprime mortgage issuance last year, up
from 25 percent in 2001.
Securities backed by home mortgages have been traded since the 1970s, but it has been only since 2002 or so that
investors, including pension funds, insurance companies, hedge funds and other institutions, have shown such an appetite for them.
Wall Street, of course, was happy to help refashion mortgages from arcane and illiquid securities into ubiquitous
and frequently traded ones. Its reward is that it now dominates the market. While commercial banks and savings banks
had long been the biggest lenders to home buyers, by 2006, Wall Street had a commanding share -- 60 percent -- of the
mortgage financing market, Federal Reserve data show.
The big firms in the business are Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank
and UBS. They buy mortgages from issuers, put thousands of them into pools to spread out the risks and then divide
them into slices, known as tranches, based on quality. Then they sell them.
The profits from packaging these securities and trading them for customers and their own accounts have been
phenomenal. At Lehman Brothers, for example, mortgage-related businesses contributed directly to record revenue and
income over the last three years.
The issuance of mortgage-related securities, which include those backed by home-equity loans, peaked in 2003 at
more than $3 trillion, according to data from the Bond Market Association. Last year's issuance, reflecting a slowdown
in home price appreciation, was $1.93 trillion, a slight decline from 2005.
In addition to enviable growth, the mortgage securities market has undergone other changes in recent years. In the
1990s, buyers of mortgage securities spread out their risk by combining those securities with loans backed by other assets, like credit card receivables and automobile loans. But in 2001, investor preferences changed, focusing on specific
types of loans. Mortgages quickly became the favorite.
Another change in the market involves its trading characteristics. Years ago, mortgage-backed securities appealed
to a buy-and-hold crowd, who kept the securities on their books until the loans were paid off. ''You used to think of
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Crisis Looms In Mortgages The New York Times March 11, 2007 Sunday Correction Appended
mortgages as slow moving,'' said Glenn T. Costello, managing director of structured finance residential mortgage at
Fitch Ratings. ''Now it has become much more of a trading market, with a mark-to-market bent.''
The average daily trading volume of mortgage securities issued by government agencies like Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac, for example, exceeded $250 billion last year. That's up from about $60 billion in 2000.
Wall Street became so enamored of the profits in mortgages that it began to expand its reach, buying companies
that make loans to consumers to supplement its packaging and sales operations. In August 2006, Morgan Stanley
bought Saxon, a $6.5 billion subprime mortgage underwriter, for $706 million. And last September, Merrill Lynch paid
$1.3 billion to buy First Franklin Financial, a home lender in San Jose, Calif. At the time, Merrill said it expected First
Franklin to add to its earnings in 2007. Now analysts expect Merrill to take a large loss on the purchase.
Indeed, on Feb. 28, as the first fiscal quarter ended for many big investment banks, Wall Street buzzed with speculation that the firms had slashed the value of their numerous mortgage holdings, recording significant losses.
As prevailing interest rates remained low over the last several years, the appetite for these securities only rose. In
the ever-present search for high yields, buyers clamored for securities that contained subprime mortgages, which carry
interest rates that are typically one to two percentage points higher than traditional loans. Mortgage securities participants say increasingly lax lending standards in these loans became almost an invitation to commit mortgage fraud. It is
too early to tell how significant a role mortgage fraud played in the rocketing delinquency rates -- 12.6 percent among
subprime borrowers. Delinquency rates among all mortgages stood at 4.7 percent in the third quarter of 2006.
For years, investors cared little about risks in mortgage holdings. That is changing.
''I would not be surprised if between now and the end of the year at least 20 percent of BBB and BBB- bonds that
are backed by subprime loans originated in 2006 will be downgraded,'' Mr. Lawler said.
Still, the rating agencies have yet to downgrade large numbers of mortgage securities to reflect the market turmoil.
Standard & Poor's has put 2 percent of the subprime loans it rates on watch for a downgrade, and Moody's said it has
downgraded 1 percent to 2 percent of such mortgages that were issued in 2005 and 2006.
Fitch appears to be the most proactive, having downgraded 3.7 percent of subprime mortgages in the period.
The agencies say that they are confident that their ratings reflect reality in the mortgages they have analyzed and
that they have required managers of mortgage pools with risky loans in them to increase the collateral. A spokesman for
S.& P. said the firm made its ratings requirements more stringent for subprime issuers last summer and that they shored
up the loans as a result.
Meeting with Wall Street analysts last week, Terry McGraw, chief executive of McGraw-Hill, the parent of S.&
P., said the firm does not believe that loans made in 2006 will perform ''as badly as some have suggested.''
Nevertheless, some investors wonder whether the rating agencies have the stomach to downgrade these securities
because of the selling stampede that would follow. Many mortgage buyers cannot hold securities that are rated below
investment grade -- insurance companies are an example. So if the securities were downgraded, forced selling would
ensue, further pressuring an already beleaguered market.
Another consideration is the profits in mortgage ratings. Some 6.5 percent of Moody's 2006 revenue was related to
the subprime market.
Brian Clarkson, Moody's co-chief operating officer, denied that the company hesitates to cut ratings. ''We made
assumptions early on that we were going to have worse performance in subprime mortgages, which is the reason we
haven't seen that many downgrades,'' he said. ''If we have something that is investment grade that we need to take below
investment grade, we will do it.''
Interestingly, accounting conventions in mortgage securities require an investor to mark his holdings to market only when they get downgraded. So investors may be assigning higher values to their positions than they would receive if
they had to go into the market and find a buyer. That delays the reckoning, some analysts say.
''There are delayed triggers in many of these investment vehicles and that is delaying the recognition of losses,''
Charles Peabody, founder of Portales Partners, an independent research boutique in New York, said. ''I do think the unwind is just starting. The moment of truth is not yet here.''
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Crisis Looms In Mortgages The New York Times March 11, 2007 Sunday Correction Appended
On March 2, reacting to the distress in the mortgage market, a throng of regulators, including the Federal Reserve
Board, asked lenders to tighten their policies on lending to those with questionable credit. Late last week, WMC Mortgage, General Electric's subprime mortgage arm, said it would no longer make loans with no down payments.
Meanwhile, investors wait to see whether the spring home selling season will shore up the mortgage market. If
home prices do not appreciate or if they fall, defaults will rise, and pension funds and others that embraced the mortgage
securities market will have to record losses. And they will likely retreat from the market, analysts said, affecting consumers and the overall economy.
A paper published last month by Mr. Rosner and Joseph R. Mason, an associate professor of finance at Drexel
University's LeBow College of Business, assessed the potential problems associated with disruptions in the mortgage
securities market. They wrote: ''Decreased funding for residential mortgage-backed securities could set off a downward
spiral in credit availability that can deprive individuals of home ownership and substantially hurt the U.S. economy.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: PERSONAL FINANCE (90%); MORTGAGE BANKING & FINANCE (90%); INDUSTRY ANALYSTS
(90%); MORTGAGE BACKED SECURITIES (89%); MORTGAGE INVESTMENTS (89%); REAL ESTATE (88%);
SARBANES OXLEY ACT (78%); MORTGAGE BANKING (78%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (78%); HOUSING
MARKET (78%); BANKING & FINANCE REGULATION (78%); RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY (78%); CORPORATE WRONGDOING (78%); INSURANCE (72%); BOND MARKETS (74%); HEDGE FUNDS (60%); MORTGAGE LOANS (58%); PRICE INCREASES (50%); BONDS (78%); DEREGULATION (74%); US SARBANES OXLEY ACT (78%) Housing; Mortgages; Credit; Stocks and Bonds; Defaulting; Regulation and Deregulation of Industry;
Housing
COMPANY: NEW CENTURY FINANCIAL CORP (92%); BEAR STEARNS COS INC (58%); ENRON CORP
(51%); ENRON CREDITORS RECOVERY CORP (51%)
TICKER: BSC (NYSE) (58%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS523110 INVESTMENT BANKING AND SECURITIES DEALING (58%); SIC6211 SECURITY BROKERS, DEALERS, & FLOTATION COMPANIES (58%); SIC4911 ELECTRIC SERVICES (51%); NAICS523110 INVESTMENT BANKING & SECURITIES DEALING (58%)
PERSON: Gretchen Morgenson
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (92%)
LOAD-DATE: March 11, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
CORRECTION-DATE: March 20, 2007
CORRECTION: A chart with a front-page news analysis article on March 11 about a looming crisis in the mortgage
market mislabeled the size of the market that trades mortgage-backed securities. It trades in hundreds of billions of dollars a day, not hundreds of millions.
GRAPHIC: Chart: ''A Booming Market''Mortgage-backed securities boomed along with the housing market as consumers borrowed ever more and took equity out of their homes. Now that housing has cooled, troubles in risky loans are
causing tremors in this $6.5 trillion market.Graph tracks home equity extraction . . . since 1991 as the following: a percentage of disposable incomea percentage of gross domestic product*Graph tracks mortgage-backed securities issuance
(both public agencies and private entities) since 1999.Graph tracks mortgage-backed securities trading (public agencies
only) since 1999.*2006 figure is an estmate based on the first two quarters(Source by Portales Partners
Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association)(pg. 25)
Page 86
Crisis Looms In Mortgages The New York Times March 11, 2007 Sunday Correction Appended
DOCUMENT-TYPE: News Analysis
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1035 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 11, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Between Black and Immigrant Muslims, an Uneasy Alliance
BYLINE: By ANDREA ELLIOTT
SECTION: Section 1; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk; DISTANT BROTHERS: Bridging a Divide; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 4292 words
Under the glistening dome of a mosque on Long Island, hundreds of men sat cross-legged on the floor. Many were
doctors and engineers born in Pakistan and India. Dressed in khakis, polo shirts and the odd silk tunic, they fidgeted and
whispered.
One thing stood between them and dinner: A visitor from Harlem was coming to ask for money.
A towering black man with a gray-flecked beard finally swept into the room, his bodyguard trailing him. Wearing a
long, embroidered robe and matching hat, he took the microphone and began talking about a different group of Muslims, the thousands of African-Americans who have found Islam in prison.
''We are all brothers and sisters,'' said the visitor, known as Imam Talib.
The men stared. To some of them, it seemed, he was from another planet. As the imam returned their gaze, he had
a similar sensation. ''They live in another world,'' he later said.
Only 28 miles separate Imam Talib's mosque in Harlem from the Islamic Center of Long Island. The congregations they each serve -- African-Americans at the city mosque and immigrants of South Asian and Arab descent in the
suburbs -- represent the largest Muslim populations in the United States. Yet a vast gulf divides them, one marked by
race and class, culture and history.
For many African-American converts, Islam is an experience both spiritual and political, an expression of empowerment in a country they feel is dominated by a white elite. For many immigrant Muslims, Islam is an inherited
identity, and America a place of assimilation and prosperity.
For decades, these two Muslim worlds remained largely separate. But last fall, Imam Talib hoped to cross that distance in a venture that has become increasingly common since Sept. 11. Black Muslims have begun advising immigrants on how to mount a civil rights campaign. Foreign-born Muslims are giving African-Americans roles of leadership in some of their largest organizations. The two groups have joined forces politically, forming coalitions and backing the same candidates.
It is a tentative and uneasy union, seen more typically among leaders at the pulpit than along the prayer line. But it
is critical, a growing number of Muslims believe, to surviving a hostile new era.
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Between Black and Immigrant Muslims, an Uneasy Alliance The New York Times March 11, 2007 Sunday
''Muslims will not be successful in America until there is a marriage between the indigenous and immigrant communities,'' said Siraj Wahhaj, an African-American imam in New York with a rare national following among immigrant
Muslims. ''There has to be a marriage.''
The divide between black and immigrant Muslims reflects a unique struggle facing Islam in America. Perhaps
nowhere else in the world are Muslims from so many racial, cultural and theological backgrounds trying their hands at
coexistence. Only in Mecca, during the obligatory hajj, or pilgrimage, does such diversity in the faith come to life, between black and white, rich and poor, Sunni and Shiite.
''This is a new experiment in the history of Islam,'' said Ali S. Asani, a professor of Islamic studies at Harvard
University.
That evening in October, Imam Al-Hajj Talib 'Abdur-Rashid drove to Westbury, on Long Island, with a task he
would have found unthinkable years ago.
He would ask for donations from the immigrant community he refers to, somewhat bitterly, as the ''Muslim elite.''
But he needed funds, and the doors of immigrant mosques seemed to be opening. Imam Talib and other AfricanAmerican leaders had formed a national ''indigenous Muslim'' organization, and he knew that during the holy month of
Ramadan, the Islamic Center of Long Island could raise thousands of dollars in an evening.
It is a place where BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes fill the parking lot, and Coach purses are perched along prayer
lines.
In Harlem, many of Imam Talib's congregants get to the mosque by bus or subway, and warm themselves with
space heaters in a drafty, brick building.
Before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, Imam Talib had only a distant connection to the Islamic Center of Long Island. In passing, he had met Faroque Khan, an Indian-born doctor who helped found the mosque, but the two had little
in common.
Imam Talib, 56, is a thundering prison chaplain whose mosque traces its roots to Malcolm X. He is a firstgeneration Muslim.
Dr. Khan, 64, is a mild-mannered pulmonologist who collects Chinese antiques and learned to ski on the slopes of
Vermont. He is a first-generation American.
But in the turmoil that followed Sept. 11, the imam and the doctor found themselves unexpectedly allied.
''The more separate we stay, the more targeted we become,'' Dr. Khan said.
Each man recognizes what the other has to offer. African-Americans possess a cultural and historical fluency that
immigrants lack, said Dr. Khan; they hold an unassailable place in America from which to defend their faith.
For Imam Talib, immigrants provide a crucial link to the Muslim world and its tradition of scholarship, as well as
the wisdom that comes with an ''unshattered Islamic heritage.''
Both groups have their practical virtues, too. African-Americans know better how to mobilize in America, both
men say, and immigrants tend to have deeper pockets.
Still, it is one thing to talk about unity, Imam Talib said, and another to give it life. Before his visit to Long Island
last fall, he had never asked Dr. Khan and his mosque to match their rhetoric with money.
''You have to have a litmus test,'' he said.One Faith, Many Histories
Imam Talib and Dr. Khan did not warm to each other when they met in May 2000, at a gathering in Chicago of
Muslim leaders.
The imam found the silver-haired doctor faintly smug and paternalistic. It was an attitude he had often whiffed
from well-to-do immigrant Muslims. Dr. Khan found Imam Talib straightforward to the point of bluntness.
The uneasy introduction was, for both men, emblematic of the strained relationship between their communities.
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Between Black and Immigrant Muslims, an Uneasy Alliance The New York Times March 11, 2007 Sunday
Imam Talib and other black Muslims trace their American roots to the arrival of Muslims from West Africa as
slaves in the South. That historical link gave rise to Islam-inspired movements in the 20th century, the most significant
of which was the Nation of Islam.
The man who founded the Nation in 1930, W. D. Fard, spread the message that American blacks belonged to a
lost Muslim tribe and were superior to the ''white, blue-eyed devils'' in their midst. Under Mr. Fard's successor, Elijah
Muhammad, the Nation flourished in the 1960s amid the civil rights struggle and the emergence of a black-separatist
movement.
Overseas, Islamic scholars found the group's teachings on race antithetical to the faith. The schism narrowed after
1975, when Mr. Muhammad's son Warith Deen Mohammed took over the Nation, bringing it in line with orthodox
Sunni Islam. Louis Farrakhan parted ways with Mr. Mohammed -- taking the Nation's name and traditional teachings
with him -- but the majority of African-American adherents came to embrace the same Sunni practice that dominates
the Muslim world.
Still, divisions between African-American and immigrant Muslims remained pronounced long after the first large
waves of South Asians and Arabs arrived in the United States in the 1960s.
Today, of the estimated six million Muslims who live in the United States, about 25 percent are AfricanAmerican, 34 percent are South Asian and 26 percent are Arab, said John Zogby, a pollster who has studied the American Muslim population.
''Given the extreme from which we came, I would say that the immigrant Muslims have been brotherly toward us,''
Warith Deen Mohammed, who has the largest following of African-American Muslims, said in an interview. ''But I
think they're more skeptical than they admit they are. I think they feel more comfortable with their own than they feel
with us.''
For many African-Americans, conversion to Islam has meant parting with mainstream culture, while Muslim immigrants have tended toward assimilation. Black converts often take Arabic names, only to find foreign-born Muslims
introducing themselves as ''Moe'' instead of ''Mohammed.''
The tensions are also economic. Like Dr. Khan, many Muslim immigrants came to the United States with advanced degrees and quickly prospered, settling in the suburbs. For decades, African-Americans watched with frustration
as immigrants sent donations to causes overseas, largely ignoring the problems of poor Muslims in the United States.
Imam Talib found it impossible to generate interest at immigrant mosques in the 1999 police shooting of Amadou
Diallo, who was Muslim. ''What we've found is when domestic issues jump up, like police brutality, all the sudden we're
by ourselves,'' he said.
Some foreign-born Muslims say they are put off by the racial politics of many black converts. They struggle to
understand why African-American Muslims have been reluctant to meet with law enforcement officials in the wake of
Sept. 11. For their part, black Muslim leaders complain that immigrants have failed to learn their history, which includes a pattern of F.B.I. surveillance dating back to the roots of the Nation of Islam.
The ironies are, at times, stinging.
''From the immigrant community, I hear that African-Americans have to learn how to work in the system,'' said
Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations, adding that this was not his personal
opinion.
At the heart of the conflict is a question of leadership. Much to the ire of African-Americans, many immigrants
see themselves as the rightful leaders of the faith in America by virtue of their Islamic schooling and fluency in Arabic,
the original language of the Koran.
''What does knowing Arabic have to do with the quality of your prayer, your fast, your relationship with God?''
asked Ihsan Bagby, an associate professor of Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. ''But AfricanAmericans have to ask themselves why have they not learned more in these years.''
Every year in Chicago, the two largest Muslim conventions in the country -- one sponsored by an immigrant organization and the other by Mr. Mohammed's -- take place on the same weekend, in separate parts of the city.
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Between Black and Immigrant Muslims, an Uneasy Alliance The New York Times March 11, 2007 Sunday
The long-simmering tension boiled over into a public rift with the 2000 presidential elections. That year, a powerful coalition of immigrant Muslims endorsed George W. Bush (because of a promise to stop the profiling of Arabs).
The nation's most prominent African-American Muslims complained that they were never consulted. The following summer, when Imam Talib vented his frustration at a meeting with immigrant leaders in Washington, a South Asian
man turned to him, he recalled, and said, ''I don't understand why all of you African-American Muslims are always so
angry about everything.''
Imam Talib searched for an answer he thought the man could understand.
''African-Americans are like the Palestinians of this land,'' he finally said. ''We're not just some angry black people. We're legitimately outraged and angry.''
The room fell silent.
Soon after, black leaders announced the creation of the Muslim Alliance in North America, their first national ''indigenous'' organization.
But the fallout over the elections was soon eclipsed by Sept. 11, when Muslim immigrants found themselves under intense public scrutiny. They began complaining about ''profiling'' and ''flying while brown,'' appropriating language
that had been largely the domain of African-Americans.
It was around this time that Dr. Khan became, as he put it, enlightened. A few weeks before the terrorist attacks,
he read the book ''Black Rage,'' by William H. Grier and Price M. Cobbs. The book, published in 1968, explores the
psychological woes of African-Americans, and how the impact of racism is carried through generations.
''It helped me understand that even before you're born, things that happened a hundred years ago can affect you,''
Dr. Khan said. ''That was a big change in my thinking.''
He sent an e-mail message to fellow Muslims, including Imam Talib, sharing what he had learned.
The Harlem imam was pleased, if not yet convinced.
''I just encouraged the brother to keep going,'' Imam Talib said.An Oasis in Harlem
One windswept night in Harlem, cars rolled past the corner of West 113th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue. A police siren blared as men huddled by a neon-lit Laundromat.
Across the street stood a brown brick building, lifeless from the outside. But upstairs, in a cozy carpeted room,
rows of men and women chanted.
''Ya Hakim. Ya Allah.'' O wise one. O God.
Imam Talib led the chant, swathed in a black satin robe. It was Ramadan's holiest evening, the Night of Power. As
the voices died down, he spotted his bodyguard swaying.
''Take it easy there, Captain,'' Imam Talib said. ''As long as you don't jump and shout it's all right.''
Laughter trickled through the mosque, where a translucent curtain separated men in skullcaps from women in African-print gowns.
''We're just trying to be ourselves, you know?'' Imam Talib said. ''Within the tradition.''
''That's right,'' said one woman.
The imam continued: ''And we can't let other people, from other cultures, come and try to make us clones of them.
We came here as Muslims.''
He was feeling drained. He had just returned from the Manhattan Detention Complex, where he works as a chaplain. Some of the mosque's men were back in jail.
''We need power,'' he said quietly. ''Without that, we'll destroy ourselves.''
Since its birth in 1964, the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood has been a fortress of stubborn faith, persevering
through the crack wars, welfare, AIDS, gangs, unemployment, diabetes, broken families and gentrification.
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Between Black and Immigrant Muslims, an Uneasy Alliance The New York Times March 11, 2007 Sunday
The mosque was founded in a Brooklyn apartment by Shaykh-'Allama Al-Hajj K. Ahmad Tawfiq, a follower of
Malcolm X. The Sunni congregation boomed in the 1970s, starting a newspaper and opening a school and a health food
store.
With city loans, it bought its current building. Fourteen families moved in, creating a bold Muslim oasis in a landscape of storefront churches and liquor stores. The mosque claimed its corner by drenching the sidewalk in dark green
paint, the color associated with Islam.
The paint has since faded. The school is closed. Many of the mosque's members can no longer afford to live in a
neighborhood where brownstones sell for millions of dollars.
But an aura of dignity prevails. The women normally pray one floor below the men, in a scrubbed, tidy room
scented with incense. Their bathroom is a shrine of gold curtains and lavender soaps. A basket of nylon roses hides a
hole in the wall.
Most of the mosque's 160 members belong to the working class, and up to a third of the men are former convicts.
Some congregants are entrepreneurs, professors, writers and musicians. Mos Def and Q-Tip have visited with
Imam Talib, who carries the nickname ''hip-hop imam.''
Mosque celebrations are a blend of Islam and Harlem. In October, at the end of Ramadan, families feasted on curried chicken and collard greens, grilled fish and candied yams.
Just before the afternoon prayer, a lean man in a black turtleneck rose to give the call. He was Yusef Salaam,
whose conviction in the Central Park jogger case was later overturned.
Many of the mosque's members embraced Islam in search of black empowerment, not black separatism. They describe racial equality as a central tenet of their faith. Yet for some, the promise of Islam has been at odds with the reality
of Muslims.
One member, Aqilah Mu'Min, lives in the Parkchester section of the Bronx, a heavily Bangladeshi neighborhood.
Whenever she passes women in head scarves, she offers the requisite Muslim greeting. Rarely is it returned. ''We have a
theory that says Islam is perfect, human beings are not,'' said Ms. Mu'Min, a city fraud investigator.
It was the simplicity of Islam that drew Imam Talib.
Raised a Christian, he spent the first part of his youth in segregated North Carolina. As a teenager, he read ''The
Autobiography of Malcolm X'' twice. He began educating himself about the faith at age 19, when as an aspiring actor he
was cast in a play about a man who had left the Nation of Islam.
But his conversion was more spiritual than political, he said.
''I'd like to think that even if I was a white man, I'd still be a Muslim because that's the orientation of my soul,'' the
imam said.
He has learned some Arabic, and traveled once to the Middle East, for hajj. Yet he feels more comfortable with
the Senegalese and Guinean Muslims who have settled in Harlem than with many Arabs and South Asians.
He is trying to reach out, but is often disappointed.
In November, he accepted a last-minute invitation to meet with hundreds of immigrants at the Islamic Cultural
Center of New York, an opulent mosque on East 96th Street.
The group, the Coalition for Muslim School Holidays, was trying to persuade the city to recognize two Muslim
holidays on the school calendar. The effort, Imam Talib learned, had been nearly a year in the making, and no AfricanAmerican leaders had been consulted.
He was stunned. After all, he had led a similar campaign in the 1980s, resulting in the suspension of alternate-side
parking for the same holidays.
''They are unaware of the foundations upon which they are standing,'' he said.Backlash in the Suburbs
Brush Hollow Road winds through a quiet stretch of Long Island, past churches and diners and leafy cul-de-sacs.
In this tranquil tableau, the Islamic Center of Long Island announces itself proudly, a Moorish structure of white concrete topped by a graceful dome.
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Between Black and Immigrant Muslims, an Uneasy Alliance The New York Times March 11, 2007 Sunday
Sleek sedans and S.U.V.'s circle the property as girls with Barbie backpacks hop out and scurry to the Islamic
classes they call ''Sunday school.''
It is a testament to America's influence on the mosque that its liveliest time of the week is not Friday, Islam's holy
day, but Sunday.
Boys in hooded sweatshirts smack basketballs along the pavement by a sign that reads ''No pray, no play.'' Young
mothers in Burberry coats exchange kisses and chatter.
For members of the mosque -- many of whom work in Manhattan and cannot make the Friday prayer -- Sunday is
the day to reflect and connect.
The treasurer, Rizwan Qureshi, frantically greeted drivers one Sunday morning with a flier advertising a fundraiser.
''We're trying to get Barack Obama,'' Mr. Qureshi, a banker born in Karachi, told a woman in a gold-hued BMW.
''We need some real money,'' he called out to another driver.
The mosque began with a group of doctors, engineers and other professionals from Pakistan and India who settled
in Nassau County in the early 1970s.
''Our kids would come home from school and say, 'Where is my Christmas tree, my Hanukkah lights?' '' recalled
Dr. Khan, who lives in nearby Jericho. ''We didn't want them to grow up unsure of who they are.''
Since opening in 1993, the mosque has thrived, with assets now valued at more than $3 million. Hundreds of people pray there weekly, and thousands come on Muslim holidays.
The mosque has an unusually modern, democratic air. Men and women worship with no partition between them.
A different scholar delivers the Friday sermon every week, in English.
Perhaps most striking, a majority of female worshipers do not cover their heads outside the mosque.
''I think it's important to find the fine line between the religion and the age in which we live,'' said Nasreen Wasti,
43, a contract analyst for Lufthansa. ''I'm sure I will have to answer to God for not covering myself. But I'm also satisfied by many of the good deeds I am doing.''
She and other members use words like ''progressive'' to describe their congregation. But after Sept. 11, a different
image took hold.
In October 2001, a Newsday article quoted a member of the mosque as asking ''who really benefits from such a
horrible tragedy that is blamed on Muslims and Arabs?'' A co-president of the mosque was also quoted saying that Israel
''would benefit from this tragedy.''
Conspiracy theories about Sept. 11 have long circulated among Muslims, and Dr. Khan had heard discussion
among congregants. Such talk, he said, was the product of two forces: a deep mistrust of America's motives in the Middle East and a refusal, among many Muslims, to engage in self-criticism.
''You blame the other guy for your own shortcomings,'' said Dr. Khan.
He visited synagogues and churches after the article ran, reassuring audiences that the comments did not reflect
the official position of the mosque, which condemned the attacks.
But to Congressman Peter T. King, whose district is near the mosque, that condemnation fell short. He began publicly criticizing Dr. Khan, asserting that he had failed to fully denounce the statements made by the men.
''He's definitely a radical,'' Mr. King said of Dr. Khan in an interview. ''You cannot, in the context of Sept. 11, allow those statements to be made and not be a radical.''
When asked about Mr. King's comments, Dr. Khan replied proudly, ''I thought we had freedom of speech.''
It hardly seems possible that Mr. King and Dr. Khan were once friends.
Mr. King used to dine at Dr. Khan's home. He attended the wedding of Dr. Khan's son, Arif, in 1995. At the
mosque's opening, it was Mr. King who cut the ribbon.
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Between Black and Immigrant Muslims, an Uneasy Alliance The New York Times March 11, 2007 Sunday
After Sept. 11, the mosque experienced the sort of social backlash felt by Muslims around the country. Anonymous callers left threatening messages, and rocks were hurled at children from passing cars.
The attention waned over time. But Mr. King cast a new light on the mosque in 2004 with the release of his novel
''Vale of Tears.''
In the novel, terrorists affiliated with a Long Island mosque demolish several buildings, killing hundreds of people. One of the central characters is a Pakistani heart surgeon whose friendship with a congressman has grown tense.
''By inference, it's me,'' Dr. Khan said of the Pakistani character. (Mr. King said it was a ''composite character''
based on several Muslims he knows.)
For Dr. Khan, his difficulties after Sept. 11 come as proof that Muslims cannot stay fragmented. ''It's a challenge
for the whole Muslim community -- not just for me,'' he said. ''United we stand, divided we fall.''The Litmus Test
Imam Talib and his bodyguard set off to Westbury before dusk on Oct. 14. They passed a fork on the Long Island
Expressway, and the imam peered out the window. None of the signs were familiar.
He checked his watch and saw that he was late, adding to his unease. He had visited the mosque a few times before, but never felt entirely at home.
''I'm conscious of being a guest,'' he said. ''They treat me kindly and nicely. But I know where I am.''
At the Islamic Center of Long Island, Dr. Khan was also getting nervous. Hundreds of congregants had gathered
after fasting all day for Ramadan. The scent of curry drifted mercilessly through the mosque.
Dr. Khan sprang to his feet and took the microphone. He improvised.
''All of us need to learn from and understand the contributions of the Muslim indigenous community,'' he said.
''Starting with Malcolm X.''
It had been six years since Imam Talib and Dr. Khan first encountered each other in Chicago. Back then, Imam
Talib rarely visited immigrant mosques, and Dr. Khan had only a peripheral connection to African-American Muslims.
In the 1980s, the doctor had become aware of the high number of Muslim inmates while working as the chief of
medicine for a hospital in Nassau County that oversaw health care at the county prison. His mosque began donating
prayer rugs, Korans and skullcaps to prisoners around the country. But his interaction with black Muslim leaders was
limited until Sept. 11.
After Dr. Khan read the book ''Black Rage,'' he and Imam Talib began serving together on the board of a new political task force. Finally, in 2005, Dr. Khan invited the imam to his mosque to give the Friday sermon.
That February, Imam Talib rose before the Long Island congregation. Blending verses in the Koran with passages
from recent American history, he urged the audience to learn from the civil rights movement.
Dr. Khan listened raptly. Afterward, over sandwiches, he asked Imam Talib for advice. He wanted to thaw the relationship between his mosque and African-American mosques on Long Island. The conversation continued for hours.
''The real searching for an answer, searching for a solution, was coming from Dr. Khan,'' said Imam Talib. ''I could
just feel it.''
Dr. Khan began inviting more African-American leaders to speak at his mosque, and welcomed Imam Talib there
last October to give a fund-raising pitch for his organization, the Muslim Alliance in North America. The group had
recently announced a ''domestic agenda,'' with programs to help ex-convicts find housing and jobs and to standardize
premarital counseling for Muslims in America.
After the imam arrived that evening and spoke, he sat on the floor next to a blazer-clad Dr. Khan. As they feasted
on kebabs, the doctor made a pitch of his own: The teenagers of his mosque could spend a day at Imam Talib's mosque,
as the start of a youth exchange program. The imam nodded slowly.
Minutes later, the mosque's president, Habeeb Ahmed, hurried over. The congregants had so far pledged $10,000.
''Alhamdulillah,'' the imam said. Praise be to God.
It was the most Imam Talib had raised for his group in one evening.
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Between Black and Immigrant Muslims, an Uneasy Alliance The New York Times March 11, 2007 Sunday
As the dinner drew to a close, the imam looked for his bodyguard. They had a long drive home and he did not
want to lose his way again.
Dr. Khan asked Imam Talib how he had gotten lost.
''Inner city versus the suburbs,'' the imam replied a bit testily.
Then he smiled.
''The only thing it proves,'' he said, ''is that I need to come by here more often.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
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Immigration and Refugees; Blacks; Discrimination
PERSON: Andrea Elliott
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LOAD-DATE: March 11, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: Dr. Faroque Khan, left, and Imam Al-Hajj Talib 'Abdur-Rashid serve very different mosques, one
on Long Island and one in Harlem. (Photo by James Estrin/The New York Times)(pg. 1)
Yusef Salaam, a Harlem mosque member whose conviction in the Central Park jogger case was overturned, gave the
call to prayer at a celebration. Up to a third of the mosque's men are ex-convicts.
Clockwise from top left: Imam Al-Hajj Talib 'Abdur-Rashid at a rally against profiling
congregants at his mosque in Harlem
Dr. Faroque Khan in prayer on Long Island
worshipers there at Ramadan's end. (Photographs by JAMES ESTRIN/The New York Times)(pg. 30)
Imam Talib leaving the mosque with his wife. ''I'd like to think that even if I was a white man, I'd still be a Muslim,'' he
said. (pg. 31)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1036 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 10, 2007 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
Warren Alpert, 86, Entrepreneur, Is Dead
BYLINE: By DENNIS HEVESI
SECTION: Section C; Column 1; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 10
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Warren Alpert, 86, Entrepreneur, Is Dead The New York Times March 10, 2007 Saturday
LENGTH: 394 words
Warren Alpert, an entrepreneur who sold sheets and towels from his father's truck at age 13 and who two months
ago donated $100 million to Brown University, died on March 3 in Manhattan. He was 86 and lived in Manhattan.
The death was confirmed by his nephew Herbert Kaplan, president of Warren Equities, a privately held investment management company that Mr. Alpert started in 1950, and of the Warren Alpert Foundation.
The company, based in Providence, R.I., owns oil, wholesale food and tobacco distributorships, real estate and
XtraMart convenience stores at more than 250 East Coast gasoline stations. It is regularly listed by Forbes Magazine as
one of the nation's 500 largest privately held companies. Last year, it had $2 billion in sales.
In January, Mr. Alpert gave $100 million to the Brown University Medical School, and it was renamed in his honor.
''The scope of the gift is so significant that it will affect virtually every dimension of the medical school,'' the president of the university, Ruth J. Simmons, said at the time.
In 1993, Mr. Alpert gave $20 million to the Harvard Medical School research building, which opened in 1992 and
housed genetics, neurobiology and pathology laboratories. That building, too, was named for Mr. Alpert.
''I want cures for Alzheimer's disease, cancer, AIDS,'' he told The New York Times.
Mr. Alpert was born on Dec. 2, 1920, the youngest of five children of Goodman and Tina Horowitz Alpert, immigrants from Lithuania who lived in a working-class neighborhood of Chelsea, Mass. Mr. Alpert never married and has
no immediate survivors.
Besides peddling dry goods as a teenager, Mr. Alpert sold hats after high school to pay his tuition at Boston University, from which he graduated in 1942. As an Army private in World War II, he was wounded in the D-Day invasion.
Financial help from the G.I. Bill allowed Mr. Alpert to earn a Master's in Business Administration at Harvard in
1947. Three years later, he started a wholesale oil business in Providence with $1,000 in savings and a $9,000 loan from
his brother.
In 2000, Mr. Alpert donated $15 million to Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, which named the Warren Alpert
Pavilion after him.
''I really don't want my relatives to be rich,'' he said when asked about his philanthropy in 1993. ''I made it and I
intend to spend it, and do it my way.''
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Page 95
Warren Alpert, 86, Entrepreneur, Is Dead The New York Times March 10, 2007 Saturday
Warren Alpert
LOAD-DATE: March 10, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Obituary (Obits)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1037 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 10, 2007 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
News Summary
SECTION: Section A; Column 3; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 839 words
INTERNATIONAL A3-7Bush's Latin America Tour Incites Fight for AttentionPresident Bush began the first full
day of a weeklong trip to Latin America promising job-creating aid in Brazil but found himself competing for attention
with President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who called the American visit an act of imperialism, adding, ''Gringo, go
home!'' A1Trip to Ease Tension Opens RiftA pilgrimage to Israel by Roman Catholic bishops from Germany last
week, meant to be a symbol of reconciliation between Jews and German Catholics, caused new tension after two bishops compared the plight of Palestinians in the West Bank to that of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II.
A3Northern Ireland Vote ResultsThe Democratic Unionists, the Protestant party, emerged as one of the main winners in
elections for a new assembly in Northern Ireland. A3Poverty as a Way of British LifeThe conditions in a housing project near Manchester, England, epitomize the social deprivation and alienation that is common across Britain.
And while Prime Minister Tony Blair has made addressing poverty a priority, his critics say there is little to show
after his 10 years in office. A5Europe Reaches Climate AccordThe European Union approved a deal that would make
Europe the world's leader in fighting climate change, but would also allow some of Europe's most polluting countries to
limit their environmental goals. A5U.S. Accused in Iraqis' DeathsAmerican soldiers were accused of opening fire on a
car carrying a family in the Sadr City district in Baghdad, killing three people. The allegations were made by a woman
who had been in the vehicle. A6NATIONAL A8-11Gun-Control Law Rejected By Federal Appeals CourtA federal
appeals court in Washington, interpreting the Second Amendment broadly, struck down a gun-control law in the District
of Columbia that bars residents from keeping handguns in their homes. A1F.B.I. Chief Faces OutrageBipartisan outrage erupted on Capitol Hill as Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the F.B.I., conceded that his agency had improperly, and sometimes illegally, used the USA Patriot Act to obtain information about people and businesses. A15th Student Dies in Bus CrashA fifth college baseball player died of injuries suffered when his team's chartered tour bus
plunged 30 feet off a highway overpass last week, bringing the death toll from the accident to seven. A9Debate Over
Image in TextbookAfter months of lobbying by Sikhs, the California Board of Education voted unanimously to ask the
publisher of a seventh-grade history book to remove a portrait of the Sikh founder from future printings. A9Explosives
Missing From MineLaw enforcement officials in Arizona are searching for hundreds of pounds of missing explosives
Page 96
News Summary The New York Times March 10, 2007 Saturday
material of the type used in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
A11Religion Journal A11SCIENCE/HEALTHWarning Issued on Anemia DrugThe Food and Drug Administration
issued warnings about overuse of widely prescribed anemia drugs after recent studies suggested they might cause heart
attacks or hasten the death of cancer patients. A8NEW YORK/REGION B1-5Crowd Fills Mosque To Mourn Fire VictimsA crowd prayed at a Manhattan mosque to mourn the nine members of two immigrant families from Mali who were
killed in a house fire in the Bronx. The mourners joined the father of five of the seven children killed in the fire.
A1Javits Plan Is CriticizedMany of the companies that use the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center are criticizing a longawaited plan to expand the complex, saying the proposal would provide less space than expected and would increase the
cost of running trade shows. B3Testimony on Police KillingA grand jury in Queens, weighing evidence in the fatal
police shooting of an unarmed man in November, heard from the last of the five police officers involved in the case, a
police detective who fired 31 of the 50 shots at the man's car. B3BUSINESS DAY C1-9 Google's Commuting PerkGoogle, the Internet search engine giant, now ferries employees to and from work daily, making commuting painless for
its workers and the company attractive for new recruits. A1Jobs Report Eases AnxietyThe Labor Department's latest
monthly report on employment in February shows added jobs and a lower unemployment rate, which has helped to assuage some anxiety over the state of the economy. C1Labor Shortage in EuropeIn Europe, high unemployment has
defined economic life for much of the last three decades, but now some sectors on the Continent are facing a shortage of
skilled labor. C1Business Digest C2OBITUARIES C10Warren AlpertAn entrepreneur who sold sheets and towels
from his father's truck at age 13 and who two months ago donated $100 million to Brown University, he was 86.
C10EDITORIAL A12-13Editorials: Another grim week in Iraq; too many secrets; shutting down fake ''prep schools'';
evangelical environmentalism.Columns: Judith Warner, Rory Stewart.Bridge B15Crossword B14TV Listings
B16Weather D8
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GEOGRAPHIC: BAGHDAD, IRAQ (90%); OKLAHOMA CITY, OK, USA (79%); MANCHESTER, ENGLAND
(71%) DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, USA (79%); OKLAHOMA, USA (79%); CALIFORNIA, USA (79%); ARIZONA, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (94%); SOUTH AMERICA (94%); UNITED KINGDOM (90%); BRAZIL (92%);
LATIN AMERICA (92%); ISRAEL (92%); NORTHERN IRELAND (92%); VENEZUELA (92%); EUROPE (94%);
IRAQ (90%); GERMANY (90%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY (79%); ENGLAND (79%); EUROPEAN UNION
(79%)
LOAD-DATE: March 10, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Summary
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
Page 97
1038 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 10, 2007 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
In Tragedy, Glimpsing Oft-Overlooked Newcomers' Lives
BYLINE: By MICHAEL POWELL and NINA BERNSTEIN
SECTION: Section B; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk; TRAGEDY IN THE BRONX; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1371 words
They began alighting in New York in the late 1970s, these Malian traders riding the currents of the global economy. After a decade, maybe two, of intense work, they sent for their wives who would bear many children and settle in
Harlem apartments and cacophonous old town houses on hilly streets in the Bronx.
Before the fire that took five of his children, Moussa Magassa was an early godfather for this tiny but swiftly
growing Malian community. He would greet newcomers with a handshake and a meal, and perhaps some cash and help
filing legal papers and shipping goods back to Mali.
His brick town house near Yankee Stadium was known even in Mali as a beacon for new immigrants and a symbol
of a Malian's success in America.
Tragedy has drawn a city's eyes to this little-known corner of the West African immigrant diaspora. An entrepreneurial group loosely bound by ties of ethnicity and sometimes language, its members have established enclaves known
as ''Little Senegal' and ''Little Guinea'' marked by thriving import-export offices and hair-braiding salons.
Some, particularly the Senegalese, peddle African goods -- and knock-off Swiss watches -- and some engage in
long-haul trucking while still others drive taxis and run general stores and money-transfer offices.
But as so often happens, tragedy also exposes an immigrant community's secrets. There is the Malians' practice of
taking more than one wife, transplanted by some from village compounds in the hills of western Mali to crowded
apartments in the Bronx. There is their often-faltering climb up the entrepreneurial ladder, with attendant business
failures and bankruptcies. And there is the tricky business of immigration status: Many Malians are here illegally even
as they raise children who become the newest generation of New Yorkers.
The West Africans -- who number about 50,000, including 6,000 to 10,000 Malians -- have suffered their share of
high-profile tragedies in this city. In 1999 police officers in Harlem fatally shot Amadou Diallo, a Guinean peddler,
when they mistakenly thought he was reaching for a gun. (It was his wallet.) In 2003 an officer running through a storage facility on the Far West Side shot and killed Ousmane Zongo, who was from Burkina Faso and repaired artwork.
Now a fire has consumed much of two families, and Malians on two continents are in mourning.
Amadou Niangadou, 46, stood on Seventh Avenue and 122nd Street last night and listened to his cellphone trill.
All day he had fielded calls from friends in New York and Mali, disconsolate at the news. He said Mr. Magassa, who is
a friend of his and is treasurer of the Association of Malians Living Abroad, was in Mali because he was accompanying
a blind countryman home.
''We are a traveling people, but our bonds back home are very close,'' he said. Mr. Niangadou held up his hand and
paused to see who was calling him before continuing: ''Mr. Magassa, this guy, he has a big, big heart.''
Page 98
In Tragedy, Glimpsing Oft-Overlooked Newcomers' Lives The New York Times March 10, 2007 Saturday
Few places on earth are poorer than Mali, a land twice the size of Texas where 90 percent of the population earns
less than $2 a day. But Mali was home to Africa's first great sub-Saharan empire; it took root in the fourth century and
had trading at its heart. Malian traders led camel caravans to the Mediterranean.
Poverty now fuels that diaspora.
''Travel and trade is for the Malians a central part of their identity,'' said Gregory Mann, an associate professor of
history at Columbia University and a specialist in Francophone Africa.
France has 120,000 Malians, but in the 1970s and 1980s, Malians began turning to the United States. Mr. Magassa
was in that first wave. Many West Africans turned to street peddling. (When the police cracked down, the Senegalese
donned sharp-looking suits and carried goods in attache cases -- these traders are nothing if not adaptable.)
Mr. Niangadou, who owns an export business, sat with a dozen of his countryman in Kouyate & Freres, a general
store and money-transfer store on 122nd Street and described the climb up the ladder:
''I started off hauling crates and worked in a supermarket,'' he said. ''Then I began selling cloth and driving goods
to other cities. I did 4,000 to 5,000 miles a month.''
Soon enough, the first arrivals sent for younger relatives. Women arrived in large numbers in the mid-1990s, some
possessing entrepreneurial instincts no less formidable than their husbands'. Others land here without education,
steeped in old country ways, and submit to their husband's lead.
Mr. Magassa had two wives, Manthia and Aisse. It is not clear when they arrived in this country, but some of their
children were born here. Only two of Mr. Magassa's seven children with Manthia lived through the fire. But all of his
four children with Aisse, who lived a floor apart from Manthia, survived.
Polygamy is common in Mali and throughout West Africa. But it is illegal in the United States, and it can bar immigrants from gaining permanent legal residency or citizenship. Many West Africans are uncomfortable talking about
the practice with an outsider, particularly so soon after the tragic fire.
But many West Africans say that Mr. Magassa's arrangement is a subterranean feature of life here, particularly for
older men who can afford it. At a spacious African hair-braiding salon on 125th Street, Aminata Dia, the Senegalese
owner, consulted with her husband before talking about the practice to a reporter. She said men traditionally bring the
first wife first, but of late many prefer to bring the youngest.
''I wasn't surprised,'' Ms. Dia said. ''It's our religion that allows men to have four wives. But two wives in the same
house, it's not so common -- usually they have one wife abroad and one here.''
A fierce argument erupted about whether this was too volatile an issue to talk about with an outsider. ''All women
suffer from polygamy, but our religion says we should not speak,'' said an employee, Aminata Fatou, 29. ''One can't do
away with that.''
Countered Ms. Dia: ''If every woman shuts her mouth, she is complicit. I'm against polygamy -- it's bad for the
woman, the man and the children.''
Then she added a coda: ''If you leave your country, you have to come with the good things, not bring the bad
things with you.''
Nor is it easy, even for the entrepreneurial Malians, to balance the demands of building a life here with sending
sufficient dollars back to their families and villages in Mali. Malian immigrants in France, to cite just one example, send
money back home that is equivalent to France's total foreign aid for Mali. These dollars pay for houses and schools,
wells and, that rarest of things in the dusty desert nation, paved roads.
These immigrants may hail from generations of traders -- many describe learning their trade by working with fathers in Gambia, Senegal and the Ivory Coast -- but the financial hardships are great.
Mr. Magassa held several jobs, including one as a carpenter at the New York City schools, before opening an import-export firm. His older brother, Mody Magassa, owns a shipping firm in Midtown Manhattan.
But they and a third brother have all filed for bankruptcy. In his 2000 Chapter 13 filing, Mr. Magassa cited
$214,700 in assets, $170,000 of it in his house. And he cited $132,124 in liabilities.
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In Tragedy, Glimpsing Oft-Overlooked Newcomers' Lives The New York Times March 10, 2007 Saturday
In the general store, Kouyate & Freres, on Thursday night several of the Malian men sipped tea and talked about
being laid off from jobs as drivers and clerks.
Lurking behind their economic troubles is another reality. Roughly 3,5000 Malians enter the United States each
year on temporary visas. But precious few attain achieve citizenship: About 85 Malians a year, and as few as 19, since
1996. Only a handful have been granted asylum, typically women seeking refuge from genital cutting, which is widespread in West Africa.
Evidence of the precarious legal status can be seen in the case of Mamadou Soumare, whose wife, Fatoumata, and
three of their four children perished in this week's fire. They lived on the top floor of Mr. Magassa's house. Mr.
Soumare wants to bury his wife and children in Mali. But people who know the family said that immigration issues
could prevent him from accompanying the bodies home.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: CHILDREN (89%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (89%); IMMIGRATION (91%); IMPORT TRADE (78%);
FAMILY (78%); WAREHOUSING & STORAGE (75%); GLOBALIZATION (73%); WIRE TRANSFERS (70%);
STADIUMS & ARENAS (69%); LAW ENFORCEMENT (67%); HAIR STYLING SERVICES (66%); SHOOTINGS
(65%); REFUGEES (70%); ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS (69%) Fires and Firefighters; Immigration and Refugees; Illegal
Immigrants
PERSON: Michael Powell; Nina Bernstein; Mamadou Soumare; Moussa Magassa
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (94%) NEW YORK, USA (94%) MALI (97%); UNITED STATES (94%);
SENEGAL (93%); GUINEA (92%); AFRICA (93%); WEST AFRICA (92%); BURKINA FASO (79%) New York
City; Mali; West Africa
LOAD-DATE: March 10, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: Manthia Magassa, who lost five of her seven children in a Bronx house fire, left the Islamic Cultural Center on East 166th Street yesterday. (Photo by Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times)(pg. B1)
Akima Brathwaite, right, has her hair braided by Seynabou Diop in a Harlem salon yesterday. At the salon, owned by
Aminata Dia, a Senegalese immigrant, the talk was of polygamy, which is common in West Africa. (Photop by Todd
Heisler/The New York Times)(pg. B5)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1039 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 10, 2007 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
A Challenge Worthy of Houdini
BYLINE: By DAMON DARLIN
Page 100
A Challenge Worthy of Houdini The New York Times March 10, 2007 Saturday
SECTION: Section C; Column 2; Business/Financial Desk; YOUR MONEY; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1301 words
The two-year contract. It is the bane of a cellphone owner's existence, especially one who must have the latest hot
phone at a discounted price.
Two years is a long time, and few other marketers can get away with demanding it, much less adding to it. Every
time you walk back into the cellphone store or call the customer service operators, it seems, the contract is extended.
Lose the phone or ask for a replacement, and the contract is extended. Sign up for a family plan, same thing.
But try getting out of a contract early? You can do it, but you will have to pay an early termination fee of as much
as $240.
Cellphone companies do not make it easy to break two-year contracts. But it can be done through shrewd negotiating or by turning to the innovators on the Internet who match contract sellers with people who want to assume the contract.
Early termination fees are intended to compensate phone companies for the discount they gave on the phone upfront. Most mobile phone companies charge the full fee no matter when the contract is scheduled to expire. Verizon
Wireless recently decided to prorate the fee, and some of the other companies do that in certain cities.
The companies will waive the early termination fee if you die. Pretending to be dead, however, does not work well
as a way to break a contract. Sprint Nextel, Verizon and Cingular, for example, may ask for a death certificate. TMobile says it does not. ''They want to take people at their word,'' said Graham Crow, a spokesman for the company.
Joining the military can sometimes work to break a contract if you are going to be stationed overseas. Sometimes,
though, the company will suspend the service for the duration of active duty, which is not a great deal. Upon returning
home, you would still be stuck with the remaining period of the contract and a much older phone. Buying a new phone
would only extend the contract further.
Next to death, moving to a place where your phone company does not have service may not seem so draconian.
Each company provides maps on its Web site or at its stores that show the general service area, so you can easily figure
that out. But companies will ask for proof of the new address. The T-Mobile spokesman warns that it has to be a legitimate address, and post office boxes will not work.
There is an intriguing escape clause in contracts with phone companies that offer ''roaming'' services, though it is
intended to give the carrier a way out. When a cellphone is used outside the provider's network, calls are routed through
another company's network. The consumer pays a monthly fee for this service, which the carrier uses to pay the other
phone companies to handle those calls.
Roam too much and your phone company starts losing money. Find a place where your phone goes into roaming
mode and make at least half your calls from there. Every carrier said they would cancel the contract, though it might
take them a month or two to notice.
A more practical approach has been bandied about on a number of blogs since October, when many carriers raised
the price of text messaging. They pointed out a clause in contracts that says if changes adversely affect your rates or
service, the consumer has the right to end the contract early without paying a penalty.
It was not that easy. Some companies, like Cingular, now AT&T, refused to budge, according to its spokesman.
Sprint was more accommodating, though a spokeswoman said Sprint approached early termination requests on case by
case. That means the consumer has to argue with customer service.
Sprint says a customer will be released from a contract if a price change has a ''material adverse effect'' on the customer. In other words, prices have to go up, not down. The customer has to be actually using the service in which the
price changed. How much they are using it is the critical factor. The spokeswoman said Sprint's ''customer care representatives'' have guidelines, but she was not going to reveal them.
Though the contract says customers have 30 days after a price change to get out of the contract, Sprint may be
more generous. ''They can always call customer care and see if there is a way to reconcile,'' said Emmy Anderson, the
Sprint spokeswoman.
Page 101
A Challenge Worthy of Houdini The New York Times March 10, 2007 Saturday
Liza Tremblay, a 26-year-old owner of Bay Burger in Sag Harbor, N.Y., gave it a shot to get out of her contract
with Verizon and avoid paying $175. (She wanted to use Cingular because colleagues told her the reception was better.)
She followed a script she found on Consumerist.com. ''I used a lot of big words, and I think I got across the idea that I
meant business,'' she said.
But then the Verizon service representative threw her a curve ball. They wanted her to fax her contract so they
could see the clause she was referring to. She dug through her papers and found an old one -- she had been with Verizon
almost 10 years -- and after a few more transfers to call center supervisors, they let her out. ''Obviously, they had a copy
of the contract,'' Ms. Tremblay said.
More often than not, the company will steer the customer into a new calling plan rather than breaking the contract.
''Typically, a customer calling up is not dissatisfied with the service, they are dissatisfied with their plan,'' said Brenda
Rainey, a Verizon spokeswoman. Nonetheless, she said, Verizon demands to see that a price increase has a significant
impact on the consumer. ''We are going to look at usage patterns to see if it is material,'' she said.
In other words, after a lot of machination and arguing, you may not win in the end.
The solution might be, as it so often is these days, in the power of the Internet. All of the companies allow a contract to be signed over to someone else. So a number of entrepreneurs have created a new online business in trading
those contracts. The best known are Celltradeusa.com and Cellswapper.com . For a fee, $20 at Celltradeusa and $15 at
Cellswapper, these companies will match a contract holder to a buyer. The contract buyers pay no fee, providing them a
way to save on a phone and on activation fees.
The sites have search engines so you can find a plan length, minutes and price that you like. Once the match is
made, the cellphone company arranges the transfer.
The risk is that you may not find a buyer; Cellswapper, however, does not charge a fee until a match is made. Adam Korbl, the chief executive of Cellswapper, said his service makes about 100 matches a week and currently has 350
plans listed.
Be careful if you want to keep your phone number when you trade your account, which you are allowed to do.
Some of the phone companies use this as a pressure point for keeping you on board, so make sure you arrange with the
carrier to keep the number before you transfer the contract.
Derek C. F. Pegritz, an English composition instructor at Waynesburg College in western Pennsylvania, wants to
switch cellphone carriers because of dropped calls, but he isn't sure how he'll do it.
''I'm shelling out $90 a month for a phone that basically sits there and collects dust,'' he said.
But getting out of his contract will cost him $170. Mr. Pegritz has tried to explore other ways to be released from
the remaining year of his contract, but the best he hopes for is a compromise by Cellular One. ''I'm looking forward to
that about as much as I'm looking forward to getting several teeth pulled next week,'' he said.
Follow-up Tip: A reader recently suggested a handy tool for bypassing automated call routing at call centers. Get
Human (www.gethuman.com/us/ ) is a database of call center numbers and the secret codes needed to get to a human.
A list of useful cellphone company numbers can be found at
http://consumersadvocate.wordpress.com/2007/02/19/cell-phone-company-phone-numbers/.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES (90%); WIRELESS TELECOMMUNICATIONS CARRIERS
(90%); INTERNET & WWW (88%); CUSTOMER SERVICE (71%); ARMED FORCES (63%); WEB SITES (50%);
TELECOMMUNICATIONS EQUIPMENT (66%); MOBILE & CELLULAR TELEPHONES (91%) Telephones and
Telecommunications; Cellular Telephones; Prices (Fares, Fees and Rates); Computers and the Internet
COMPANY: VERIZON WIRELESS INC (68%); SPRINT NEXTEL CORP (66%); VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS
INC (90%); CINGULAR WIRELESS LLC (54%)
ORGANIZATION: Sprint Nextel; Verizon Communications; Cingular Wireless; T-Mobile (Co)
Page 102
A Challenge Worthy of Houdini The New York Times March 10, 2007 Saturday
TICKER: S (NYSE) (66%); VZC (LSE) (90%); VZ (NYSE) (90%); VER (SWX) (90%)
INDUSTRY: SIC5063 ELECTRICAL APPARATUS & EQUIPMENT (68%); NAICS517212 CELLULAR & OTHER
WIRELESS TELECOMMUNICATIONS (54%); NAICS517110 WIRED TELECOMMUNICATIONS CARRIERS
(90%); SIC4813 TELEPHONE COMMUNICATIONS, EXCEPT RADIOTELEPHONE (54%); NAICS517210
WIRELESS TELECOMMUNICATIONS CARRIERS (EXCEPT SATELLITE) (90%); SIC4812 RADIOTELEPHONE COMMUNICATIONS (68%)
PERSON: Damon Darlin
LOAD-DATE: March 10, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: Liza Tremblay got out of her contract, but it took persistence. ''I think I got across the idea that I
meant business,'' she said. (Photo by Doug Kuntz for The New York Times )(pg. C6)
(Photographs by Tony Cenicola/Illustration by The New York Times)(pg. C1)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1040 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 9, 2007 Friday
Late Edition - Final
Start-Up Aims for Database to Automate Web Searching
BYLINE: By JOHN MARKOFF
SECTION: Section C; Column 1; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 7
LENGTH: 920 words
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO, March 8
A new company founded by a longtime technologist is setting out to create a vast public database intended to be
read by computers rather than people, paving the way for a more automated Internet in which machines will routinely
share information.
The company, Metaweb Technologies, is led by Danny Hillis, whose background includes a stint at Walt Disney
Imagineering and who has long championed the idea of intelligent machines.
He says his latest effort, to be announced Friday, will help develop a realm frequently described as the ''semantic
Web'' -- a set of services that will give rise to software agents that automate many functions now performed manually in
front of a Web browser.
Page 103
Start-Up Aims for Database to Automate Web Searching The New York Times March 9, 2007 Friday
The idea of a centralized database storing all of the world's digital information is a fundamental shift away from
today's World Wide Web, which is akin to a library of linked digital documents stored separately on millions of computers where search engines serve as the equivalent of a card catalog.
In contrast, Mr. Hillis envisions a centralized repository that is more like a digital almanac. The new system can
be extended freely by those wishing to share their information widely.
On the Web, there are few rules governing how information should be organized. But in the Metaweb database, to
be named Freebase, information will be structured to make it possible for software programs to discern relationships
and even meaning.
For example, an entry for California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, would be entered as a topic that would
include a variety of attributes or ''views'' describing him as an actor, athlete and politician -- listing them in a highly
structured way in the database.
That would make it possible for programmers and Web developers to write programs allowing Internet users to
pose queries that might produce a simple, useful answer rather than a long list of documents.
Since it could offer an understanding of relationships like geographic location and occupational specialties, Freebase might be able to field a query about a child-friendly dentist within 10 miles of one's home and yield a single result.
The system will also make it possible to transform the way electronic devices communicate with one another, Mr.
Hillis said. An Internet-enabled remote control could reconfigure itself automatically to be compatible with a new television set by tapping into data from Freebase. Or the video recorder of the future might stop blinking and program itself
without confounding its owner.
In its ambitions, Freebase has some similarities to Google -- which has asserted that its mission is to organize the
world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. But its approach sets it apart.
''As wonderful as Google is, there is still much to do,'' said Esther Dyson, a computer and Internet industry analyst
and investor at EDventure, based in New York.
Most search engines are about algorithms and statistics without structure, while databases have been solely about
structure until now, she said.
''In the middle there is something that represents things as they are,'' she said. ''Something that captures the relationships between things.''
That addition has long been a vision of researchers in artificial intelligence. The Freebase system will offer a set of
controls that will allow both programmers and Web designers to extract information easily from the system.
''It's like a system for building the synapses for the global brain,'' said Tim O'Reilly, chief executive of O'Reilly
Media, a technology publishing firm based in Sebastopol, Calif.
Mr. Hillis received his Ph.D. in computer science while studying artificial intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In 1985 he founded one of the first companies focused on massively parallel computing, Thinking Machines.
When the company failed commercially at the end of the cold war, he became vice president for research and development at Walt Disney Imagineering. More recently he was a founder of Applied Minds, a research and consulting firm
based in Glendale, Calif. Metaweb, founded in 2005 with venture capital backing, is a spinoff of that company.
Mr. Hillis first described his idea for creating a knowledge web he called Aristotle in a paper in 2000. But he said
he did not try to build the system until he had recruited two technical experts as co-founders. Robert Cook, an expert in
parallel computing and database design, is Metaweb's executive vice president for product development. John Giannandrea, formerly chief technologist at Tellme Networks and chief technologist of the Web browser group at
Netscape/AOL, is the company's chief technology officer.
''We're trying to create the world's database, with all of the world's information,'' Mr. Hillis said.
All of the information in Freebase will be available under a license that makes it freely shareable, Mr. Hillis said.
In the future, he said, the company plans to create a business by organizing proprietary information in a similar fashion.
Page 104
Start-Up Aims for Database to Automate Web Searching The New York Times March 9, 2007 Friday
Contributions already added into the Freebase system include descriptive information about four million songs
from Musicbrainz, a user-maintained database; details on 100,000 restaurants supplied by Chemoz; extensive information from Wikipedia; and census data and location information.
A number of private companies, including Encyclopaedia Britannica, have indicated that they are willing to add
some of their existing databases to the system, Mr. Hillis said.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: ENTREPRENEURSHIP (90%); INTERNET & WWW (90%); SEARCH ENGINES (88%); SEMANTIC
WEB (72%); COMPUTER NETWORKS (72%); INTELLIGENT AGENTS (57%); WEB DEVELOPMENT (50%);
CONSUMER ELECTRONICS (74%); COMPUTER SOFTWARE (90%); ACTORS & ACTRESSES (74%) Computers and the Internet; Computers and the Internet
COMPANY: WALT DISNEY CO (57%); GOOGLE INC (51%)
ORGANIZATION: Metaweb Technologies
TICKER: MCKY (LSE) (57%); DIS (NYSE) (57%); GOOG (NASDAQ) (51%); GGEA (LSE) (51%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS713110 AMUSEMENT AND THEME PARKS (57%); NAICS515112 RADIO STATIONS
(57%); NAICS512110 MOTION PICTURE AND VIDEO PRODUCTION (57%); NAICS453220 GIFT, NOVELTY,
AND SOUVENIR STORES (57%); SIC7996 AMUSEMENT PARKS (57%); SIC7812 MOTION PICTURE & VIDEO
TAPE PRODUCTION (57%); SIC5947 GIFT, NOVELTY, & SOUVENIR SHOPS (57%); SIC4832 RADIO
BROADCASTING STATIONS (57%); NAICS518112 WEB SEARCH PORTALS (51%); SIC8999 SERVICES, NEC
(51%); SIC7375 INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SERVICES (51%); NAICS713110 AMUSEMENT & THEME
PARKS (57%); NAICS512110 MOTION PICTURE & VIDEO PRODUCTION (57%); NAICS453220 GIFT, NOVELTY & SOUVENIR STORES (57%); NAICS519130 INTERNET PUBLISHING & BROADCASTING & WEB
SEARCH PORTALS (51%)
PERSON: ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER (54%) John Markoff; Danny Hillis
GEOGRAPHIC: SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA (79%) CALIFORNIA, USA (79%); NEW YORK, USA (79%)
UNITED STATES (79%)
LOAD-DATE: March 9, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Danny Hillis, left, is a founder of Metaweb Technologies and Robert Cook is the executive vice
president for product development. (Photo by Darcy Padilla for The New York Times)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1041 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 9, 2007 Friday
Correction Appended
Page 105
Bronx Fire's Toll: Nine Dead, a Community in Mourning The New York Times March 9, 2007 Friday Correction
Appended
Late Edition - Final
Bronx Fire's Toll: Nine Dead, a Community in Mourning
BYLINE: By ELLEN BARRY
SECTION: Section A; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk; TRAGEDY IN THE BRONX; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1821 words
The narrow brick house on Woodycrest Avenue in the Bronx was full of children's voices and the scent of peanut
stew. In the mornings, the children would strap on their backpacks and gather on the front steps for the walk to P.S. 73;
their mothers would venture out later, babies tucked in brilliantly colored slings across their backs. Friends used to tease
Manthia Magassa, one of the residents, about her growing family, but she didn't mind. She would smile and say, ''No,
it's God giving.''
Fire roared through this house on Wednesday night. Relatives and neighbors ran to help, but they could only stand
there, in the bitter cold, and watch.
One father -- he had been driving a cab in Manhattan when he got a panicked call from his wife -- ran back and
forth outside, screaming. A terrified mother threw two of her children from a window to neighbors below, then jumped,
wearing only a bra and panties.
In all, eight children and a woman were killed, all of them part of an extended family of immigrants from Mali.
Four of the children and the woman were found on the fourth floor. Two died in a bedroom on the third floor. One was
found on the second floor, and one was on the stairs.
Excluding Sept. 11, 2001, it was the deadliest fire in New York since 1990, when 87 people were trapped in the
Happy Land Social Club, also in the Bronx. Fire Department officials said the blaze started in a cord attached to a space
heater on the ground floor, then raced up a wooden staircase to consume the second, third and fourth floors. The row
house, built in 1901, had no fire escapes. Although there were two smoke alarms in the building, neither had batteries.
Help came late for several reasons. The four women in the house did not call 911. They tried to put out the fire
themselves, according to the Fire Department. The first call to 911 came from a neighbor across the street, at 11:08 p.m.
A fire engine arrived at the scene 3 minutes and 23 seconds later.
Other things went wrong. While the women tried to put out the fire, they left a door open, allowing the fire to
spread upstairs. A padlocked gate in front of the house stood in the way of firefighters, who went back to the truck to
get a bolt-cutter. The first two floors were already filled with fire and smoke, and women and children on the upper
floors were weakening from smoke inhalation.
''Sometimes it just seems more painful and more unfair when it's children that die,'' Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg
said yesterday. ''When children die, everyone around them, everyone who loved them, die a little bit as well.
''It's one small building, but one very large tragedy for our city.''
Mayor Bloomberg said he believed 22 people lived in the building: five or six adults and as many as 17 children.
Firefighters rescued two children from the third floor, and several other survivors got out on their own.
The dead included four members of the Soumare family: Harouma and Sisi, 7-month-old twins; Djibril, age 3; and
Fatoumata, their mother, 42. Five children in the Magassa family died: Bilaly, 1; Djama, 3; Abudubary, 5; Mahamadou,
8; and Bandiougou, 11.
At 1 a.m. yesterday, six children were brought to Jacobi Medical Center, said Michael Heller, a spokesman. An infant boy was dead on arrival. Five others, suffering from burns, were treated in a hyperbaric chamber, which is used to
relieve carbon monoxide poisoning.
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Bronx Fire's Toll: Nine Dead, a Community in Mourning The New York Times March 9, 2007 Friday Correction
Appended
Moussa Magassa, the father of five of the dead children, was in Mali on business when he was told of the fire and
is on his way back to New York, said Alpha Kassogue, a health educator at the African Services Committee, a social
services agency.
Last night, Manthia Magassa, the mother of five of the dead children, sat on a bed in a neighbor's apartment. On
her lap was a niece, one of the children who survived. They were surrounded by roughly a dozen African women, one
of whom translated the single sentence she spoke: ''I'm in pain.''
Relatives came and went yesterday, dazed with grief. Word had spread to Mali so quickly that Adama Traore,
who works as an outreach worker at the African Services Committee, got an early-morning phone call about the fire
from a relative in Africa. Women in head wraps and colorful batik dresses gathered in a friend's apartment in High
Bridge Gardens, where they lay on couches, some nursing babies, with frozen looks on their faces.
''We sit and we pray for them,'' said Miriam Tall, a relative of Fatoumata Soumare, who died with three of her four
children. ''We cannot make them get up. If you die, you die.''
By late afternoon, a stream of African Muslims had filled the Islamic Cultural Center on East 166th Street, where
Mamadou Soumare, the cabdriver, was worshiping. Donations had mounted to $11,000, said Sheik Moussah Drammeh,
who is helping to organize burials for the family.
The four members of the Soumare family will be sent to Mali for burial, and the five dead Magassa children will
be buried in New York, said Imam Konate Souleimane, general secretary of the Association of African Imams. He said
funeral plans would be discussed today.
Musa Dukuray, 41, said he was at the mosque out of loyalty to Mr. Soumare, who, he said, sacrificed everything
for his children.
''He never had a nice pair of pants,'' Mr. Dukuray said. ''He was just working hard all the time.''
Two of the injured children improved yesterday and were transferred to Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center in fair condition. Two others were released, Mr. Heller said. A woman was in stable condition at Lincoln, and a 7year-old girl remained in critical condition at Jacobi.
Four firefighters and one emergency worker were also hospitalized with minor injuries.
The house, at 1022 Woodycrest Avenue, belongs to Moussa Magassa, one of three brothers who moved to New
York from western Mali 25 years ago. The brothers prospered, and were known as pioneers among the city's Malian
community, estimated at 5,000 to 10,000.
The families were from the Sarakhole clan, natives of rugged country who are known as traders and entrepreneurs, Mr. Kassogue said. Mr. Magassa's brother Mody is the vice president of the Association of Malians Living
Abroad. All three brothers sent a portion of their earnings back to Africa.
''Immigration is in their blood, in their culture,'' Mr. Kassogue said of the Sarakhole people. ''They come here, they
work hard and they build everything in their home towns -- roads, houses, hospitals, day care.''
Moussa Magassa bought the house in 1996, for $139,000. It became a crossroads for dozens of West African families who moved to the area. Fatan Kanoute, 17, a junior at Bronx International High School, said she used to stop at the
house every day after school. The children were happy and boisterous, she said, and the home was spacious compared
to her own. Though Fatoumata Soumare often prepared traditional African stews, she said, the children wanted -- and
got -- hot dogs.
Mr. Magassa had two wives in the home, living on different floors, according to a friend of the family and a
cousin. On the third floor lived Aisse Magassa and four of Mr. Magassa's children. All lived. Aisse Magassa is believed
to have broken a leg jumping from the house. On the second floor, Manthia Magassa lived with seven children, five of
whom perished.
''Both wives,'' said the friend, Bulansa Kebbeh, 30. The cousin, 12-year-old Dieinabou Magassa, asked about the
relationships in the house, said, ''Aisse is his other wife. Manthia is his wife too.''
On the ground floor lived Niakale Magassa, a statuesque woman who left every morning for an English class at
the High Bridge Community Life Center. She desperately wanted to improve her English, but she couldn't keep herself
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Bronx Fire's Toll: Nine Dead, a Community in Mourning The New York Times March 9, 2007 Friday Correction
Appended
from nodding off in class, because she was exhausted from caring for the children, said Mohammed Barri, 20, a Sierra
Leonean immigrant in the same class. Recently, he said, she had inquired about jobs at a 99-cent store and a gas station.
''I think she needed money, because her husband is not here,'' Mr. Barri said.
Moussa Magassa has worked as a carpenter for the school system. In 2000, when he filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy, he stated that he had $214,700 in assets -- the house representing $170,000 of it -- and $132,124 in liabilities. He
was also listed as the owner of an import-export business. Both of his brothers filed for bankruptcy over the course of
the next four years.
In the neighborhood, the house was chiefly known as a place full of children. A small crowd of them convened
every morning before school for the walk around the block to P.S. 73. Mr. Kassogue, of the African Services Committee, said Manthia Magassa's serial pregnancies became a running joke.
''We were teasing her, 'Why are you making so many kids?' '' Mr. Kassogue recalled. But, he said, ''she was appreciating being pregnant.''
The house was quiet on Wednesday night, and most of its residents had gone to bed. According to the Fire Department, Niakale Magassa awoke to flames near her bed, and removed her child to safety, then called the three women
upstairs to help her extinguish the fire. It was not clear how they tried to quench it, Fire Department officials said.
Mr. Soumare was driving his taxi, due to finish his shift at midnight. But shortly after 11 p.m., his wife called him
on his cellphone. He was at Amsterdam Avenue and 139th Street, a little more than two miles away.
''She said, 'We have a fire,' '' Mr. Soumare said. ''She screamed. I said, 'Go up to the top floor. Call 911.' ''
Fatan Kanoute, 17, was asleep in a house across the street, where many of the Magassas' relatives live. She heard
a cousin screaming and ran out onto Woodycrest Avenue. But there was nothing she could do.
''Nobody can get in, and nobody can get out,'' she said. ''Too much fire.''
Aisse Magassa threw two of her children out a window to neighbors in the yard below. Edward Soto, 28, who
lives in a building across the street, said he had caught one of the children but had been unable to break the fall of the
other.
''The mother said, 'Please, God, don't kill my children,' '' Mr. Soto said. ''Then she went and she jumped. When I
looked up the woman was coming down. I screamed out and screamed out. She came down hard.''
Charles O'Neal, 21, was out there, too, watching from the front porch of No. 1021. The street was full of thick
black smoke, and the fire kept growing, he said, as if it ''was relighting itself.'' He said he saw Mr. Soumare run down
the street screaming, and watched as police officers pushed him back against a wall.
Mr. O'Neal stood outside for almost three hours, until the street had grown quiet and firefighters' water had turned
to sheets of ice. What stuck with him, he said, was one moment of it: He was standing there when firefighters carried
out two children. Their bodies were laid out on the road, still in their pajamas.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: FIRES (89%); HOME SECURITY (89%); CITY GOVERNMENT (86%); FIRE DEPARTMENTS (86%);
IMMIGRATION (71%); REFUGEES (67%); SMOKE DETECTORS (75%) Fires and Firefighters; Heaters; Smoke
Detectors; Children and Youth; Immigration and Refugees; Fire Escapes; Fires and Firefighters
PERSON: MICHAEL BLOOMBERG (61%) Ellen Barry; Michael R (Mayor) Bloomberg
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (96%) NEW YORK, USA (96%) UNITED STATES (96%) New York
City; Mali
LOAD-DATE: March 9, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
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Bronx Fire's Toll: Nine Dead, a Community in Mourning The New York Times March 9, 2007 Friday Correction
Appended
CORRECTION-DATE: April 20, 2007
CORRECTION: An article on March 9 about a fire in a Bronx home that killed one adult and, eventually, nine children misspelled the given name of one victim, a 5-year-old boy. (The error was repeated in articles in some copies on
March 10, 12, 13 and 18.) The boy was Abudubacary Magassa, not Abudubary. A reporter who visited the boy's school
in late March discovered a discrepancy in the spellings, and this correction was delayed for additional research.
GRAPHIC: Photos: Manthia Magassa, the mother of five of the young children who died in the fire, with relatives and
friends last night. ''I'm in pain,'' she said. (Photo by Chang W. Lee/The New York Times)(pg. A1)
Outside the scene of the fire yesterday, there were official vehicles and despairing relatives, including Banta Haidara, an
aunt of some of the children who perished. (Photo by James Estrin/The New York Times)
Mamadou Soumare, a cabdriver who lost his wife and three of their four children, with mourners yesterday. (Photo by
Librado Romero/The New York Times)(pg. B5)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1042 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 9, 2007 Friday
Late Edition - Final
Australian Muslims Go for Surf, Lifesaving and Burqinis
BYLINE: By RAYMOND BONNER
SECTION: Section A; Column 3; Foreign Desk; CRONULLA JOURNAL; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 958 words
DATELINE: CRONULLA, Australia, March 3
As a teenager growing up in a Sydney suburb, Mecca Laalaa never felt anything but Australian, even though she
was for the most part unable to engage in the most quintessential of Australian pastimes: swimming at the beach. ''Restricted by my clothing,'' Ms. Laalaa explained.
Ms. Laalaa is a Muslim and has voluntarily worn the burqa, the traditional head-to-toe covering for Muslim women, since she was 14. It is hard to swim, she said, if your body is swathed in cotton, which is very heavy when wet.
Now, her clothing quandary solved by a novel fashion, the burqini, Ms. Laalaa, a vivacious 20-year-old, has become a Surf Life Saver, as volunteer lifeguards here are known, lured to the beach by a new outreach program for Australia's Muslims.
The program, On the Same Wave, was started a year ago by the nonprofit group that organizes the volunteers,
Surf Life Saving Australia, along with the federal Immigration Ministry and the local council.
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Australian Muslims Go for Surf, Lifesaving and Burqinis The New York Times March 9, 2007 Friday
The outreach was the response to an ugly episode on Cronulla Beach, about 20 miles south of downtown Sydney,
in December 2005, when skinheads and neo-Nazis, many drunk and with racial epithets painted on their bodies and Tshirts, marauded through the area beating up Lebanese men.
Many here and abroad wondered if Australia was headed for a period of rising racial tension. The riots set off a
round of soul-searching and left many Australians asking if the violence reflected an underlying racism in their society.
Among Australia's population of roughly 20.2 million, fewer than half a million are Muslims, most of them in
Sydney and Melbourne.
On the Same Wave was intended to promote cultural understanding, introduce people from minority groups -Chinese, Somalis, Sudanese -- to beach culture and safety, and above all to increase and diversify the membership of
Surf Life Saving, said Vanessa Brown, its membership director.
It has also challenged the public perception of a virtually sacred Australian icon, the Surf Life Saver, as someone
who is always blond, blue-eyed and sun-bronzed. ''It's a stereotype, that's accurate,'' said Suzie Stollznow, diversity
manager for Surf Life Saving New South Wales.
Under the program, 22 men and women, from 14 to 40 years old and including a woman with three small children,
signed up to become Surf Life Savers. Most were ethnic Lebanese, but there was a Palestinian, a Syrian and a Libyan.
''But all proudly Australian,'' said one, Suheil Damouny. ''It's important to mention that.''
Like most Muslim immigrants here, Mr. Damouny, 20, a sportswriter at The Torch, a weekly newspaper, does not
like to be referred to by ethnicity. His grandparents fled Palestine in 1948 and moved to Lebanon, then to the United
Arab Emirates, where he lived until moving to Australia seven years ago. He considers himself Australian.
Mr. Damouny said his friends could not understand why he wanted to be a Life Saver, especially in Cronulla. And
they did not think he could pass the rigorous eight-week course. ''But I did,'' he said proudly. Seventeen finished; one
woman dropped out after making the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, and coming back in a full burqa.
Nodding to where a yellow surfboard with the red letters ''Surf Rescue'' rested waiting to be paddled out in an
emergency, Mr. Damouny, who is about 5 feet 7 and weighs 140 pounds, said: ''The hardest was getting used to that big,
ugly thing. It is quite heavy.''
One requirement was to be able to pull an unconscious swimmer on board, and then get him to shore, ''through
massive waves,'' Mr. Damouny said.
Ms. Laalaa broke her nose when she was trying to paddle out through the crashing surf and the board reared up
and kicked back into her. She also twisted both ankles, she said. ''I have black-and-blue bruises all over my body,'' she
said. ''But I'd do it all over again.''
She admits that she was an unlikely candidate. ''I'm a girly-girl,'' she said. ''I like to walk on the street in high
heels.''
But Ms. Laalaa said one reason she had joined the lifesaving program was to educate Australians about Muslims.
''They don't think Muslim women swim,'' she said. ''Or do anything,'' she quickly added with an irrepressible laugh.
When people see women wearing the burqa, they think they are oppressed. ''I am not oppressed,'' she said. ''I do
have my own mouth. I am educated. I do make my own decisions.''
For her and other women, the biggest obstacle, she explained, was what they would wear. That was solved by a
local fashion entrepreneur, Aheda Zanetti, who designs ''dynamic swimwear and sportswear for today's Muslim female.''
For Surf Life Savers, Ms. Zanetti, whose label is Ahiida, came up with a two-piece outfit made of spandex, formfitting but fully covering, even the hair. Ms. Laalaa pulls her hair back into a bun and hides it under a bright red hood
that is an extension of the long-sleeved yellow top.
Ms. Laalaa said her father, a welder, was completely supportive, as was her mother, a homemaker, and her three
brothers and sister. She said her family was not that different from other Muslims in Australia. Most are moderate, she
said. Experts here agree. It is the radicals who grab the headlines, they say.
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Australian Muslims Go for Surf, Lifesaving and Burqinis The New York Times March 9, 2007 Friday
Ms. Laalaa said Muslims had felt fully integrated into Australian life until the attacks of Sept. 11. That is when the
tensions mounted, when many Australians began looking at Muslims with suspicion.
''Before 9/11 they didn't know us,'' said Shayma Almoty, a friend of Ms. Laalaa's. ''Now they've become afraid and
fearful of us.''
''Which is ridiculous,'' chimed in Ronya Chami, 21, an accountant and another longtime friend. The message to
other young Muslims, Ms. Chami said, is, ''Get out there and be part of Australia.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: RELIGION (92%); MUSLIMS & ISLAM (90%); BEACHES (90%); RACE & RACISM (89%); ETHNICITY (87%); IMMIGRATION (87%); NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS (69%); POPULATION SIZE (69%); REFUGEES (68%); WORKPLACE DIVERSITY (68%); RIOTS (64%); CHILDREN (62%); WATER SPORTS (90%) Assaults; Immigration and Refugees; Islam; Fringe Groups and Movements ; Beaches; Lifeguards; Women; Apparel
PERSON: TZIPORA LIVNI (62%) Raymond Bonner
GEOGRAPHIC: SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA (94%); MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA (79%) NEW SOUTH WALES,
AUSTRALIA (79%) AUSTRALIA (94%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY (92%); LEBANON (89%); UNITED ARAB
EMIRATES (79%); SYRIA (79%) Australia; Cronulla (Australia); Australia; cronulla beach (australia)
LOAD-DATE: March 9, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: Suheil Damouny, left, and Mecca Laalaa on duty. Ms. Laalaa's outfit is meant to comply with Islamic modesty.
Ms. Laalaa and Mr. Damouny, both 20, are Muslims taking part in an outreach program called On the Same Wave,
which started a year ago. (Photographs by Tony Sernack for The New York Times) Map of Australia highlighting
Cronulla: Cronulla, a short drive from Sydney, is a popular summer resort.
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1043 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 9, 2007 Friday
Late Edition - Final
Al Gore's Outsourcing Solution
BYLINE: By Gregg Easterbrook.
Gregg Easterbrook is a fellow of the Brookings Institution and the author of ''The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets
Better While People Feel Worse.''
SECTION: Section A; Column 1; Editorial Desk; Pg. 23
Page 111
Al Gore's Outsourcing Solution The New York Times March 9, 2007 Friday
LENGTH: 896 words
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
LAST month, to the delight of many global-warming skeptics, it was revealed that Al Gore uses 20 times as much
electricity and natural gas at his Tennessee house than the national average. Out of curiosity, I put the former vice president's power bills and ZIP code through the home-emissions calculator of TerraPass, a company that sells ''carbon offsets'' -- the promise to reduce greenhouse gases by the same amount your behavior increases them.
TerraPass estimated that the power use of a house equivalent to Mr. Gore's causes 377,000 pounds of greenhouse
gases annually. That is roughly the annual carbon emission of 20 Hummers. Next time you see Mr. Gore wagging his
finger about the energy sins of others, picture a caravan of 20 Hummers driving to the Academy Awards.
A Gore spokeswoman told the press that the former vice president pays extra for wind energy, and buys carbon offsets. He's not the only one: companies that sell such offsets are rising in popularity, and certificates for them were included in the stars' Oscar night goodie bags. Soon not just individuals, but the entire United States, may be purchasing
carbon offsets on a grand scale.
TerraPass charges $1,247.50 for one year of carbon offsets for a home like Mr. Gore's, the price including a refrigerator magnet proclaiming the home ''carbon balanced.'' Initially I found it hard to believe anyone could counteract
Mr. Gore's prodigious energy lust for just $1,247.50, since planting about 20,000 trees would be required to neutralize
even half his house's carbon footprint.
But it turns out that TerraPass does its good works in part by covering landfills to prevent methane from seeping
out. Since methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, covering landfills is a cost-effective way to
wrestle with global warming. I may be annoyed by Mr. Gore's hectoring, but I'm not going to accuse him of hypocrisy
on this one.
This all seems a classic example of economies of scale. Individuals can't do anything about landfill methane. But a
company like TerraPass can combine the resources of many to accomplish this task, allowing the person of good intent
to use energy with no net contribution to the greenhouse effect. Whether companies marketing offsets really do reduce
greenhouse gases is something for consumer reporters or the Federal Trade Commission to determine. Assuming the
sellers do as promised, buying carbon offsets isn't an exercise in guilt. It's smart economics.
There is also a bigger issue here. That offsets are smart economics may be central to slowing carbon accumulation
in the atmosphere. The scientific case for greenhouse-gas regulation now strong, and Congress may soon impose the
first carbon dioxide limits on American producers. Current bills in the Senate -- one sponsored by John McCain and Joe
Lieberman, another by John Kerry and Olympia Snowe -- would cut domestic greenhouse emissions to about the level
of 1990.
On the plus side, these bills would create a significant profit incentive for greenhouse-gas reduction. Offering inventors and entrepreneurs a profit incentive should lead to an outpouring of anti-global-warming innovations.
But even if successful, the McCain-Lieberman or Kerry-Snowe bills would only slightly lower future atmospheric
levels of greenhouse gases. That's because Chinese carbon emissions are skyrocketing.
Since 1990, according to the World Resources Institute, American greenhouse emissions rose 18 percent while
Chinese emissions rose 77 percent. China may pass America as the No. 1 emitter of greenhouse gases as soon as 2010.
If current trends hold, by 2050 emerging nations led by China and India will emit twice as much carbon as the United
States and Western Europe combined.
China's emissions are soaring because the Chinese economy is nearly three times as ''carbon intensive'' as America's, burning far more fossil fuel per unit of gross domestic product. Chinese coal-fired power plants are notoriously
inefficient, consuming twice as much coal per kilowatt produced as American generating stations. They also run without the elaborate anti-pollution ''stack scrubbers'' found in Western power plants. And China opens a new coal-fired
generating station every week to 10 days.
Here's where offset economics come into play. Dollar for dollar, capital invested in greenhouse gas reduction
would accomplish more if used to improve the efficiency of Chinese power plants than if spent in the United States.
America needs legislation capping carbon emissions here, but Congress should allow American companies and con-
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Al Gore's Outsourcing Solution The New York Times March 9, 2007 Friday
sumers to use investments in carbon offsets in China and India against those caps, where the bang for the buck is much
higher.
As a bonus, American investment in reducing Chinese and Indian air pollution would improve public health in
those nations. Today smog in Chinese and Indian cities is worse than any in the West since London of the early 1950s.
The result is far higher rates of respiratory disease in China and India than in the West.
If our goal in legislating against carbon releases is not simply punishing the West and its power companies but truly trying to reduce the accumulation of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, the main event will be in the developing
world. We must use the smartest possible economics, and that means investing in China and India.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: GLOBAL WARMING (90%); CLIMATE CHANGE (90%); NATURAL GAS PRODUCTS (90%);
EMISSIONS (90%); OUTSOURCING (90%); EDITORIALS & OPINIONS (90%); METHANE (89%); NATURAL
GAS & ELECTRIC UTILITIES (78%); ENERGY & UTILITY LAW (78%); ELECTRICITY TRANSMISSION &
DISTRIBUTION (78%); LEGISLATION (77%); LEGISLATIVE BODIES (77%); WIND ENERGY (73%); ENERGY
REGULATION (73%); LANDFILLS (70%); ENTERTAINMENT & ARTS AWARDS (68%); EARTH & ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE (64%); COMMERCE DEPARTMENTS (50%); CLIMATOLOGY (89%); CARBON OFFSETS
(91%) Weather; Global Warming; Carbon Dioxide; Law and Legislation; Weather
PERSON: AL GORE (97%) Gregg Easterbrook
GEOGRAPHIC: UNITED STATES (94%); CHINA (79%) United States; China; India
LOAD-DATE: March 9, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Op-Ed
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1044 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 9, 2007 Friday
Late Edition - Final
China Nears Passage of Law Protecting Private Property
BYLINE: By JIM YARDLEY; Lin Yang contributed reporting.
SECTION: Section C; Column 2; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 860 words
DATELINE: BEIJING, March 8
Page 113
China Nears Passage of Law Protecting Private Property The New York Times March 9, 2007 Friday
China's national legislature began deliberating Thursday on a landmark law that would provide legal protections for
private property as well as a law that would gradually equalize corporate taxes on foreign and domestic corporations.
The two pieces of legislation are a result of years of debate within the Communist Party. They are intended to protect private wealth, create more coherence in the tax code and continue the country's market-driven economic reforms.
The property law is particularly symbolic, because it writes private property into the evolving legal code of a country
that is growing rich on capitalism but nominally remains a socialist state.
''To me, the private property law is more a symbolic ratification of how far China has rejected its socialist past,'' Arthur R. Kroeber, managing editor of China Economic Quarterly, said in an e-mail message. ''That's important insofar as
it signifies a point of no return in the reform process.''
Both pieces of legislation were introduced Thursday during the National People's Congress, the annual two-week
gathering of the Communist Party-controlled legislative body. Passage, considered a formality, is expected next week.
Approval of the property law was expected last year, but party leaders tabled the proposal after an unusually public and passionate ideological fight erupted. It was led by leftist scholars who argued that the law would worsen income
inequality, legalize the misappropriation of state assets and undermine the socialist tenet of state ownership of property.
''This will accelerate the loss of state assets,'' Gong Xiantian, a law professor at Peking University, said in an interview this week. ''And it will accelerate the process of turning the country into a place where private ownership is the
dominant system.''
This year, Mr. Gong and other critics tried to continue their fight, but the law's introduction indicates that it will be
approved. Wang Zhaoguo, a ranking official in the National People's Congress, said that the public wanted legal safeguards for its property and that such protections stimulated ''people's initiative to create and accumulate wealth and to
promote social harmony.''
Mr. Kroeber said the property law largely ratified customary practice, and he predicted that the practical shortterm impact on business would be limited. He said the law offered entrepreneurs protection against seizure of assets
but most businesses were more concerned about fees, levies and illegal taxes.
Land in China is owned by the state, but individuals and corporations are permitted to own buildings, homes or
apartments while renting the land below on long-term leases.
Real estate has become a primary engine of the Chinese economy, but also a source of widespread official corruption and illegal land confiscations. Government studies indicate that land has been confiscated from more than 40 million farmers, often by corrupt officials working in concert with developers. Urban residents have been evicted from aging apartments to make way for development.
Critics like Mr. Gong have argued that the property law would legalize such misappropriations. But Jiang Ping, a
scholar involved in the early drafting of the law, said the law protected only ''legally obtained'' property and also included protections for farmers against illegal land seizures.
Mr. Jiang, an emeritus professor at the Chinese University of Politics and Law, also said the law addressed specific concerns of the emerging middle class on narrow issues like ownership rights of common areas and parking garages
in apartment complexes.
''I see the law as a great encouragement for people to seek wealth legally, and be protected,'' Mr. Jiang said.
The proposed law on corporate taxes has also been under discussion for several years. For years, China has offered tax incentives and lower rates to foreign corporations, a package that has helped attract record amounts of foreign
investment. Domestic companies also receive certain tax preferences, but many resent the tiered tax-rate structure.
Anthony M. Fay Jr., a tax lawyer with White & Case in Beijing, said domestic companies paid a 33 percent statutory tax rate while their foreign competitors paid a much lower rate and often received ''tax holidays'' like two-year exemptions followed by three years of paying half the usual rate. Under the new law, the statutory tax rate will gradually
be equalized to 25 percent for all companies, Mr. Fay said.
Most existing companies will be grandfathered into the old system for up to five years, Mr. Fay said. Mr. Kroeber
said the proposed changes had been publicized for several years to give foreign companies time to plan for them.
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China Nears Passage of Law Protecting Private Property The New York Times March 9, 2007 Friday
Mr. Kroeber said the tax changes might prompt manufacturers of low-end items like shoes and garments, which
depend on tax preferences to make their profit margins, to move to places like Vietnam. But he predicted that China
would remain a favorite for foreign investment.
''Foreign companies still have enormous incentives to invest in China because of the manufacturing efficiencies it
offers and the market opportunities,'' he said.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: REAL ESTATE (90%); POLITICAL PARTIES (90%); POLITICS (90%); LEGISLATION (90%);
COMMERCIAL RENTAL PROPERTY (90%); PROPERTY LAW (90%); LEGISLATIVE BODIES (90%); LEGISLATORS (90%); TAXES & TAXATION (90%); ASSET FORFEITURE (89%); EMERGING MARKETS (79%);
COMMERCIAL PROPERTY (78%); MISAPPROPRIATION (78%); LAW SCHOOLS (78%); OFFICE PROPERTY
(78%); TAX LAW (78%); INCOME DISTRIBUTION (76%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (75%); ECONOMIC NEWS
(72%); FOREIGN INVESTMENT (72%); ECONOMIC POLICY (72%); APPROVALS (71%); TRENDS (70%); INTERVIEWS (68%); LEASE AGREEMENTS (64%); FRAUD & FINANCIAL CRIME (63%); SEARCH & SEIZURE
(60%); COLLEGE & UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS (50%) Economic Conditions and Trends; Law and Legislation;
Real Estate; Taxation; Corporations; Foreign Investments; Office Buildings and Commercial Properties; Housing; Renting and Leasing; Search and Seizure; Frauds and Swindling
COMPANY: CNINSURE INC (93%)
TICKER: CISG (NASDAQ) (93%)
PERSON: Jim Yardley; lin yang
GEOGRAPHIC: BEIJING, CHINA (90%) NORTH CENTRAL CHINA (89%); SOUTH CHINA (74%) CHINA
(97%) China; China; China
LOAD-DATE: March 9, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: Women from Guangxi Province appeared yesterday outside the hall in Beijing where China's national legislature was holding its annual meeting. (Photo by Peter Parks/Agence France-Presse -- Getty Images)
The National People's Congress, China's national legislature, is expected to enact a law equalizing taxes on foreign and
domestic companies. (Photo by Claro Cortes IV/Reuters)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1045 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 8, 2007 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section C; Column 5; Business/Financial Desk; TODAY IN BUSINESS; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 842 words
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The New York Times March 8, 2007 Thursday
TAKEOVER PLOT AT TAKE-TWO -- A consortium of investors disclosed that it intended to oust the board and
possibly the top management of Take-Two Interactive Software, a video game publisher that has been plagued by legal,
regulatory and accounting issues. [Page C1.] RETHINKING THE EUROPEAN CAR -- The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, below, wants European automakers to adhere to new limits on carbon dioxide emissions. But first she will
have to take on the auto industry at home, where Porsche sports cars tear along the no-speed-limit autobahn. [C1.] A
SHORTFALL IN POWER -- A deal that delighted environmentalists -- TXU Corporation's decision to scrap plans for
eight new coal-fired plants under a deal it has agreed to with potential new owners -- could leave Texas with a shortfall
in energy.
[C4.]ENVIRONMENTALISTS HIRE BANKER -- One of the nation's largest and most influential environmental
groups, Environmental Defense, has hired Perella Weinberg Partners, the boutique investment bank, to advise it as the
group takes on an unusual role in the middle of the $38 billion buyout of TXU, the Texas energy giant. [C1.]
WALGREEN ACCUSED OF RACIAL BIAS -- The Walgreen Company, the nation's largest drugstore chain, discriminated against thousands of black employees across the country, including managers and pharmacists, according to a
class-action lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. [C1.] FRAUD RULES QUESTIONED - Some lawmakers are questioning the Justice Department's recently revised guidelines on combating corporate fraud,
asking whether they do enough to protect the confidentiality of legal communications and the right to legal counsel.
[C3.] A TO-DO LIST, IN BILLIONS -- Exxon Mobil, which earned a record $39.5 billion last year, said that it would
spend much of that money by increasing investment in oil and natural gas projects. [C6.] A WIDGET BY ANY OTHER NAME When global marketers try to come up with a meaningful name for a new product, the odds of finding a
name not already taken are getting smaller and smaller. Advertising. [C5.] HIGHER BID FOR CAREMARK -- Express
Scripts sweetened its $26.1 billion offer for Caremark Rx but cautioned that the bid would be delayed by further regulatory scrutiny. [C3.] BRINGING VIDEO TO THE WEB -- A New York-based Internet start-up that is backed and will
be run by former executives of MTV and Nickelodeon will announce plans to begin a series of video-oriented Web sites
on niche topics. [C3.] CHANGES AT A RETAILER? The resignation of the supervisory board chairman at Carrefour,
the French retailer, has fueled speculation over a shift in strategy. [C6.] SEEKING SUPPORT FOR 'OPEN SKIES' -European transportation officials urged Britain not to scuttle a landmark deal on trans-Atlantic air travel. British officials are concerned that the draft ''open skies'' agreement could hurt British Airways and Virgin Atlantic. [C6.] E.ON
RECONSIDERS TAKEOVER BID -- The German energy giant E.On said that it might abandon a yearlong effort to
take over the utility company Endesa of Spain, or settle for just a slice of the company.[C6.] INDIAN EXCHANGES
DIVERSIFY -- The Bombay Stock Exchange sold a 5 percent stake to the Singapore Stock Exchange for 1.89 billion
India rupees, or $42.6 million, and the exchange in Calcutta said it planned to sell 51 percent of its shares to partners
and strategic investors. [C11.] SAKS REVERSES A LOSS -- Saks Inc. reported a fourth-quarter profit, reversing a
year-earlier loss, as improved merchandise drove higher sales. The company, operator of Saks Fifth Avenue stores, also
said that sales at stores open at least a year had gained nearly 25 percent in February. [C2.] WAIT TILL YOU SEE MY
HARD DRIVE -- External hard drives for computers have suddenly become stylish, with brushed aluminum cases, decorator colors and glowing blue or amber lights that grab attention. [C9.] A MEANS TO INFLUENCE POLICY -- The
founder of eBay, Pierre Omidyar, has named a new leader for his personal philanthropy as he explores ways to play a
bigger role in shaping public policy. [C11.] FILLING A FOUNDER'S SHOES -- When an heir steps in to run a start-up
after an entrepreneur dies, it can be difficult undertaking. Small Business. [C7.] MARKETS SHOW STABILITY -Stocks fell modestly but showed more signs of stability as investors sifted through new economic data and found little
reason to resume last week's heavy selling. [C11.]ONLINEON MORTGAGES -- Bob Tedeschi talks about lenders who
are redoubling their efforts to keep borrowers afloat. That article and more on home mortgages are available at nytimes.com/realestate.PODCAST ON HEALTH -- Jane Brody, the ''Personal Health'' columnist, discusses the latest
health news. Subscriptions to her podcast are available at nytimes.com/health. BATTLE FOR BLUE SKIES -- A decade and a half after Thailand began a battle for better air quality, this erstwhile icon of smog has emerged as a role model for pollution-choked capitals in Asia. A slide show is at nytimes.com/science.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: PHARMACIES & DRUG STORES (90%); ENVIRONMENTALISM (90%); TAKEOVERS (90%); AUTOMOTIVE MFG (90%); LITIGATION (90%); PHARMACIES (87%); RETAILERS (87%); SELF REGULATING
ORGANIZATIONS (78%); CLASS ACTIONS (50%); ACCOUNTING (78%); INVESTMENT BANKING (78%);
AUTOMAKERS (77%); SOFTWARE MAKERS (77%); MOTOR VEHICLES (77%); TRANSPORTATION REGU-
Page 116
The New York Times March 8, 2007 Thursday
LATION (77%); LEGISLATORS (77%); AUTOMOBILE MFG (77%); INTERNET VIDEO (77%); EMISSIONS
(76%); ENVIRONMENTAL & WILDLIFE ORGANIZATIONS (76%); EMPLOYMENT (74%); BUYINS & BUYOUTS (74%); RACIAL DISCRIMINATION IN EMPLOYMENT (74%); CORPORATE WRONGDOING (74%);
STARTUPS (73%); RETAIL PHARMACEUTICALS (73%); LAWYERS (73%); SUITS & CLAIMS (72%); SPEED
LIMITS (72%); COMPUTER GAMES (72%); RACE & RACISM (71%); COAL FIRED PLANTS (71%); AFRICAN
AMERICANS (71%); JUSTICE DEPARTMENTS (67%); NEW PRODUCTS (66%); LAW ENFORCEMENT (64%);
INTERNET & WWW (64%); DELAYS & POSTPONEMENTS (60%); NATURAL GAS PRODUCTS (54%); RIGHT
TO COUNSEL (50%); ENVIRONMENT & NATURAL RESOURCES (90%); COMPUTER SOFTWARE (89%);
PHARMACISTS (70%) Terms not available from NYTimes
COMPANY: TAKE-TWO INTERACTIVE SOFTWARE INC (93%); TXU CORP (83%); WALGREEN CO (82%);
EXXON MOBIL CORP (56%); ENERGY FUTURE HOLDINGS CORP (70%); CVS CAREMARK CORP (52%)
ORGANIZATION: EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION (54%)
TICKER: TTWO (NASDAQ) (93%); TXU (NYSE) (83%); WAG (NYSE) (82%); XOM (NYSE) (56%); XOM
(BRU) (53%); EXX (LSE) (53%); CVS (NYSE) (52%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS446110 PHARMACIES AND DRUG STORES (82%); SIC5912 DRUG STORES & PROPRIETARY STORES (82%); NAICS325110 PETROCHEMICAL MANUFACTURING (56%); NAICS324110 PETROLEUM REFINERIES (56%); NAICS211111 CRUDE PETROLEUM & NATURAL GAS EXTRACTION (56%);
SIC2911 PETROLEUM REFINERIES (56%); SIC2869 INDUSTRIAL ORGANIC CHEMICALS, NEC (56%);
SIC2865 CYCLIC ORGANIC CRUDES & INTERMEDIATES & ORGANIC DYES & PIGMENTS (56%); SIC1311
CRUDE PETROLEUM & NATURAL GAS (56%); NAICS446110 PHARMACIES & DRUG STORES (82%)
PERSON: ANGELA MERKEL (57%)
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, USA (79%) GERMANY (92%); UNITED STATES (79%)
LOAD-DATE: March 8, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo Graph shows Saks shares for the week.
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Summary
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1046 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
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Late Edition - Final
In a Global Marketplace, Claiming a Name Becomes an Art in Itself
BYLINE: By KATE WEISMAN
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In a Global Marketplace, Claiming a Name Becomes an Art in Itself The New York Times March 8, 2007 Thursday
SECTION: Section C; Column 1; Business/Financial Desk; MEDIA: ADVERTISING; Pg. 5
LENGTH: 1074 words
WHEN a snazzy new product goes on sale in many countries, its name must be one of a kind.
Yet today it has become increasingly difficult to find a name for a company, a product, even a new shade of lipstick that has not been taken.
''Finding names today is a total headache,'' said Bernard Fornas, the president and chief executive of Cartier. ''Once
you come up with a name that's interesting, you'll also discover that it's already registered.''
In the end, ''it's all a legal game,'' said Joseph Gubernick, chief marketing officer for Estee Lauder, who has been
with the company for more than 30 years and recalls when the naming process was much easier.
What has changed, industry specialist say, is that companies and the distribution of their goods have become more
global. Now names have to be registered in a company's home country and secured in several others. And the Internet,
with its vast reach, has complicated the process.
In addition, many products, particularly in the luxury and fashion categories, need a name that conveys a feeling
or a sense of emotion -- and do that across many cultures and languages.
''The word 'Viagra' is really meaningless,'' said Jasmine Montgomery, the deputy managing director in London of
FutureBrand, a branding and marketing business. Viagra and other made-up brand names acquire meaning only when
backed with a lot of advertising and marketing.
''But if I am launching a new fashion label, the task gets really hard because I have to find a name that communicates the creative style, or lifestyle, that the brand is supposed to embody,'' Ms. Montgomery said. ''There's this high
degree of emotion,'' which beauty businesses also require, that is not an issue for other industries.
For a global brand like Estee Lauder, as many as 40 new products are trademarked every year -- something the
company has been doing for the last 35 years. The number does not include the hundreds of new products or colors that
are the result of Lauder's line extensions or expansions, like a second kind of mascara within an existing group of cosmetics, a company spokeswoman said.
As for the Internet, the growth of trademarked Web addresses or Web sites is exponential, said Delphine Parlier, a
founder and partner in Quensis, a company in Paris that goes through the process of choosing a name at the same time
that it does the legal, cultural and linguistic screening.
''Today, there are over 64 million domain names,'' Ms. Parlier said. ''This compares to 45 million in August 2005.''
''Naming is not a problem for a small company with local distribution, but it's a big problem for global brands,''
she said. ''Before, it used to be like climbing a hill. Now, it's like crossing the Himalayas.''
For companies, it's best if a Web search goes directly to the proper name of their site or their product's site. But for
years entrepreneurs have been registering many dot.com names, dreaming that one day some company will need a
name and be willing to pay for it.
In mid-January, the luxury goods giant Louis Vuitton came upon such a legal snag in China, a country whose
population of luxury consumers is on the rise while counterfeiting runs rampant.
According to The Changjiang Times, a Wuhan businessman named Wang Jun had trademarked the phonetic translation of Louis Vuitton in Roman letters and Chinese characters. There were even reports that he was preparing to offer
the trademarks to Vuitton for 120 million yuan, or about $15 million.
Louis Vuitton said last month that it was not trying to buy the trademarks and that it would appeal a 2002 decision
by the Chinese Patent Re-examination Board that upheld Jun's rights to make a handbag with various Vuitton motifs
and logo.
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In a Global Marketplace, Claiming a Name Becomes an Art in Itself The New York Times March 8, 2007 Thursday
In any event, naming is a costly endeavor. Fees for simply coming up with an unregistered name can range from a
few thousand dollars for a one-market venture to more than $70,000 for a global name and a dot-com counterpart, according to industry estimates.
In addition, there are the legal fees for the registration, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
''It's a real puzzle,'' Mr. Fornas of Cartier said. ''The investment for a name can go from nothing to a very high
price. A company has to decide what it wants to invest: how important is the product vis-a-vis the price to register its
name.''
Despite the challenges, companies do have success stories.
In 1998, Cartier developed a unisex fragrance that it wanted to call Declaration. Members of the development
team proposed the name, then crossed their collective fingers.
''For a perfume, it was actually available! We wondered: How on earth could that be available? Such luck,'' Mr.
Fornas recalled.
Success also occurs when managers come up with obscure or very hard-to-copy names.
When Cartier wanted to name a watch La Dona, for the late Mexican actress Maria Felix, once among Cartier's
most extravagant jewelry customers, it found that the name, not surprisingly, was available.
Ms. Montgomery of FutureBrand gives the nail care company OPI kudos for its clever, hard-to-copy nail polish
color names like Didgeridoo Your Nails, a mauve hue from the brand's Australia collection for 2007.
Choosing the right name can also help in the creative process, said Jim Nevins, the creative director at Clinique
who in 1997 came up with the name Happy for a perfume.
''The fragrance was being developed before we had a name for it,'' Mr. Nevins recalled. ''I was watching a biography of Judy Garland on the A&E channel one night and the song came on, 'Come On Get Happy.' I thought to myself:
'Who doesn't want to be happy?' ''
He said the name helped direct the final stages of the product's development. An orange note was added to the fragrance and orange was chosen for the package color because, Mr. Nevins said, several consumer studies indicated that
the color and smell of orange evoke happiness.
The fragrance, however, could not be marketed under the single word Happy. The company had some concerns it
would be too generic, a spokeswoman said. And, when Clinique was registering the name, it learned that a small company had already registered a similar name, although for an item in another product category.
As a result, the perfume is called Clinique Happy, a phrasing combining the brand and the product name in what
the industry calls a ''lockup.''
Consumers, however, generally refer to the product as just Happy.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: MARKETING & ADVERTISING (91%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING SERVICES (90%); NEW
PRODUCTS (89%); DOMAIN NAMES (89%); BRANDING (89%); TRADEMARK LAW (89%); COSMETICS &
TOILETRIES COMPANIES (89%); INTERNET & WWW (87%); COSMETICS & TOILETRIES (78%); GENERIC
PRODUCTS (78%); ONLINE MARKETING & ADVERTISING (74%); LANGUAGE & LANGUAGES (70%);
LINGUISTICS (70%); INTERNATIONAL TRADE (68%); FASHION & APPAREL (66%) Advertising and Marketing; Trademarks and Trade Names; Generic and Brand Name Products; International Trade and World Market; Computers and the Internet; Advertising and Marketing
COMPANY: ESTEE LAUDER COS INC (56%); FUTUREBRAND (58%)
TICKER: EL (NYSE) (56%)
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In a Global Marketplace, Claiming a Name Becomes an Art in Itself The New York Times March 8, 2007 Thursday
INDUSTRY: NAICS446120 COSMETICS, BEAUTY SUPPLIES & PERFUME STORES (56%); NAICS325620
TOILET PREPARATION MANUFACTURING (56%); SIC5122 DRUGS, DRUG PROPRIETARIES, & DRUGGISTS' SUNDRIES (56%); SIC2844 PERFUMES, COSMETICS, & OTHER TOILET PREPARATIONS (56%)
PERSON: ANN LIVERMORE (57%) Kate Weisman
GEOGRAPHIC: LONDON, ENGLAND (54%) ENGLAND (54%); UNITED KINGDOM (54%)
LOAD-DATE: March 8, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1047 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 8, 2007 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
Accidental Bosses Seize the Opportunities
BYLINE: By GLENN RIFKIN
SECTION: Section C; Column 1; Business/Financial Desk; SMALL BUSINESS; Pg. 7
LENGTH: 1236 words
When Archie Williams, an entrepreneur in Boston, died in his bed on Thanksgiving Day in 2002, his youngest
daughter, Elizabeth, recalls confronting feelings that went beyond grief.
Should she take over her father's company and give up her career, she wondered? At 38, she had been director of
diversity at Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Massachusetts for two years, and the future seemed promising. Ten days earlier,
Ms. Williams, a single mother, had just bought her first home.
''It came down to the fact that I was the only qualified person in the family to take over,'' she said. ''If it wasn't me, it
was close the doors.''
Her father's company, Roxbury Technology, remade used toner cartridges for copying machines. Though her father started the company in 1994, it was still a fledgling operation with three employees and less than $4 million in
sales. Ms. Williams knew nothing about the business, she said, but she admired her father's devotion to building a business in the inner city.
Consultants and others who advise start-ups and track small businesses agree that accidental entrepreneurship is
a tough undertaking. Notable chief executives like Martha Rivers Ingram of Ingram Industries have surprised people by
successfully steering a company after the death of a leader -- in Ms. Ingram's case, her husband. More recently, Apollonia Poilane gained fame in France when at age 18 she took over Pain Poilane, her family's renowned Paris-based bread
business, after her parents were killed in a helicopter crash in 2002. Ms. Poilane is a senior at Harvard running the $18
million business from afar.
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Accidental Bosses Seize the Opportunities The New York Times March 8, 2007 Thursday
But for many who face such unexpected opportunity, the task is daunting, the failure rate high. So many factors
figure into the decision to pick up a business and run with it. The stability of the enterprise, the presence of trusted employees and advisers, and the financial well-being of the company are all crucial decision points. But in the case of the
sudden death of a parent or spouse, these decisions are often supplanted by emotional concerns and burdens.
Ms. Williams reached out to her father's business associates, including Thomas G. Stemberg, founder and chairman of Staples, for advice. Within a few days, she decided to make the leap.
''This thing really dropped in my lap,'' she recalled. ''I was scared to death and thought, 'What am I going to do?' I
believed in my father's legacy and what he was trying to do for the community. I also knew the company supported my
mom, who had never really worked. I knew I had a responsibility to get this done.''
Her four years at the helm have been difficult, particularly because of health problems along the way. Yet Ms.
Williams says she is convinced she made the right decision. Roxbury Technology has blossomed into an $11.5 million
company with 35 employees and a thriving business model. ''I'm still amazed sometimes that this happened,'' she said. ''I
cried a lot of nights.''
Mr. Stemberg said: ''She had the combination of her dad's entrepreneurial genes and some business experience at
great companies like Blue Cross/Blue Shield that give her business discipline. She's done a great job building the company.''
Andy Birol, founder of Birol Growth Consulting in Solon, Ohio, interviewed more than 5,000 business owners,
and estimates that 50 percent of businesses inherited unexpectedly fail or are sold in a year or two. He suggests that prospective business owners must answer three essential questions when considering what course to take.
The first is, Can you do the job? ''This is critical because there is so much guilt along with the assumption of the
duty or responsibility to take over the business,'' Mr. Birol said. ''Many people end up making irrational decisions. They
go into it with the idea that they have to do it, and they may simply not have the capability.''
Then there is, Will you do it? ''The person they are replacing had that confidence and conviction that they could
run a business, and the new person rarely brings the same level of confidence,'' Mr. Birol said.
If the heir can and will take on the job, the third question is, How will they do it? Mr. Birol noted that this last
question is made more difficult because the business owner who died might have been on the wrong track, leaving the
new leader to figure out ''the best and highest use'' of the company.
When Radha Jalan's husband died at age 47 in 1992, for example, she had to either find a job or take over her husband's six-year-old company, ElectroChem. Ms. Jalan had a Ph.D. in education but was a stay-at-home mother in Concord, Mass., raising the couple's two daughters, one of them still in high school. She knew nothing about the company's
fuel-cell technology but realized that she had to make a living to support herself and her daughters. She decided to run
the company, but then all but one of the 10 employees quit after three months.
It was time for a change. Ms. Jalan decided to refocus the company away from research and development to sell
products for fuel-cell researchers.
''I had no credentials in technology, but I also never really thought about selling the company,'' she said. Nearly 15
years later, Ms. Jalan is still president and chief executive of ElectroChem, based in Woburn, Mass., and the company is
three times the size it was when she took over.
''I've eked out a living with this,'' she said. ''My family in India are Marwaris, a group known for their business acumen. I guess business was in my blood.''
An unexpected death is not the only catalyst for accidental entrepreneurs. Family obligations can lead to unexpected careers as well.
Kent Griswold, armed with a Harvard degree and a master's degree from the Wharton School at the University of
Pennsylvania, moved to Australia permanently as a financial consultant, or so he thought. His mother, Jean, an entrepreneur, had started her own home health care business, Griswold Special Care in Erdenheim, Pa., in 1982, despite
having multiple sclerosis. Two years after Mr. Griswold left the country, his mother fell and broke her arm and shoulder. His father, a Presbyterian minister, could not run the business, so Mr. Griswold returned to help until his mother
mended. He thought it would be a six-month stint.
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Accidental Bosses Seize the Opportunities The New York Times March 8, 2007 Thursday
''I felt an obligation to my parents to try to help them with something they were working very hard at,'' he said. He
realized that his mother's concept was ahead of a coming trend and he found himself enjoying the work. He ended up as
president and chief executive of the fledgling company. Despite the intensity of living and working with his mother who
threatened to resign numerous times, Mr. Griswold helped her build a $100 million business.
Richard Stim, a lawyer in San Francisco and author of ''Whoops! I'm in Business,'' warns that getting into family
businesses can wreck personal relationships. ''You need to address financial issues in a businesslike way so you are not
sitting around at Thanksgiving with relatives wondering where their money is,'' he said.
For Ms. Williams, her success has justified the faith her father had in her as she was starting her own career. ''I
found a letter he wrote to me when I was 22,'' she recalled. ''He wrote: 'You don't see what I see in you. I'm building this
business so you can take it over someday. I see you as a star.' I think he would be very proud of me.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: SMALL BUSINESS (90%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (90%); ACCIDENTAL FATALITIES (78%);
WORKPLACE DIVERSITY (77%); CELEBRITIES (77%); HEALTH INSURANCE (72%); CONSULTING SERVICES (72%); AIRCRAFT ACCIDENTS (64%); THANKSGIVING (73%); SINGLE PARENTS (72%) Small Business; Small Business
COMPANY: BLUE CROSS & BLUE SHIELD OF MASSACHUSETTS (84%)
ORGANIZATION: Birol Growth Consulting; Roxbury Technology
INDUSTRY: NAICS524114 DIRECT HEALTH AND MEDICAL INSURANCE CARRIERS (84%); SIC6324 HOSPITAL & MEDICAL SERVICE PLANS (84%); NAICS524114 DIRECT HEALTH & MEDICAL INSURANCE
CARRIERS (84%)
PERSON: Glenn Rifkin; Andy Birol; Elizabeth Williams
GEOGRAPHIC: BOSTON, MA, USA (90%); PARIS, FRANCE (54%) MASSACHUSETTS, USA (91%) UNITED
STATES (91%); FRANCE (54%)
LOAD-DATE: March 8, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Elizabeth Williams took over her father's company, Roxbury Technology, after he died. It has nearly tripled its sales volume under her reign. (Photo by Jodi Hilton for The New York Times)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1048 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 8, 2007 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
Out of Jail, Out of Options, Out on a Limb
Page 122
Out of Jail, Out of Options, Out on a Limb The New York Times March 8, 2007 Thursday
BYLINE: By JANET MASLIN
SECTION: Section E; Column 4; The Arts/Cultural Desk; BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 954 words
Con EdBy Matthew Klein285 pages. Warner Books. $23.99.
There's no great case to be made for Matthew Klein's ''Con Ed,'' a bright swindling-scam comedy set in the world
of the Internet nouveau-riche. It's not a groundbreaking book. It's just funny, full of tricks and very, very hard to put
down.
In other words ''Con Ed'' makes perfect airplane reading, not least because its satirical targets are the kinds of people who have their own planes. By contrast its narrator is lucky to be a passenger on any form of public conveyance,
since the ability to travel freely is a novelty to him.
He's a seasoned (to put it nicely), paunchy, 54-year-old con artist named Kip Largo, and he has done time in a
California prison for one of his failed schemes. It involved the sale of a diet product, and most of what Kip did was reasonably well-intentioned. He's not likely to make that mistake again.
''You don't remember the Kip Largo boom?'' he asks the reader. Well, there was one. Kip was worth millions then;
now he subsists on home-heated spaghetti dinners at $3.49 a pop and works at a dry cleaner for $10 an hour, plus tips.
''You ever leave a tip at a dry cleaners?'' he asks. ''That's what I thought.''
Mr. Klein, who has some firsthand knowledge about living in Silicon Valley and flopping in the world of venture
capital and technology start-ups, begins by establishing Kip's checkered history. Then he plants Kip in picturesque Palo
Alto. ''On all four sides are beautiful gated condominium buildings where one-bedrooms go for half a million dollars,''
he says. ''My place is old, cheap stucco, with an open carport in the front, like the neighborhood cold sore.''
From inside this tenuously rented haven (the landlord's grandson-in-law would love to evict him), Kip runs an
online vitamin sales operation that has so far brought him nothing more than a bouncing pill as a screen saver. ''It's totally legitimate,'' he says of this business. ''Unfortunately.'' But 800 bottles of vitamins are stockpiled, ready to go. ''In the
unlikely event that the world ever switches to a selenium-based economy, I will become a very rich man.''
As this setup is introduced, the elements of an elaborate scheme begin to appear. The book starts in a bar, where
Kip sadly watches an amateur crook fail miserably at setting up a scam. This draws Kip's professional sympathies: ''It's
like what would happen if Renoir went to one of those art schools advertised on the back of a matchbook.'' Despite himself, he wants to help the stranger who louses up.
Less eagerly he needs to help his own son, Toby, who appears at Kip's little sanctuary needing a place to stay.
''Toby has the stupid Gotcha! grin of a 15-year-old boy,'' Kip explains, with his version of fatherly affection. ''Unfortunately for both of us, Toby is 25 years old.''
Toby is in trouble because he's run up gambling debts. ''There is only one thing Toby can do to avoid having his
brains knocked out of his skull by Russian goons,'' Kip reasons. ''He must build a time machine in my garage.'' Failing
that, Toby must prompt his father to swing back into con-man mode to get the kid out of a jam.
Along comes the fall guy who will figure in Kip's plotting: Edward Napier, whose wife turned up in the opening
bar scene asking Kip to help her escape her husband's clutches. Napier is a gambling magnate, with a lavish, heaventheme hotel in Las Vegas that the book merrily skewers. He's also the kind of guy who appears to be active in business
but is diverted each day by wine and golf around lunchtime. In light of this work ethic Napier is a good target for a getricher-quick scheme, and the plan calls for an attractive woman to pique his interest.
Kip enlists Jessica, a onetime porn actress whose body has been made to look ''less like a boast and more like a
promise,'' so that she can pass for an Internet executive type. ''She radiates a quiet sexiness,'' Kip says admiringly, ''like
the voluptuous PTA mom whose comments about homework and field trips are met with clamorous applause by all the
fathers in the auditorium.''
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Out of Jail, Out of Options, Out on a Limb The New York Times March 8, 2007 Thursday
''Con Ed'' is distinguished from countless routine books in its genre by the other kinds of elements that Kip's
scheme requires. He knows how to use dizzying arrays of computer equipment in ways that are bewitching, even psychedelic, to potential investors. Kip's knowledge of the stock market also figures prominently in his plans.
And he uses Silicon Valley jargon (''massively parallel computing''), wardrobe (chinos and chambray shirt to suggest an entrepreneur, ''Code Warrior'' T-shirt for the programming geek) and manners to amusing effect. He knows his
Northern California turf, from its near-religious faith in the Internet to its lock-step sedateness. ''I know a Black Panther
who settled here in 1972, with an Afro the size of a cosmonaut's helmet,'' he says. ''Thirty years later, he's a white man
who shops at Whole Foods for organic barley.''
As ''Con Ed'' and its sting plot gather momentum, the book poses a constant threat: that Kip will use this situation
to seek redemption, become a great father, right his past wrongs. Happily, Mr. Klein shows no signs of a sentimental
side. And he keeps his story largely surprising, with the exception of one major jolt that is too easily foreseen.
But even when it veers near heavily commercial storytelling (there's a bit of Janet Evanovich in Mr. Klein's everwisecracking tone), this book and its narrator are great fun. When Kip at last finds himself talking to law enforcement
officials and one female officer sounds motherly (''I think we're being very fair''), Kip's comeback is perfect. ''Where
were you 50 years ago,'' he asks, ''when I needed you most?''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: INTERNET & WWW (77%); EVICTION (70%); RESIDENTIAL CO-OWNERSHIP (67%); RENTAL
PROPERTY (67%); VITAMIN SUPPLEMENTS (65%); WEALTHY PEOPLE (65%); VENTURE CAPITAL (63%);
LITERATURE (78%); BOOK REVIEWS (78%) Books and Literature; Reviews
COMPANY: CONSOLIDATED EDISON INC (58%); GRAND CENTRAL PUBLISHING (58%)
TICKER: ED (NYSE) (58%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS221210 NATURAL GAS DISTRIBUTION (58%); NAICS221122 ELECTRIC POWER DISTRIBUTION (58%); SIC4924 NATURAL GAS DISTRIBUTION (58%); SIC4911 ELECTRIC SERVICES (58%)
PERSON: Janet Maslin; Matthew Klein
GEOGRAPHIC: SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, CA, USA (79%) CALIFORNIA, USA (79%) UNITED STATES
(79%)
LOAD-DATE: March 8, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Matthew Klein (Photo by David Nicholas)
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Review
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1049 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
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Green Gold, or Just Slime? The New York Times March 7, 2007 Wednesday
March 7, 2007 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Green Gold, or Just Slime?
BYLINE: By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
SECTION: Section C; Column 2; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1613 words
DATELINE: NILAND, Calif.
The idea of replacing crude oil with algae may seem like a harebrained way to clean up the planet and bolster national security.
But Lissa Morgenthaler-Jones and her husband, David Jones, are betting their careers and personal fortunes that
they can grow masses of the slimy organism and use its natural photosynthesis process to produce a plentiful supply of
biofuel.
A few companies are in a race to be first to convert algae to fuel on a commercial scale, and it will require not a
small amount of money, luck and biotech tweaking.
''You have a vintage here that you are not sure is going to mature into anything good, and you are putting money
into it on the off chance that it might,'' Ms. Morgenthaler-Jones, acknowledged during a drive the other day to an algaefilled catfish farm in this secluded desert town.
Like thousands of other pioneer venture capitalists over the last two years or so, these two San Francisco Bay area
investors have trolled through the dizzying, complicated world of renewable fuels -- from wave power, to hydrogen fuel
cells, to lithium batteries, to cow manure for making methane. And just like their predecessors of the dot-com boom a
decade ago, they have come up with their very own gamble, started their own company, called LiveFuels Inc., and are
now negotiating with other potential venture capital partners.
What is different, though, about Ms. Morgenthaler-Jones and this latest entrepreneurial wave is that the search is
for something that both produces profits and offers something good for the environment. One goal, for instance, is to
find an energy-efficient way to convert algae into fuel , which is why she was visiting a catfish farm here that was for
sale. Farmed catfish could provide a useful source of carbon dioxide for the algae, as well as a critical revenue flow to
keep research going. The timing may be just right. With oil prices at high levels and fears of global warming growing,
the old world of conventional hydrocarbon energy has been joined by an alluring new array of alternative-energy gadgetry, technical wizardry and potential riches. But there are still many more blind alleys than successes, and sleepless
nights go with the territory.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of start-ups in the alternative-energy business, some so tiny they are run out
of home basements. But the bigger ones are beginning to take off. A handful are now building at least three demonstration plants to convert wood chips and grasses into ethanol in the United States and Canada.
Meanwhile, venture capital firms and hedge funds are financing the construction of new plants to produce biodiesel fuel out of vegetable oil, larger and more durable wind turbines and new materials to make cheaper solar cells.
While still on the fringes of the energy mix, United States venture capital flowing into clean energy leapfrogged to
more than $2.4 billion in 2006, well more than double that invested in 2005, and more than triple from 2004, according
to Clean Edge, a research and consulting firm. The numbers are still small compared with the research budgets of the
big oil companies, but the ascent of venture capital in renewable energy has reminded some Silicon Valley venture capitalists of the early flow of money into the Internet in the mid-1990s.
''Venture capital in energy has reached a critical mass,'' said Daniel Yergin, the energy historian and consultant.
''Enough is happening so that significant things will come out of this. With the same intent to do in energy what they did
in biotech, they bring not only money and discipline, but they are results-oriented.''
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Green Gold, or Just Slime? The New York Times March 7, 2007 Wednesday
One Seattle-based start-up, Prometheus Energy, attracted enough equity capital in the last three years to open a
plant in Orange County, Calif., in January that for the first time produces liquid natural gas commercially out of landfill
methane gas that would otherwise waft greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Another venture capital favorite, Jadoo
Power of Folsom, Calif., has already pioneered portable hydrogen fuel-cell technology for remote satellite phones, critical emergency radio communications and police surveillance, and it is now working on cells for home use to free customers entirely of their utility bills.
''I can honestly say that for the first time in my life we are seeing the venture capital community put sizable
amounts of money into energy,'' Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman said in a speech in Houston last month. ''This is
real money. They are betting, if you will, that clean, safe, affordable energy represents the new innovation frontier.''
To this group add LiveFuels , with its improbable company jingle that goes ''from pond to pump.''
''If the U.S. put 15 million acres of desert into algae production, we could produce enough volume of liquid fuels
to get us off the Middle East oil addiction and give Iowa back to the songbirds,'' said B. Gregory Mitchell, an algae research biologist at the University of California, San Diego, who is a friend of Ms. Morgenthaler-Jones and Mr. Jones.
The company projects that in three years it can produce some biofuel, which theoretically could eventually be
produced in quantities of as much as 20,000 gallons of fuel a year per acre of algae.
The road to algae has been far from straight for Mr. Jones, and Ms. Morgenthaler-Jones, who comes from a family
of venture capitalists and started her own clean energy venture capital fund in 2004. It culminated more than two years
of reading and research, tracking down and talking to scientists and attending energy and venture capital gatherings,
where Ms. Morgenthaler-Jones has a habit of munching on chocolate-covered strawberries while doodling molecular
diagrams of fatty acids during the duller lectures.
They looked at investing in wave energy but decided that corrosion from salt water and unpredictable weather
made it unreliable. They looked at investing in hydrogen fuel cells but decided that they were too expensive for generating stationary power and too fragile to install in cars.
They looked at wind energy but decided it could not beat the price of power from coal anytime soon, especially
with Congress's past habit of allowing production tax credits to lapse whenever the price of oil dropped and the sense of
urgency faded. They looked at solar but concluded that it would be tough to compete with venture capitalists experienced in semiconductors already pouring into the field.
They came close to investing in a cellulosic ethanol company that had designed machinery to turn sugar cane or
wood chips into a synthetic gas. But after talking to experts, they concluded that the scientist behind the firm was promising more than he could deliver.
Ms. Morgenthaler-Jones spent months visiting dairy farms around the country to see if there might be a good
business opportunity in converting cow manure into methanol.
''Oh, boy! Do you smell it?'' she said. ''I was tramping around in manure and admiring five-acre manure ponds.''
But what bothered her most were the regulatory and cost hurdles to making the business work.
''For most of these alternative fuels, you need a perfect confluence of technology, regulation and market conditions,'' she said.
During her research, Ms. Morgenthaler-Jones found a decade-old government study on algae that lost funding during the Clinton administration. It was a moment that led her to more conversations with algae specialists. The slime, she
concluded, showed real potential.
And since Ms. Morgenthaler-Jones and Mr. Jones both had prior business experience in biotechnology, they
founded LiveFuels as an algae business last February. She became chief executive, and he, chief financial officer.
Since its founding a year ago, the company has not attracted outside capital, much less made any money. They
need $45 million in seed money. LiveFuels has survived so far with nearly $1 million of family money to pay two fulltime and two part-time employees and to rent laboratory space outfitted with a centrifuge and microscopes to research
algae DNA.
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Green Gold, or Just Slime? The New York Times March 7, 2007 Wednesday
But the fledgling company caught the attention of the energy world in recent months when it formed partnerships
with two Energy Department national laboratories to help revive the government's moribund algae energy research. The
couple are now negotiating with several investors, whom they would not identify.
At the catfish farm recently in the dusty Imperial Valley, they and three advising scientists peppered the owner
with questions about the salinity of the water in the ponds, local water rights, evaporation and drainage. LiveFuels
would have to use biotechnology to make stronger, fecund and more productive strains of algae to be superheated or
pressurized into fuel.
Geothermal activity under the desert could provide a free source of carbon dioxide to bubble up for the algae to
absorb and convert into organic matter to process as fuel. But fish farming, the scientists warned, would not be a surefire profit-maker and could prove to be more of a diversion of time and capital than an asset.
By the end of a long day, the couple were still not sure whether to invest in the fish farm or not, and this was their
fourth visit.
Last month at a biodiesel conference in San Antonio, when Ms. Morgenthaler-Jones met Peterson Conway, an executive with the GreenFuel Technologies Corporation, a competing algae company, he jokingly asked her, ''Do you
think some day we'll look at this as rabbit farming or the holy grail?''
She smiled but quickly turned serious. ''I wouldn't put my money and time into this,'' she said, ''if I didn't think it
would work.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: VENTURE CAPITAL (90%); SEAWEED & ALGAE (90%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (90%); BIOFUELS (89%); ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT (89%); RENEWABLE ENERGY (89%); WEALTH MANAGEMENT
(89%); SOLAR ENERGY (87%); WIND ENERGY (78%); NATIONAL SECURITY (78%); BIOMASS (78%); ENERGY EFFICIENCY & CONSERVATION (78%); OILS & FATS (78%); AGRICULTURAL WASTES (78%); ALCOHOLS (76%); METHANE (76%); FUEL CELL TECHNOLOGY (76%); GLOBAL WARMING (73%); OIL &
GAS PRICES (73%); LAKES (73%); AQUACULTURE (73%); WEALTHY PEOPLE (72%); HYDROGEN ENERGY (71%); ETHANOL (71%); CAPITAL MOVEMENTS (69%); PLANT CONSTRUCTION (63%); MANUFACTURING FACILITIES (63%); HEDGE FUNDS (62%); WIND POWER PLANTS (60%); CONSTRUCTION (60%);
CLIMATOLOGY (73%) Energy and Power; Venture Capital ; Algae; Hedge Funds; Factories and Industrial Plants;
Oils and Fats; Wind; Turbines; Solar Energy; Energy and Power; Research; Energy and Power
COMPANY: MORGENTHALER VENTURES (85%)
ORGANIZATION: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA (59%)
PERSON: David (Entrepreneur) Jones; Lissa Morgenthaler-Jones; B Gregory Mitchell; Clifford Krauss
GEOGRAPHIC: SAN DIEGO, CA, USA (79%); SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA (79%) CALIFORNIA, USA (98%)
UNITED STATES (98%); NORTH AMERICA (79%); CANADA (79%) Salton Sea (Calif); California; Niland (Calif)
LOAD-DATE: March 7, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: Lissa Morgenthaler-Jones pulled algae from a catfish pond in Niland, Calif., and saw the possibility of a successful biofuel investment. (Photo by Sandy Huffaker for The New York Times)(pg. C1)
David Jones and Lissa Morgenthaler-Jones considered the Salton Sea, an inland saline lake in the California desert, as a
potential source for algae. (Photographs by Sandy Huffaker for The New York Times)
B. Gregory Mitchell, a research biologist at the University of California, San Diego, collects algae samples from a fish
farm in Niland, Calif. (pg. C4)Chart: ''Green Gets the Money''The amount of venture capital flowing into clean enery
companies soared last year.Graph tracks Clean Energy Venture Capital Investments in U.S.-based companies since
2000.(Source by Clean Edge and Nth Power)
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Green Gold, or Just Slime? The New York Times March 7, 2007 Wednesday
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1050 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 7, 2007 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Ernest Gallo, 97, Dies; He and His Brother Founded a California Powerhouse in Wines
BYLINE: AP
SECTION: Section C; Column 1; National Desk; Pg. 11
LENGTH: 925 words
DATELINE: BERKELEY, Calif., March 6
Ernest Gallo, who with his brother Julio started a winery seven decades ago that now sells one of every four bottles
of wine that Americans drink, died yesterday at his home on Modesto, Calif. He was 97.
''He passed away peacefully this afternoon surrounded by his family,'' said Susan Hensley, vice president of public
relations for E.& J. Gallo Winery.
Somber, secretive and seemingly humorless, with little more than a high school education, Mr. Gallo -- working
closely with his brother, Julio -- created a wine empire that became one of the world's largest.
While Julio, who died in an auto accident in 1993, preferred the winemaking, Ernest had a head for business. His
entrepreneurial skills, instinctive command of marketing and distribution, and his compulsive need to be the best at
what he did, created the large company that he controlled at the time of his death.
And the company, entirely family controlled, was indeed large. Industry analysts estimate that Gallo produces
some 80 million cases of wine a year, which is about 220,000 cases or 2.64 million bottles every day. The company
reportedly owns 10,000 acres of vineyards in California and buys grapes from hundreds of independent growers.
According to Forbes magazine, Gallo had sales of about $980 million in 2005 with a net profit of $44 million. In
2006, according to Forbes, Ernest Gallo was No. 283 on its list of the 400 richest Americans, with an estimated net
worth of $1.2 billion.
The company also imported wine from France, Italy and New Zealand and, last year, according to one estimate,
exported some seven million cases of wine to some 85 countries.
Survivors include Mr. Gallo's son, Joseph; five grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. Mr. Gallo's wife,
Amelia, died in 1993. A son, David, died in 1997.
According to the legend, the two brothers, virtually penniless farm boys from the Central Valley of California,
scraped together $5,900 and started their winery in a rented shed in Modesto. It was 1933 and repeal of Prohibition was
weeks away. Ernest was 24, Julio 23; the two knew nothing about winemaking, according to the story, and relied on a
pamphlet from the Modesto Public Library to explain their trade.
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Ernest Gallo, 97, Dies; He and His Brother Founded a California Powerhouse in Wines The New York Times March 7,
2007 Wednesday
But in fact, they were from the second generation of an Italian immigrant family long immersed in the wine business.
Ernest Gallo was born on March 18, 1909, to Giuseppe Gallo, known as Joseph, and Assunta Bianco Gallo, who
was called Susie, in Jackson, Calif. The father, and his younger brother, Michael, had a business buying wine from
small wineries and selling it in bars in Oakland and San Francisco. As early as 1906, they operated as the Gallo Wine
Company.
Their mother's family, the Biancos, were successful winemakers, and when their maternal grandfather died in
1916, he left 9,000 gallons of red wine ready to be sold.
In the 1920s, Ernest's parents bought a farm near Modesto and like their neighbors, began to grow grapes. Their
fruit was loaded on railcars and shipped east (private winemaking was still allowed during Prohibition). The railheads in
Eastern cities, from Boston to the Carolinas, from Pittsburgh to Cleveland and Buffalo, were dominated by thugs who
took a cut of whatever was sold. By the time he was 17, Ernest was traveling with the grapes to ensure the family received top dollar.
At first, Prohibition meant prosperity for the growers, but the Depression ended that. Ernest's parents were saddled
with a nonproductive farm and apparently heavily in debt. On the morning of June 21, 1933, in the kitchen of the farmhouse, Joseph Gallo shot and killed his wife and then himself, leaving three sons, Ernest, Julio, and their younger brother, Joseph, then 12.
That was also the year that Prohibition was repealed and the two older brothers, with $5,900, most of it borrowed
from Ernest's mother-in-law, opened a winery.
Hundreds of wineries were starting, but as Ernest said years later: ''We could do anything anyone else could do,
not because I was brilliant or well-educated, but because I was willing to devote as much time and energy as was necessary, regardless of the sacrifice.''
''We could afford one tractor,'' he said, ''and there were times when I drove it for 12 hours, then turned it over to
Julio who drove it for another 12 hours.''
The brothers were successful from the start, but in those days were no match for industry giants like Petri, Cribari
and Italian Swiss Colony.
But the company's introduction of Thunderbird wine would change that. In 1957, the Gallos developed the brand,
a concoction of inexpensive fortified white wine with added citrus flavors.
It was named after the Ford sports car and was aimed directly at ''the misery market,'' according to ''Blood and
Wine,'' Ellen Hawkes's unauthorized biography of the family. By the end of 1957, Ms. Hawkes reported, Gallo was
making 32 million gallons of Thunderbird.
By the mid-1970s, the Gallos realized that the market for cheap table wines and the sweet fortified wine market
would not sustain the company. America was moving upscale in its wines and Ernest insisted Gallo go along. Over the
next 20 years. Gallo moved into the fine wine market.
Ernest himself, aside from his service on the Wine Institute, the industry's promotional arm, usually kept apart
from the rest of the wine business. Only in his last years did he begin to appear at wine events, often in the company of
Robert Mondavi, another winemaker, who had long urged him to become more open to the trade and to his customers.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: DEATHS & OBITUARIES (93%); WINE (90%); WINERIES (90%); ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES
(89%); CHILDREN (89%); ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE INDUSTRY (89%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (78%); IMPORT TRADE (75%); COMPANY EARNINGS (72%); GRAPE VINEYARDS (71%); EXPORT TRADE (69%);
FARMERS & RANCHERS (68%); WEALTHY PEOPLE (67%); INDUSTRY ANALYSTS (67%); COMPANY
PROFITS (65%); SECONDARY SCHOOLS (57%) Deaths (Obituaries); Alcoholic Beverages; Wines; Biographical
Information
COMPANY: E & J GALLO WINERY (57%)
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Ernest Gallo, 97, Dies; He and His Brother Founded a California Powerhouse in Wines The New York Times March 7,
2007 Wednesday
ORGANIZATION: Gallo, Ernest & Julio, Wine Cellars
PERSON: Julio Gallo; Frank J Prial
GEOGRAPHIC: SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA (79%); SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, CA, USA (92%) CALIFORNIA, USA (97%) UNITED STATES (97%); NEW ZEALAND (79%); FRANCE (53%)
LOAD-DATE: March 7, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Ernest Gallo founded E.& J. Gallo Winery with his brother Julio. (Photo by The Modesto Bee, via
Associated Press)
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Obituary (Obit); Biography
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1051 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 7, 2007 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
The Professional Pull of Toffee
BYLINE: By Florence Fabricant
SECTION: Section F; Column 3; Dining, Dining Out/Cultural Desk; FOOD STUFF; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 103 words
Laurie Pauker took things into her own hands when she could not find toffee that she liked. After a year of study
she began making toffee sticks dipped in dark chocolate, with just the right balance of sweet touched with salt. She produces the toffee, which she named Lush, at a commercial kitchen set up for small entrepreneurs, Mi Kitchen Es Su
Kitchen, in Long Island City, Queens. The toffee, in three- and five-ounce boxes, are about $5 and $7 at Mani Marketplace, and $5.50 and $9.99 at the Boyd's on Columbus Avenue, both on the Upper West Side; and $5.99 and $7.99 at
Butterfield Market on the Upper East Side.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: FOOD INDUSTRY (84%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (54%) Candy; Prices (Fares, Fees and Rates)
PERSON: Florence Fabricant; Laurie Pauker
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (73%) NEW YORK, USA (78%) UNITED STATES (78%) New York City
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The Professional Pull of Toffee The New York Times March 7, 2007 Wednesday
LOAD-DATE: March 7, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo (Photo by Tony Cenicola/The New York Times)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1052 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 7, 2007 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Some Like It Hot (He Likes It Steaming)
BYLINE: By WILLIAM GRIMES
SECTION: Section E; Column 6; The Arts/Cultural Desk; BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 921 words
Tales From the Torrid ZoneTravels in the Deep TropicsBy Alexander Frater 384 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $25.95.
It's the heat and the humidity. Alexander Frater settles that question early on in ''Tales From the Torrid Zone'' as
he wanders, in seven-league boots, across the earth's fat, sweaty midsection, swatting flies and mosquitoes all the way.
That's not even the half of it. Along with the palm trees and the beaches and the relentless heat, the tropics also feature
''extreme weather, geological instability and a whole host of ghastly afflictions,'' Mr. Frater writes.
And yet he counts himself a ''tropophiliac,'' a lover of warm, wet countries, where disease, poverty, political chaos,
decay and inertia are the rule rather than the exception. He cannot help himself.
''I sat and listened to a fitful southerly trade leafing through palm fronds, heard the occasional whump of a falling
coconut and knew again the pleasing sense of being parked in one of the world's lay-bys,'' he writes after a hard day in
Fiji. ''Those of us born in the tropics have lassitude bred into our very bones, and now, yielding to it, I felt the old waypoints -- sunrise and sunset, the rhythm of the tides -- quietly reimpose themselves.''
This is clear evidence of what the French call the coup de bambou, a mild mania for the tropics that grips Mr. Frater and animates his diverting, loose-limbed tour of the earth's hot zones.
As a travel writer for The Observer in London, Mr. Frater has set foot in some 70 of the 169 countries and territories that lie wholly or partly between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, the two belts on either side of
the Equator. Some he counts as home. The son and grandson of Presbyterian missionaries, originally from Scotland, he
grew up in present-day Vanuatu, and at least half of his book deals with the islands scattered like loose change across
the South Pacific.
His unstructured itinerary also takes him up the Amazon, down the Irrawaddy, across the ocean to Zanzibar and
onward to dozens of other remote locations, where he observes, describes and ponders. Part memoir, part travelogue,
''Tales From the Torrid Zone'' is a pleasing grab bag of a book, a jumble of funny encounters, strange sights, forgotten
history and really bad food.
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Some Like It Hot (He Likes It Steaming) The New York Times March 7, 2007 Wednesday
Mr. Frater, a genial tour guide and a stylish writer, makes excellent company. He maintains his composure on decrepit airplanes spewing oil and gasoline. He dines complacently on stewed flying fox. Best of all, he keeps his eyes
open. In an airport in Vanuatu, while conversing with a manic American, he spies an elegantly dressed woman approaching the check-in counter with a sleeping piglet in a basket. When the piglet wakes up, ''making noises like a fire
alarm,'' its owner calmly pops a Ferrero Rocher chocolate in its mouth.
In a bar on the island of Paama, he looks up long enough from his book to take in a terrific fight around the pool
table, which he recounts economically.
''A huge woman grasped a billiard cue in a two-handed axman's grip, and, as if splitting a log, brought it down on
the bald head of an old, wrinkled man,'' he writes. ''He went 'Ungh!' and slumped to his knees. Both sexes began trading
blows, the females punching harder and meaner and lower. Soon the males began limping back to the table where the
women, impassive, joined them; quietly they resumed their game.''
Mr. Frater can listen too. On the island of Pentecost, a local entrepreneur extols the virtues of the local beverage
made from kava root. Drinking kava, he claims, has allowed his grandfather to live to the age of 200. That means that
Grandpa is almost old enough to have seen Captain Cook, Mr. Frater points out. ''I think he has mentioned him,'' the
man replies coolly.
In Burma a plaintive pop singer captivates Mr. Frater. ''Her anguish had a kind of Wagnerian resonance,'' he
writes. The song, he finds out, is ''Mummy, My Car Has Broken Down.'' Rain comes off the leaves of the palm tree, he
observes, ''in an interesting tonal way.''
Mr. Frater takes his comedy where he can find it. As often as not, he turns up in the midst of lethal political conflicts or surveying the miseries of failed postcolonial states crippled by disease, poor education, bad roads and bleak
economic prospects. Palm trees are not enough.
One of his more fascinating chapters describes, with a certain relish, several of the 40 tropical diseases that flourish in the torrid zone. He listens in fascination as a French doctor tells of transporting a woman to a hospital with an ax
in her head.
More often than not, corrupt leaders preside over misery with serene indifference. Mr. Frater pays a visit to one of
them, the King of Tonga, who speaks vaguely of earning billions by extracting natural gas from seawater. ''He wore a
gold Rolex on either wrist and, occasionally, would glance at both to indicate I was asking dumb questions in two time
zones, or lapse into one of his famous transcendental silences,'' Mr. Frater writes. The audience is brief.
Mr. Frater has a wonderful plan for a tropical afterlife. He would like his ashes to be buried under a palm tree.
''That would not only help nourish one of the world's most bountiful trees, but perhaps even allow me to wander eternally through the Torrid Zone,'' he writes.
Fleets of bobbing coconuts go on voyages lasting for years, riding the ocean currents for thousands of miles before
washing up on dry land. Mr. Frater's best trip may lie ahead of him. He certainly deserves it.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: GEOLOGY & GEOPHYSICS (70%); WRITERS & WRITING (78%); BOOK REVIEWS (78%); LITERATURE (68%) Books and Literature; Reviews
PERSON: William Grimes; Alexander Frater
GEOGRAPHIC: LONDON, ENGLAND (53%) PACIFIC OCEAN (79%); EQUATOR (79%) VANUATU (90%);
FIJI (79%); UNITED STATES (79%); ENGLAND (53%); UNITED KINGDOM (53%)
LOAD-DATE: March 7, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Alexander Frater (Photo by Anne Miller)(pg. E6)
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Review
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PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1053 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 7, 2007 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
What's So Bad About Big?
BYLINE: By MATTHEW L. WALD
SECTION: Section H; Column 2; The Business of Green; RENEWABLE ENERGY; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1788 words
''SMALL is beautiful,'' wrote the economist E. F. Schumacher almost 35 years ago. In most areas of the economy,
he reasoned, production had become too big and too centralized.
But he might have been wrong about the subject he knew most about: energy. When it comes to alternative ways
of generating power, big may be better.
Wind, solar and other renewable-energy technologies that were once considered more appropriate for single homes
or small communities are reaching levels of scale and centralizing that were formerly the province of coal- and gas-fired
plants and nuclear reactors. In other words, green is going giant.
The companies that are building or dreaming up large projects argue that there are economies of scale to be
gained.
In the desert north of Tucson, Arizona Public Service, an electric utility, is using an array of mirrors to concentrate
sunlight and heat mineral oil up to 550 degrees; the heat vaporizes a liquid hydrocarbon, which runs a generator to make
electricity.
But this is no rooftop operation. There are six rows of mirrors, each nearly a quarter-mile long, totaling nearly
100,000 square feet. The project produces one megawatt of power -- enough to run a hospital or a large shopping center
-- but the company that installed it, now called Acciona Solar Power (formerly Solargenix), expects to open a 350-acre
plant in Boulder City, Nev., soon, producing 64 megawatts with similar technology. And Arizona Public Service is one
of about a half-dozen utilities that is considering a joint project to build a 250-megawatt plant based on the same technology.
Such projects run counter to some ideas of how alternative energy should be developed. Jeremy Rifkin, the author
and futurist who believes that millions of people will soon be generating their own hydrogen from renewable energy,
said that waste was built into large central projects because of electrical transmission losses.
''If you go and put it in the desert and bring it back in, you lose 7 to 9 percent on the way,'' he said.
More to the point, Mr. Rifkin said, home-grown energy is going to be cheaper. ''It's a question of who owns and
controls it at the end of the line,'' he said. ''If you own it on your own, it's going to be at a cheaper price than if the utility
company is going to sell it to you.''
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What's So Bad About Big? The New York Times March 7, 2007 Wednesday
But it is not just corporations that are finding that bigger may be better.
Hull, Mass., is about as far from an oil or gas well as it is possible to get in the United States. Its municipal utility
decided in the early 1980s to build a wind turbine, making an asset from the strong breeze coming off the ocean north of
Boston. The machine it built could generate 40 kilowatts, enough for a handful of homes.
Five years ago, Hull tried again, still wanting to cut energy costs and also the emissions of greenhouse gases that
might one day cause the Atlantic Ocean, which surrounds the town on three sides, to creep up the beaches. It built a
wind machine 16 times larger, 660 kilowatts. While the 1985 turbine was on a structure that looked a bit like a hamradio operator's antenna, the new one, named Hull 1, was on a 150-foot tower.
But it was too small. Last year the town installed Hull 2, which at 1.8 megawatts is three times larger. Now Hull is
considering four new turbines that can produce 3.6 megawatts each. ''The small one we have, purely aesthetically, is
kind of an ugly thing,'' said John B. Murdock, manager of the municipal electric system. With their slow-moving, graceful blades, he said, ''the big ones are much more attractive.''
They also make better economic sense, he said. Earlier this year, the town put up a tiny turbine, 1,800 watts, as an
educational tool, for $15,000. If 1,000 families in the area put up such machines, they would have the same output as
Hull 2, at a cost of $15 million. Hull 2 cost about $3 million.
Hull's economics are being repeated around New England and the world. Farther down the Massachusetts coast in
Nantucket Sound, for example, entrepreneurs are trying to build the Cape Wind project, 130 turbines producing 3.6
megawatts each.
At Siemens Power Generation, which builds equipment for wind turbines and other generators, Randy Zwirn, the
chief executive, said that the only limit to wind-turbine size might be how long a blade could be transported to the site.
The company's 3.6-megawatt machine uses a blade that is about 175 feet long.
Other companies want to build even bigger wind turbines with capacities as high as seven megawatts. A larger
machine would be even higher -- perhaps 250 feet -- and could take advantage of the fact that winds are 20 percent
stronger at 250 feet than at 150 feet, said Dr. Mark Z. Jacobson, an associate professor at Stanford's department of civil
and environmental engineering.
But in Nantucket Sound, 3.6-megawatt turbines are considered big enough. On a windy day, the 130 machines
would produce as much power as a modest-size plant burning coal or natural gas.
There is certainly no point in making the project smaller, said Mark Rodgers, a spokesman for Cape Wind.
''You've got costs that include staging, marine construction, placing an electric transmission infrastructure below
the seabed, acquisition of maintenance vessels, use of a port facility, spare parts, storage, manning an operations center,
insurance and taxes,'' he said.
For many of those items, if the project were 50 percent larger or 50 percent smaller, the costs would vary little.
''These are things that you're going to have to do, whether it's a very small or a very large offshore wind farm,'' Mr.
Rodgers said. ''The best bang for the buck is go to large.''
While mirrors in the desert cannot operate at the rooftop scale, the kind that can, photovoltaic cells, which turn
sunlight into energy, may also work better on a big scale, experts say.
A single-home installation is fine, they say, but not cost-effective. It can become so through large-scale deployment of the kind envisioned by Bud Annan, who was the solar program director at the Department of Energy during the
Clinton administration.
Mr. Annan said that the cost of a rooftop solar project was divided between the manufacturing of solar cells and
installation. Some progress has been made in reducing manufacturing costs, but both parts of the equation must come
down in price, he said.
Now living in Scottsdale, Ariz., Mr. Annan is working with a utility and local real estate developers to try to incorporate solar roofs into 10,000 new houses, all at once. That way, he said, the installers can go from house to house
the way carpenters, plumbers and electricians do. ''He can standardize his installation, and that whole second half of the
equation becomes more manageable for him,'' Mr. Annan said.
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What's So Bad About Big? The New York Times March 7, 2007 Wednesday
Clusters of houses might share a bank of batteries, so that they could guarantee a steady power output. Power that
a utility can count on is worth more than power that is unpredictable. Solar energy that is connected to a battery system
is available even after the sun sets, making it sell for a higher price.
Roger Little, chief executive of the Spire Corporation, a solar cell manufacturer near Boston, said his systems cost
$7 or $8 per watt of installed capacity when put on rooftops, which means that the equipment needed to light a 100-watt
bulb would cost $700 to $800. Half is for the cells and half is for the rest of the system, including mounting brackets
and external wiring.
Mr. Little said he could lower the price to $3.60, but that the first step would have to be replacing typical solar
panels, which produce about 160 watts of electricity each, with a 1,000-watt panel. The big panel would require less
support material per watt than the smaller ones, he said.
But that panel would be 200 pounds, too heavy to haul up to a roof. The solution, he said, is to install it on the
ground, in a big flat spot of desert -- which, by the way, would be a wonderful place to build the solar-cell factory, cutting delivery costs to zero. And the bigger the installation, the lower the cost, per watt, of the other equipment required,
he said.
Mr. Little is negotiating with the Tucson Electric Company to build a factory in Arizona that would produce 100
megawatts of cells a year, and run it for 10 years or so. Other cities and companies are considering similar ideas. Mr.
Little said that at some point his project would turn into a ''breeder,'' its electric production paying for its operation.
His company already runs factories that make 50 megawatts of new cells a year. The viability of the project depends mostly on whether Congress extends the production tax credit given to renewable and nuclear energy, he said.
Arizona Public Service, which operates the solar generator north of Tucson, seems to be on a campaign to show
that there is no green approach that does not work well on a corporate scale. Last year, it started raising algae, feeding
them carbon dioxide from a natural-gas-fired power plant, Red Hawk, west of Phoenix. It used the algae to make biodiesel, a vehicle fuel that is more commonly made from soybeans or corn. The company is now installing bigger equipment to test the process on a larger scale.
Even for renewable energy like heating with wood (an idea that has been around for much longer than the term
''renewable''), the scale is growing. For example, the University of South Carolina would like to reduce its carbon footprint and lower its natural-gas bill of $6.5 million a year. So this spring it plans to open a plant that will use wood scraps
to make electricity, and use steam from the system's waste heat to warm the campus.
This is not some wood-fired boiler. It is an $18 million gasification project that will heat the wood, mostly chips
and bark, to produce a flammable gas, which will be burned in a turbine that resembles a jet engine. And the university
will not run it on clippings from trees at the Columbia campus; it will take 14 tractor-trailer loads a day, about 55,000
tons a year.
Because the wood is gasified but not burned, the system, which is similar to one used in Burlington, Vt., produces
less nitrogen oxides and less soot than a boiler would, said Jonathan S. Rhone, chief of the Nexterra Energy Corporation
of Vancouver, British Columbia, which built the gasifier. But being that clean requires an industrial-size system.
There is another reason that it is not the kind of project that works on a small basis: it will take about 14 years to
pay for itself. ''We've been here 200 years,'' said Helen Zeigler, the university business manager. ''We can afford to
make investments like this.'' A 14-year payback would never work on a family budget, she said.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: NATURAL GAS & ELECTRIC UTILITIES (90%); ELECTRIC POWER PLANTS (90%); WIND ENERGY (89%); UTILITIES INDUSTRY (89%); RENEWABLE ENERGY (89%); POWER PLANTS (89%); WIND
POWER PLANTS (89%); SOLAR ENERGY (90%); ELECTRIC POWER INDUSTRY (88%); ENERGY & UTILITY
CONSTRUCTION (77%); ELECTRICITY TRANSMISSION & DISTRIBUTION (77%); CONSTRUCTION (76%);
COAL FIRED PLANTS (76%); FOSSIL FUEL POWER PLANTS (76%); NUCLEAR ENERGY (72%) Electric Light
and Power; Solar Energy; Turbines; Wind; Special Sections
COMPANY: ARIZONA PUBLIC SERVICE CO (56%)
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What's So Bad About Big? The New York Times March 7, 2007 Wednesday
PERSON: Matthew L Wald
GEOGRAPHIC: TUCSON, AZ, USA (79%); BOSTON, MA, USA (79%) ARIZONA, USA (94%); MASSACHUSETTS, USA (79%); NEVADA, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (94%)
LOAD-DATE: March 7, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: LINES IN THE SAND -- A solar-power installation in the Arizona desert uses 100,000 square feet
of mirrors, a change from the days when renewable-energy sources were considered most appropriate on a small scale.
(Photo by Chris Richards for The New York Times)(pg. H1)
REFLECTIONS -- Arizona Public Service's solar plant produces one megawatt of power, enough to run a shopping
center. The utility is considering a much larger solar project. (Photo by Chris Richards for The New York Times)
GATHERING THE GUST -- Hull 2, the third wind turbine in Hull, Mass. The town may build four more, even larger.
(Photo by C. J. Gunther for The New York Times)
FUEL FROM THE DEEP -- Cathy Clifton, a biology technician, monitoring algae at an Arizona Public Service plant.
The algae are fed carbon dioxide and used to make biodiesel. (Photo by Chris Richards for The New York Times)
GRAND IDEAS -- Roger Little, chief executive of the Spire Corporation, which makes solar cells, says there are economic benefits to using bigger solar panels. (Photo by C. J. Gunther for The New York Times)(pg. H8)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1054 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 7, 2007 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Vermont Wants You To Fill Its Open Spaces
BYLINE: By KATIE ZEZIMA
SECTION: Section H; Column 1; The Business of Green; HOMEGROWN INDUSTRY; Pg. 7
LENGTH: 1125 words
DATELINE: NORTH FERRISBURG, Vt.
DAVE MELICHAR always knew he wanted to work in wind power, but Mr. Melichar, a native of Carmel, N.Y. ,
was unsure where he would settle after college. That changed 10 years ago, when he visited friends in Burlington, Vt.,
and fell in love with the city and its environmentalist culture.
Now Mr. Melichar, 33, is part owner of Windstream, a wind-power company in this town 20 miles south of Burlington. He is also a rarity whose numbers state officials want to increase: an environmental engineer from outside
Vermont who came here and put down roots.
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Vermont Wants You To Fill Its Open Spaces The New York Times March 7, 2007 Wednesday
State officials have begun a program to bring environmental engineering firms to the state and help those already
here to expand. The goal, Gov. Jim Douglas and others said, is to transform Vermont into a state where growth is driven
by green businesses, the way Silicon Valley is sustained by Internet and technology companies.
''We wanted to find a niche, an economic sector in which Vermont can excel,'' Mr. Douglas, a Republican, said in
an interview in his Montpelier office. ''Environmental engineering and sustainable technology is that niche. Vermont
has a strong environmental ethic. We have clean air, no billboards.''
While other states and cities, including New York and Chicago, are trying to attract green businesses with economic incentives like tax breaks, Vermont is banking on a mix of benefits that the state hopes will change its business
profile, which was once dominated by the insurance industry.
Vermont ranks 46th in the nation for its tax climate for business, according to the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit,
nonpartisan research group. State officials said that across-the-board tax breaks were not being considered, and that they
preferred a tailored approach, offering cash incentives tied to increasing employment and capital investments. The state
also plans to adapt perks to individual businesses. For example, if water rates are a sticking point, the state will lower
them. It is focusing on businesses with 20 to 100 employees for now.
What makes Vermont's pitch unusual is that officials view the state itself as a lure for moving a company here or
enlarging an existing one. Officials are trying to use the clean air, open space and connection to the earth, which brought
early environmentalists here in the 1970s, to attract businesses.
''The values of Vermonters are so environmentally conscious, and globally this is what we're known for,'' said
Frank Cioffi, the president of the Greater Burlington Industrial Corporation, an economic development group. ''It's a
natural fit.''
The state program, which Lt. Gov. Brian E. Dubie started in 2004 and Mr. Douglas has made the centerpiece of
his administration, is also intended to cultivate homegrown brainpower in Vermont, which has been losing young people at a rapid clip. The state has the lowest birthrate in the nation, and the number of 20- to 34-year-olds has shrunk by
19 percent since 1990.
To help stem the tide, Mr. Douglas is proposing opening new math, science and technology high schools across
the state and offering scholarships to students who stay in Vermont for college. Officials are also considering the feasibility of providing cellular and broadband access statewide by 2010.
The state is looking for help from the University of Vermont, where the Center for Emerging Technologies has
been an incubator for environmental companies. ''There really wasn't a regional economy,'' said Daniel Mark Fogel, the
university president, ''and the more we asked, the more we were confident that we really wanted to put a stake in the
ground as a leader in environmental and sustainable technology.''
While that stake has been planted, it is not fixed. Just under 1,000 people are employed in the 69 engineering
firms that work in environmental fields statewide, with 27 of them dealing exclusively with alternative energy, according to the state office of business and economic development.
Two large environmental engineering companies opened offices in Vermont last year: the URS Corporation,
which is based in San Francisco, and Leggette, Brashears & Graham of Shelton, Conn. The Vermont Environmental
Consortium, a nonprofit association of businesses, is growing.
Some of the state's dairy farmers have also been turning into alternative energy entrepreneurs, harnessing the
methane gas from cow manure and selling it as clean energy. Vermonters call it ''cow power,'' and think it can help the
farmers, who are struggling with low prices.
Still, the state has been losing jobs, and there are tangential costs to doing business in Vermont.
Northern Power Systems, an environmental engineering firm founded here in 1974, was recently merged with
Proton Energy Systems; both were subsidiaries of the Distributed Energy Systems Corporation of Wallingford, Conn.,
which announced in January that it was cutting 60 jobs. Most of those were in Vermont, said Rob Smart, the director of
marketing for Northern Power.
The Bowles Corporation, which makes equipment to clean up industrial oil spills, has operated here since 1983,
expanding from two employees to 16. Its president, David Bowles, has become involved in helping the state's environ-
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Vermont Wants You To Fill Its Open Spaces The New York Times March 7, 2007 Wednesday
mental companies market their products. But he said there were problems in how the state does business, and he, too,
felt hemmed in. He also said Vermont suffered because of tourists and others who opposed development.
''It's not easy, but I'm here,'' he said. ''The tax burden is high, and the costs of health insurance have just risen and
risen. And there's a sort of philosophical disconnect between people who love this view of Vermont as an unspoiled
place where business doesn't mix. But if we don't have jobs, this place doesn't work.''
Joel Makower, the executive editor of GreenBiz.com, said that Vermont was jumping on the bandwagon, trying to
capitalize on a rapidly growing industry. ''You can certainly see that there's a bubble potential, but at the same time
you're talking about a trillion-dollar market for clean energy and alternative transportation,'' he said.
Mr. Makower said the state needed to build on its academic and financial resources and tap its entrepreneurs for
help. While Northern Power has gone through setbacks, he said, it was well regarded and has had ample investment.
''I see them as a good anchor company, showing what can be done in the Green Mountains,'' he said.
Mr. Cioffi, of the Greater Burlington Industrial Corporation, and others involved in the effort to make Vermont a
center for green business say they are confident that their vision will take shape.
''This is orchard planting,'' Mr. Cioffi said. ''It's not an annual garden. We're nurturing seedlings and making sure
they're healthy.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: WIND ENERGY (90%); ENGINEERING (92%); ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING & CONSULTING (90%); US STATE GOVERNMENT (90%); ENVIRONMENTALISM (89%); UTILITIES INDUSTRY (89%);
CIVIL ENGINEERING (90%); TAX INCENTIVES (86%); ENVIRONMENTAL INDUSTRY (76%); US REPUBLICAN PARTY (75%); BUSINESS CLIMATE & CONDITIONS (73%); INTERVIEWS (72%); TAXES & TAXATION
(72%); BIRTHS & BIRTH RATES (71%); UTILITY RATES (71%); ELECTRIC POWER INDUSTRY (71%); ETHICS (71%); SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT (70%); ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (68%); INSURANCE (67%);
ENVIRONMENT & NATURAL RESOURCES (89%); TRENDS (77%); GLOBAL WARMING (75%); INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (73%); CLIMATOLOGY (69%); ECONOMIC NEWS (60%) Weather; Economic Conditions and Trends; Labor; Engineering and Engineers; Global Warming
PERSON: JIM DOUGLAS (84%); MICHAEL MCMAHON (51%) Katie Zezima; Jim (Gov) Douglas
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (79%); CHICAGO, IL, USA (70%); MONTPELIER, VT, USA (79%)
VERMONT, USA (98%); NEW YORK, USA (79%); ILLINOIS, USA (70%) UNITED STATES (98%) Vermont
LOAD-DATE: March 7, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: ALTERNATIVES -- Some dairy farms, like Blue Spruce Farm in Bridport, are selling methane
gas from manure as clean energy.
PEDALING -- Vermont wants to attract more ''green'' engineers like Dave Melichar, on bike, but David Bowles, right,
says there are problems doing business there. (Photographs by Paul O. Boisvert for The New York Times)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1055 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
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Wednesday
The New York Times
March 7, 2007 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
'Corporate Hippies' Seek Their Bliss In a New Environmental Economy
BYLINE: By FELICITY BARRINGER
SECTION: Section H; Column 1; The Business of Green; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 1096 words
CHANGE once came slowly to the job market for people seeking careers focused on the environment. No more.
There were signs as early as the 1980s, when the Rainforest Alliance began working with businesses to create a
program for identifying environmentally sound wood products: more graduates were taking jobs outside traditional environmental arenas like engineering, waste management, policy development, law and resource protection.
The shift gathered steam in the 1990s, when companies like Starbucks and Nike started to integrate such concerns
into everyday business practices.
Early this decade, Daniel C. Esty, a professor of environmental law and policy at Yale University, noticed changes
in the goals of younger students and the kinds of jobs students took when they left the Yale School of Forestry and the
Environment.
Law and science, which were traditional environmental specialties, still attracted many students; but a newer one,
corporate environmental management, was growing. The latest ones -- finance, venture investment, entrepreneurialism -- barely registered.
''I am overwhelmed by how this has evolved,'' Dr. Esty said recently.
Students still gravitate toward nongovernmental organizations, advocacy groups and government, but a large plurality of the current generation interested in environmental work are looking elsewhere, particularly to financial firms,
small businesses and even corporations. They seek employment there because, among other things, they think that is
where they can have the greatest impact.
''It's extraordinary how many students see themselves as going into business as a place to have leverage on the issues,'' Dr. Esty said.
Take Samantha Unger, 27, a graduate of Barnard College and the school of engineering at Columbia University.
She started with a summer job in a California program, trading state-issued pollution-emission credits. Now she trades
credits for greenhouse gas emissions at Evolution Markets, a company in White Plains.
''I would call myself a corporate hippie,'' she said. ''I'm in the business of definitely caring for and supporting environmental growth and change for the better, but I also believe in the growth of business. And from the beginning I have
believed there should be a cost associated with pollution.''
Ms. Unger and her colleague Jason Patrick, 34, are examples of what Charles F. Mason, a professor of economics
at the University of Wyoming, describes as a new driving force. ''The person who knows how to play the financial markets, the middleman looking for someone who has something to sell and can anticipate who will buy it,'' he said -- they
will make a real difference.
None of the academics, employers or young professionals would call these boom times for environmental employment; plenty of graduates with degrees in environmental science must work at finding a job. But all say they are
witnessing both an upward trend in the number of jobs and a change in the definition of environmental work.
''The issues themselves have changed -- climate change is far and away an example of that,'' said Kevin Doyle, the
national director of program development for the Environmental Careers Organization, a nonprofit group that places
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'Corporate Hippies' Seek Their Bliss In a New Environmental Economy The New York Times March 7, 2007
Wednesday
recent graduates in environmental internships at federal agencies, businesses, nonprofit groups and state and local governments.
''Businesses as businesses are becoming actors of environmental sustainability, either because they want to, or
they feel they can do good public relations, or because they have to,'' Mr. Doyle said. ''The axis of influence is starting
to shift from a more exclusive focus on activists and government. You can work in business because you're an environmentalist.''
Mr. Doyle and others named several paths to environmental work: law, government, nonprofit groups and, increasingly, management and finance, often in alternative energy.
Private employers providing environmental jobs include Goldman Sachs, General Electric, Nike, Timberland, engineering consultants and philanthropic foundations. Some workers bounce among the various subgroups, adding skills
as they go.
Jesse Johnson, 36, graduated from Princeton in 1993 and worked in finance in Hong Kong. He said that he loved
the intensity of finance and the intellectual caliber of his co-workers, but missed ''the things that motivated me in college
-- the environment, the outdoors.''
He returned to Yale and graduated in 2002 with joint master's degrees in environmental management and business. When he finished, he and a friend started a furniture business, the Q Collection, in Manhattan.
''It took a while to get it up and running,'' Mr. Johnson said of the company, which is not yet profitable. ''It's home
furnishings, furniture, textiles, baby furniture. But we add a whole new layer. We are thinking about sustainability.''
Right now, the horizontal expansion of environmental careers is most evident among the 20- and 30-something
age groups. They have been trained in what Mr. Doyle called the ''sustainable ecosystems'' mind-set of this generation's
environmental policy makers, blending scientific understanding with concerns like economics or social justice.
Many switch among environmental jobs -- starting out, say, at a nonprofit, then getting a master's degree and ending up at a business.
While Jill Gravender was an undergraduate in economics and taking an ecology class at Arizona State University,
she said, ''It became apparent to me that when you're thinking about economics, environmental issues are all considered
to be market externalities.'' The two disciplines, she said, ''were talking past one another; I realized I wanted to be that
facilitator.''
After college, she got policy jobs with the New America Foundation and the nonprofit California Climate Action
Registry, which collects data on various companies' greenhouse gas emissions. She went back to get a master's degree in
environmental science and management at the University of California at Santa Barbara and now, at 33, is director of
water programs for a small foundation called Environment Now.
It is not just industrial concerns that are adding environmental jobs. In 1992, Shelley Billik started as a recycling
coordinator at Warner Brothers. Now she is vice president for environmental projects. ''When I started in 1992, it was
just me,'' she said. ''Now we have a staff of four in the office and a recycling crew of seven.''
''The place where the department fits'' has changed as well, she added, becoming part of corporate strategy.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: EMPLOYMENT (93%); STUDENTS & STUDENT LIFE (90%); FORESTRY & ENVIRONMENT
(90%); LABOR SECTOR PERFORMANCE (89%); ENGINEERING (89%); EMISSIONS (89%); ENVIRONMENTAL & WILDLIFE ORGANIZATIONS (89%); TRENDS (79%); BANKING & FINANCE (78%); ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH (78%); ENVIRONMENTAL INDUSTRY (78%); ECOLOGY & ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE
(78%); ENVIRONMENTAL LAW (78%); EMPLOYMENT GROWTH (77%); RAIN FORESTS (77%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (77%); PUBLIC POLICY (76%); AIR QUALITY REGULATION (76%); LAW SCHOOLS (76%);
NONGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS (73%); SMALL BUSINESS (72%); WASTE MANAGEMENT & REMEDIATION SERVICES (71%); VENTURE CAPITAL (68%); EMISSIONS CREDITS (68%); ENVIRONMENT &
NATURAL RESOURCES (90%); COLLEGE & UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS (89%); EMPLOYMENT SEARCH
(78%); BUSINESS EDUCATION (76%) Environment; Labor; Hiring and Promotion
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Wednesday
ORGANIZATION: RAINFOREST ALLIANCE (84%); YALE UNIVERSITY (83%)
PERSON: Felicity Barringer
GEOGRAPHIC: CALIFORNIA, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (79%)
LOAD-DATE: March 7, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: RENEWAL -- Jesse Johnson, 36, left a career in finance to get a degree in environmental management and business and create a furniture business focused on sustainability. (Photo by Philip Greenberg for The New
York Times)
DEALING -- Samantha Unger, 27, trades emissions credits at Evolution Markets. She says her job combines her beliefs in protecting the environment and helping business. (Photo by Michael Nagle for The New York Times)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1056 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 7, 2007 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
The Value Of Their Values
BYLINE: By RORY STEWART.
Rory Stewart's latest book is ''The Prince of the Marshes and Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq.'' He
runs the Turquoise Mountain Foundation in Kabul and is a guest columnist this month.
SECTION: Section A; Column 1; Editorial Desk; Pg. 21
LENGTH: 740 words
I began my career as a Foreign Service officer in Indonesia. There, journalists, diplomats and aid workers emphasized that local government was ''incompetent, inefficient and corrupt.'' I heard the same when working in the Balkans,
Afghanistan and Iraq. My colleagues often seemed contemptuous of the nations where they served. They overlooked the
cultures' virtues and strengths, which are the keys to rebuilding nations, particularly after insurgency and civil war.
Foreign policy experts will tell you that poor states lack the rule of law, a vibrant civil society, free media, a transparent civil service, political participation and a great deal more. Employees of major international agencies commonly
complain that Afghans or Iraqis or Kenyans ''can't plan'' or ''can't implement.''
At its worst, this attitude is racist, bullying and ignorant. But there are less sinister explanations. As a diplomat, I
was praised for ''realism'' if I sent home critical telegrams. Now, working for a nonprofit, I find that donor proposals
encourage us to emphasize the negative aspects of local society. Many of our criticisms reflect our deep assumptions
about citizenship, management and the state.
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The Value Of Their Values The New York Times March 7, 2007 Wednesday
Afghans and Iraqis are often genuinely courageous, charming, generous, inventive and honorable. Their social
structures have survived centuries of poverty and foreign mischief and decades of war and oppression, and have enabled
them to overcome almost unimaginable trauma. But to acknowledge this seems embarrassingly romantic or even patronizing.
Yet the only chance of rebuilding a nation like Iraq or Afghanistan in the face of insurgency or civil war is to identify, develop and use some of these traditional values. Many international reformers overexaggerate the power of technical assistance and formal processes. In fact, in these contexts, charisma can be more potent than bureaucracy. Politicians have to demonstrate an intuitive understanding of local power structures and an empathy for the unexpected things
people value about themselves.
This may be uncomfortable for the international community. A leader who can restore security, reconcile warring
parties and shape the aspirations of a people may resemble an Ataturk more than a U.S. president. This is not a call for
dictatorship. True progress must be sustained by the unconstrained wishes of the people. These should include, in Afghanistan, people with strong liberal values as much as conservative rural communities. These various desires must be
protected from both the contorted control of an authoritarian state and the muffling effect of foreign aid.
The international community often attempts to avoid imposing foreign systems. Donors try hard to emphasize
grass-roots consultation in designing a political system. But it is much easier for us in theory than in practice to admire
and empower an unfamiliar society.
Our approach to nation building in Afghanistan has failed to accommodate the splits between Hazara and Pusthu
land arrangements, gender attitudes and codes, or their different approaches to literacy, the dignity of the individual or
economic progress. We do not embrace the many unexpected ways in which Afghans might overcome trauma, invest,
trade and learn. Such diversity should not be imprisoned by the current centralized government, but empowered by a
devolved and flexible federal system.
Western management jargon is of little help to Afghan entrepreneurs, who use tricks, trust, community and crises in a powerful way. The strong Afghan sense of justice, community and religious belief can support a counternarcotics program, the rule of law, democracy or security. But the real drivers of change are opaque.
Ultimately, we must respect countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, and trust in their ability to find their own solutions. This does not mean we need to withdraw entirely. A Harvard M.B.A. will be better at building a hydroelectric
plant than a local tribal process. Foreign troops can sometimes, as in Bosnia, end a war. Our rigid values, critiques and
methodologies can, even in Iraq, set up a central bank and stabilize a currency.
But the central problems are national and political. Our invective about state failure and our dissatisfaction have
become part of the problem. Real solutions will emerge, often improbably, from local individual virtues, and from the
cultures we struggle to describe and tend to ignore.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: EDITORIALS & OPINIONS (91%); REGIONAL & LOCAL GOVERNMENTS (90%); DIPLOMATIC
SERVICES (90%); INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS (90%); POLITICS (89%); REBELLIONS & INSURGENCIES
(89%); INTERNATIONAL ASSISTANCE (89%); WAR & CONFLICT (89%); MILITARY WEAPONS (79%);
PUBLIC POLICY (78%); HEADS OF STATE & GOVERNMENT (78%); US FEDERAL GOVERNMENT (76%);
POSTWAR RECONSTRUCTION (76%); TRENDS (71%); FOREIGN POLICY (71%); RURAL COMMUNITIES
(61%); ECONOMIC NEWS (59%); JOURNALISM (90%); FOREIGN RELATIONS (90%) United States Armament
and Defense; United States International Relations; Politics and Government; Economic Conditions and Trends; Currency
PERSON: Rory Stewart
GEOGRAPHIC: AFGHANISTAN (96%); IRAQ (94%); UNITED STATES (93%); INDONESIA (92%) Afghanistan;
Iraq; Afghanistan
LOAD-DATE: March 7, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
Page 142
The Value Of Their Values The New York Times March 7, 2007 Wednesday
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Op-Ed
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1057 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 7, 2007 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
For Internet Barons, Uncharted Investment Territory
BYLINE: By MATT RICHTEL
SECTION: Section H; Column 1; The Business of Green; NEW CONQUESTS; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 1430 words
ROBERT M. METCALFE, Silicon Valley legend, creator of the Ethernet standard, founder of 3Com and now a
venture capitalist, makes a bold prediction about technology investors' next conquest.
''We're going to solve the energy problem in 30 years, just like we solved the Internet problem in 30 years,'' he
said.
For that to happen, many hurdles must be overcome, including, for Mr. Metcalfe, a personal one. Until recently, he
didn't know much about the field or its markets. He said he was still struggling to figure it out.
There lies a conundrum for the Internet barons who have turned, of late anden masse, to investing in solar, wind,
biofuel and other energy startups. Does their expertise with technology qualify them to take on the world of alternative
fuel and power?
When it comes to Energy 2.0, are some of the nation's most successful investors in over their heads?
Mr. Metcalfe, 60, and other venture capitalists say they are getting up to speed on the subject by meeting with academics and experts, hearing pitches from entrepreneurs seeking financing, partnering with energy investors and applying the same methodology that created giants like Amazon and Yahoo to take on the oil juggernaut.
The key to success, they say, is the Silicon Valley investment vetting process. The venture capital model, they
contend, pits great entrepreneurs against one another, invests in the best technologies and creates focused, streamlined
companies and new industries.
But their certainty, which can spill into bravado, has stirred criticism even within their own ranks.
''They're completely wandering in with no clear idea'' of how the energy industry works, said Paul Kedrosky, a
venture capitalist and the executive director of the von Liebig Center for Entrepreneurism and Technology Advancement at the University of California at San Diego.
He argued that the party line -- that good investment strategists can apply their principles across industries -- did
not acknowledge the peculiarities and complexities of energy technology.
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For Internet Barons, Uncharted Investment Territory The New York Times March 7, 2007 Wednesday
''The downside? They're going to blow up this sector before it has a chance to get established,'' Mr. Kedrosky said.
But, he added, ''You won't find out that today's investments were nonsense for at least 24 and maybe 36 months.''
There are many investments; one of the hottest in the business world has been the rush of interest into alternative
energy by venture capitalists. In 2006, they put at least $727 million into 39 alternative-energy startups, compared with
$195 million in 18 such firms in 2005, according to the National Venture Capital Association.
The investment reflects not just the changing political and public policy sentiment toward energy but changing
dynamics within the venture capital business. Because it has gotten harder to take technology companies public and
reap big paydays, investors are directing their discipline and seed capital to new industries.
None are potentially bigger than energy's $1 trillion annual market. Plus, energy has the benefit of creating potentially environmentally friendly technologies. The mantra in the venture capital world has become, ''Do well by doing
good.''
Some venture capitalists argue that the shift from the information and biotech industries to energy startups is not
that big. Take Samir Kaul, who made the change from sequencing DNA to building companies that make car fuel from
wood chips.
A biochemist by training, Mr. Kaul, now 33, was working at the Institute for Genomic Research in 2000, where he
oversaw a pioneering project that sequenced the genome of Arabidopsis thaliana, a member of the mustard family and
an important organism in biological research. He went to Harvard Business School, then worked as a venture capitalist
in Boston financing and creating companies that focused on DNA sequencing and synthetic biology, which involves
programming biological cells.
In early 2006, he joined Khosla Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture firm started by Vinod Khosla, a founder of Sun
Microsystems. The firm's concept was to emphasize the emerging world of alternative energy, and Mr. Kaul said the fit
was more natural than it appeared.
''A lot of the basic principles of understanding the genetic blueprint are very, very relevant in the clean fuels and
the clean tech area,'' he said.
For example, he said that sequencing and engineering processes that might yield a cell better equipped to fight
disease could also yield an organism that creates ethanol from plant refuse more efficiently.
Generally, Mr. Kaul argues that venture capitalists steeped in other technologies are finding that their expertise
applies to energy. For instance, he noted, investors in material sciences might be equipped to invest in clean-water
startups.
Nicholas Parker, the chairman of the Cleantech Group, an energy-investing trade and research organization,
agrees. ''Silicon is used to make semiconductors, and it is used to make solar cells,'' he said. To be successful in energy,
venture capitalists ''need to come at it from their existing strengths.''
Still, Mr. Parker said that some investors appeared to be jumping in hastily or without doing the proper diligence.
''It's very hip to be saying you're doing this stuff,'' he said. Of the more than 1,000 venture capitalists getting involved, he added, there are ''well over 100 V.C.'s that are for the first time indicating an interest but that don't yet have a
lot of depth in their teams'' on alternative energy.
Technical expertise is only part of the challenge for venture capitalists making the transition to energy, said
Charles J. McDermott, a general partner with RockPort Capital Partners in Boston. Mr. McDermott, who has spent
about 25 years involved with energy companies, said there were peculiarities to nurturing them.
For instance, ''If you've never tried to sell technology to a utility, you will definitely experience a learning curve,''
Mr. McDermott said, adding that some customers of energy were regulated monopolies that did not necessarily play by
the same profit-and-loss rules as free-market competitors.
One way in which traditional venture firms are learning about energy is by investing as partners with RockPort
and other more experienced firms.
RockPort has already entered into deals with some major venture firms. One is an investment with Kleiner Perkins
Caufield & Byers in Lilliputian Systems, a Wilmington, Mass., company that makes tiny fuel cells for portable electronic devices. Mr. McDermott said that Kleiner was lending expertise on how to manage and build a startup.
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For Internet Barons, Uncharted Investment Territory The New York Times March 7, 2007 Wednesday
''Nobody knows better than Kleiner how to groom a company,'' Mr. McDermott said.
Mr. McDermott said he was generally optimistic about venture capitalists' chances for success in energy investing.
Yet his own optimism is belied by RockPort's investments. The firm has not put any money into biofuel companies partly because, Mr. McDermott said, it fears that many will fail unless they get government subsidies. Meanwhile,
more than a third of new alternative energy financing from venture capitalists in 2006 went to such startups, according
to the National Venture Capital Association.
The lure of the payoff from investing in energy is too great to ignore for Mr. Metcalfe, who in 1973 invented the
Ethernet standard for connecting computers, and in 1979 founded 3Com, which makes computer networking equipment.
Six years ago, he became a venture capitalist at Polaris Venture Partners, focusing on information-technology
startups. Last year, he said he became convinced that energy investments were worthwhile. ''You'd have to be an idiot
not to notice the huge opportunity in energy,'' he said. ''The markets are huge.''
Last April, in one of its first such investments, Polaris put $6.8 million into GreenFuel Technologies Corporation.
The company develops algae bioreactor systems that capture carbon dioxide from smokestack emissions, producing
more algae that can be converted into biofuels.
Mr. Metcalfe says he spends a lot of time learning about new energy technologies. One day he might hear about
wind power, the next about refining of metallurgical silicon for use in solar cells. ''I'm really on the steep part of the
learning curve,'' he said, adding, ''There's no proof yet I'm good at it.''
But he said he felt the challenge was worthwhile. And it's what he is paid to do.
''My job is to create innovative high-tech companies and get venture returns,'' he said. ''In the energy market,
there's a huge need, and lots of technology to fill that need.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: VENTURE CAPITAL (92%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (90%); INTERNET & WWW (90%); INITIAL
PUBLIC OFFERINGS (89%); RENEWABLE ENERGY (89%); COMPUTER NETWORKS (78%); WIND ENERGY
(77%); NETWORK PROTOCOLS (73%); ELECTRIC POWER INDUSTRY (70%); BIOFUELS (69%); PUBLIC
POLICY (68%); US POLITICAL PARTIES (67%); ELECTRIC POWER PLANTS (89%) Electric Light and Power;
Venture Capital ; Special Sections; Electric Light and Power
COMPANY: 3COM CORP (90%)
TICKER: TCC (FRA) (90%); COMS (NASDAQ) (90%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS541512 COMPUTER SYSTEMS DESIGN SERVICES (90%); NAICS334119 OTHER COMPUTER PERIPHERAL EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURING (90%); SIC7373 COMPUTER INTEGRATED SYSTEMS DESIGN (90%); SIC3577 COMPUTER PERIPHERAL EQUIPMENT, NEC (90%)
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (94%) Robert M Metcalfe; Matt Richtel
GEOGRAPHIC: SAN DIEGO, CA, USA (77%) CALIFORNIA, USA (91%) UNITED STATES (91%)
LOAD-DATE: March 7, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: EXPERT -- Samir Kaul left biotech to support firms creating renewable energy. (Photo by Fred
Mertz for The New York Times)
STEEP CURVE AHEAD -- Robert M. Metcalfe, the Silicon Valley legend, holds a beaker of dried algae. He is now a
venture capitalist specializing in the energy industry, where he sees great opportunities. (Photo by C. J. Gunther for The
New York Times)
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For Internet Barons, Uncharted Investment Territory The New York Times March 7, 2007 Wednesday
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1058 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 6, 2007 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
Big Corporate Gift Expected For Los Angeles Museum
BYLINE: By EDWARD WYATT
SECTION: Section E; Column 3; The Arts/Cultural Desk; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 444 words
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES, March 5
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is expected to announce a corporate gift of more than $10 million on
Tuesday that it will use to finance a building project, a person close to the museum said yesterday.
The gift, for new exhibition space, arrives as the museum pursues a sweeping renovation of its 20-acre campus,
and its director, Michael Govan, aggressively seeks to step up fund-raising and transform the museum's somewhat dowdy image.
The museum, on Wilshire Boulevard in Hancock Park, next to La Brea Tar Pits, has been working since 2004 with
the Italian architect Renzo Piano on the renovation plan.
The first phase includes the construction of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, which is already under way
and is being paid for by a $60 million gift from the philanthropist Eli Broad. That building, along with a new grand entrance pavilion and an underground parking garage, is expected to open in about a year.
Allison Agsten, a spokeswoman for the museum, declined to comment on any potential announcement. But the
person close to the museum, who declined to be identified because the institution had not authorized disclosure of the
gift, said the donation was expected to be in the tens of millions of dollars. That the gift is from a corporation is likely to
stir some excitement in the art world, given recent cutbacks in companies' contributions to nonprofit institutions.
As part of his attempt to raise the museum's profile Mr. Govan has helped recruit several new members of its
board, including some business figures. Among those named to the board in recent months are Terry Semel, the chief
executive of Yahoo; David Bohnett, a technology entrepreneur and venture capitalist; Chris DeWolfe, the co-founder
and chief executive of MySpace.com; and Anthony N. Pritzker, a co-founder of the Pritzker Group, an investment firm,
and part of the family that founded the Hyatt hotel chain.
The museum has been trying to raise money to finance the second and third phases of its rebuilding plan, which
are to include a renovation of a building that formerly housed the May Company department store on the western edge
of the museum campus. That building will include exhibition space and a children's gallery, a restaurant, bookstore and
administrative offices.
In an interview last week Mr. Govan said the later phases of the project would include ''a new exhibition facility''
on the west side of the campus, near the May Company building.
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Big Corporate Gift Expected For Los Angeles Museum The New York Times March 6, 2007 Tuesday
Last month he described plans for a giant moving sculpture at the museum's new entrance: a 161-foot-tall sculpture by Jeff Koons that is essentially a working 1940s locomotive suspended from a crane.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: CONSTRUCTION (90%); BUILDING RENOVATION (90%); ART & ARTISTS (90%); MUSEUMS &
GALLERIES (90%); CORPORATE GIVING (90%); EXHIBITIONS (89%); BOARD CHANGES (89%); SCULPTURE (89%); FUNDRAISING (89%); CHARITIES (78%); MAJOR GIFTS (78%); INTERVIEWS (76%); VENTURE
CAPITAL (76%); HOTELS & MOTELS (75%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (74%); NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
(71%); HOTEL CHAINS (62%); RESTAURANTS (62%); BOOKSTORES (62%); RETAILERS (62%); FOUNDATIONS (78%); PHILANTHROPY (78%); INTERNET SOCIAL NETWORKING (64%) Art; Grants (Corporate and
Foundation)
COMPANY: MYSPACE.COM (81%)
ORGANIZATION: Los Angeles County Museum of Art
PERSON: ELI BROAD (56%); TERRY SEMEL (54%) Edward Wyatt; Michael Govan
GEOGRAPHIC: LOS ANGELES, CA, USA (93%) CALIFORNIA, USA (93%) UNITED STATES (93%)
LOAD-DATE: March 6, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1059 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 6, 2007 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
Start-Up Insurer in Florida Pursues an Exclusive Niche
BYLINE: By JOSEPH B. TREASTER
SECTION: Section C; Column 3; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 1183 words
Most insurance executives look at the lavish houses and condominiums along the Florida coasts and cannot help
thinking: hurricanes, wreckage, financial ruin.
But Ross J. Buchmueller sees opportunity. As most big insurers are cutting back coverage in Florida and other
coastal states after a string of catastrophic hurricanes, Mr. Buchmueller has started a company offering policies that
hardly anyone else wants to sell -- and at as little as half the going rates.
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Start-Up Insurer in Florida Pursues an Exclusive Niche The New York Times March 6, 2007 Tuesday
His strategy, he says, is not as daring as it seems. By studying industry statistics, he has found that big, expensive
houses have fared the best in hurricanes. And his company will sell only to owners of those homes.
To be covered, a home must be worth more than $1 million. It must be fairly new, solidly built and equipped with
the strongest shutters, or such high-grade windows that flying debris merely bounces off them.
Mr. Buchmueller said that to further reduce his risk, sales in the first year will be limited to a few thousand policies and he will buy insurance from big international insurance companies, known as reinsurers, that will cover 75 percent of his potential losses.
The cost of the reinsurance will sharply lower his profit. But Mr. Buchmueller, 41, has set up his company, Privilege Underwriters Reciprocal Exchange, as a nonprofit concern, owned by its policyholders. His reward, Mr. Buchmueller says, will come from a management fee, which should rise as the company grows and expands into a national
business.
Mr. Buchmueller has been quietly selling policies for several weeks and plans to announce the opening of his new
company formally today.
Some insurance experts say the venture may inspire other entrepreneurs -- or groups of property owners, like
condominium associations -- to create similar arrangements. Doing so could help break the crippling pattern in which
big, established insurers reduce coverage, and investors in new companies chase ever-higher premium prices.
But others are skeptical. ''It's a creative approach,'' said Michael Koziol, a public policy specialist at the Property
Casualty Insurers Association of America, a large insurance trade group, ''but like any new company, there's a certain
risk. More new companies go under than old companies.''
Robert P. Hartwig, the president and chief economist at the Insurance Information Institute, a trade group in New
York, said that even with insurance premium prices at a record high in Florida, they were still not high enough to offset
all the potential damage that many weather analysts expect over the next decade or so.
Mr. Buchmueller says his company will have considerably more capital than most Florida start-ups -- an estimated
$45 million by the end of the year. And he says that he is confident that he has found a gap in the market where the going prices are higher than the actual risk. ''Everyone in Florida thinks they're paying too much for insurance,'' he said,
''and some of them are right.''
Florida has been hit by a number of hurricanes in the last few years. Insurers have paid billions of dollars in
claims, and the price of coverage for homes in the state is the highest in the nation. Some people are paying almost as
much for insurance as for mortgage payments. And every week, 15,000 homeowners in Florida are requesting barebones coverage from the state-run insurance agency because no one else will sell it to them -- at any price.
In January, Florida's Legislature went into special session to deal with the insurance crisis and decided to force
down prices for all companies, including Mr. Buchmueller's, by perhaps 20 percent.
But many insurance experts say that if hurricane damage is heavy in the next few years, the state will probably
have to make up for the price cut and possibly a lot more in claims costs by issuing bonds and passing on potentially
enormous expenses to all policyholders.
Florida regulators welcomed Mr. Buchmueller's company as a new source of coverage. They approved his plan in
mid-January, and he has started selling policies through independent agents across the state. Mr. Buchmueller previously spent about 20 years working for the Chubb Corporation and the American International Group.
Charles Kilvert, the owner of the Claude D. Reese insurance agency in Palm Beach, said the first question he
hears is: ''Are these guys going to pay their claims?''
''I tell them, 'These guys are top-flight industry insiders,' '' he said. ''And they're very conservative. Whereas the
state allows an insurance company to take in $10 of premium for every dollar it's got for paying claims, these guys are
coming in at less than one to one.''
One of Mr. Buchmueller's first customers, Ellis Kern, owns a two-story pale yellow Mediterranean-style home on
a golf course several miles inland from West Palm Beach. Mr. Kern, a manufacturing executive, said he had been paying $15,175.86 a year for $1.2 million in coverage from a unit of Lloyd's of London. He is now paying $6,845 to Mr.
Buchmueller's company for $1.7 million in coverage.
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Start-Up Insurer in Florida Pursues an Exclusive Niche The New York Times March 6, 2007 Tuesday
''Obviously,'' he said, ''the first thing was that there was a savings.''
But Mr. Kern said he was also drawn to the company by its business plan. ''They were limiting their risk, being selective in who they were taking,'' he said.
Patrick Lacy, a manager at the Plastridge Insurance Agency in Delray Beach, said he had been talking to a homeowner who had been paying $32,637 for $2.8 million in coverage. From the new company, Mr. Lacy said, the same
coverage would cost $18,812.
Customers of the new company are required to make an additional one-time payment equal to half their first-year
premium into a fund for paying claims. Even then, costs are often lower than before. At the end of each year, Mr.
Buchmueller said, any company money left over from claims and other expenses is to go into holding accounts for the
policyholders, from which they can collect if they decide to drop their coverage.
In the meantime, putting money that would otherwise be termed profit into special accounts will add to the company's ability to pay claims and also provide tax benefits.
The structure Mr. Buchmueller chose has been used by groups of professionals -- doctors, lawyers and architects - and some industries, including pharmaceutical manufacturers, when coverage they need has become scarce and extremely high priced. One of the biggest, most successful insurance companies in the country, USAA, is organized along
the same lines. But recent start-ups have been structured to yield high profits as quickly as possible.
One quirk of Mr. Buchmueller's company is that his rates, as approved by regulators, are about the same or higher
than those of other insurers catering to the rich, like Chubb. A big difference is that the others routinely refuse to sell
new coverage. And the few companies willing to provide the coverage can charge much higher rates.
''It's like going to the butcher,'' Mr. Buchmueller said, ''and he tells you that rib-eye sells for $1 a pound. But you
go to buy it, and you can't have it.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: INSURANCE (93%); RESIDENTIAL CO-OWNERSHIP (90%); HURRICANES (90%); REINSURANCE (90%); TROPICAL STORMS (90%); WEATHER (90%); CONDOMINIUMS (89%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (89%); INSURANCE ASSOCIATIONS (89%); RESIDENTIAL CONDOMINIUMS (89%); STARTUPS (86%);
HOMEOWNERS ASSOCIATIONS (78%); PROPERTY & CASUALTY INSURANCE (78%); INSURANCE POLICIES (78%); INSURANCE PREMIUMS (78%); NATURAL DISASTERS (73%); COASTAL AREAS (72%); STATISTICS (71%); PUBLIC POLICY (71%); INDUSTRY ANALYSTS (69%) Hurricanes and Tropical Storms; Insurance; Hurricanes and Tropical Storms
ORGANIZATION: Privilege Underwriters Reciprocal Exchange
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (50%) Joseph B Treaster; Ross J Buchmueller
GEOGRAPHIC: FLORIDA, USA (98%); NEW YORK, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (98%) Florida
LOAD-DATE: March 6, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Ross J. Buchmueller at the office building in Plantation, Fla., that houses his insurance company,
Privilege Underwriters Reciprocal Exchange. (Photo by Marc Serota for The New York Times)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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Former Senator, a Poker Aficionado, Lobbies for Online Gambling The New York Times March 5, 2007 Monday
1060 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 5, 2007 Monday
Late Edition - Final
Former Senator, a Poker Aficionado, Lobbies for Online Gambling
BYLINE: By GARY RIVLIN and MATT RICHTEL
SECTION: Section C; Column 2; Business/Financial Desk; D'Amato Never Folds; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1527 words
For years, Alfonse M. D'Amato, the former Republican senator from New York, was the host at a Thursday evening poker game at his Capitol Hill office, playing with other lawmakers, staff members and lobbyists late into the night
over pots that ranged from a few dollars to a few hundred.
Once New Yorkers collectively informed Mr. D'Amato that it was time to find a new line of work, he graduated to
a higher-stakes game, playing with Howard Stern, among others. He is now a stalwart of a weekly game on Long Island
where a bad night might mean that a player drops $5,000 or more.
As Mr. D'Amato tells it, and as his card-playing cronies confirm, he rarely leaves a game a loser. Yet it is a safe bet
that his love of poker never proved so lucrative as it did last week, when he signed a lobbying deal with the Poker Players Alliance, a nascent group that hopes that Mr. D'Amato will help them become players in Washington politics, too.
Most immediately, the group is hoping that Mr. D'Amato, long known for his connections to Washington insiders
and his ability to deliver perks to his constituents and interest groups, can help them overturn a new federal ban on Internet gambling -- or at least exempt poker from its provisions.
''John Smith, maybe he doesn't have the financial means or the ability'' to travel to a casino, Mr. D'Amato said,
gesturing with his hands and speaking volubly in his trademark accent. ''The poor guy at home can't bet $50 because we
pass this law.''
The first big assault on poker players came in October when President Bush signed a bill aimed at online gambling by making it a crime to use credit cards or online payment systems for poker and other online casino games and
sports betting conducted over the Internet. The law did not make it impossible or illegal for Americans to bet online, but
it did make it trickier for players to get their cash to the offshore casinos that run the Internet sites.
''I think it's fair to say that most poker players see themselves as nonpolitical,'' said Walt Thiessen, 49, an entrepreneur from Warrenton, Va., who recently joined the alliance. ''But the more that the government does to impede poker players, the more angry and frustrated they're going to become.''
The booming popularity of poker has spawned any number of cable television shows and made media figures of
professionals like Chris Moneymaker and Daniel Negreanu. Tens of millions of Americans play, primarily in home
games but also at casinos, legal and illegal card rooms, and at scores of Web sites.
So perhaps it was inevitable that poker enthusiasts would assert themselves as another special interest demanding
to be heard in Washington. The Poker Players Alliance, which says it has more than 160,000 members, most paying at
least $20 to join the group, will open an office in Washington in the next two months ''to oversee our political efforts
there,'' the group's president, Michael Bolcerek, said. It hopes to build a grassroots organization whose political presence is felt in all 50 states, he said.
But even though Mr. D'Amato's involvement in the lobbying effort is bound to generate plenty of talk, it is not expected to lead to overturning the new law anytime soon.
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Former Senator, a Poker Aficionado, Lobbies for Online Gambling The New York Times March 5, 2007 Monday
Moreover, Mr. D'Amato, for all his ability to attract attention and parlay his reputation into big money, may not
have much sway in a Democratic-controlled Congress preoccupied with war, budget deficits and presidential politics.
There is little interest there at the moment in turning back to a subject decided a year ago, when Republicans ruled.
Mr. D'Amato and his backers, said I. Nelson Rose, law professor at Whittier Law School in Costa Mesa, Calif.,
and an expert on gambling law, ''think they have a pair of queens. But what have they really got? They don't even have a
pair.''
Still, former Representative Jim Leach, an Iowa Republican and one of the authors of the Internet gambling ban,
said that Mr. D'Amato certainly added heft to the effort.
''Don't ever underestimate Al,'' he said on hearing of Mr. D'Amato's role.
Certainly, Mr. D'Amato's poker buddies have learned that lesson. ''He's tenacious, he's fearless and he's aggressive,'' said Gary Melius, the host of the Monday game where Mr. D'Amato is now a regular. ''He's also really good at
reading people.''
Subtlety has never been Mr. D'Amato's long suit, and he has already embraced his new role with characteristic
fervor. During an interview in his offices in a high-rise on Park Avenue in Manhattan, Mr. D'Amato did not answer
questions about online poker as much as filibuster on the issue.
To him the implications of prohibiting online poker are profound, touching on matters as wide ranging as the war
on terrorism, national security, the rights of the elderly and the handicapped and equal protection under the law. At
times, he pounded his desk to make his point.
The money being spent to outlaw poker and enforce the ban, Mr. D'Amato said, could be better spent ''in the battle
against money laundering, trafficking in drugs, or trafficking in terrorism.''
He takes issue with Congress's decision to lump in poker, a game of skill as well as luck, with games of pure
chance like roulette and craps. ''It's really a great sport,'' Mr. D'Amato said, perhaps the country's favorite sport. ''You
don't have 70 million people participating in baseball.''
It is not clear that poker has 70 million players, either. (Mr. D'Amato's source is a study commissioned by the
poker association.)
But one of his trademark tactics is throwing around numbers that might or might not be considered, well, a bluff.
He talks of the million players who have already joined the poker association -- a misstatement that prompted his handler, presidential style, to clarify that what the former senator meant is that the group hoped one day soon to have that
many names on its rolls.
After New York voters replaced Mr. D'Amato with Charles E. Schumer, a Democrat, in 1998, the former senator
opened Park Strategies, a lobbying and corporate strategy firm whose client list includes banks, telecommunications
companies and a few racetrack owners.
He acknowledged that he did not understand the impulse that prompted a person to place a wager on a horse. But
he spoke rhapsodically about the sense of community that poker has fostered in his life, and the banter, camaraderie and
friendly competition that can make the game so engaging.
The intimacy of the game, in fact, produced some political headaches for Mr. D'Amato while he was chairman of
the Senate Banking Committee after an article in The New York Times disclosed that he had invited lobbyists to play in
his office. That gave extraordinary access, some charged, to those representing banks, securities firms and other financial institutions.
Mr. D'Amato has a different view, defending his activity as an innocent pastime that followed in the footsteps of
President Harry S. Truman's poker games with cronies. ''It was a great way to while the time away -- to have fun and
talk politics,'' he said.
Plenty of Americans are still playing poker online, if no longer at sites run by publicly traded companies, which
fear reprisals from Washington despite being based overseas.
Instead, online players have shifted to smaller, privately owned sites. They are forced to find other means for
transferring money in and out of their accounts, given that the new law more closely monitors financial institutions processing wagers.
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Former Senator, a Poker Aficionado, Lobbies for Online Gambling The New York Times March 5, 2007 Monday
''I play as much now as I did before the ban,'' said Ethan Ruby, a member of the poker alliance who lives and
works in Manhattan. Mr. Ruby said he simply took the money he had on account at PartyPoker, his old site, and transferred it to Full Tilt. He then linked his poker account to his checking account instead of a credit card.
''It's a much more tedious process now,'' Mr. Ruby said.
Still, it only took a few days. ''You can't cork this,'' Mr. D'Amato said. ''You can't stop this through some silly
bill.''
Online poker will only go further underground, he continued, providing an opening for unscrupulous foreign operators seeking to take advantage of the hunger of Americans to play poker.
''When you have regulation, where you have openness, you can ensure you have a game that won't be unfairly cut
or disadvantaged or manipulated,'' Mr. D'Amato said. You can also tax the winnings of players whose ups and downs
are tracked online, a figure the poker alliance puts potentially in the billions.
Mr. Rose, the law professor, while doubtful of the chances for the lobbying effort in the short run, said Mr.
D'Amato and his backers would be well served in keeping the issue alive until there is more interest in the matter. ''If
they stay active the next two years,'' he said, ''then there could be a serious bill'' to carve out an exception for poker.
Certainly, Mr. D'Amato has staying power.
''The later the game goes, the more Al is going to win,'' said Larry Elovich, a Long Island lawyer who said he has
been playing poker on and off with Mr. D'Amato for 50 years. ''He has the ability to stay awake when the rest of the
players are all tired.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: LOBBYING (91%); GAMING (90%); LEGISLATIVE BODIES (90%); US REPUBLICAN PARTY
(90%); LEGISLATORS (91%); INTERNET & WWW (86%); ILLEGAL GAMBLING (78%); INTERNET SERVICE
REGULATION (77%); POLITICS (78%); LEGISLATION (87%); ELECTRONIC BILLING (70%); COMPUTER &
INTERNET LAW (86%); US PRESIDENTS (67%); TELEVISION PROGRAMMING (50%); SPORTS & RECREATION EVENTS (78%) Gambling; Computers and the Internet; Law and Legislation; Poker (Card Game); Politics and
Government
ORGANIZATION: Poker Players Alliance
PERSON: GEORGE W BUSH (53%); HOWARD STERN (57%); MICHAEL MCMAHON (51%) Alfonse M
D'Amato; Gary Rivlin; Matt Richtel
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, USA (94%) UNITED STATES (94%) United States
LOAD-DATE: March 5, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Former Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato, fourth from left, playing poker last week at a Long Island
mansion. Only the locale seems to have changed. (Photo by James Estrin/The New York Times)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1061 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
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The New York Times
March 5, 2007 Monday
Late Edition - Final
TODAY IN BUSINESS
SECTION: Section C; Column 5; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 635 words
EASY COME, UNTIL RECENTLY -- Just as the technology boom of the late 1990s turned twenty-something
programmers into dot-com billionaires, the explosive growth in subprime lending in recent years turned mortgage bankers and brokers across the country into multimillionaires seemingly overnight. [Page C1.]A RUSH TO SPRING
AHEAD -- Daylight saving time begins Sunday, three weeks earlier than usual, and many companies are scrambling to
reset BlackBerry e-mail devices, desktop PCs and big data-center computers. [C1.]LOBBYING FOR HIGH STAKES -Alfonse M. D'Amato, the former Republican senator from New York, is a longtime poker fan who plays regularly in
high-stakes game. But the stakes got even higher last week when he signed a lobbying deal with the Poker Players Alliance, which hopes that he can help them overturn a federal ban on Internet gambling -- or at least exempt poker from its
provisions.
[C1.]THREE DAYS TO CHANGE THE WORLD -- More than 1,000 people -- including Nobel laureates, entrepreneurs and entertainers -- will gather in Monterey, Calif., this week for the annual TED conference, named for the
convergence of technology, entertainment and design. [C1.]THE MANY FATHERS OF MP3 -- Microsoft paid a German rights holder $16 million to license the MP3 audio format, the foundation of the digital music boom. But an American jury decided that Microsoft had failed to pay another MP3 patent holder, and issued a $1.52 billion judgment. And
the MP3 toll gates do not end there. [C3.]ONLINE SEARCH FOR IN-STORE ITEMS -- Technology companies are
poised to solve the problem of finding items at the mall, via cellphone or personal digital assistant. One company is
NearbyNow, whose chief executive, Scott Dunlap, above, says more than 2,000 shoppers used its service at a California
mall on the first day of a trial. E-Commerce Report: Bob Tedeschi. [C8.]A FICTION AT WIKIPEDIA -- Contributors
to Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia, have turned against one of their own who was found to have created an
elaborate false identity. [C5.]MEDIA DISPUTE CUTS TV SERIES -- A dispute between British Sky Broadcasting and
Virgin Media has left 3.3 million cable television viewers without ''Lost,'' ''The Simpsons'' and other popular American
series. [C5 .]COKE V. COKE, IN COMMERCIALS -- The Coca-Cola Company is updating the make-fun-of-lawyers
shtick for new generations in a nontraditional campaign for Coke Zero. Advertising: Stuart Elliott. [C7.]HEALTH
SERVICES BY CELLPHONE -- Rwanda is using a system built by a United States company to track H.I.V. and AIDS
patients, manage drug supplies and monitor health programs by cellphone in a country where travel is difficult.
[C8.]KIDZ BOP 11 RISES IN CHARTS -- Kidz Bop 11, released by Razor & Tie on Feb. 20, became a best seller in
the children's music category in its first week and has captured the No. 4 spot among top music albums. Most Wanted.
[C9.]BITE-SIZE NEWS -- The Philadelphia Inquirer and its sister paper, The Daily News, are offering digests that look
like Web sites, with quick summaries of news articles as well as sports scores, lottery numbers and the weather -- pretty
much all one needs to read. [C5.]NBC ANCHOR IN BAGHDAD -- Brian Williams, the NBC news anchor, is in Baghdad, the first network news anchor to travel there since Bob Woodruff, then the co-anchor of ABC News, was severely
injured by a roadside bomb in January 2006. [C5.]LURING GAME DEVELOPERS -- Microsoft plans to announce a
contest that will award $10,000 to the developer of the next great digital diversion for the company's Xbox 360.
[C5.]BUYOUT FIRMS WORK ON IMAGE -- Under attack by politicians who call them ''locusts'' and union leaders
who accuse them of cutting jobs, European private equity firms are trying to salvage their reputations. [C2.]
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: INTERNET AUDIO (90%); LOBBYING (90%); WEALTHY PEOPLE (90%); INTERNET & WWW
(90%); PATENTS (78%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (78%); SUBPRIME LENDING (77%); LEGISLATIVE BODIES
(77%); SOFT DRINK INDUSTRY (76%); PERSONAL COMPUTERS (71%); GAMING (75%); US REPUBLICAN
PARTY (75%); LEGISLATORS (75%); MORTGAGE BANKING (72%); MORTGAGE BANKING & FINANCE
(72%); MEDIA CONVERGENCE (71%); DESKTOP COMPUTERS (71%); MUSIC INDUSTRY (70%); TELEVI-
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TODAY IN BUSINESS The New York Times March 5, 2007 Monday
SION INDUSTRY (70%); CABLE & OTHER DISTRIBUTION (70%); ELECTRONIC COMMERCE (68%); TELEVISION PROGRAMMING (65%); VERDICTS (64%); AIDS & HIV (61%); MORTGAGE BROKERS (57%); NOBEL PRIZES (52%); HANDHELD COMPUTERS (71%); ARTISTS & PERFORMERS (66%); JURY TRIALS (64%)
Terms not available from NYTimes
COMPANY: COCA-COLA CO (61%); MICROSOFT CORP (55%); BRITISH SKY BROADCASTING GROUP
PLC (54%); E-COMMERCE& (52%); VIRGIN MEDIA INC (83%); IN-STORE GAGE MARKETING LLC (53%)
TICKER: KO (NYSE) (61%); MSFT (NASDAQ) (55%); BSY (NYSE) (54%); BSY (LSE) (54%); VMED
(NASDAQ) (83%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS312111 SOFT DRINK MANUFACTURING (61%); SIC2086 BOTTLED & CANNED SOFT
DRINKS & CARBONATED WATER (61%); NAICS511210 SOFTWARE PUBLISHERS (55%); SIC7372 PREPACKAGED SOFTWARE (55%); NAICS515210 CABLE AND OTHER SUBSCRIPTION PROGRAMMING (54%);
SIC4841 CABLE & OTHER PAY TELEVISION SERVICES (54%); NAICS515210 CABLE & OTHER SUBSCRIPTION PROGRAMMING (54%); NAICS517110 WIRED TELECOMMUNICATIONS CARRIERS (83%)
GEOGRAPHIC: CALIFORNIA, USA (92%); NEW YORK, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (92%); RWANDA
(75%)
LOAD-DATE: March 5, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Summary
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1062 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
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Late Edition - Final
A Scuffle Over Pay Television in Britain Spills Into the Living Room
BYLINE: By ERIC PFANNER
SECTION: Section C; Column 1; Business/Financial Desk; MEDIA; Pg. 5
LENGTH: 925 words
DATELINE: LONDON, March 3
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A Scuffle Over Pay Television in Britain Spills Into the Living Room The New York Times March 5, 2007 Monday
For 3.3 million cable television viewers in Britain, ''Lost'' has disappeared. So have several other popular American
series, including ''24'' and ''The Simpsons.''
The shows vanished from cable last week when British Sky Broadcasting, the satellite television company, withdrew several of its channels, including those that broadcast the United States series, from Virgin Media, the main cable
provider in Britain.
The companies ostensibly ended their relationship because of a disagreement over the cost of carrying the channels
on cable. But analysts say that the companies are fighting a broader battle over the British pay-TV market.
This has turned Homer Simpson and the castaways of ''Lost'' into pawns for some far more powerful media figures: on one side, Richard Branson, the British entrepreneur behind the Virgin brand; on the other, the Murdoch family.
Rupert Murdoch's company, the News Corporation, is the largest shareholder in BSkyB, and one of his sons,
James, is its chief executive. BSkyB, with more than eight million subscribers, has long dominated pay TV in Britain,
relegating cable to also-ran status.
Suddenly, however, BSkyB faces a revitalized competitor in Virgin Media, the result of a recent merger between
the two main cable providers, NTL and Telewest. Mr. Branson entered the picture when the combined company bought
the British operations of Virgin Mobile, giving him a stake in the cable operator, which licensed the Virgin brand name
from him.
Mr. Branson, who has climbed aboard airplanes, hot-air balloons and elephants for marketing stunts that helped
build Virgin Atlantic Airways into a competitor to British Airways, wasted little time in trying to raise Virgin Media's
profile.
Last autumn, he prodded Virgin Media to explore a bid for ITV, the largest commercial broadcaster in Britain.
That effort failed when BSkyB swooped in to buy a 17.9 percent stake in ITV -- enough to foil Virgin Media's efforts.
Virgin Media cried foul, protesting that BSkyB's move went against the spirit of British rules on concentration of
media ownership, given that the News Corporation's British assets also include several newspapers -- The Sun, The
Times of London and The News of the World. Under British media law, BSkyB can own up to 20 percent of ITV as
long as it does not exert undue influence, but the government announced last week that it had asked the media regulator,
Ofcom, to examine the deal.
Neither Rupert nor James Murdoch has commented publicly on the dispute with Virgin Media. The BransonMurdoch rivalry has now moved out of deal makers' suites and regulatory offices and into viewers' living rooms with
BSkyB's decision to withhold its channels from Virgin Media.
Several weeks ago, BSkyB had already antagonized Virgin Media by running advertisements warning cable viewers that they might lose access to channels like Sky One, which shows ''Lost,'' and BSkyB's 24-hour news channel.
Virgin said it objected to BSkyB's attempt to raise the fees for the channels even though viewership had fallen.
BSkyB maintained that the price increases were justified because it was adding new channels to the package for Virgin
Media, and because of new investments in the existing ones.
The claims and counterclaims, detailed in a flurry of newspaper advertisements and news releases last week, grew
more strident as the deadline for the negotiations approached last Wednesday, with each side accusing the other of acting in bad faith.
Behind the seemingly petty aspects of the dispute are big changes in the competitive relationship between the two
companies, Virgin Media said.
''This is not just about the carriage agreement,'' said Neil Berkett, chief operating officer of Virgin Media. ''We
now have a very viable proposition under the U.K.'s most loved and best-known brand.''
Cable television has suffered from a reputation for bad customer service in Britain, analysts say. Mr. Burkett said
Virgin Media was taking steps to improve that, along with making investments in video-on-demand and improved content offerings. The company is also trying to appeal to customers by marketing a ''quad play'' of telecommunications and
media services, by offering television, fixed-line and mobile phone calls and broadband in one package.
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A Scuffle Over Pay Television in Britain Spills Into the Living Room The New York Times March 5, 2007 Monday
BSkyB has responded to that challenge by introducing its own broadband offering. Both sides, facing a threat
from free digital television beamed over the airwaves, have also announced plans to add so-called digital terrestrial services.
Virgin Media initially tried to make light of losing the BSkyB channels. On its on-screen program guide, it briefly
replaced the slot for Sky News with a listing reading, ''Sky Snooze, try BBC.''
But Virgin Media later bowed to pressure from a consumer group and said it would allow customers to cancel
their subscriptions with no penalty because of the loss of the BSkyB channels.
For its part, BSkyB has said that it stands to forfeit about $:60 million, or $117 million, a year from the loss of
channel carriage fees from Virgin Media, as well as from reduced advertising rates, because the channels will now reach
3.3 million fewer viewers.
BSkyB appeared to be gambling that it would make up some of that lost revenue by appealing to Virgin Media
subscribers who cannot live without ''Lost.''
''There's only a certain amount of premium content,'' said James Healey, a media analyst at Ernst & Young in
London. ''And if you've got that, you may not be willing to play nicely with the other children in the group.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: CABLE & OTHER DISTRIBUTION (92%); TELEVISION INDUSTRY (91%); CABLE TELEVISION
(90%); SUBSCRIPTION TELEVISION (90%); MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS (90%); CABLE INDUSTRY (90%);
BROADCASTING REGULATION (89%); SATELLITE TELEVISION (78%); TELEVISION PROGRAMMING
(78%); BRANDING (73%); SHAREHOLDERS (67%); DIVESTITURES (72%); MERGERS (72%) Television; Mergers, Acquisitions and Divestitures; Prices (Fares, Fees and Rates); Television
COMPANY: NEWS CORP (70%); BRITISH SKY BROADCASTING GROUP PLC (92%); BRITISH AIRWAYS
PLC (53%); VIRGIN GROUP LTD (92%); VIRGIN MEDIA INC (94%); ITV PLC (85%); VIRGIN ATLANTIC
AIRWAYS LTD (82%)
ORGANIZATION: British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc; Virgin Media; Ntl Inc ; Telewest Global; News Corp
TICKER: NWS (NYSE) (85%); NCRA (LSE) (85%); BSY (NYSE) (92%); BSY (LSE) (92%); BAY (LSE) (53%);
NWS (ASX) (70%); VMED (NASDAQ) (94%); ITV (LSE) (85%); NWS (NASDAQ) (70%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS515210 CABLE AND OTHER SUBSCRIPTION PROGRAMMING (73%); SIC4841 CABLE &
OTHER PAY TELEVISION SERVICES (92%); NAICS515210 CABLE & OTHER SUBSCRIPTION PROGRAMMING (92%); NAICS517110 WIRED TELECOMMUNICATIONS CARRIERS (94%)
PERSON: KEITH RUPERT MURDOCH (92%); RICHARD BRANSON (93%) Richard Branson; Rupert Murdoch;
Eric Pfanner
GEOGRAPHIC: LONDON, ENGLAND (73%) UNITED KINGDOM (93%); UNITED STATES (93%); ENGLAND
(73%) Great Britain
LOAD-DATE: March 5, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: Richard Branson, left, has a large stake in the cable provider Virgin Media
Rupert Murdoch controls British Sky Broadcasting. (Photo by Rick Maiman/Bloomberg News)
(Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
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Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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March 5, 2007 Monday
Late Edition - Final
Girl Scout Cookies
SECTION: Section A; Column 6; Editorial Desk; Pg. 18
LENGTH: 195 words
To the Editor:
Re ''In a Fat Nation, Are Thin Mints on Thin Ice?,'' by Peter Applebome (Our Towns column, Feb. 21):
The essence of the Girl Scouts is a 90-year tradition that empowers young women to practice leadership skills, selfreliance, community service, respect for self and others and entrepreneurship.
A campaign to discourage people from buying Girl Scout cookies would cripple our ability to serve the girls who
need us most.
Without revenue from the cookie sale, we could not provide Girl Scouting to our more than 21,000 girls ages 5 to
17 every year in New York City.
In the five boroughs, 67 percent of our members come from low-income homes. More than 1,200 of our members
are in Housing Authority projects. We have a troop in a homeless shelter.
Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. has eliminated trans fats from Girl Scout cookies. The Girl Scout Council of Greater
New York applauds this achievement and believes that all snacks -- even our favorite Girl Scout cookies, available only
once a year -- should be eaten in moderation as part of a healthy diet.Carmen DubrocPresident, Board of DirectorsGirl
Scout Councilof Greater New York New York, Feb. 22, 2007
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: LETTERS & COMMENTS (90%); YOUTH CLUBS & ACTIVITIES (90%); OILS & FATS (90%); NUTRITION (78%); BAKED GOODS (78%); CITY GOVERNMENT (77%); WOMEN (77%); EDITORIALS & OPINIONS (74%); LOW COST HOUSING SCHEMES (73%); HOUSING AUTHORITIES (73%); BAKERIES (70%);
TEMPORARY SHELTERS (68%); HOMELESS SHELTERS (68%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (56%); HOMELESSNESS (53%); LOW INCOME PERSONS (68%) Bakeries and Baked Products; Diet and Nutrition; Trans Fatty
Acids
COMPANY: GIRL SCOUTS OF THE USA (84%)
ORGANIZATION: GIRL SCOUT COUNCIL OF GREATER NEW YORK (56%) Girl Scouts
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (91%) Carmen Dubrox
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (90%) NEW YORK, USA (94%) UNITED STATES (94%)
LOAD-DATE: March 5, 2007
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LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Letter
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1064 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 4, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
What Starbucks Can Learn From the Movie Palace
BYLINE: By RANDALL STROSS.
Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San Jose State University. E-mail:
stross@nytimes.com.
SECTION: Section 3; Column 1; Money and Business/Financial Desk; DIGITAL DOMAIN; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 1441 words
WI-FI service is quickly becoming the air-conditioning of the Internet age, enticing customers into restaurants and
other public spaces in the same way that cold ''advertising air'' deliberately blasted out the open doors of air-conditioned
theaters in the early 20th century to help sell tickets.
Today, hotspots are the new cold spots.
Starbucks became the most visible Wi-Fi-equipped national chain when it began offering the service in 2002. Now,
at more than 5,100 stores, Starbucks offers Internet access ''from the comfort of your favorite cozy chair.''
Before you pop open your laptop, however, you need to pull out your credit card. Starbucks and its partner, TMobile, charge $6 an hour for the ''pay as you go'' plan. Day passes or monthly subscriptions are available but can be
used only at Starbucks stores and other T-Mobile partners like Borders bookstores.
McDonald's offers Wi-Fi in more than 8,000 of its 13,700 stores in the United States, giving it wider reach than
even Starbucks, and it also charges for access. McDonald's doesn't charge as much: it asks $2.95 for two hours. You
can't apply your T-Mobile subscription there, however, because McDonald's works with other partners.
Metering and charging for a service, of course, is the prerogative of any business owner in a free market. One will
always find entrepreneurs willing to try new ways to profit by erecting tollbooths in front of facilities that had been
freely accessible.
In the past, this took the form of coin-operated locks on bathroom stalls. (You may have first encountered these at
a moment when you were least ready to praise the inventor's ingenuity.)
Today, the outer frontier of pricing innovation can be found at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, where
some electrical outlets are accompanied by a small sign: ''To Activate Pay $2 at Kiosk.'' This is an experimental service,
''Power Up My Portable,'' which provides chairs and outlets for laptops; $2 buys 20 minutes of juice.
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What Starbucks Can Learn From the Movie Palace The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
But what about the many other wall outlets scattered around the terminals and originally installed for vacuum
cleaners? Zenola Campbell, the airport vice president who oversees concessions, demurred last week when asked
whether travelers could always count on having free access to those outlets. ''I can't tell you where we're going to be in
the future,'' she said.
When Starbucks and McDonald's decided to exact a toll from their customers as they set up their in-store Wi-Fi
networks, they created a confusion of conflicting signals: how welcome can one feel when staring at a meter that is running?
The restaurants' predecessors, the movie theater owners of almost a century ago, understood that not every amenity, every service, every offering must have a separate price tag attached. The owners and the architects sought to give
theatergoers an environment that was pleasing in all aspects. Marcus Loew, the head of a nationwide chain, once said,
''We sell tickets to theaters, not movies.''
Panera Bread, which has more than 900 Wi-Fi-equipped sandwich and bakery stores, has set itself apart from its
contemporaries by upholding the old-fashioned spirit of those bygone theater owners who never stinted in their efforts
to make public space inviting.
The grand movie palaces did not have to show the revenue-enhancing potential of an ornamental gold cornice or
plaster pilaster. So, too, at Panera Bread, where its fireplaces do not have to demonstrate a monetary payback to justify
their place in the stores.
Neither does Wi-Fi. Neil Yanofsky, Panera's president, said that no cost accounting had been done on its service,
which is free. The rationale relates to ambience: ''We want our customers to stay and linger.''
A Panera cafe does half of its business at lunchtime -- there is little lingering then. But before and after the lunch
rush, the restaurant addresses what it refers to internally as ''the chill-out business,'' which constitutes a not-insignificant
15 to 20 percent of its revenue.
Panera has no interest in rushing these customers out -- the longer they stay, the greater the likelihood that resistance to the aroma of freshly baked muffins will crumble. Free, unmetered Wi-Fi is one way the restaurant sends an
unambiguous signal: Stay as long as you like.
Of course, Mr. Yanofsky is the first to point out that he is in a position to be much more welcoming than the competition across the street at Starbucks. The average Panera store has 120 seats and does about two and a half times as
much business as the average Starbucks store.
Mr. Yanofsky said he could not see why Starbucks, given its more limited seating, would drop access charges so
that it could match Panera's Wi-Fi offering. ''Why make it free?'' he said. ''They're already full.''
Each Panera cafe averages 220 connect hours a week; Starbucks and McDonald's declined to provide similar information about the use of their services.
In the 1920s, when air-conditioning began to be installed in movie theaters, owners had to spend a sizable sum -$50,000 (roughly equivalent to $570,000 today) -- to transform the property into a ''cold spot.'' But it was worth it. Before the ''refrigeratory process'' came along, theaters could not draw customers during the summer because of the unbearable heat in confined space. With air-conditioning, patronage increased so sharply that even the largest investments
were quickly repaid.
Wi-Fi does not address a similar problem of seasonal attendance. Nor will it produce a multifold increase in patronage. But, then again, it's not nearly as costly to introduce as the cooling plants of the 1920s.
The access charges assessed at Starbucks and McDonald's suggest that behind the scenes, their service providers
have had to make huge infrastructure investments and carry burdensome operational costs. But if the stores already have
business-class broadband connections for their own operations, the addition of a Wi-Fi access point is trivial.
Schlotzsky's Deli, which offers free Wi-Fi in 82 of its restaurants, uses Internet connections that were already in
place, just as Panera Bread did. And Val King, Schlotzsky's director of information technology, said the technical demands of remotely overseeing a wireless network were minimal. ''It doesn't take rocket science to run these things,'' he
said.
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What Starbucks Can Learn From the Movie Palace The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
Customers need feel no shame, however, if they need help configuring their laptops, and sandwich makers and
baristas are not necessarily the ones who can solve their technical problems quickly.
A Starbucks spokeswoman, Sonja Gould, explained that her company's Wi-Fi customers receive, in exchange for
their access fees, ''excellent customer service help from T-Mobile.'' It should be added that businesses offering free WiFi also contract with tech-support companies to help customers. One such company, HotPoint Wireless, says its network now handles five times as many sessions originating from businesses offering free access as those that charge fees.
Getting connected is one thing, but keeping one's e-mail private is another. Wi-Fi signals, by their nature, are notoriously susceptible to electronic eavesdropping. Wi-Fi services you pay for are no better protected than free services.
As T-Mobile informs customers on its support Web page, all wireless service is ''inherently insecure.''
Its recommendation should be heeded by users of Wi-Fi hotspots everywhere: use a virtual private network, which
provides secure industrial-strength encryption. If your employer does not provide a V.P.N. server, consider using a
commercial service, like JiWire, which charges $30 a year for a V.P.N., personal firewall and other services, including a
hotspot directory that can be used offline.
STARBUCKS, which has rolled out a plenitude of stores, follows the same design concept that is behind the modern multiplex: for interior space, small is beautiful. It's unfortunate that the grand architecture of early movie theaters no
longer exists to put today's microscale retail architecture to shame.
Gail Cooper, a professor of history at Lehigh University who has written about the introduction of airconditioning, said: ''In the movie palaces, one-third of the space was devoted to the lobby so people could come and
'promenade' -- today we would say 'hang out.' Welcome was built into the space, and air-conditioning was one part.''
The movie palaces are long gone, and so, too, is the novelty of air-conditioning. We now step into public space
less to be chilled than to chill. The palace's spiritual successor is the cafe that sends out a welcoming blast of free, unlimited Wi-Fi.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: WIRELESS INTERNET ACCESS (90%); RESTAURANTS (90%); INTERNET & WWW (78%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (73%); BOOKSTORES (71%); LAPTOP COMPUTERS (89%); AIRPORTS (66%) Restaurants; Computers and the Internet; Prices (Fares, Fees and Rates); Motion Pictures; Theaters (Buildings); Air Conditioning
COMPANY: STARBUCKS CORP (93%); BORDERS GROUP INC (69%)
ORGANIZATION: Starbucks Corp; Mcdonald's Corp
TICKER: STB (LSE) (93%); SBUX (NASDAQ) (93%); BGP (NYSE) (69%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS722213 SNACK AND NONALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE BARS (93%); SIC5812 EATING
PLACES (93%); NAICS722213 SNACK & NONALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE BARS (93%); NAICS451211 BOOK
STORES (69%); SIC5942 BOOK STORES (69%)
PERSON: ANN LIVERMORE (51%); MICHAEL MCMAHON (51%) Randall Stross
GEOGRAPHIC: DALLAS, TX, USA (79%) TEXAS, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (79%)
LOAD-DATE: March 4, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Drawing (Drawing by James Yang)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
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Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1065 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
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March 4, 2007 Sunday
Correction Appended
Late Edition - Final
Mission Improbable: Tom Cruise As Mogul
BYLINE: By RICHARD SIKLOS
SECTION: Section 3; Column 5; Money and Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 3444 words
DATELINE: Los Angeles
ARRAYED in a glass case in the lobby of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's headquarters in Century City are contracts
from the creation of the United Artists studio in 1919. The documents bear the signatures of the Tinseltown legends
Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and D. W. Griffith. Also ensconced in the case is one of United
Artists' first income statements: sales of $21 million in today's dollars, a fair sum for the early 20th century but barely
enough to finance even a single low-budget film now.
Some things never change. Asked how United Artists' early revenues compare with what it takes in today, Harry
E. Sloan, chief executive of the studio's parent company, MGM, replies: ''We don't have any yet. It's all cost.''
If Mr. Sloan has his way, however, that will soon change. Last November, he signed the latest set of United Artists
contracts with yet another Hollywood heavyweight determined to chart his own financial and creative course: Tom
Cruise. Mr. Cruise and his business partner, the veteran film producer Paula Wagner, have signed on to run United Artists with what insiders describe as a relatively free hand for a term of at least five years. In exchange, MGM has granted
the pair about a one-third stake in the dormant studio without asking them to invest a penny in it.
Ms. Wagner is the chief executive of UA -- as the studio is commonly known -- while Mr. Cruise bears no official
title except, perhaps, the world's most famous movie star. Unlike Ms. Wagner, Mr. Cruise does not draw a salary from
UA, according to a person with direct knowledge of the arrangement. The idea is that his ownership stake alone will
align the interests of Tom Cruise the actor with Tom Cruise the studio grandee.
''I can't put a number on it yet,'' says Bert Fields, the Hollywood rainmaker and lawyer who represents Mr. Cruise
and Ms. Wagner. ''I will tell you this: If their pictures succeed, it will be worth a very large amount.''
Still, in a town awash in news releases written in magic ink on fairy parchment, Hollywood does not know exactly
what to make of the idea of Cruise-as-mogul -- or, for that matter, how exactly the fast-moving Mr. Sloan plans to deploy UA and the deep pockets of private equity investors to yank MGM back from the brink of obscurity.
Moreover, Mr. Cruise stands at the end of a long line of creative potentates in Hollywood, including Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman, Barbra Streisand, Sidney Poitier, Steve McQueen and Steven Spielberg, who have tried to follow the
original Chaplin-Fairbanks-Pickford blueprint by overseeing their own mini-studios. All of them experienced mixed
results as they ran up against the brutal economics of a hit-and-miss industry in which independents often lack the size
needed to overcome the financial vagaries of filmmaking.
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Mission Improbable: Tom Cruise As Mogul The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday Correction Appended
Though the relationship between studios and stars has grown ever more tangled in modern Hollywood, one thing
has stayed the same: what many stars most covet -- along with fame and fortune -- is creative autonomy from their corporate overlords. For actors like Brad Pitt, Reese Witherspoon, Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio, that has meant
deals as independent producers that give them a stronger hand in developing their pet projects and bestow production
fees and credits on them.
Until last year, the gold standard of such deals was an arrangement between Cruise/Wagner Productions and Paramount, the studio where Mr. Cruise, 44, had starred in many of his biggest pictures. But that relationship vaporized in a
mushroom cloud last August, after what many critics called Mr. Cruise's erratic behavior during his promotional tour
for the spy thriller ''Mission: Impossible III.''
Sumner M. Redstone, the chairman of Viacom, Paramount's owner, contended that he had fired Mr. Cruise for
''inappropriate'' behavior that had hurt his studio's bottom line. Mr. Cruise's defenders accused Mr. Redstone of grandstanding and said that, actually, both sides had already been planning to part amicably.
Regardless, the media firestorm and scrutiny of Mr. Cruise's career and conduct only intensified when, two
months later, Mr. Cruise and Ms. Wagner landed at United Artists, which through different owners has hewed in varying degrees to its founding ideals of artistic hegemony.
The producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who worked with Mr. Cruise early in his career on the film ''Top Gun,'' said that
the news of the move ''kind of shocked Hollywood.''
Mr. Bruckheimer added: ''You have a star and his producing partner actually running a studio. That hasn't happened in I don't know how many years.''
BEFORE it became part of MGM in 1981, United Artists spawned the ''James Bond,'' ''Pink Panther'' and ''Rocky''
franchises and, during one prolific run in the 1970s, won three consecutive best-picture Oscars for ''One Flew Over the
Cuckoo's Nest,'' ''Rocky'' and ''Annie Hall.''
A promotional reel that Mr. Sloan shows investors in MGM's penthouse screening room makes plain that many of
the best-known titles in the current MGM film library -- from ''The Apartment'' to ''West Side Story'' -- were United
Artists releases.
The lore is not lost on Mr. Cruise. At a recent party, Peter Bart, the editor in chief of Variety, greeted Mr. Cruise
and mentioned that for a two-year period in the 1980s he, too, had been a senior executive at United Artists. ''I know,''
Mr. Cruise replied instantly, and proceeded to list all the movies made under Mr. Bart's tenure, Mr. Bart recalled in an
interview.
Discussing their fledgling plans to revive one of the more storied names in filmdom -- and considering the maelstrom in which the whole idea was hatched -- United Artists' new chieftains acknowledge in interviews that they have
stitched together their business plan on the fly because, they say, they are in a hurry and have a lot to prove.
As a result, UA in its new incarnation is a basket of contradictions and question marks: it's a filmmaking enterprise ultimately owned by a studio, MGM, that had only recently vowed to get out of that line of work to focus on the
less risky and more predictable -- albeit far less sexy -- business of marketing and distribution. Moreover, it's a small
studio co-managed by one of the world's ultimate ''big movie'' movie stars.
''UA is in the shadows here,'' Ms. Wagner insists. At the new studio, she adds, ''It's the film that's the star.''
Everyone involved cautions that it is still early and that the studio's course is not fully set; its first production, a
political thriller called ''Lambs for Lions,'' directed by Robert Redford and starring Mr. Redford, Mr. Cruise and Meryl
Streep, is being shot now and is scheduled for a November release. If all goes as planned, United Artists will announce
as soon as this week a debt financing of $400 million to $500 million to finance its first slate of pictures, backing that
includes $100 million from MGM itself.
Beyond saying that the plan is to live up to the United Artists legacy of making talent feel like partners rather than
employees, and a goal of releasing four to six films a year distributed by MGM, Ms. Wagner says that little else is set in
stone.
''There are no absolutes,'' she says over brunch at the Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel. ''Under no circumstances am I making any proclamations or declarations -- we're new; we're 100 days here.''
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Mission Improbable: Tom Cruise As Mogul The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday Correction Appended
Ms. Wagner carries herself with the poise of someone who once worked as a theater actress and a talent agent before becoming Mr. Cruise's collaborator and the public face of his entrepreneurial and filmmaking ambitions. Mr.
Cruise declined to be interviewed for this article, because, Ms. Wagner says, he prefers that she speak publicly about
their mutual business interests.
As far as those first 100 days go, Ms. Wagner says their new company is on track: it is hiring new employees, has
''Lambs for Lions'' under way, has just optioned a hot book, ''The Birthday Party'' by Stanley N. Alpert, and is taking
meetings and pitches all over town. The plan is to make films of varying budgets and genres. But anything that is projected to cost more than about $60 million needs a green light from MGM.
Mr. Cruise is not obligated to appear in any UA films, though the incentive of owning a large chunk of the print,
as well as the bragging rights and perquisites that entails, is meant to be a strong motivator for him to ply his ''day job -or night job,'' as Ms. Wagner puts it, at UA.
In the case of ''Lions for Lambs,'' MGM is providing the film's $35 million budget. Mr. Cruise, Mr. Redford and
Ms. Streep have all deferred their usual upfront fees or percentages of gross revenue in exchange for cumulatively splitting half of the film's profit with UA.
Ms. Wagner would not discuss the numbers, joking that she ''never discusses her budgets or her age.'' But she said
that the structure was typical of how she envisions UA: as a trusted partner rather than as a big studio with arcane accounting that prompts agents to insist that their most bankable clients are paid up front.
Of course, Ms. Wagner is now something of an expert in the perks and pitfalls of life at a big studio. All she needs
to do is flash back to last fall, to the Cruise/Wagner Productions offices on the Paramount lot. Cruise/Wagner was initially fueled by the adrenalin of Mr. Cruise's star power in the early 1990s, when he anchored hits like ''A Few Good
Men,'' ''The Firm'' and ''Days of Thunder.''
Over nearly 15 years, Cruise/Wagner produced 13 films, aided in the latter years by a plush overhead deal from
Paramount in which Paramount provided office space and underwrote their projects in exchange for a first crack at
bringing them to the screen. The result of that collaboration was films approaching a gross of $3 billion at the box office, with Cruise/Wagner having particular success in shepherding the lucrative ''Mission: Impossible'' franchise to the
big screen for Paramount.
But last year Viacom was in transition, and the studio's new overseers, the Paramount chief executive, Brad Grey
and the Viacom chief, Tom Freston -- like other Hollywood chieftains -- believed that they were spending too much
money on too many co-producers. Where Cruise/Wagner was concerned, they reasoned that the studio could just as
easily work out a deal with Mr. Cruise to shoot another ''Mission: Impossible'' installment by hiring him and Ms. Wagner as producers, without subsidizing their company.
What's more, Cruise/Wagner's track record was strong with films starring Mr. Cruise, but those that did not feature the actor -- pictures like ''The Others,'' ''Elizabethtown,'' ''Shattered Glass'' and ''Narc'' -- had ''mixed'' commercial
success, according to an executive with knowledge of the discussions.
''Any producer who makes more than one or two films in their lifetime -- with the exception perhaps of Tom
Cruise -- has a 'mixed' thing,'' Ms. Wagner says when asked if that was a fair assessment of her partnership with Mr.
Cruise. Viacom declined to comment.
As the mood in Hollywood changed and Paramount offered a greatly reduced production deal, Ms. Wagner says
that she and Mr. Cruise decided that it was time for a change. Following the lead of other successful producers like Ivan
Reitman and Joel Silver, they wanted to tap into the new Wall Street and hedge fund money flowing into Hollywood.
Under these new business arrangements, big-name producers can control nearly every aspect of filmmaking -even the most exalted perk, the ability to greenlight a picture. Big studios remain crucial to a film's success under this
new model, but largely as marketers and distributors.
ONE Wednesday morning last August, Mr. Redstone, in an interview that appeared on the front page of The Wall
Street Journal, announced that he had fired Mr. Cruise.
Mr. Cruise's antics, Mr. Redstone contended, had cost him money.
Indeed, while ''Mission: Impossible III'' grossed close to $134 million at the box office domestically, it fell $81
million shy of the previous installment. And the roughly $70 million that Mr. Cruise took home as his share of the film's
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Mission Improbable: Tom Cruise As Mogul The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday Correction Appended
worldwide receipts meant that he probably earned more than Paramount did on the picture, said an executive with direct
knowledge of the film's financial results. Ms. Wagner and Viacom would not confirm that calculation.
Mr. Redstone's comments came in the wake of Mr. Cruise's statements about his faith in Scientology, his public
declarations of love for his girlfriend -- and now wife -- Katie Holmes, and his crusade against prescription antidepressants. Ms. Wagner bristles when she recalls the episode. ''Tom Cruise, in 10 months, for Paramount Pictures, generated
just under $1 billion,'' she says, referring to the box office take of his last two films, ''Mission: Impossible III'' and ''War
of the Worlds.''
Mr. Cruise's so-called firing was extraordinary in Hollywood -- and nothing personal, Mr. Redstone has said in
subsequent interviews. Mr. Cruise's camp says that his contract had merely expired and that he was already planning to
move on. That issue aside, the incident raised a salient question in filmdom: had the pay for talent grown out of kilter
with the financial realities of the marketplace?
In the uncertain days that followed, Cruise/Wagner announced a deal to develop films for a company backed by
Daniel Snyder, the investor who owns the Washington Redskins, but it was hardly the big move that showed the world
that they were unfazed. Friends of Mr. Cruise, meanwhile, advised him to focus less on his production business and
more on picking smart follow-ups to ''Mission: Impossible III'' so he could put the bad publicity behind him.
FOR Harry Sloan, meanwhile, the raging headlines about Mr. Cruise gave him a flash of inspiration. After taking
charge of MGM in 2005 at the behest of its main investors, Providence Equity Partners and Thomas H. Lee Partners,
Mr. Sloan set out to revive the company, which also counts Sony and Comcast as investors. The private equity firms
had initially backed the Sony Corporation's $5 billion takeover of MGM from the investor Kirk Kerkorian in 2004, with
the strategy that MGM would be largely shuttered and its 4,000-film library fed through the distribution pipeline of
Sony Pictures.
But the investors, unhappy with MGM's performance under the Sony strategy, changed course after a year and installed Mr. Sloan, an MGM director, as the studio's chief executive. Mr. Sloan, an entertainment lawyer turned entrepreneur, founded SBS Broadcasting in Europe in the early 1990s and sold it three years ago for $2.6 billion. The venture made him a tidy fortune, an undisclosed portion of which he has reinvested in MGM.
In addition to moving the distribution of MGM's home video business to 20th Century Fox, Mr. Sloan wanted to
shore up MGM's own television channels around the world by cutting deals with various small and independent producers. Mr. Sloan, who once served as chairman of Lion's Gate Entertainment, also wanted to revive MGM's movie-making
capabilities, but without the expense of layers of creative executives and producers.
In an interview, Mr. Sloan estimated that big studios spent as much as $100 million apiece annually on films that
are never released, and he called Hollywood's film development deals ''an enormous welfare project'' for writers, agents
and producers.
Mr. Sloan considered selling the UA brand name because it was doing nothing more for MGM than gathering dust
in a closet. But when he saw Mr. Cruise's broad smile flashed across the evening news during the Paramount dust-up, he
decided to give him and Ms. Wagner the UA shingle to hang.
''You can't lose,'' Mr. Sloan says of the deal with Mr. Cruise and Ms. Wagner. ''There are plenty of things I'm doing that have plenty of risk and downside. This is not one of them.''
So while the news media buzzed with speculation about whether Mr. Cruise's career would be dented or even destroyed, Harry Sloan placed calls to Mr. Fields, the lawyer. He also phoned Mr. Cruise's longtime representatives at
Creative Artists Agency, whose co-chairman, Rick Nicita, is Ms. Wagner's husband. (Ms. Wagner herself had been Mr.
Cruise's agent at the firm before becoming his production partner.)
Knowing that Mr. Cruise and Ms. Wagner would need to exit the Paramount lot in a hurry, Mr. Sloan offered
them office space on the 11th floor of the MGM tower. Over the next two months, the three conducted a series of private meetings at Mr. Sloan's office and home that involved contingents of lawyers and agents.
What emerged was what Ms. Wagner describes as a hybrid between a studio and a production company. Rather
than the overhead deal they had at Paramount, Mr. Sloan proposed establishing an autonomous studio within a larger
studio -- a structure akin to the relationship that Mr. Spielberg's studio, DreamWorks, now has with Paramount, but with
real ownership attached.
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Mission Improbable: Tom Cruise As Mogul The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday Correction Appended
''We all answer to somebody about something,'' Ms. Wagner says. ''It's really the number of people you answer to.
In this structure, Tom and I really answer to ourselves.''
According to people involved in the talks, the question of whether Mr. Cruise, whom Mr. Sloan did not know previously, was past his prime or a loose cannon came up, particularly among MGM's private equity investors.
But Mr. Sloan concluded that Mr. Cruise was still a bankable star and filmmaker. Kelvin L. Davis, a partner at
Texas Pacific who serves on MGM's executive committee, said he came away from his initial meeting with Mr. Cruise
impressed by his business acumen and his curiosity about the financial goals of his prospective backers.
''One of the things Tom said to me that impressed me early on,'' Mr. Davis said, ''was that he thought his artistic
performance, his acting abilities, were best displayed when he felt a real sense of partnership with those who he was
doing business with.''
After weeks of preliminary negotiations, Mr. Cruise met with Mr. Sloan in his office for the first time last October. During a meeting that lasted four hours, Mr. Cruise did not jump off the bronze sofa he was sitting on. Rather, he
listened intently as Mr. Sloan proposed giving UA some of MGM's franchise films to produce and suggested that its
first project be the next ''Terminator.''
Mr. Sloan recalls that Mr. Cruise responded, ''Let's not do something derivative'' for a first film. ''Let's do something original.''
Since then, a partnership has been struck and Mr. Sloan has been to Mr. Cruise's gala wedding in Italy. Mr. Sloan
says he is convinced that Mr. Cruise has both the movie-making ability and the work ethic to make a success of UA.
''He is driven, professional and a total perfectionist,'' Mr. Sloan says. ''I thought he was me in a lot of ways.''
Mr. Sloan calls his venture with Mr. Cruise an ''interesting experiment'' that he might extend to other dormant
MGM brands like Orion Pictures. He also says that other artists could unite with Mr. Cruise and Ms. Wagner as equity
owners of UA.
ONE of the lingering questions about UA is how well Ms. Wagner will fare in putting out four to six films a year,
when she and Mr. Cruise previously averaged just one movie a year as producers aligned with Paramount. It is also unclear how Mr. Cruise will manage his loyalties and time among the many professional roles he juggles both inside and
outside of UA. Last month, for instance, the Hollywood trades reported that he plans to make a comedy with Ben Stiller
as the co-star at 20th Century Fox.
Mr. Cruise isn't saying. But the answer to questions about his commitment may lie in another meeting he and Ms.
Wagner held in Mr. Sloan's office just a few days before the deal was announced last November.
The centerpiece of the meeting was a four-hour pow-wow with Jonathan M. Nelson, the chief executive of Providence Equity, whose 29 percent stake in MGM makes it the studio's single largest shareholder. According to two people
who would not agree to be named because it was a private meeting, Mr. Nelson was there to scope out Mr. Cruise's intentions for UA before signing off on the deal.
At the meeting, Mr. Nelson declined an invitation to read the script for ''Lions for Lambs,'' these people said. But
he was reassured by other things he saw. Like Mr. Sloan, Mr. Nelson was impressed by Mr. Cruise's sense of purpose
and the fact that the star had never responded publicly to Mr. Redstone's lambasting. Instead, it became clear that Mr.
Cruise had chosen a different way to fire back at the Viacom chairman: he was determined to let his results be his revenge.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: MOVIE & VIDEO INDUSTRIES (90%); HOLDING COMPANIES (78%); MOVIE INDUSTRY (77%);
CELEBRITIES (77%); LAWYERS (75%); MOVIE & VIDEO PRODUCTION (75%); WAGES & SALARIES (71%);
PRIVATE EQUITY (64%); FILM (90%); ACTORS & ACTRESSES (75%) Motion Pictures; Company and Organization Profiles; Motion Pictures
COMPANY: METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER INC (96%); METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER CINEMAS LTD (91%);
METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER PICTURES INC (91%); METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER DISTRIBUTION CO (91%)
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Mission Improbable: Tom Cruise As Mogul The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday Correction Appended
ORGANIZATION: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc; United Artists
INDUSTRY: NAICS512110 MOTION PICTURE AND VIDEO PRODUCTION (93%); SIC7812 MOTION PICTURE & VIDEO TAPE PRODUCTION (96%); NAICS512110 MOTION PICTURE & VIDEO PRODUCTION (96%)
PERSON: TOM CRUISE (99%); STEVEN SPIELBERG (50%) Tom Cruise; Paula Wagner; Richard Siklos
GEOGRAPHIC: LOS ANGELES, CA, USA (79%) CALIFORNIA, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (79%)
LOAD-DATE: March 4, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
CORRECTION-DATE: March 11, 2007
CORRECTION: An article last Sunday about United Artists misidentified one of the investors in its parent company,
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It is the Texas Pacific Group, not Thomas H. Lee Partners. The article also referred incorrectly
to the title of UA's first film under its new managers in two references. It will be ''Lions for Lambs,'' not ''Lambs for
Lions.''
GRAPHIC: Photos: Tom Cruise and his business partner, Paula Wagner, now run United Artists. (Photo by Lester Cohen/WireImage.com)(pg. 1)
From left, the Hollywood legends D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin (seated) and Douglas Fairbanks Sr.
signing the original contract, below, that created the United Artists studio in 1919. (Photo by United Artists)
As Sumner Redstone, left, had his public dust-up with Tom Cruise, the chief of MGM, Harry Sloan, right, made new
plans for United Artists. (Photo by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer via The Associated Press)
(Photo by Danny Moloshok/Associated Press)(pg. 8)
Tom Cruise's last two films for Paramount Pictures, ''Mission: Impossible III,'' top, and ''War of the Worlds.'' (Photo by
Stephen Vaughan/Paramount Pictures)
(Photo by Andrew Cooper/Paramount Pictures)(pg. 9)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1066 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 4, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Tragic Mountain
BYLINE: By LOUISE JARVIS FLYNN.
Louise Jarvis Flynn has written about adventure and sports for Women's Sports & Fitness and other magazines.
SECTION: Section 7; Column 1; Book Review Desk; Pg. 23
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Tragic Mountain The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
LENGTH: 811 words
THE WHITE CASCADE
The Great Northern Railway Disaster
and America's Deadliest Avalanche.
By Gary Krist.
Illustrated. 315 pp.
Henry Holt & Company. $26.
Natural disasters follow a script in America, a maddening, though some might argue reassuring, drama that taps into our puritanical righteousness, our legacy of entitlement and our compulsion to right wrongs with regulatory legislation. Whether a hurricane is to blame or a blizzard, as in ''The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and
America's Deadliest Avalanche,'' by Gary Krist, our outrage in retrospect seems matched only by our lack of foresight at
the time. Set in 1910 on elegant Pullmans and drab boxcars held hostage by snow in the Cascade mountains, Krist's
account of an avalanche -- which struck early on the morning of March 1 and killed 96 men, women and children -resonates because the particulars of such national tragedies have not, in fact, changed much.
The Great Northern Railway's Cascade line, completed in 1893, was considered a marvel. The switchbacks and
tunnels that cut through the snowiest region in the lower 48 were the handiwork of John F. Stevens, who would later
become chief engineer of the Panama Canal. For the first time, Seattle, Spokane and Everett were efficiently connected
to the rest of the country, allowing mail and other goods to travel from St. Paul to Seattle in just under 48 hours.
Watching over this line was James O'Neill, a 37-year-old golden boy whose career on the rails started at age 13.
He became a favorite of the Great Northern's owner, James J. Hill, a tycoon who once said, ''Give me enough Swedes
and whiskey and I'll build a railroad to hell.''
O'Neill had been superintendent of the division for three years when, at the end of February 1910, an enormous
snowstorm socked in the mountains, and he was forced to shut down the line until the weather improved. Six trains
were on the tracks, but O'Neill's main concern quickly became the two already deep in the Cascades, the time-sensitive
Fast Mail train and the stately Seattle Express. Weather, Krist notes, was not the only villain here. As the hours and days
passed, telegraph lines snapped and coal supplies dwindled. There were honest miscalculations, good intentions gone
awry and corporate hubris aplenty, giving the story complexity and relevance.
Krist was fortunate with the cast of characters aboard these trains -- stogie-smoking gents, an imperious dowager,
a young and fashionable hair-care entrepreneur, an intrepid female journalist, a handful of adorable children -- but he
doesn't use them to full effect. He's a novelist and short-story writer, but in this, his first nonfiction book, he restrains his
imaginative powers somewhat. He is hesitant to recreate scenes even when the story's lagging pace begs for a bit of embellishment, and even though his source material -- diaries, passengers' letters and transcripts from the coroner's official
report -- would seem to support some license. Krist rarely budges from his admirable detachment, and, as a result, portions of the narrative drag.
Wisely, though, Krist puts O'Neill at the center of the story: a man of swift and earnest action and company loyalty. Still, this is a case of disaster compounded by bad choices, and one that brought to light hidden agendas among the
powerful, as well as the diffuse anxieties and suspicions Americans felt toward the industry titans of their time. Class
warfare and bigotry emerged in the avalanche's wake. Newspapers stoked gruesome rumors, one involved starving crew
members killing and eating a cat. Years later, events were rehashed in lawsuits.
But for all the emotional familiarity of the tragedy and its aftermath, the victims are anachronisms. They are evidence that Americans have devolved in terms of civility, stoicism and patience. Most were too polite, too adaptable to
make too much fuss. Though, one group did gather signatures for a petition requesting a meeting with O'Neill, who was
too busy dickering with snowplows to oblige. And some passengers managed to hike down off the mountain before the
avalanche struck.
O'Neill tried to shoulder the burden himself, but his commendable work ethic prevented him from evacuating the
trains. Everyone on the mountain that week had a faith in man and machine so complete that they were willing to endure days in claustrophobic quarters among toddlers and the infirm and drinking polluted snow water.
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Tragic Mountain The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
Paradoxically, it is precisely our modern propensity for impatience and aggression, our tendency to freak out and
then blame others, that could have saved these well-behaved men, women and children. Aren't we too rude and cynical
to stand for such shenanigans from Amtrak? Certainly the hundreds who died waiting bravely for assistance in New
Orleans could belie that point. Or prove it, perhaps.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: MOUNTAINS (90%); RAIL TRANSPORTATION ACCIDENTS (90%); NATURAL DISASTERS
(90%); BOOK REVIEWS (90%); WRITERS & WRITING (89%); NOVELS & SHORT STORIES (83%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (78%); AVALANCHES (74%); RAILROAD CONSTRUCTION (73%); NON FICTION LITERATURE (72%); HOSTAGE TAKING (69%); JOURNALISM (63%); LITERATURE (61%) Books and Literature; Reviews
COMPANY: HENRY HOLT & CO PUBLISHING (58%)
PERSON: Louise Jarvis Flynn; Gary Krist
GEOGRAPHIC: SEATTLE, WA, USA (92%) WASHINGTON, USA (94%) UNITED STATES (94%); PANAMA
(79%)
LOAD-DATE: March 4, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: After the avalanche, salvage efforts lasted for months. (Photo by Jerry Quinn Collection, from ''The
White Cascade'')
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Review
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1067 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 4, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Super Agents, Super Teams
BYLINE: By GERRI HIRSHEY
SECTION: Section 14NJ; Column 2; New Jersey Weekly Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 2334 words
THE young couple are seated together awaiting another real estate agent's appraisal in what is called the ''English
pub room'' of their 1730 antique home in Westport, Conn. Theirs is the kind of property that ads typically limn as ''his-
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Super Agents, Super Teams The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
toric charmer with state-of-the-art amenities.'' This means the imposing stone hearth is hung with a tasteful dark plasma
screen instead of a fox-hunting print.
The couple took two years to renovate, expand and hone the place to Architectural Digest perfection while they
lived elsewhere. The home's craftsmanship and detail are exquisite, from the outdoor fireplace to the fully wired and
Wi-Fied his-and-hers offices much desired by Fairfield County's Blackberry-dependent financial services cadres.
''Those offices are absolutely going to sell this house,'' says Michelle Genovesi, a Westport broker with a 100gigabyte memory for detail, detail, detail, and a sales presentation that corners and shifts as smoothly as the BMW she
drove up in. ''Commuters are willing to spend more for things like this if it means they can work at home one or two
days a week.''
Ms. Genovesi, a former Wilhelmina model, is the founder and top producer of her Westport-area firm, Michelle &
Company. Despite the housing market slowdown, her three-agent team did $70 million in sales volume in 2006.
Teams are a trend in the region's residential real estate market. Sharing resources, from office workers to Webmasters, has become practical as agents struggle to keep up with local and Internet listings. According to the National
Association of Realtors, Web listings are now consulted by 80 percent of Americans looking to buy homes.
Successful teams like Ms. Genovesi's are actively courted by big national agencies, which are only too happy to
encourage their local, personalized approach. Ms. Genovesi says she has had many corporate suitors but has opted to
stay with a parent company, William Raveis Real Estate and Home Services, because its founder and chief executive,
William Raveis, ''allows you to unleash your personality in the business.''
''He's not fearful of you growing and branding yourself,'' she says.
Mr. Raveis said: ''Michelle is a mega-agent. We're in negotiations for her to double that sales volume, expand her
territory and her team.''
To that end, Ms. Genovesi is shopping for her own office building, where she will add to her current team-- two
''buyer specialist'' agents and a six-person staff that provides administrative, Web, mortgage and marketing support.
''Most people in our industry are reactive to the market,'' Mr. Raveis said. ''She's very proactive. She branded herself and created this team approach before anyone else out here thought of it. Now there are lots of Michelle wannabes.''
Among the more visible branded teams in the region are Mike Luchen's in Westchester County, N.Y., whose ads
promise, ''Team Mike Luchen Realtors speak English, Italian, Spanish, Polish and German.'' There are married teams
and sister acts, like the Twin Team in Westchester, identical sisters whose Web site trumpets ''A Shared Synergy.''
In Essex County, the Baldwin Dream Team, a ReMax quartet of former freelance writers and administrators, will
be one of three teams featured on a new reality series, ''Bought and Sold,'' on HGTV in late April. Roberta Baldwin,
lead agent of the team, which did $40 million in sales in 2006, explained why she set up her own shop within the ReMax penumbra: ''I wanted to be more entrepreneurial, and I found people to help me grow my business that I can absolutely trust to have our interests at heart. It's pretty cutthroat in real estate, either on your own or in a big company.
Clients also like the idea that they'll be taken care of even when I'm busy elsewhere.''
Mr. Raveis, whose business has 55 offices in Connecticut and Massachusetts with 1,700 agents and claims $5 billion in annual sales, has big producers besides Ms. Genovesi. Most notable is Jean Ruggiero, who, embedded in Greenwich, Conn. -- a hedge-fund capital -- can bring in $110 million in yearly volume by selling executive castles.
The rich do shop differently, Mr. Raveis said, and he especially values Ms. Genovesi for her ability to reel in and
placate corporate titans and their families -- and their decorators. ''To deal with the high-end seller and high-end demands and be sane well, she's amazing,'' he said.
Selling white-glove service requires a statelier pace, and no visible pressure. Ms. Genovesi's presentation to the
couple with the Westport property takes more than an hour and includes a customized, meticulously researched portfolio on their home and others in the area, prepared by her staff. She is the third agent the couple have interviewed.
As the spring real estate market gets off to a brisk start -- Ms. Genovesi says you can peg it, reliable as the first
robin, to the first weekend after the Super Bowl -- they want to be ready.
The last agent the couple interviewed left a brochure and dashed off after a few words about installing a lockbox.
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''Under no circumstances do we do a lockbox here,'' Ms. Genovesi says. ''You do not walk in and out of an exceptional property at will.'' She will show the home herself, and only to those prequalified with a discreet questionnaire and
mortgage preapproval.
''If buyers decide after a tour it's not right, I'll introduce them to my buyer team members, who will share with
them whatever else is in the market,'' Ms. Genovesi says. ''That's where I pass the baton. My focus is on selling my
properties.''
She says she will sell the home three times: to other agents, to a buyer and to the bank appraiser. She will invite
other agents in for a look and a catered lunch, but there will be no open house. ''Too many people just want to check out
the granite counters and get some ideas,'' she says.
Calling Ms. Genovesi, the wife says, was ''almost automatic,'' given her reputation and visibility. According to a
competing agent, ''No one would think of listing a high-end property without having Michelle at least do an appraisal.''
For her part, Ms. Genovesi does not want to know the competition. ''I have 23 years' experience here,'' she says,
''and I can say that I own the high-end market.''
As conversation deepens, Ms. Genovesi's pronouns subtly slide from ''your'' to ''our,'' as in ''Our appliances and
renovations are mint.'' Finally, the sensitive part -- the number -- comes up. Ms. Genovesi routinely turns down listings
if the asking prices are unrealistically high. Sometimes sellers come back to her -- and her number -- after other agents
fail to move the house. ''The number is just a suggestion based on my experience and market education,'' she says. It can
be fine-tuned. She tells the couple her number and commission. They nod.
One more big question hangs: Are things moving? ''There's lots of inventory now,'' Ms. Genovesi says, ''but in
some segments, only 50 percent sold last year, in others only 25 percent. Statistically, the high end hasn't taken as big a
hit as the rest of the market -- especially with this year's Wall Street bonuses. We're definitely feeling those bonuses
now. We find that when the market turns, it's the lower and higher ends that still do well. It's the middle market that
suffers the most.''
AS part of her presentation, she explains her career path: ''In the late '80s, no one was really taking any part of the
business and owning it. So Idecided to focus on listing and marketing exceptional properties. To do that I needed to
brand myself. I started to spend money to make money. I put my photograph in my ads. Back then, everyone said,
'What's with the picture?' But people remembered. I started getting calls.''
Ms. Genovesi does business in expensive but understated clothes and in two BMWs: a 5 Series S.U.V. for ferrying
clients, and a sportier 3 Series convertible she just bought as a 50th birthday present to herself. She had considered indulging in a Maserati but rejected it as ''too pretentious.''
Nothing, not even a well-earned midlife toy, should interfere with the image she has honed carefully, some might
say obsessively, since she arrived in Connecticut as a fiancee looking for a house and got her real estate license ''on a
whim.'' After two long engagements, she is ''single and fine with it.''
As the eldest of five children born into an Air Force family, ''I'm a habitual caregiver,'' she says. A mobile childhood, much of it in Europe -- five moves during the last two years of high school -- made her an extrovert of necessity.
Her brief modeling career was fun, chiefly for the travel, but she found fashion confining.
By taking the long view in her next endeavor, she says, she has carved herself a posh, Scalamandre-upholstered
niche here on Connecticut's Gold Coast. ''Exceptional properties'' translates to $2 million to $15 million. Most of Ms.
Genovesi's listings have names, like Pier Way, Lord's Manor and the Hermitage. They will appear on premiere Web
sites with detailed virtual tours. Qualified buyers will get custom portfolios including a CD-ROM virtual tour of the
property, its photo imprinted on the disc.
Some homes, like Judith Paixao's riverside compound, a property once owned by the prima ballerina Tanaquil Le
Clercq, have exceptional provenance. Ms. Le Clercq and her husband, the choreographer George Balanchine, also
owned a summer residence across the road. ''It's a singular property that needs the right buyer,'' Ms. Paixao said. ''I
needed someone who could think way outside the box, and that was Michelle. She gets it. She arranged to have two
Chico's holiday catalogs photographed there -- and showed the place right in the middle of the shoot.''
MS. GENOVESI has other ideas for the 1730 antique property. ''Weather permitting, I can have an aerial photographer here by the weekend,'' she tells the couple. From the air, the manicured grounds will show to estate-like ad-
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Super Agents, Super Teams The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
vantage. ''People are starting to look now,'' she tells the owners. ''Our biggest binding month, when offers are written, is
March.'' The couple have one more agent to see; they promise a prompt decision and see her out warmly.
''I'm sure I've got it,'' Ms. Genovesi says as she heads to her car.
Even perfect properties require an alternative mind-set. On another day, Ms. Genovesi demonstrates her houseshowing technique at a modernist masterwork in Saugatuck Shores -- waterfront, private dock, $8.8 million. This is not
a home to perfume with the smell of baking cookies. But the automatic shades will be raised to the view when buyers
stroll in. Cool jazz -- appropriate to the modern art, the custom leather floors in the library -- will provide a chic soundtrack. ''We're not selling a house,'' Ms. Genovesi instructs. ''We're selling a lifestyle.''
This is how she was able to price the home next door to this one at an audacious $9 million -- almost $2 million
over what she said the Westport market was bearing at the time.
''In exceptional properties you have to market outside the town you're in,'' Ms. Genovesi says. She researched waterfront prices all the way to Greenwich and sent e-mail messages to more than 500 potential customers. A Darien agent
saw it and brought her clients, who had been looking at waterfront in Greenwich, where the prices are higher. They
bought it for the asking price.
Thus, in so many ways, Ms. Genovesi is not what Mr. Raveis calls a ''maintenance'' Realtor -- that diligent professional who tucks so many suburban families into center-hall colonials. Nor does she fit the voracious, blonde-in-a-goldLexus cliche of the go-go '90s. At the weekly team meeting at Michelle & Company, six women come and go, talking
of corporate ''relo.'' Mobility is the agent's bread and butter: corporate relocations, divorce, remarriages with blended
families, empty nesters.
Audrey Demetres, one of the two agents who concentrate on buyers, says this is an especially fluid market. ''I
came from a house where my teenage wallpaper is still on the wall,'' Ms. Demetres says. ''But I don't think I've ever sold
anyone a house that was thinking in terms of a lifetime home. They'll either upsize, downsize. They never think of staying in that 30-year-mortgage house. I have one family that couldn't move up fast enough -- a two-bedroom cottage, then
a colonial, then new construction, all before they were 34.''
Ms. Demetres's counterpart, Suzanne Dodge, left a high-profile career in real estate marketing in Manhattan after
she had her third child, but she wanted ''a serious career'' in the suburbs. The high-tech embrace of Ms. Genovesi's team
was perfect. ''Internet was just cranking up,'' Ms. Dodge says. ''That was a huge expense to take on as a sole agent. I was
advertising, trying to get listings, staying up all night answering e-mails, writing ads.''
Signing on with Ms. Genovesi after a stint at another agency, ''I was just dazzled,'' Ms. Dodge says. ''Everything is
smooth. I never do paperwork after I sell a house. They handle everything. And I can go out and sell another house.''
A few days after Ms. Genovesi's presentation to the couple with the 1730 home, she is sitting in a Westport Starbucks. Above the cellphone cacophony of other recaffeinating brokers, she confides, ''I got the listing.'' The aerial shots
are done, the number is firmed up, the virtual tour is being shot. She is talking about the office buildings along the Post
Road that she has been looking at for her expansion when a lawyer, Joseph C. Maya, strides over and says hello. She is
friendly, but quizzical until he explains that she found him a house in 2001 when he wanted to move his family to a quieter, safer street.
Ms. Genovesi had forgotten Mr. Maya's first name, but she could summon the precise transaction details.
He is pumping her hand. ''Since then I've sent over 20 people to you,'' he says. ''I'll probably send 20 more.''
She thanks him with a big grin. ''Bring 'em on,'' she says.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: REAL ESTATE (91%); HOUSING MARKET (89%); RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY (89%); REAL ESTATE AGENTS (89%); SALES FIGURES (87%); SALES & SELLING (73%); TRENDS (72%); BUILDING RENOVATION (72%); MARKET INCIDENCE (72%); HOME BASED EMPLOYMENT (71%); HOLDING COMPANIES (70%); BANKING & FINANCE (68%); BRANDING (64%); CITIES (74%); BALLET (74%) Housing; Brokers
and Brokerage Firms
ORGANIZATION: Michelle & Co
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Super Agents, Super Teams The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (51%) Gerri Hirshey; Michelle Genovesi
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (79%) CONNECTICUT, USA (92%); NEW JERSEY, USA (79%); NEW
YORK, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (92%) New York City Metropolitan Area; Connecticut
LOAD-DATE: March 4, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: BEYOND LOCATION -- While giving a sales tour of Balanchine to Will Aufderheide, a potential
buyer, Michelle Genovesi showed off the home's spiral staircase (inside the silo in the photograph at right). ''Exceptional properties'' with listing prices of $2 million to $15 million are Ms. Genovesi's specialty, and most, like Balanchine,
have names. Ms. Genovesi's team, Michelle & Company, includes her two buyer agents, flanking her at right: Suzanne
Dodge, left, and Audrey Demetres. (Photographs by Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times)
(Photo by Douglas Healey for The New York Times)(pg. 10)
RURAL CHARM -- Michelle Genovesi, one of Connecticut's top real estate sales agents, at the entrance to Balanchine,
a barn home and estate in Wilton that is on the market for $3,650,000. The property once belonged to the prima ballerina Tanaquil Le Clercq, who had a home nearby with her husband, the choreographer George Balanchine. (Photo by
Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times)(pg. 1)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1068 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 4, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
HOW TO GROW A SUPER ATHLETE
BYLINE: By DANIEL COYLE.
Daniel Coyle wrote about the endurance cyclist Jure Robic in the February 2006 issue of Play.
SECTION: Section 6; Column 1; Sports Desk; Pg. 36
LENGTH: 7501 words
This story could begin in many places -- it's about beginnings, after all -- but I'd like to start with the recent evening
when my 4-year-old daughter, Zoe, appeared before me wielding a yellow baseball bat and an important announcement:
batting tees were for babies. From now on, she would hit real pitches, like the big kids.
By way of biography, I should mention that Zoe, the youngest of four, is considered one of the finest all-around
mini-athletes in the history of our house. She's widely celebrated for her ability to throw balls really far, to hop on one
foot across the whole front porch, and to run faster than a superfast airplane can fly. So as I walked (and she raced)
down to the basement and located an inflatable purple ball, I fully expected Zoe to take to hitting like she'd taken to
everything else.
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HOW TO GROW A SUPER ATHLETE The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
But Zoe, it turned out, pretty much stunk.
Toss after toss, she missed. Five tosses. Then 10. I tried throwing the ball softer, harder, lower, higher. I got a different bat, offered advice and abundant encouragement, tried covertly to pitch the ball so it hit the bat. Nothing worked.
Zoe whiffed with virtuosity and enthusiasm. Against my nobler instincts, I found myself, like the purple ball, getting a
bit deflated. I felt as if I were receiving a grimly polite report suggesting that Zoe, despite her athletic promise, had regrettably tested negative for hand-eye coordination.
A few days later, we did it again. This time Zoe started off missing, then hit a foul ball. Then two fair balls in a
row. Then three. She was watching the ball now, timing it. As the saying goes, something had clicked. Zoe hit the last
toss squarely, and the purple ball zipped past my ear and smacked the window with a resounding gong. We froze at the
unexpected sound, enjoying the moment and the question echoing beneath.
What, exactly, just happened?
What is talent? It's a big question, and one way to approach it is to look at the places where talent seems to be located -- in other words, to sketch a map. In this case, the map would show the birthplaces of the 50 top men and women
in a handful of professional sports, each sport marked by its own color. (Tennis and golf handily rank performance; for
team sports, salaries will do.) The resulting image -- what could be called a talent map -- emerges looking like abstract
art: vast empty regions interspersed with well-defined bursts of intense color, sort of like a Matisse painting.
Canada, for instance, is predictably cluttered with hockey players, but significant concentrations also pop up in
Sweden, Russia and the Czech Republic. The United States accounts for many of the top players in women's golf, but
South Korea has just as many. Baseball stars are generously sprinkled across the southern United States but the postagestamp-size Dominican Republic isn't far behind. In women's tennis, we see a dispersal around Europe and the United
States, then a dazzling, concentrated burst in Moscow.
The pattern keeps repeating: general scatterings accompanied by a number of dense, unexpected crowdings. The
pattern is obviously not random, nor can it be fully explained by gene pools or climate or geopolitics or Nike's global
marketing budget. Rather, the pattern looks like algae starting to grow on an aquarium wall, telltale clumps that show
something is quietly alive, communicating, blooming. It's as though microscopic spores have floated around the atmosphere in the jet stream and taken root in a handful of fertile places.
A quick analysis of this talent map reveals some splashy numbers: for instance, the average woman in South Korea is more than six times as likely to be a professional golfer as an American woman. But the interesting question is,
what underlying dynamic makes these people so spectacularly unaverage in the first place? What force is causing those
from certain far-off places to become, competitively speaking, superior?
In early December, I traveled to the heart of one of those breeding grounds, the Spartak Tennis Club in Moscow.
Russia is the birthplace of a group of athletes who have affected the World Tennis Association rankings in the same
way that zebra mussels have affected the Great Lakes -- which is to say, pretty much clogged them. The invasion happened swiftly: at the end of 2001, Russia had one woman (Elena Dementieva) in the W.T.A. Tour's top 30. By the start
of 2007, Russian women accounted for fully half of the top 10 (Dementieva, Maria Sharapova, Svetlana Kuznetzova,
Nadia Petrova and Dinara Safina) and 12 of the top 50. Not to mention 15-year-old Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, who
was the International Tennis Federation's No. 1-ranked junior and who was joined in the top 500 by five countrywomen
also named Anastasia.
Spartak, usually preceded in the tennis press by the word ''famous'' or ''legendary,'' had produced three of the top
six Russians (Dementieva, Safina and Anastasia Myskina), along with Anna Kournikova, now retired. Tournament pairings regularly became all-Spartak affairs, most memorably the 2004 French Open final, Myskina over Dementieva, the
continuation of a rivalry the two began at age 7. To put Spartak's success in talent-map terms: this club, which has one
indoor court, has achieved eight year-end top-20 women's rankings over the last three years. During that same period,
the entire United States has achieved seven.
''They're like the Russian Army,'' says Nick Bollettieri, the founder of the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in
Bradenton, Fla., and the former coach to Sharapova, Andre Agassi and other top-ranked players. ''They just keep on
coming.''
Getting to Spartak, however, takes more than a talent map; it's not located on any real maps. Fortunately, help arrived in the form of Elena Rybina, a chain-smoking, speed-talking translator who worked part-time for the Russian
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HOW TO GROW A SUPER ATHLETE The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
Tennis Federation and who possessed a fast-alternating combination of film noir toughness and childlike giddiness that
I took as the quintessence of modern Russia.
''I learned my English listening to music, like Elton John,'' she said. '' 'Crocodile Rocks'! I love it!''
We rode the subway half an hour northeast to Sokolniki Park and started walking. And walking. Sokolniki is almost twice the size of Central Park, considerably less central and only vaguely parklike. It's basically a huge forest of
birch and elm trees filled with a disconcertingly energetic population of stray dogs. We walked past an abandoned chess
club, an abandoned amusement park, an abandoned factory and the smashed onion dome of what appeared to be an
abandoned church.
''It is very beautiful in summer,'' Rybina assured me as we passed a pond frosted with green scum. ''But Spartak, I
must warn you, is not so nice.''
''What do you mean?''
Rybina lighted a Davidoff cigarette and raised her eyebrow into a Gothic arch. ''Spartak is not exactly like a palace.''
We turned a corner, followed a road for a few hundred yards and saw a loose assortment of peaked buildings and
shotgun shacks that resembled a dilapidated ski village. Windows were dim cataracts of warped plastic, paint was
scabbed and peeling and the buildings were frescoed in a rich coat of grime. A glaze of ice coated the club's 15 outdoor
clay courts, as it did for six months of the year. A beat-up 18-wheeler lent the scene a postnuclear, ''Mad Max'' vibe. The
only bright color came from the rainbow sheen of diesel fuel in the puddles.
Rybina shrugged indifferently and lighted another Davidoff. We walked past the inexplicably manned guard post,
past an A-frame that appeared to be a storehouse for scrap metal and toward a larger structure that resembled a greenhouse. We ducked through a low door and onto the court. The surface was worn down in frequently trodden spots, like
cathedral steps. Two wooden sticks nudged the sagging net futilely toward regulation height. The fluorescent lights
buzzed. ''We are lucky,'' Rybina whispered. ''The heat is working.'' When it doesn't, the kids play in their coats.1
The class, called the Little Group, had already arrived. They wore heavy coats and toted their tennis rackets in
backpacks, sports duffels and plastic grocery bags. At first glance, they looked like a standard-issue assortment of 5- to
7-year-olds: there was Denis, the handsome blond in the blue turtleneck; Alexandra, the lanky towhead in the green Tshirt; Gunda, the smiley ponytailed girl in the silver shoes; and Vova, the revved-up boy with the Asiatic eyes who was
the class's only 4-year-old. There were 12 students in all. They had been coming to Spartak three times a week since
September; by now they'd been on the court perhaps 40 times. As the lesson began, a few of them made their final preparations, reaching into their bags for what appeared to be their good luck charms: a tidy gallery of stuffed dinosaurs,
bunnies and pandas formed on the wall behind the base line.
The coach, 77-year-old Larisa Preobrazhenskaya (pronounced pray-oh-brah-ZHEN-skya), stood at the sideline,
watching. She wore a red-and-white tracksuit and a knowing, amused expression. Preobrazhenskaya was Spartak's most
renowned youth coach, but she wore her authority lightly, radiating a grandmotherly twinkle behind hooded eyes. She'd
been quite a player in her day, the 1955 Soviet singles champion. She still looked athletic, sauntering around the court
with a John Wayne limp caused by a sore hip. The parents huddled by the door, watchful and silent.
The students formed a circle on one side of the net and started to stretch. I watched, scoping for telltale signs of
uberkinder superiority, but saw nothing of the sort. The Little Group proceeded to hustle energetically through a 15minute set of calisthenics worthy of Jack LaLanne: jumping jacks, hops, crab walking, bear walking, skipping, sidestepping, zigzagging through a line of orange cones. I was half expecting them to pull out medicine balls, when they actually did pull out medicine balls, passing them back and forth earnestly like so many extras in a Rocky movie.
''All the motions,'' Preobrazhenskaya would tell me. ''It is important to do everything, every practice.''
The Little Group paired off with rackets and began imitatsiya -- rallying with an imaginary ball. They bounced
lightly from foot to foot, they turned, they swung, the invisible balls flew. Preobrazhenskaya roamed the court like a
garage mechanic tuning an oversize engine: realigning a piston here, tightening a flywheel there. Several times, she
grasped their small arms and piloted their bodies through the stroke. Thus the lesson began, and with it the unspoken
implication: the great, rusty Spartak machine was coming to life, carrying its cargo of mini-geniuses another step closer
toward inevitable glory.
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HOW TO GROW A SUPER ATHLETE The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
As I pictured the scale of the David and Goliath phenomenon this unlikely scene embodied, the question arose:
how does Spartak do it?
Explanations were not in short supply. I'd heard plenty from American tennis coaches, a nicely bulleted list that
included a Slavic gene pool that produces a seemingly inexhaustible supply of tall, fast, strong kids; the economic and
cultural gateway that opened with the 1991 collapse of the Communist government; the former Russian president Boris
Yeltsin's enthusiastic (if at times klutzy) love for the sport; and the potent catnip effect of Kournikova, the former top 10
player who, though she never won a singles tournament, provided an escape-hungry generation of girls (and, more important, their parents) with vivid proof that tennis success equaled glamour, fortune, fame.
The Russians, when I asked them, chimed in with explanations of their own, including the lifelong commitment of
coaches like Preobrazhenskaya; the superior biomechanical techniques taught at the Moscow Institute of Physical Culture, where many of Russia's top coaches train; and (in a nostalgic burst of cold war trash talking) the intrinsic softness
of the West.
Watching the Little Group play, I, too, felt a strong urge to bellow my share of theories: it must be the medicine
balls! The discipline! The lack of Game Boys! I was particularly struck by the kids' obvious enjoyment of the lesson.
One of the mothers told Preobrazhenskaya that her daughter, Gunda, had awakened early that day, unable to sleep. ''Today is my day with Larisa Dmitrievna!'' Gunda had said. ''It is today!''
In sum, there are a lot of explanations, some better than others. For instance, is the Russian gene pool really that
innately superior to that of Ukraine or Slovenia or Southern California? If Kournikova inspired so many Russians, then
where were the German stars inspired by Steffi Graf? But ultimately the theories fall short because they don't explain
the principles underpinning Spartak's success. Indeed, seeing the place up close made me wonder if there were any principles. Spartak radiates the glow of happenstance, the diamond in the trash heap. (This impression is apparently shared
by the Russian Tennis Federation, which has been content to allow Spartak to remain with its single indoor court.)
So even here, at the core of one of the globe's brightest talent blooms, the question of that talent's source remains
enigmatically tangled, perhaps as much of a mystery to those who nurture these athletes as it is to the rest of us. It's
enough to make you wish for a set of X-ray glasses that could reveal how these invisible forces of culture, history,
genes, practice, coaching and belief work together to form that elemental material we call talent -- to wish that science
could come up with a way to see talent as a substance as tangible as muscle and bone, and whose inner workings we
could someday attempt to understand.
As it turns out, that's exactly what's happening.
I was peering inside an incubator at the Laboratory of Developmental Neurobiology at the National Institutes of
Health in Bethesda, Md. The incubator, about the size of a small refrigerator, held shiny wire racks on which sat several
rows of petri dishes containing clear pink liquid. Inside the liquid were threadlike clumps of mouse neurons, which were
wired to platinum electrodes and covered with a white, pearlescent substance called myelin. Within that myelin, according to new research, lies the seed of talent.
''In neurology, myelin is being seen as an epiphany,'' Douglas Fields, the lab's director, had told me earlier. ''This
is a new dimension that may help us understand a great deal about how the brain works, especially about how we gain
skills.''
The myelin in question didn't look particularly epiphanic, which is understandable since it would normally be employed by mice for sniffing out food or navigating a maze. Neurologists theorize, however, that this humble-looking
material is the common link between the Spartak kids, the Dominican baseball players and all the other blooms on the
talent map -- a link all the more interesting for the fact that few outside this branch of neurology currently know much
about myelin. In fact, as Fields pointed out, if indirectly, the talent map wasn't technically the most accurate name for
my hypothetical landscape. It should be called the myelin map.
''I would predict that South Korean women golfers have more myelin, on average, than players from other countries,'' Fields said. ''They've got more in the right parts of the brain and for the right muscle groups, and that's what allows them to optimize their circuitry. The same would be true for any group like that.''
''Tiger Woods?'' I asked.
''Definitely Tiger Woods,'' he said. ''That guy's got a lot of myelin.''
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HOW TO GROW A SUPER ATHLETE The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
Fields, 53, is a sinewy man with a broad smile and a jaunty gait. A former biological oceanographer who studied
shark nervous systems, he now runs a six-person, seven-room lab outfitted with hissing canisters, buzzing electrical
boxes and tight bundles of wires and hoses. The place has the feel of a tidy, efficient ship. In addition, Fields has the sea
captain's habit of making dramatic moments sound matter-of-fact. The more exciting something is, the more mundane
he makes it sound. As he was telling me about the six-day climb of Yosemite's 3,000-foot El Capitan he made two
summers back, I asked what it felt like to sleep while hanging from a rope thousands of feet above the ground. ''It's actually not that different,'' he said, his expression so unchanging that he might have been discussing a trip to the grocery
store. ''You adapt.''
Fields reached into the incubator, extracted one of the pink petri dishes and slid it beneath a microscope. ''Have a
peek,'' he said quietly.
I leaned in and saw a tangled bunch of spaghetti-like threads, which Fields informed me were nerve fibers. The
myelin was harder to see, a faintly undulating fringe on the edge of the neurons. I blinked, refocused, struggled to imagine how this stuff might help my golf game.
Fields proceeded to explain that myelin is a sausage-shaped layer of dense fat that wraps around the nerve fibers -and that its seeming dullness is, in fact, exactly the point. Myelin works the same way that rubber insulation works on a
wire, keeping the signal strong by preventing electrical impulses from leaking out. This myelin sheath is, basically, electrical tape, which is one reason that myelin, along with its associated cells, was classified as glia (Greek for ''glue''). Its
very inertness is why the first brain researchers named their new science after the neuron instead of its insulation. They
were correct to do so: neurons can indeed explain almost every class of mental phenomenon--memory, emotion, muscle
control, sensory perception and so on. But there's one question neurons can't explain: why does it take so long to learn
complex skills?
''Everything neurons do, they do pretty quickly; it happens with the flick of a switch,'' Fields said. ''But flicking
switches is not how we learn a lot of things. Getting good at piano or chess or baseball takes a lot of time, and that's
what myelin is good at.''
To the surprise of many neurologists, it turns out this electrical tape is quietly interacting with the neurons.
Through a mechanism that Fields and his research team described in a 2006 paper in the journal Neuron, the little sausages of myelin get thicker when the nerve is repeatedly stimulated. The thicker the myelin gets, the better it insulates
and the faster and more accurately the signals travel. As Fields puts it, ''The signals have to travel at the right speed,
arrive at the right time, and myelination is the brain's way of controlling that speed.'' 2
It adds up to a two-part dynamic that is elegant enough to please Darwin himself: myelin controls the impulse
speed, and impulse speed is crucial. The better we can control it, the better we can control the timing of our thoughts
and movements, whether we're running, reading, singing or, perhaps more to the point, hitting a wicked topspin backhand.
Back at Spartak, the Little Group lined up outside the service box, rackets at the ready. Preobrazhenskaya stood at
the net, a shopping cart of balls at her hip. She waited for silence, then started: forehand, backhand, back to the end of
the line. One by one, the kids took their swings -- to my eye, pretty nice-looking swings. But not to hers. Preobrazhenskaya frequently stopped them, had them do it over. More follow-through. More turn. Watch. Feel.
Pravil'no, she said. Correct.
Molodets. Good job.
If Preobrazhenskaya's approach were boiled down to one word (and it frequently was), that word would be
tekhnika -- technique. This is enforced by iron decree: none of her students are permitted to play in a tournament for the
first three years of study. It's a notion that I don't imagine would fly with American parents, but none of the Russian
parents questioned it for a second. ''Technique is everything,'' Preobrazhenskaya told me later, smacking a table with
Khrushchev-like emphasis, causing me to jump and reconsider my twinkly-grandma impression of her. ''If you begin
playing without technique, it is big mistake. Big, big mistake!''
I thought of something Dr. Fields had said: ''You have to understand that every skill exists as a circuit, and that
circuit has to be formed and optimized.'' To put it in Spartak terms, myelin is a slave to tekhnika -- and so, in turn, was
the Little Group. Preobrazhenskaya didn't instruct them on tactics or positioning or offer any psychological tips; rather,
every gesture and word was funneled to teaching the elemental task of hitting the ball clean and hard. Which they did,
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one by one. A few of the kids had located that magical-seeming burst of leverage that makes the ball explode off the
strings with a distinctive thwock.
''What do good athletes do when they train?'' George Bartzokis, a professor of neurology at U.C.L.A., had told me.
''They send precise impulses along wires that give the signal to myelinate that wire. They end up, after all the training,
with a super-duper wire -- lots of bandwidth, high-speed T-1 line. That's what makes them different from the rest of us.''
3
As the Little Group continued its lesson, I found myself picturing myelin. I'd seen a highly magnified image on
one of Fields's computer screens, and it looked like a deep-sea photograph: bright colors against a field of black. The
oligodendrocytes -- oligos, in lab lingo, are the cells that form the myelin -- resembled glowing green squids, their tentacles reaching toward a set of slender nerve fibers. Once they seize hold, each tentacle begins to curl and extend, as the
oligo squeezes the cytoplasm out of itself until only a cellophane-like sheet of membrane remains. That membrane proceeds to wrap over the nerve fiber with machinelike precision, spiraling down to create the distinctive sausage shape,
tightening itself over the fiber like a threaded nut.
''It's one of the most intricate and exquisite cell-cell interactions there is,'' Fields said. ''And it's slow. Each one of
these wraps can go around a nerve fiber 40 or 50 times, and that can take days or weeks. Imagine doing that to an entire
neuron, then an entire circuit with thousands of nerves.''
So each time Alexandra or Denis or Gunda swings the racket properly -- or, for that matter, each time we practice
a chip shot or a guitar chord or a chess opening -- those tiny green tentacles sense it and reach toward the thousands of
related nerve fibers. They grasp, they squish, they make another wrap, thickening the sheath. They build a little more
insulation along the wire, which adds a bit more bandwidth and precision to the circuit, which translates into an infinitesimal bit more skill and speed. Myelin is both practice and mastery, cause and effect. As Bartzokis had said: ''Myelin
is our Achilles strength, and it's our Achilles' heel. It's what makes us human.'' 4
All this myelin talk, combined with jet lag, left me feeling slightly changed. I wandered Moscow as if I were seeing the world through myelin-colored glasses. Emerald-green squids and snowy white sausages were everywhere I
looked. A TV highlight of a Ronaldinho goal? Pure myelin! That violinist playing Mozart in the subway? What incredible oligodendrocytes that guy must have! A poster for the 2008 Olympics? An international myelin cultivation contest!
My repeated ability to get lost within a few blocks of my hotel? Myelin again! (Rather, my lack of it.)
It also left me thinking about the clusters on the talent map. Specifically, wondering whether these places quietly
possess myelin-accelerating factors: i.e., forces and conditions that promote what Fields would call ''circuit optimization.'' Might those factors help explain the success of these superior athletes?
The rise of the South Korean golfers, who won almost one-third of the events last year on the Ladies Professional
Golf Association Tour, has usually been explained by citing two factors: the country's formidably driven parents, and
the rock-star status of Se Ri Pak, who has won 23 tournaments and is one of the nation's biggest sports celebrities. Yet
the logic of this formula has always been confounded by a puzzling fact: South Korea happens to be a nation where it is
singularly difficult for a young person to play golf. There are only 200 golf courses in the entire country, compared with
17,000 in the United States.
Viewed through the prism of myelin, however, the situation makes more sense. The lack of public courses sends
golf-hungry parents and kids to South Korea's abundant driving ranges, which are Elysian fields of myelination compared to the relative randomness of course play. Were South Korea to increase access to courses, it could be argued, the
country might wind up producing fewer top golfers.
Then there's the Dominican Republic, which has historically produced more Major League Baseball players than
any other country outside the United States. Conventional wisdom holds that this remarkable record arises from the
fruitful collision of a baseball-mad culture and grinding poverty. The equation is undeniably true, but it's also true of
several nearby countries that don't achieve a fraction of the Dominican Republic's success.
There is one way, however, in which the Dominican Republic is historically unique. It's the first place where Major League Baseball teams built training academies -- two dozen of them, starting in the mid-1970s. While academies
provide players with obvious advantages like good nutrition and housing, not to mention regular exposure to scouts,
they also provide a daily structure of drills and practices that, like the South Korean driving ranges, would presumably
be a ripe environment for building myelin. 5
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The most impressive myelin collection I encountered during my Moscow trip belonged to a woman encased in a
sheepskin coat, fur-trimmed boots and a fuzzy white hat. Elena Dementieva, 25, represented the acme of the Spartak
product. She stood 5-foot-11, weighed 141 pounds and emanated a vibration of such unearthly physical perfection that
crowds parted as she moved down the sidewalk. Seeing Dementieva walk into the Russian Army sports club, where she
trains between tournaments, I flashed to an image of the Spartak kids and felt a brief parental pang of disbelief. Such a
transformation seemed impossible.6
Sitting down on a set of courtside bleachers (level gaze, warm laugh, no hint of divahood), Dementieva told her
story. Surprisingly, she had been rejected by several other clubs as too slow before landing at Spartak. She spoke fondly, if a little vaguely, of her days at the club: dodging stray dogs, washing dirty tennis balls in the sink, doing homework
on the long subway ride. Her first instructor was the renowned Rausa Islanova (the mother of Dinara Safina and of the
men's 2000 United States Open winner, Marat Safin), who was known for her strictness and her elimination system in
which students competed for a constantly shrinking number of slots. Dementieva's group started with 25 students; within a year it was down to 7. Of those 7 kids, 4 became world-class players (Myskina, Kournikova and Safin were the
other 3).
''Spartak was good for me, I think,'' Dementieva said, squinting as if she were peering into her hazy past. ''I always
had a feeling that I was going forward, getting better technique.''
When Dementieva took the court to practice, she began with a set of those Jack LaLanne-style warm-ups -- sidesteps, jumping jacks, high steps. She looked as if she were still a member of the Little Group, so much so that, watching
from the bleachers, I was momentarily unsure whether it was her or some beginner. Dementieva did imitatsiya; she
practiced each stroke in slow motion. Then, when her male sparring partner showed up, she proceeded to hit the ball so
hard, accurately and consistently that it seemed she was playing a sport I'd never seen before. Again and again, her body
rose to the ball in a twist of ballistic force, the power betrayed only by the snakelike rise of her thick blond braid. The
ball hissed.
Trying to wrap my head around the metamorphic process through which a too-slow kid could become . . . her,
well, it left me utterly at a loss, able only to fumble for such useful scientific terms as ''magic'' and ''miracle.''
Fortunately, there are more rational people to consult, and perhaps the most rational is K. Anders Ericsson, who
has devoted much of his life to studying phenomena like Dementieva and Spartak. Ericsson, a native of Sweden and a
professor of psychology at Florida State University, is co-editor of ''The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert
Performance,'' published in 2006. If talented people can be thought of as a singular species, then Ericsson is its John J.
Audubon, and the handbook is his painstakingly annotated field guide.
The handbook runs to 901 pages, so, in the interest of time, allow me to sum up. Every talent, according to Ericsson, is the result of a single process: deliberate practice, which he defines as ''individuals engaging in a practice activity
(typically designed by teachers) with full concentration on improving some aspect of their performance.'' In a moment
of towering simplification, ''The Handbook'' distills its lesson to a formula known as the Power Law of Learning: T = a
P-b . (Don't ask.) A slightly more useful translation: Deliberate practice means working on technique, seeking constant
critical feedback and focusing ruthlessly on improving weaknesses.
''It feels like you're constantly stretching yourself into an uncomfortable area beyond what you can quite do,'' Ericsson told me. It's hard to sustain deliberate practice for long periods of time, which may help explain why players like
Jimmy Connors succeeded with seemingly paltry amounts of practice while their competitors were hitting thousands of
balls each day. As the tennis commentator Mary Carillo told me, ''He barely practiced an hour a day, but it was the most
intense hour of your life.''
Ericsson also discusses the Ten-Year Rule, an intriguing finding dating to 1899, which shows that even the most
talented individual requires a decade of committed practice before reaching world-class level. (Even a prodigy like the
chess player Bobby Fischer put in nine hard years before achieving his grandmaster status at age 16.) While this rule is
often used to backdate the ideal start of training (in tennis, girls peak physically at around 17, so they ought to start by 7;
boys peak later, so 9 is O.K.), the Ten-Year Rule has more universal implications. Namely, it implies that all skills are
built using the same fundamental mechanism, and that the mechanism makes physiological demands from which no one
is exempt.
This is not to suggest that the only difference between an average Joe and Michael Jordan is a few thousand hours
of deliberate practice. Almost all of the scientists I spoke with agreed that inheritance is a huge factor in potential, if
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perhaps not in quite the way we've commonly assumed. (Perhaps, as George Bartzokis suggests, Jordan's greatest natural gift was his powerful oligodendrocytes.)
All in all, Ericsson's theory sounds logical and appealing, but part of me rises up in rebellion. What about geniuses? What about young Mozart's famous ability to transcribe entire scores on a single hearing? What about Shakespeare
or Leonardo or those 14-year-old Ph.D. candidates? What about savants, who walk up to the piano or a Rubik's cube
and are magically brilliant?
T = a P-b would be the reply. In his 1999 book, ''Genius Explained,'' Michael Howe of the University of Exeter
speculates that Mozart studied some 3,500 hours of music with his instructor father by his sixth birthday, a number that
places his musical memory into the realm of impressive but obtainable party tricks. Savants, it is pointed out, excel
within narrow domains that feature clear, logical rules (classical piano, math, occasionally art -- as opposed to, say, jazz
clarinet). Furthermore, savants typically possess prior exposure to those domains, such as listening to music around the
home. Savants' true expertise, the research suggests, is in their ability to practice obsessively, even when it doesn't look
as if they're practicing. As Ericsson succinctly put it, ''There's no cell type that geniuses have that the rest of us don't.''
So let's return to the initial question: how does Spartak do it? If the new science is right and myelination is to talent as photosynthesis is to plant growth, then Spartak makes it abundantly clear that photosynthesis alone is never
enough; you also need soil, water, air, sunlight, luck. The question becomes, which variables are helping Spartak's myelin grow to such riotous abundance? Four factors stand above the rest:
1. Driven Parents. The hunger and ambition of Russian parents is uniquely strong, particularly when one considers
how hard life is in Russia right now and also that the patron saint of Russian tennis parents is the ex-Siberian oil-field
worker Yuri Sharapov, who came to America with less than $1,000 and his 7-year-old daughter, Maria, who now earns
an estimated $30 million a year in endorsements. On the other hand, while they are intense, Russian parents aren't all
that different a group from the parents in Serbia, the Czech Republic or Mission Viejo, Calif.
2. Early Starts. The kids here start young and specialize early. They are tennis players, and not much else competes for their attention (only a handful owned video games, according to my informal poll), and they also benefit from
a Russian culture that's built to select athletes and shield them from academic pressures. Incidentally, there were indeed
elite athletic genes floating around at Spartak: Alexandra's parents were famous figure skaters, and another kid was
Myskina's cousin. So good genes probably play a role, or (just as likely, to my mind) there's a beneficial effect to growing up in an environment of working athletes.
3. Powerful, Consistent Coaches. Most tennis coaches I saw were treated with a respect reserved for university
professors. The tennis clubs I visited were patrolled by a squad of Brezhnev lookalikes who offered advice that seemed
hewed from stone. Their institutional specialty is biomechanics, but the point is perhaps not so much in the details of
that coaching, but rather in the passion, rigor and uniformity with which that coaching is delivered. This, incidentally, is
the opposite of the entrepreneurial system in which many American tennis coaches operate, as they often compete
with one another, relying on their ability to sell their services to sometimes anxious parents. American coaches have to
be unique to survive; Russian coaches are mostly the same.
4. Cultural Toughness. As poets have pointed out, the intrinsic hardiness of the Russian woman is legendary. Historically, this might have something to do with the hardships of life under Communism and the loss of 11 million soldiers in World War II. Whatever the cause, the immediate effect is a tangible mental toughness and a work ethic second
to none. After all, at Spartak, they don't speak of ''playing'' tennis. The verb they like to use is borot'sya -- to struggle.
If I gave in to the uncontrollable Ericssonian urge to put Spartak's success into a formula, it would read something
like:
Intense Parents + Young Kids + Rigorous Technique + Toughness = Talent
Alongside it, we could write another equation:
Deliberate Practice + Time = Myelin = Talent
But in the end, as I look around the court, it can't come down to a formula because formulas are rational, and
whatever Spartak is, it isn't entirely rational. It's a bunch of kids in a dumpy club who are burning to be here, for whom
every swing is meaningful, who wake up in the morning and say, ''Today is my day with Larisa Dmitrievna!'' It's deeply
and purposefully irrational, because it's built on a love of sport and country that can't be explained but holds everything
together anyway. Spartak is not science; what happens here is not analogous to what happens in a factory or a laborato-
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ry. It's closer to what happens in a garden, a forgotten, rundown garden that somehow produces marvelous tomatoes,
summer after summer.7
Thwock . . . thwock . . . thwock . . . thwock.
The Little Group was smacking it now, the balls zipping over the net and ricocheting off the far wall. Preobrazhenskaya, the gardener, watched with a smile, occasionally correcting a backswing or a grip, nudging the kids on with
a murmur of praise and instruction: ''Clever boy.'' ''Good girl.'' ''No.'' ''Correct.'' ''Not there.'' ''That's it.''
On my last day at Spartak, I met one more player. Her name was Kseniya; she was 5, and she'd come for a tryout.
Her parents, an upscale pair, ducked through the low door and asked Larisa Dmitrievna if she might have a moment.
Kseniya had black pigtails held in place with pink ribbons. She wore new silver tennis shoes. She walked solemnly, one
step behind her parents, carrying a tiny pink racket. Something in the precision of her walk, in her air of self-possession,
reminded me of my daughter Zoe.
Preobrazhenskaya put her arm on Kseniya's shoulder and walked her to the corner of the court, out of the parents'
earshot. The girl looked up into the coach's face. ''She has good eyes,'' Preobrazhenskaya said later.
Preobrazhenskaya rotated Kseniya's arms in a wide circle, feeling for looseness in her muscles, which she regarded as a good sign. Preobrazhenskaya then showed Kseniya a new tennis ball, and told her what was about to happen.
Kseniya listened closely, and nodded. Then the coach tossed the ball lightly, and Kseniya, her small body coming alive
at once, ran to catch it. .
If I gave in to the uncontrollable Ericssonian urge to put Spartak's success into a formula, it would read something
like:
Intense Parents + Young Kids + Rigorous Technique + Toughness = Talent
Alongside it, we could write another equation:
Deliberate Practice + Time = Myelin = Talent
But in the end, as I look around the court, it can't come down to a formula because formulas are rational, and
whatever Spartak is, it isn't entirely rational. It's a bunch of kids in a dumpy club who are burning to be here, for whom
every swing is meaningful, who wake up in the morning and say, ''Today is my day with Larisa Dmitrievna!'' It's deeply
and purposefully irrational, because it's built on a love of sport and country that can't be explained but holds everything
together anyway. Spartak is not science; what happens here is not analogous to what happens in a factory or a laboratory. It's closer to what happens in a garden, a forgotten, rundown garden that somehow produces marvelous tomatoes,
summer after summer.7
Thwock . . . thwock . . . thwock . . . thwock.
The Little Group was smacking it now, the balls zipping over the net and ricocheting off the far wall. Preobrazhenskaya, the gardener, watched with a smile, occasionally correcting a backswing or a grip, nudging the kids on with
a murmur of praise and instruction: ''Clever boy.'' ''Good girl.'' ''No.'' ''Correct.'' ''Not there.'' ''That's it.''
On my last day at Spartak, I met one more player. Her name was Kseniya; she was 5, and she'd come for a tryout.
Her parents, an upscale pair, ducked through the low door and asked Larisa Dmitrievna if she might have a moment.
Kseniya had black pigtails held in place with pink ribbons. She wore new silver tennis shoes. She walked solemnly, one
step behind her parents, carrying a tiny pink racket. Something in the precision of her walk, in her air of self-possession,
reminded me of my daughter Zoe.
Preobrazhenskaya put her arm on Kseniya's shoulder and walked her to the corner of the court, out of the parents'
earshot. The girl looked up into the coach's face. ''She has good eyes,'' Preobrazhenskaya said later.
Preobrazhenskaya rotated Kseniya's arms in a wide circle, feeling for looseness in her muscles, which she regarded as a good sign. Preobrazhenskaya then showed Kseniya a new tennis ball, and told her what was about to happen.
Kseniya listened closely, and nodded. Then the coach tossed the ball lightly, and Kseniya, her small body coming alive
at once, ran to catch it. 1 In September, as part of an ongoing effort to revive American tennis, the United States Tennis
Association plans to centralize its player development program at the Evert Tennis Academy in Boca Raton, Fla., a new
complex that will feature 23 courts (14 lighted), dormitories, a state-of-theart video lounge and a staff of 30, including a
mental-conditioning coach. Tuition with room and board will cost as much as $42,000 a year. By comparison, the Rus-
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HOW TO GROW A SUPER ATHLETE The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
sian Tennis Federation's total youth-development budget is estimated to be between $300,000 and $400,000.2 Timing is
vital because neurons are binary: either they fire or they don't -- no gray areas. Their firing depends solely on whether
the incoming impulse is strong enough to exceed the neuron's threshold of activation. To explain the implications of this
effect, Fields had me imagine a skill circuit in which two neurons need to combine their impulses to make a third, highthreshold neuron fire -- for, say, a golf swing. In order to combine properly, those two incoming impulses must arrive at
nearly exactly the same time -- sort of like two people running at a heavy door to push it open. The time window turns
out to be about four milliseconds, or roughly the time it takes a bee to flap its wings once. If the first two signals arrive
more than four milliseconds apart, the door stays shut, the crucial third neuron doesn't fire and the golf ball soars into
the rough (or, as I was reflexively picturing, Zoe swings and misses the purple ball). ''Your brain has so many connections and possibilities that your genes can't code the neurons to time things so precisely,'' Fields said. ''But you can build
myelin to do it.''3 These studies shine a new light on the neuro-anatomist Marian C. Diamond's 1985 finding that the
left, inferior parietal lobe of Albert Einstein's brain, though it had a typical number of neurons, had significantly more
glial cells than her other samples, a study that neurologists at the time considered so meaningless as to be nearly comical
but that now seems to make sense, bandwidth-wise.4 The list of myelin-related pathologies is long and, Bartzokis believes, includes multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's as well as a wider range of conditions, like schizophrenia, dyslexia,
attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autism, all of which can be understood as disorders of impulse timing.5
Venezuela is a more recent example of this phenomenon. In 1989, the Houston Astros opened the first of what are now
nine major-league academies there, and a few years later, the number of Venezuelans in the big leagues started to rise.
Since 1995, 125 Venezuelans have broken into Major League Baseball, 51 more than had appeared in all the years up to
that point.6 In children, myelin arrives in a series of waves, some of them determined by biological code, some of them
dependent on activity. These waves last into young adulthood. Until this time, the brain is extraordinarily receptive to
learning new skills. Though adults retain the ability to myelinate throughout life (thankfully, 5 percent of our oligos
remain immature, ready to answer the call), anyone who has tried to learn a language or musical instrument late in life
can testify that it costs a lot more time and sweat to build the requisite circuitry. The effortlessness is the first thing to
go.7 Replicating the Spartak system in the United States (or, for that matter, installing Dominican-style baseball academies or forcing young golfers to practice only at driving ranges) would likely not create a sudden wellspring of stars.
The reasons that the United States is losing ground on the talent map have less to do with training mechanisms and
more to do with bigger factors: a highly distractive youth culture, a focus on the glamour of winning rather than on the
brickwork of building technique and a sporting environment that is gentler than those found in many of the world's
harder corners.
''You can't keep breast-feeding them all the time,'' Robert Lansdorp, a tennis coach in Los Angeles, told me.
''You've got to make them an independent thinker.'' Lansdorp, who is in his 60s, has coached Sharapova, along with the
former No. 1-ranked players Pete Sampras, Tracy Austin and Lindsay Davenport, all three of whom grew up in the
same area and played at the same run-of-the-mill tennis clubs near Los Angeles. ''You don't need a fancy academy,'' he
said. ''You need fundamentals and discipline, and in this country nobody gives a damn about fundamentals and discipline.'' Lansdorp also mentioned that he'd visited Spartak last year to teach a clinic. ''It was a pretty different place,'' he
said. ''But that Larisa, she sure knows her stuff.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: SPORTS & RECREATION (89%); GOLF (89%); SPORTS (89%); PROFILES & BIOGRAPHIES (56%);
PAINTING (64%) Athletics and Sports; Children and Youth
PERSON: Daniel Coyle
GEOGRAPHIC: SWEDEN (65%); CZECH REPUBLIC (65%); UNITED STATES (50%)
LOAD-DATE: March 4, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: ''TECHNIQUE IS EVERYTHING'' -- Larisa Preobrazhenskaya (far left) won't let her students
compete until they've had three years of training
6-year-old Gunda Arzhba myelinates her backhand with a Spartak coach.
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HOW TO GROW A SUPER ATHLETE The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT -- A combination of cultural toughness and focused practice makes places like Spartak
fertile ground for producing world-class athletes. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY OLAF BLECKER FOR THE NEW YORK
TIMES)(pgs. 36,37,38,39,41)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1069 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 4, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Super Agents, Super Teams
BYLINE: By GERRI HIRSHEY
SECTION: Section 14LI; Column 2; Long Island Weekly Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 2331 words
THE young couple are seated together awaiting another real estate agent's appraisal in what is called the ''English
pub room'' of their 1730 antique home in Westport. Theirs is the kind of property that ads typically limn as ''historic
charmer with state-of-the-art amenities.'' This means the imposing stone hearth is hung with a tasteful dark plasma
screen instead of a fox-hunting print.
The couple took two years to renovate, expand and hone the place to Architectural Digest perfection while they
lived elsewhere. The home's craftsmanship and detail are exquisite, from the outdoor fireplace to the fully wired and
Wi-Fied his-and-hers offices much desired by Fairfield County's Blackberry-dependent financial services cadres.
''Those offices are absolutely going to sell this house,'' says Michelle Genovesi, a Westport broker with a 100gigabyte memory for detail, detail, detail, and a sales presentation that corners and shifts as smoothly as the BMW she
drove up in. ''Commuters are willing to spend more for things like this if it means they can work at home one or two
days a week.''
Ms. Genovesi, a former Wilhelmina model, is the founder and top producer of her Westport-area firm, Michelle &
Company. Despite the housing marketslowdown, her three-agent team did $70 million in sales volume in 2006.
Teams are a trend in the region's residential real estate market. Sharing resources, from office workers to Webmasters, has become practical as agents struggle to keep up with local and Internet listings. According to the National
Association of Realtors, Web listings are now consulted by 80 percent of Americans looking to buy homes.
Successful teams like Ms. Genovesi's are actively courted by big national agencies, which are only too happy to
encourage their local, personalized approach. Ms. Genovesi says she has had many corporate suitors but has opted to
stay with a parent company, William Raveis Real Estate and Home Services, because its founder and chief executive,
William Raveis, ''allows you to unleash your personality in the business.''
''He's not fearful of you growing and branding yourself,'' she says.
Mr. Raveis said: ''Michelle is a mega-agent. We're in negotiations for her to double that sales volume, expand her
territory and her team.''
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Super Agents, Super Teams The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
To that end, Ms. Genovesi is shopping for her own office building, where she will add to her current team-- two
''buyer specialist'' agents and a six-person staff that provides administrative, Web, mortgage and marketing support.
''Most people in our industry are reactive to the market,'' Mr. Raveis said. ''She's very proactive. She branded herself and created this team approach before anyone else out here thought of it. Now there are lots of Michelle wannabes.''
Among the more visible branded teams in the region are Mike Luchen's in Westchester, whose ads promise,
''Team Mike Luchen Realtors speak English, Italian, Spanish, Polish and German.'' There are married teams and sister
acts, like the Twin Team in Westchester, identical sisters whose Web site trumpets ''A Shared Synergy.''
In Essex County, N.J., the Baldwin Dream Team, a ReMax quartet of former freelance writers and administrators,
will be one of three teams featured on a new reality series, ''Bought and Sold,'' on HGTV in late April. Roberta Baldwin,
lead agent of the team, which did $40 million in sales in 2006, explained why she set up her own shop within the ReMax penumbra: ''I wanted to be more entrepreneurial, and I found people to help me grow my business that I can absolutely trust to have our interests at heart. It's pretty cutthroat in real estate, either on your own or in a big company.
Clients also like the idea that they'll be taken care of even when I'm busy elsewhere.''
Mr. Raveis, whose business has 55 offices in Connecticut and Massachusetts with 1,700 agents and claims $5 billion in annual sales, has big producers besides Ms. Genovesi. Most notable is Jean Ruggiero, who, embedded in Greenwich -- a hedge-fund capital -- can bring in $110 million in yearly volume by selling executive castles.
The rich do shop differently, Mr. Raveis said, and he especially values Ms. Genovesi for her ability to reel in and
placate corporate titans and their families -- and their decorators. ''To deal with the high-end seller and high-end demands and be sane well, she's amazing,'' he said.
Selling white-glove service requires a statelier pace, and no visible pressure. Ms. Genovesi's presentation to the
couple with the Westport property takes more than an hour and includes a customized, meticulously researched portfolio on their home and others in the area, prepared by her staff. She is the third agent the couple have interviewed.
As the spring real estate market gets off to a brisk start -- Ms. Genovesi says you can peg it, reliable as the first
robin, to the first weekend after the Super Bowl -- they want to be ready.
The last agent the couple interviewed left a brochure and dashed off after a few words about installing a lockbox.
''Under no circumstances do we do a lockbox here,'' Ms. Genovesi says. ''You do not walk in and out of an exceptional property at will.'' She will show the home herself, and only to those prequalified with a discreet questionnaire and
mortgage preapproval.
''If buyers decide after a tour it's not right, I'll introduce them to my buyer team members, who will share with
them whatever else is in the market,'' '' Ms. Genovesi says. ''That's where I pass the baton. My focus is on selling my
properties.''
She says she will sell the home three times: to other agents, to a buyer and to the bank appraiser. She will invite
other agents in for a look and a catered lunch, but there will be no open house. ''Too many people just want to check out
the granite counters and get some ideas,'' she says.
Calling Ms. Genovesi, the wife says, was ''almost automatic,'' given her reputation and visibility. According to a
competing agent, ''No one would think of listing a high-end property without having Michelle at least do an appraisal.''
For her part, Ms. Genovesi does not want to know the competition. ''I have 23 years' experience here,'' she says,
''and I can say that I own the high-end market.''
As conversation deepens, Ms. Genovesi's pronouns subtly slide from ''your'' to ''our,'' as in ''Our appliances and
renovations are mint.'' Finally, the sensitive part -- the number -- comes up. Ms. Genovesi routinely turns down listings
if the asking prices are unrealistically high. Sometimes sellers come back to her -- and her number -- after other agents
fail to move the house. ''The number is just a suggestion based on my experience and market education,'' she says. It can
be fine-tuned. She tells the couple her number and commission. They nod.
One more big question hangs: Are things moving? ''There's lots of inventory now,'' Ms. Genovesi says, ''but in
some segments, only 50 percent sold last year, in others only 25 percent. Statistically, the high end hasn't taken as big a
hit as the rest of the market -- especially with this year's Wall Street bonuses. We're definitely feeling those bonuses
Page 183
Super Agents, Super Teams The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
now. We find that when the market turns, it's the lower and higher ends that still do well. It's the middle market that
suffers the most.''
AS part of her presentation, she explains her career path: ''In the late '80s, no one was really taking any part of the
business and owning it. So I decided to focus on listing and marketing exceptional properties. To do that I needed to
brand myself. I started to spend money to make money. I put my photograph in my ads. Back then, everyone said,
'What's with the picture?' But people remembered. I started getting calls.''
Ms. Genovesi does business in expensive but understated clothes and in two BMWs: a 5 Series S.U.V. for ferrying
clients, and a sportier 3 Series convertible she just bought as a 50th birthday present to herself. She had considered indulging in a Maserati but rejected it as ''too pretentious.''
Nothing, not even a well-earned midlife toy, should interfere with the image she has honed carefully, some might
say obsessively, since she arrived in Connecticut as a fiancee looking for a house and got her real estate license ''on a
whim.'' After two long engagements, she is ''single and fine with it.''
As the eldest of five children born into an Air Force family, ''I'm a habitual caregiver,'' she says. A mobile childhood, much of it in Europe -- five moves during the last two years of high school -- made her an extrovert of necessity.
Her brief modeling career was fun, chiefly for the travel, but she found fashion confining.
By taking the long view in her next endeavor, she says, she has carved herself a posh, Scalamandre-upholstered
niche here on Connecticut's Gold Coast. ''Exceptional properties'' translates to $2 million to $15 million. Most of Ms.
Genovesi's listings have names, like Pier Way, Lord's Manor and the Hermitage. They will appear on premiere Web
sites with detailed virtual tours. Qualified buyers will get custom portfolios including a CD-ROM virtual tour of the
property, its photo imprinted on the disc.
Some homes, like Judith Paixao's riverside compound, a property once owned by the prima ballerina Tanaquil Le
Clercq, have exceptional provenance. Ms. Le Clercq and her husband, the choreographer George Balanchine, also
owned a summer residence across the road. ''It's a singular property that needs the right buyer,'' Ms. Paixao said. ''I
needed someone who could think way outside the box, and that was Michelle. She gets it. She arranged to have two
Chico's holiday catalogs photographed there -- and showed the place right in the middle of the shoot.''
MS. GENOVESI has other ideas for the 1730 antique property. ''Weather permitting, I can have an aerial photographer here by the weekend,'' she tells the couple. From the air, the manicured grounds will show to estate-like advantage. ''People are starting to look now,'' she tells the owners. ''Our biggest binding month, when offers are written, is
March.'' The couple have one more agent to see; they promise a prompt decision and see her out warmly.
''I'm sure I've got it,'' Ms. Genovesi says as she heads to her car.
Even perfect properties require an alternative mind-set. On another day, Ms. Genovesi demonstrates her houseshowing technique at a modernist masterwork in Saugatuck Shores -- waterfront, private dock, $8.8 million. This is not
a home to perfume with the smell of baking cookies. But the automatic shades will be raised to the view when buyers
stroll in. Cool jazz -- appropriate to the modern art, the custom leather floors in the library -- will provide a chic soundtrack. ''We're not selling a house,'' Ms. Genovesi instructs. ''We're selling a lifestyle.''
This is how she was able to price the home next door to this one at an audacious $9 million -- almost $2 million
over what she said the Westport market was bearing at the time.
''In exceptional properties you have to market outside the town you're in,'' Ms. Genovesi says. She researched waterfront prices all the way to Greenwich and sent e-mail messages to more than 500 potential customers. A Darien agent
saw it and brought her clients, who had been looking at waterfront in Greenwich, where the prices are higher. They
bought it for the asking price.
Thus, in so many ways, Ms. Genovesi is not what Mr. Raveis calls a ''maintenance'' Realtor -- that diligent professional who tucks so many suburban families into center-hall colonials. Nor does she fit the voracious, blonde-in-a-goldLexus cliche of the go-go '90s. At the weekly team meeting at Michelle & Company, six women come and go, talking
of corporate ''relo.'' Mobility is the agent's bread and butter: corporate relocations, divorce, remarriages with blended
families, empty nesters.
Audrey Demetres, one of the two agents who concentrate on buyers, says this is an especially fluid market. ''I
came from a house where my teenage wallpaper is still on the wall,'' Ms. Demetres says. ''But I don't think I've ever sold
Page 184
Super Agents, Super Teams The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
anyone a house that was thinking in terms of a lifetime home. They'll either upsize, downsize. They never think of staying in that 30-year-mortgage house. I have one family that couldn't move up fast enough -- a two-bedroom cottage, then
a colonial, then new construction, all before they were 34.''
Ms. Demetres's counterpart, Suzanne Dodge, left a high-profile career in real estate marketing in Manhattan after
she had her third child, but she wanted ''a serious career'' in the suburbs. The high-tech embrace of Ms. Genovesi's team
was perfect. ''Internet was just cranking up,'' Ms. Dodge says. ''That was a huge expense to take on as a sole agent. I was
advertising, trying to get listings, staying up all night answering e-mails, writing ads.''
Signing on with Ms. Genovesi after a stint at another agency, ''I was just dazzled,'' Ms. Dodge says. ''Everything is
smooth. I never do paperwork after I sell a house. They handle everything. And I can go out and sell another house.''
A few days after Ms. Genovesi's presentation to the couple with the 1730 home, she is sitting in a Westport Starbucks. Above the cellphone cacophony of other recaffeinating brokers, she confides, ''I got the listing.'' The aerial shots
are done, the number is firmed up, the virtual tour is being shot. She is talking about the office buildings along the Post
Road that she has been looking at for her expansion when a lawyer, Joseph C. Maya, strides over and says hello. She is
friendly, but quizzical until he explains that she found him a house in 2001 when he wanted to move his family to a quieter, safer street.
Ms. Genovesi had forgotten Mr. Maya's first name, but she could summon the precise transaction details.
He is pumping her hand. ''Since then I've sent over 20 people to you,'' he says. ''I'll probably send 20 more.''
She thanks him with a big grin. ''Bring 'em on,'' she says.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: REAL ESTATE (91%); REAL ESTATE AGENTS (89%); SALES FIGURES (87%); RESIDENTIAL
PROPERTY (78%); HOUSING MARKET (77%); SALES & SELLING (73%); TRENDS (72%); BUILDING RENOVATION (72%); MARKET INCIDENCE (72%); HOME BASED EMPLOYMENT (71%); HOLDING COMPANIES
(70%); BANKING & FINANCE (68%); BRANDING (64%); CITIES (74%); BALLET (74%) Housing; Brokers and
Brokerage Firms
ORGANIZATION: Michelle & Co
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (51%) Gerri Hirshey; Michelle Genovesi
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (79%) CONNECTICUT, USA (90%); NEW YORK, USA (79%) UNITED
STATES (90%) New York City Metropolitan Area; Connecticut
LOAD-DATE: March 4, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: RURAL CHARM -- Michelle Genovesi, one of Connecticut's top real estate sales agents, at the
entrance to Balanchine, a barn home and estate in Wilton that is on the market for $3,650,000. The property once belonged to the prima ballerina Tanaquil Le Clercq, who had a home nearby with her husband, the choreographer George
Balanchine. (Photo by Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times)(pg. 1)
BEYOND LOCATION -- While giving a sales tour of Balanchine to Will Aufderheide, a potential buyer, Michelle
Genovesi showed off the home's spiral staircase (inside the silo in the photograph at right). ''Exceptional properties''
with listing prices of $2 million to $15 million are Ms. Genovesi's specialty, and most, like Balanchine, have names.
Ms. Genovesi's team, Michelle & Company, includes her two buyer agents, flanking her at right: Suzanne Dodge, left,
and Audrey Demetres. (Photographs by Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times)
(Photo by Douglas Healey for The New York Times)(pg. 6)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Page 185
Super Agents, Super Teams The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1070 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 4, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Super Agents, Super Teams
BYLINE: By GERRI HIRSHEY
SECTION: Section 14WC; Column 2; Westchester Weekly Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 2332 words
THE young couple are seated together awaiting another real estate agent's appraisal in what is called the ''English
pub room'' of their 1730 antique home in Westport. Theirs is the kind of property that ads typically limn as ''historic
charmer with state-of-the-art amenities.'' This means the imposing stone hearth is hung with a tasteful dark plasma
screen instead of a fox-hunting print.
The couple took two years to renovate, expand and hone the place to Architectural Digest perfection while they
lived elsewhere. The home's craftsmanship and detail are exquisite, from the outdoor fireplace to the fully wired and
Wi-Fied his-and-hers offices much desired by Fairfield County's Blackberry-dependent financial services cadres.
''Those offices are absolutely going to sell this house,'' says Michelle Genovesi, a Westport broker with a 100gigabyte memory for detail, detail, detail, and a sales presentation that corners and shifts as smoothly as the BMW she
drove up in. ''Commuters are willing to spend more for things like this if it means they can work at home one or two
days a week.''
Ms. Genovesi, a former Wilhelmina model, is the founder and top producer of her Westport-area firm, Michelle &
Company. Despite the housing marketslowdown, her three-agent team did $70 million in sales volume in 2006.
Teams are a trend in the region's residential real estate market. Sharing resources, from office workers to Webmasters, has become practical as agents struggle to keep up with local and Internet listings. According to the National
Association of Realtors, Web listings are now consulted by 80 percent of Americans looking to buy homes.
Successful teams like Ms. Genovesi's are actively courted by big national agencies, which are only too happy to
encourage their local, personalized approach. Ms. Genovesi says she has had many corporate suitors but has opted to
stay with a parent company, William Raveis Real Estate and Home Services, because its founder and chief executive,
William Raveis, ''allows you to unleash your personality in the business.''
''He's not fearful of you growing and branding yourself,'' she says.
Mr. Raveis said: ''Michelle is a mega-agent. We're in negotiations for her to double that sales volume, expand her
territory and her team.''
To that end, Ms. Genovesi is shopping for her own office building, where she will add to her current team-- two
''buyer specialist'' agents and a six-person staff that provides administrative, Web, mortgage and marketing support.
''Most people in our industry are reactive to the market,'' Mr. Raveis said. ''She's very proactive. She branded herself and created this team approach before anyone else out here thought of it. Now there are lots of Michelle wannabes.''
Page 186
Super Agents, Super Teams The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
Among the more visible branded teams in the region are Mike Luchen's in Westchester, whose ads promise,
''Team Mike Luchen Realtors speak English, Italian, Spanish, Polish and German.'' There are married teams and sister
acts, like the Twin Team in Westchester, identical sisters whose Web site trumpets ''A Shared Synergy.''
In Essex County, N.J., the Baldwin Dream Team, a ReMax quartet of former freelance writers and administrators,
will be one of three teams featured on a new reality series, ''Bought and Sold,'' on HGTV in late April. Roberta Baldwin,
lead agent of the team, which did $40 million in sales in 2006, explained why she set up her own shop within the ReMax penumbra: ''I wanted to be more entrepreneurial, and I found people to help me grow my business that I can absolutely trust to have our interests at heart. It's pretty cutthroat in real estate, either on your own or in a big company.
Clients also like the idea that they'll be taken care of even when I'm busy elsewhere.''
Mr. Raveis, whose business has 55 offices in Connecticut and Massachusetts with 1,700 agents and claims $5 billion in annual sales, has big producers besides Ms. Genovesi. Most notable is Jean Ruggiero, who, embedded in Greenwich, Conn. -- a hedge-fund capital -- can bring in $110 million in yearly volume by selling executive castles.
The rich do shop differently, Mr. Raveis said, and he especially values Ms. Genovesi for her ability to reel in and
placate corporate titans and their families -- and their decorators. ''To deal with the high-end seller and high-end demands and be sane well, she's amazing,'' he said.
Selling white-glove service requires a statelier pace, and no visible pressure. Ms. Genovesi's presentation to the
couple with the Westport property takes more than an hour and includes a customized, meticulously researched portfolio on their home and others in the area, prepared by her staff. She is the third agent the couple have interviewed.
As the spring real estate market gets off to a brisk start -- Ms. Genovesi says you can peg it, reliable as the first
robin, to the first weekend after the Super Bowl -- they want to be ready.
The last agent the couple interviewed left a brochure and dashed off after a few words about installing a lockbox.
''Under no circumstances do we do a lockbox here,'' Ms. Genovesi says. ''You do not walk in and out of an exceptional property at will.'' She will show the home herself, and only to those prequalified with a discreet questionnaire and
mortgage preapproval.
''If buyers decide after a tour it's not right, I'll introduce them to my buyer team members, who will share with
them whatever else is in the market,'' '' Ms. Genovesi says. ''That's where I pass the baton. My focus is on selling my
properties.''
She says she will sell the home three times: to other agents, to a buyer and to the bank appraiser. She will invite
other agents in for a look and a catered lunch, but there will be no open house. ''Too many people just want to check out
the granite counters and get some ideas,'' she says.
Calling Ms. Genovesi, the wife says, was ''almost automatic,'' given her reputation and visibility. According to a
competing agent, ''No one would think of listing a high-end property without having Michelle at least do an appraisal.''
For her part, Ms. Genovesi does not want to know the competition. ''I have 23 years' experience here,'' she says,
''and I can say that I own the high-end market.''
As conversation deepens, Ms. Genovesi's pronouns subtly slide from ''your'' to ''our,'' as in ''Our appliances and
renovations are mint.'' Finally, the sensitive part -- the number -- comes up. Ms. Genovesi routinely turns down listings
if the asking prices are unrealistically high. Sometimes sellers come back to her -- and her number -- after other agents
fail to move the house. ''The number is just a suggestion based on my experience and market education,'' she says. It can
be fine-tuned. She tells the couple her number and commission. They nod.
One more big question hangs: Are things moving? ''There's lots of inventory now,'' Ms. Genovesi says, ''but in
some segments, only 50 percent sold last year, in others only 25 percent. Statistically, the high end hasn't taken as big a
hit as the rest of the market -- especially with this year's Wall Street bonuses. We're definitely feeling those bonuses
now. We find that when the market turns, it's the lower and higher ends that still do well. It's the middle market that
suffers the most.''
AS part of her presentation, she explains her career path: ''In the late '80s, no one was really taking any part of the
business and owning it. So I decided to focus on listing and marketing exceptional properties. To do that I needed to
brand myself. I started to spend money to make money. I put my photograph in my ads. Back then, everyone said,
'What's with the picture?' But people remembered. I started getting calls.''
Page 187
Super Agents, Super Teams The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
Ms. Genovesi does business in expensive but understated clothes and in two BMWs: a 5 Series S.U.V. for ferrying
clients, and a sportier 3 Series convertible she just bought as a 50th birthday present to herself. She had considered indulging in a Maserati but rejected it as ''too pretentious.''
Nothing, not even a well-earned midlife toy, should interfere with the image she has honed carefully, some might
say obsessively, since she arrived in Connecticut as a fiancee looking for a house and got her real estate license ''on a
whim.'' After two long engagements, she is ''single and fine with it.''
As the eldest of five children born into an Air Force family, ''I'm a habitual caregiver,'' she says. A mobile childhood, much of it in Europe -- five moves during the last two years of high school -- made her an extrovert of necessity.
Her brief modeling career was fun, chiefly for the travel, but she found fashion confining.
By taking the long view in her next endeavor, she says, she has carved herself a posh, Scalamandre-upholstered
niche here on Connecticut's Gold Coast. ''Exceptional properties'' translates to $2 million to $15 million. Most of Ms.
Genovesi's listings have names, like Pier Way, Lord's Manor and the Hermitage. They will appear on premiere Web
sites with detailed virtual tours. Qualified buyers will get custom portfolios including a CD-ROM virtual tour of the
property, its photo imprinted on the disc.
Some homes, like Judith Paixao's riverside compound, a property once owned by the prima ballerina Tanaquil Le
Clercq, have exceptional provenance. Ms. Le Clercq and her husband, the choreographer George Balanchine, also
owned a summer residence across the road. ''It's a singular property that needs the right buyer,'' Ms. Paixao said. ''I
needed someone who could think way outside the box, and that was Michelle. She gets it. She arranged to have two
Chico's holiday catalogs photographed there -- and showed the place right in the middle of the shoot.''
MS. GENOVESI has other ideas for the 1730 antique property. ''Weather permitting, I can have an aerial photographer here by the weekend,'' she tells the couple. From the air, the manicured grounds will show to estate-like advantage. ''People are starting to look now,'' she tells the owners. ''Our biggest binding month, when offers are written, is
March.'' The couple have one more agent to see; they promise a prompt decision and see her out warmly.
''I'm sure I've got it,'' Ms. Genovesi says as she heads to her car.
Even perfect properties require an alternative mind-set. On another day, Ms. Genovesi demonstrates her houseshowing technique at a modernist masterwork in Saugatuck Shores -- waterfront, private dock, $8.8 million. This is not
a home to perfume with the smell of baking cookies. But the automatic shades will be raised to the view when buyers
stroll in. Cool jazz -- appropriate to the modern art, the custom leather floors in the library -- will provide a chic soundtrack. ''We're not selling a house,'' Ms. Genovesi instructs. ''We're selling a lifestyle.''
This is how she was able to price the home next door to this one at an audacious $9 million -- almost $2 million
over what she said the Westport market was bearing at the time.
''In exceptional properties you have to market outside the town you're in,'' Ms. Genovesi says. She researched waterfront prices all the way to Greenwich and sent e-mail messages to more than 500 potential customers. A Darien agent
saw it and brought her clients, who had been looking at waterfront in Greenwich, where the prices are higher. They
bought it for the asking price.
Thus, in so many ways, Ms. Genovesi is not what Mr. Raveis calls a ''maintenance'' Realtor -- that diligent professional who tucks so many suburban families into center-hall colonials. Nor does she fit the voracious, blonde-in-a-goldLexus cliche of the go-go '90s. At the weekly team meeting at Michelle & Company, six women come and go, talking
of corporate ''relo.'' Mobility is the agent's bread and butter: corporate relocations, divorce, remarriages with blended
families, empty nesters.
Audrey Demetres, one of the two agents who concentrate on buyers, says this is an especially fluid market. ''I
came from a house where my teenage wallpaper is still on the wall,'' Ms. Demetres says. ''But I don't think I've ever sold
anyone a house that was thinking in terms of a lifetime home. They'll either upsize, downsize. They never think of staying in that 30-year-mortgage house. I have one family that couldn't move up fast enough -- a two-bedroom cottage, then
a colonial, then new construction, all before they were 34.''
Ms. Demetres's counterpart, Suzanne Dodge, left a high-profile career in real estate marketing in Manhattan after
she had her third child, but she wanted ''a serious career'' in the suburbs. The high-tech embrace of Ms. Genovesi's team
was perfect. ''Internet was just cranking up,'' Ms. Dodge says. ''That was a huge expense to take on as a sole agent. I was
advertising, trying to get listings, staying up all night answering e-mails, writing ads.''
Page 188
Super Agents, Super Teams The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
Signing on with Ms. Genovesi after a stint at another agency, ''I was just dazzled,'' Ms. Dodge says. ''Everything is
smooth. I never do paperwork after I sell a house. They handle everything. And I can go out and sell another house.''
A few days after Ms. Genovesi's presentation to the couple with the 1730 home, she is sitting in a Westport Starbucks. Above the cellphone cacophony of other recaffeinating brokers, she confides, ''I got the listing.'' The aerial shots
are done, the number is firmed up, the virtual tour is being shot. She is talking about the office buildings along the Post
Road that she has been looking at for her expansion when a lawyer, Joseph C. Maya, strides over and says hello. She is
friendly, but quizzical until he explains that she found him a house in 2001 when he wanted to move his family to a quieter, safer street.
Ms. Genovesi had forgotten Mr. Maya's first name, but she could summon the precise transaction details.
He is pumping her hand. ''Since then I've sent over 20 people to you,'' he says. ''I'll probably send 20 more.''
She thanks him with a big grin. ''Bring 'em on,'' she says.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: REAL ESTATE (91%); REAL ESTATE AGENTS (89%); SALES FIGURES (87%); RESIDENTIAL
PROPERTY (78%); HOUSING MARKET (77%); SALES & SELLING (73%); TRENDS (72%); BUILDING RENOVATION (72%); MARKET INCIDENCE (72%); HOME BASED EMPLOYMENT (71%); HOLDING COMPANIES
(70%); BANKING & FINANCE (68%); BRANDING (64%); CITIES (74%); BALLET (74%) Housing; Brokers and
Brokerage Firms
ORGANIZATION: Michelle & Co
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (51%) Gerri Hirshey; Michelle Genovesi
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (79%) CONNECTICUT, USA (90%); NEW YORK, USA (79%) UNITED
STATES (90%) New York City Metropolitan Area; Connecticut
LOAD-DATE: March 4, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: RURAL CHARM -- Michelle Genovesi, one of Connecticut's top real estate sales agents, at the
entrance to Balanchine, a barn home and estate in Wilton that is on the market for $3,650,000. The property once belonged to the prima ballerina Tanaquil Le Clercq, who had a home nearby with her husband, the choreographer George
Balanchine. (Photo by Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times)(pg. 1)
BEYOND LOCATION -- While giving a sales tour of Balanchine to Will Aufderheide, a potential buyer, Michelle
Genovesi showed off the home's spiral staircase (inside the silo in the photograph at right). ''Exceptional properties''
with listing prices of $2 million to $15 million are Ms. Genovesi's specialty, and most, like Balanchine, have names.
Ms. Genovesi's team, Michelle & Company, includes her two buyer agents, flanking her at right: Suzanne Dodge, left,
and Audrey Demetres. (Photographs by Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times)
(Photo by Douglas Healey for The New York Times)(pg. 6)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1071 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
Page 189
Super Agents, Super Teams The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
March 4, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Super Agents, Super Teams
BYLINE: By GERRI HIRSHEY
SECTION: Section 14CN; Column 2; Connecticut Weekly Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 2331 words
THE young couple are seated together awaiting another real estate agent's appraisal in what is called the ''English
pub room'' of their 1730 antique home in Westport. Theirs is the kind of property that ads typically limn as ''historic
charmer with state-of-the-art amenities.'' This means the imposing stone hearth is hung with a tasteful dark plasma
screen instead of a fox-hunting print.
The couple took two years to renovate, expand and hone the place to Architectural Digest perfection while they
lived elsewhere. The home's craftsmanship and detail are exquisite, from the outdoor fireplace to the fully wired and
Wi-Fied his-and-hers offices much desired by Fairfield County's Blackberry-dependent financial services cadres.
''Those offices are absolutely going to sell this house,'' says Michelle Genovesi, a Westport broker with a 100gigabyte memory for detail, detail, detail, and a sales presentation that corners and shifts as smoothly as the BMW she
drove up in. ''Commuters are willing to spend more for things like this if it means they can work at home one or two
days a week.''
Ms. Genovesi, a former Wilhelmina model, is the founder and top producer of her Westport-area firm, Michelle &
Company. Despite the housing market slowdown, her three-agent team did $70 million in sales volume in 2006.
Teams are a trend in the region's residential real estate market. Sharing resources, from office workers to Webmasters, has become practical as agents struggle to keep up with local and Internet listings. According to the National
Association of Realtors, Web listings are now consulted by 80 percent of Americans looking to buy homes.
Successful teams like Ms. Genovesi's are actively courted by big national agencies, which are only too happy to
encourage their local, personalized approach. Ms. Genovesi says she has had many corporate suitors but has opted to
stay with a parent company, William Raveis Real Estate and Home Services, because its founder and chief executive,
William Raveis, ''allows you to unleash your personality in the business.''
''He's not fearful of you growing and branding yourself,'' she says.
Mr. Raveis said: ''Michelle is a mega-agent. We're in negotiations for her to double that sales volume, expand her
territory and her team.''
To that end, Ms. Genovesi is shopping for her own office building, where she will add to her current team -- two
''buyer specialist'' agents and a six-person staff that provides administrative, Web, mortgage and marketing support.
''Most people in our industry are reactive to the market,'' Mr. Raveis said. ''She's very proactive. She branded herself and created this team approach before anyone else out here thought of it. Now there are lots of Michelle wannabes.''
Among the more visible branded teams in the region are Mike Luchen's in Westchester, whose ads promise,
''Team Mike Luchen Realtors speak English, Italian, Spanish, Polish and German.'' There are married teams and sister
acts, like the Twin Team in Westchester, identical sisters whose Web site trumpets ''A Shared Synergy.''
In Essex County, N.J., the Baldwin Dream Team, a ReMax quartet of former freelance writers and administrators,
will be one of three teams featured on a new reality series, ''Bought and Sold,'' on HGTV in late April. Roberta Baldwin,
lead agent of the team, which did $40 million in sales in 2006, explained why she set up her own shop within the ReMax penumbra: ''I wanted to be more entrepreneurial, and I found people to help me grow my business that I can absolutely trust to have our interests at heart. It's pretty cutthroat in real estate, either on your own or in a big company.
Clients also like the idea that they'll be taken care of even when I'm busy elsewhere.''
Page 190
Super Agents, Super Teams The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
Mr. Raveis, whose business has 55 offices in Connecticut and Massachusetts with 1,700 agents and claims $5 billion in annual sales, has big producers besides Ms. Genovesi. Most notable is Jean Ruggiero, who, embedded in Greenwich -- a hedge-fund capital -- can bring in $110 million in yearly volume by selling executive castles.
The rich do shop differently, Mr. Raveis said, and he especially values Ms. Genovesi for her ability to reel in and
placate corporate titans and their families -- and their decorators. ''To deal with the high-end seller and high-end demands and be sane well, she's amazing,'' he said.
Selling white-glove service requires a statelier pace, and no visible pressure. Ms. Genovesi's presentation to the
couple with the Westport property takes more than an hour and includes a customized, meticulously researched portfolio on their home and others in the area, prepared by her staff. She is the third agent the couple have interviewed.
As the spring real estate market gets off to a brisk start -- Ms. Genovesi says you can peg it, reliable as the first
robin, to the first weekend after the Super Bowl -- they want to be ready.
The last agent the couple interviewed left a brochure and dashed off after a few words about installing a lockbox.
''Under no circumstances do we do a lockbox here,'' Ms. Genovesi says. ''You do not walk in and out of an exceptional property at will.'' She will show the home herself, and only to those prequalified with a discreet questionnaire and
mortgage preapproval.
''If buyers decide after a tour it's not right, I'll introduce them to my buyer team members, who will share with
them whatever else is in the market,'' '' Ms. Genovesi says. ''That's where I pass the baton. My focus is on selling my
properties.''
She says she will sell the home three times: to other agents, to a buyer and to the bank appraiser. She will invite
other agents in for a look and a catered lunch, but there will be no open house. ''Too many people just want to check out
the granite counters and get some ideas,'' she says.
Calling Ms. Genovesi, the wife says, was ''almost automatic,'' given her reputation and visibility. According to a
competing agent, ''No one would think of listing a high-end property without having Michelle at least do an appraisal.''
For her part, Ms. Genovesi does not want to know the competition. ''I have 23 years' experience here,'' she says,
''and I can say that I own the high-end market.''
As conversation deepens, Ms. Genovesi's pronouns subtly slide from ''your'' to ''our,'' as in ''Our appliances and
renovations are mint.'' Finally, the sensitive part -- the number -- comes up. Ms. Genovesi routinely turns down listings
if the asking prices are unrealistically high. Sometimes sellers come back to her -- and her number -- after other agents
fail to move the house. ''The number is just a suggestion based on my experience and market education,'' she says. It can
be fine-tuned. She tells the couple her number and commission. They nod.
One more big question hangs: Are things moving? ''There's lots of inventory now,'' Ms. Genovesi says, ''but in
some segments, only 50 percent sold last year, in others only 25 percent. Statistically, the high end hasn't taken as big a
hit as the rest of the market -- especially with this year's Wall Street bonuses. We're definitely feeling those bonuses
now. We find that when the market turns, it's the lower and higher ends that still do well. It's the middle market that
suffers the most.''
AS part of her presentation, she explains her career path: ''In the late '80s, no one was really taking any part of the
business and owning it. So I decided to focus on listing and marketing exceptional properties. To do that I needed to
brand myself. I started to spend money to make money. I put my photograph in my ads. Back then, everyone said,
'What's with the picture?' But people remembered. I started getting calls.''
Ms. Genovesi does business in expensive but understated clothes and in two BMWs: a 5 Series S.U.V. for ferrying
clients, and a sportier 3 Series convertible she just bought as a 50th birthday present to herself. She had considered indulging in a Maserati but rejected it as ''too pretentious.''
Nothing, not even a well-earned midlife toy, should interfere with the image she has honed carefully, some might
say obsessively, since she arrived in Connecticut as a fiancee looking for a house and got her real estate license ''on a
whim.'' After two long engagements, she is ''single and fine with it.''
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Super Agents, Super Teams The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
As the eldest of five children born into an Air Force family, ''I'm a habitual caregiver,'' she says. A mobile childhood, much of it in Europe -- five moves during the last two years of high school -- made her an extrovert of necessity.
Her brief modeling career was fun, chiefly for the travel, but she found fashion confining.
By taking the long view in her next endeavor, she says, she has carved herself a posh, Scalamandre-upholstered
niche here on Connecticut's Gold Coast. ''Exceptional properties'' translates to $2 million to $15 million. Most of Ms.
Genovesi's listings have names, like Pier Way, Lord's Manor and the Hermitage. They will appear on premiere Web
sites with detailed virtual tours. Qualified buyers will get custom portfolios including a CD-ROM virtual tour of the
property, its photo imprinted on the disc.
Some homes, like Judith Paixao's riverside compound, a property once owned by the prima ballerina Tanaquil Le
Clercq, have exceptional provenance. Ms. Le Clercq and her husband, the choreographer George Balanchine, also
owned a summer residence across the road. ''It's a singular property that needs the right buyer,'' Ms. Paixao said. ''I
needed someone who could think way outside the box, and that was Michelle. She gets it. She arranged to have two
Chico's holiday catalogs photographed there -- and showed the place right in the middle of the shoot.''
MS. GENOVESI has other ideas for the 1730 antique property. ''Weather permitting, I can have an aerial photographer here by the weekend,'' she tells the couple. From the air, the manicured grounds will show to estate-like advantage. ''People are starting to look now,'' she tells the owners. ''Our biggest binding month, when offers are written, is
March.'' The couple have one more agent to see; they promise a prompt decision and see her out warmly.
''I'm sure I've got it,'' Ms. Genovesi says as she heads to her car.
Even perfect properties require an alternative mind-set. On another day, Ms. Genovesi demonstrates her houseshowing technique at a modernist masterwork in Saugatuck Shores -- waterfront, private dock, $8.8 million. This is not
a home to perfume with the smell of baking cookies. But the automatic shades will be raised to the view when buyers
stroll in. Cool jazz -- appropriate to the modern art, the custom leather floors in the library -- will provide a chic soundtrack. ''We're not selling a house,'' Ms. Genovesi instructs. ''We're selling a lifestyle.''
This is how she was able to price the home next door to this one at an audacious $9 million -- almost $2 million
over what she said the Westport market was bearing at the time.
''In exceptional properties you have to market outside the town you're in,'' Ms. Genovesi says. She researched waterfront prices all the way to Greenwich and sent e-mail messages to more than 500 potential customers. A Darien agent
saw it and brought her clients, who had been looking at waterfront in Greenwich, where the prices are higher. They
bought it for the asking price.
Thus, in so many ways, Ms. Genovesi is not what Mr. Raveis calls a ''maintenance'' Realtor -- that diligent professional who tucks so many suburban families into center-hall colonials. Nor does she fit the voracious, blonde-in-a-goldLexus cliche of the go-go '90s. At the weekly team meeting at Michelle & Company, six women come and go, talking
of corporate ''relo.'' Mobility is the agent's bread and butter: corporate relocations, divorce, remarriages with blended
families, empty nesters.
Audrey Demetres, one of the two agents who concentrate on buyers, says this is an especially fluid market. ''I
came from a house where my teenage wallpaper is still on the wall,'' Ms. Demetres says. ''But I don't think I've ever sold
anyone a house that was thinking in terms of a lifetime home. They'll either upsize, downsize. They never think of staying in that 30-year-mortgage house. I have one family that couldn't move up fast enough -- a two-bedroom cottage, then
a colonial, then new construction, all before they were 34.''
Ms. Demetres's counterpart, Suzanne Dodge, left a high-profile career in real estate marketing in Manhattan after
she had her third child, but she wanted ''a serious career'' in the suburbs. The high-tech embrace of Ms. Genovesi's team
was perfect. ''Internet was just cranking up,'' Ms. Dodge says. ''That was a huge expense to take on as a sole agent. I was
advertising, trying to get listings, staying up all night answering e-mails, writing ads.''
Signing on with Ms. Genovesi after a stint at another agency, ''I was just dazzled,'' Ms. Dodge says. ''Everything is
smooth. I never do paperwork after I sell a house. They handle everything. And I can go out and sell another house.''
A few days after Ms. Genovesi's presentation to the couple with the 1730 home, she is sitting in a Westport Starbucks. Above the cellphone cacophony of other recaffeinating brokers, she confides, ''I got the listing.'' The aerial shots
are done, the number is firmed up, the virtual tour is being shot. She is talking about the office buildings along the Post
Road that she has been looking at for her expansion when a lawyer, Joseph C. Maya, strides over and says hello. She is
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Super Agents, Super Teams The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
friendly, but quizzical until he explains that she found him a house in 2001 when he wanted to move his family to a quieter, safer street.
Ms. Genovesi had forgotten Mr. Maya's first name, but she could summon the precise transaction details.
He is pumping her hand. ''Since then I've sent over 20 people to you,'' he says. ''I'll probably send 20 more.''
She thanks him with a big grin. ''Bring 'em on,'' she says.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: REAL ESTATE (91%); HOUSING MARKET (89%); RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY (89%); REAL ESTATE AGENTS (89%); SALES FIGURES (87%); SALES & SELLING (73%); TRENDS (72%); BUILDING RENOVATION (72%); MARKET INCIDENCE (72%); HOME BASED EMPLOYMENT (71%); HOLDING COMPANIES (70%); BANKING & FINANCE (68%); BRANDING (64%); CITIES (74%); BALLET (74%) Housing; Brokers
and Brokerage Firms
ORGANIZATION: Michelle & Co
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (51%) Gerri Hirshey; Michelle Genovesi
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (79%) CONNECTICUT, USA (91%); NEW YORK, USA (79%) UNITED
STATES (91%) New York City Metropolitan Area; Connecticut
LOAD-DATE: March 4, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: RURAL CHARM -- Michelle Genovesi, one of Connecticut's top real estate sales agents, at the
entrance to Balanchine, a barn home and estate in Wilton that is on the market for $3,650,000. The property once belonged to the prima ballerina Tanaquil Le Clercq, who had a home nearby with her husband, the choreographer George
Balanchine. (Photo by Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times)(pg. 1)
BEYOND LOCATION -- While giving a sales tour of Balanchine to Will Aufderheide, a potential buyer, Michelle
Genovesi showed off the home's spiral staircase (inside the silo in the photograph at right), and the center hall, below.
''Exceptional properties'' with listing prices of $2 million to $15 million are Ms. Genovesi's specialty, and most, like
Balanchine, have names. Ms. Genovesi's team, Michelle & Company, includes her two buyer agents, flanking her at
right: Suzanne Dodge, left, and Audrey Demetres. (Photographs by Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times)
(Photo by Douglas Healey for The New York Times)(pg. 8)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1072 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 4, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Coffee Puts Laid-Back Town On Edge
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Coffee Puts Laid-Back Town On Edge The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
BYLINE: By PETER APPLEBOME.
E-mail: peappl@nytimes.com
SECTION: Section 1; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk; Second Front; OUR TOWNS; Pg. 27
LENGTH: 805 words
DATELINE: New Paltz, N.Y.
Many questions could be raised about the coffee war of New Paltz.
At what point does a small business become a giant chain? Just how much coffee can one little village consume?
How often does a village trustee consider it an urgent public issue when a new coffee shop might compete with her favored one? A century from now will this be one of those places where it still feels like it's 1968?
And then there's the one Jim Svetz keeps asking himself. How in the world did a guy who started his first coffee
shop on Staten Island six years ago and now runs five others in far-flung Hudson Valley towns become the moral
equivalent of Wal-Mart and Starbucks? ''Well, it's now official,'' he announced last month on the Web site that promotes
his Muddy Cup coffeehouses. ''I am now head of the evil empire.''
All this and more has become a wintertime diversion in this charmingly scruffy Hudson Valley duchy of vegan
cuisine and multiple piercings that has gained a measure of continuing fame in recent years. First came the 2003 election, when the Green Party and its 26-year-old mayoral candidate, Jason West, took over village government with the
support of students from the State University of New York at New Paltz.
The next came with Mr. West's 2004 decision to certify about two dozen same-sex marriages, the first in state history (the courts have refused to uphold their legality).
And now the talk of New Paltz has to do with something far more important than mere marriage -- coffee. More
specifically it's whether Mr. Svetz is plotting an act of entrepreneurial imperialism by presuming to open one of his
Muddy Cup coffeehouses next door to the ultimate green icon in town, the funky 60 Main coffee shop operated in conjunction with the nonprofit New Paltz Cultural Collective.
The collective, which supports arts and cultural activities in town and generally promotes the primal New Paltz
vibe, shares a cheerfully makeshift space with the coffee shop on Main Street. Regulars view the shop and its diligent
proprietor, Tobias Devor, with near-religious affection.
''We have ex-convicts and discreet millionaires who you would never know about,'' said Juli Castelbuono, one of
the regulars. ''It's a place where you can hang out, play chess, talk issues, make artwork or valentines, where you can be
a kindergartner again. It doesn't matter if you're a sexist creep or a feminist or whatever.''
Given prevailing winds in town it's safe to say that 60 Main attracts much more of the feminists and whatevers
than sexist creeps. The shop wears its politics like a badge of honor from the organic coffee to the ''fair trade'' goods
billed as free from exploitive labor or the ''No One is Free When Others are Oppressed'' bumper stickers.
All of this was sauntering along in an amiable R. Crumb sort of way until Mr. Svetz decided to open up a New
Paltz Muddy Cup, next to 60 Main and down the street from the defiantly corporate Starbucks -- the ultimate evil empire in the 60 Main worldview. He says all his shops strive to be aggressively local -- in their architecture, in supporting
local artists, poets and musicians, in taking part in local causes and civic affairs -- so it never occurred to him that coming to New Paltz would raise any issues.
Little did he know. As word filtered out he began receiving a blizzard of e-mail messages from 60 Main proponents, reacting to an urgent appeal from the collective. The messages threatened a boycott and told him to stay home. ''If
we can stop Wal-Mart we can stop you,'' said one.
''We do not want to become yet another small town taken over by huge corporations,'' read another.
His landlord, Bobby Downs, said he was stunned when a member of the village governing board, Julia Walsh,
confronted him, furious that he would put in a coffee shop next to 60 Main. A Facebook site immediately went up called
''Keep 60 Main Alive! Say No to Corporate Coffee in New Paltz!''
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Coffee Puts Laid-Back Town On Edge The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
One item on the civic agenda is a proposal still being developed to limit or ban chain establishments in town, but
Mr. Svetz said he did not think his little business could count as a chain and would not be affected even if the ordinance
were in place.
Mr. Svetz is still stunned by the whole thing, particularly his sudden status as a giant corporation. He says that just
as lots of bars coexist in town, several coffee shops can too. Maybe he's right. Maybe he's not. He's not Wal-Mart, but
maybe it's fair to ask how many artist-friendly coffeehouses the village can support. But it's hard to argue when he says
that even in New Paltz, businesses generally have to compete to survive, not find a way to build a Berlin Wall around
town.
''When a community starts building walls and saying you don't belong here or you don't think like we do, that can't
be a good thing,'' he said.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: SMALL BUSINESS (89%); POLITICS (87%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (78%); COFFEE & TEA
STORES (78%); COFFEE & TEA (78%); REGIONAL & LOCAL GOVERNMENTS (77%); MAYORS (77%); POLITICAL CANDIDATES (73%); COFFEE (73%); US GREEN PARTY (71%); MARRIAGE (64%); WEALTHY
PEOPLE (60%); GAYS & LESBIANS (50%); SAME SEX MARRIAGE & UNIONS (64%); RESTAURANTS (90%);
RESTAURANT FOOD & BEVERAGE SALES (65%); BOYCOTTS (64%); MEAT FREE DIETS (72%) Restaurants;
Boycotts; Restaurants
ORGANIZATION: Muddy Cup (Restaurant Chain); Sixty Main Street (New Paltz, NY, Restaurant); New Paltz Cultural Collective
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (50%) Peter Applebome; Jim Svetz
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (79%) NEW YORK, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (79%) New Paltz
(NY)
LOAD-DATE: March 4, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1073 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 4, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
A High-Fashion Lane in China
BYLINE: By ANDREW YANG
SECTION: Section 5; Column 1; Travel Desk; SURFACING SHANGHAI; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 519 words
Page 195
A High-Fashion Lane in China The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
TAIKANG ROAD, at the southern end of the French Concession area in Shanghai, does not look like a portal to
the cutting edge of high fashion. A dark alleyway leads to Lane 248, a narrow street filled with, among other things, old
bicycles, yam carts and clotheslines dripping with laundry.
But on a recent afternoon, the floodlights from a television crew pierced the drabness to report on the opening of
yet another boutique along the lane. The store, Jaooh, which sells loose-fitting, or deconstructed, clothing under its own
label, had just opened the day before.
''This area is quite unique and has more personality and character than many other places in Shanghai,'' said
Yvonne Wang, an owner of Jaooh (Shop 47, Lane 248, Taikang Road, 86-21-6466-5385). ''There are lot of new shops,
but the character of the buildings has stayed the same.''
In Shanghai, where mega-developments are the norm, the small stone houses known as shikumen along Lane 248
are being lovingly restored and converted into trendy boutiques, patisseries and cafes. Since last summer, nearly two
dozen shops have opened.
''Every day I come here, there's something new,'' said A-Ti Dong, a recent transplant from New York City who
runs Arts du Monde (Shop 43, Lane 248; 86-21-5465-7896), which sells unusual items like trench coats made from Tibetan fabric (2,500 yuan, about $316 at 7.9 yuan to the dollar), and vintage Christian Dior Mary Jane high-heeled shoes
(3,500 yuan).
The ''shopification'' of Lane 248 has been spurred largely by young entrepreneurs from cosmopolitan cities like
Taipei and Hong Kong. Some jokingly refer to their budding district as Lao Tian Di (Old Sky Earth), a riff on a popular
entertainment district in Shanghai known as Xintiandi (New Sky Earth) that features immaculately restored shikumen
houses -- and a Starbucks.
But unlike that master-planned entertainment district, Lane 248 is a community with deep roots. ''There's a lot of
interaction and harmony among the shopkeepers and the locals,'' said Bobbie Cornell, a New Zealand native who
opened up her shop, Nuzi (Shop 30, Lane 248; 86-21-5465-3245) in November. Ms. Cornell said that her next-door
neighbors, longtime residents of the lane, welcomed her to the area by offering her a number of home-cooked meals.
Nuzi sells New Zealand-inspired furniture and accessories like an ash and birch loveseat by the designer David
Trubridge (35,000 yuan) and large-scale prints by the artist Brent Wong (about 600 yuan).
For a Zen-like break between shops, stop by Meshi (Shop 37, Lane 248; 86-21-5465-2450), a Japanese-style teahouse that serves traditional green tea and has the feel of an old Kyoto house. The Alley Bar (Shop 33, Lane 248; 8621-6433-3469), a tiny bar and coffee shop with a third-floor patio, was getting ready to open this week.
Locals who stumble onto Lane 248 don't always appreciate its appeal. ''My producer thinks it's strange,'' said Huo
Yi-Lin, a film editor working on a documentary about Lane 248. ''They are such poor quality houses. But foreigners
really love them, and think they are emblematic of Shanghai.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: FASHION & APPAREL (90%); FASHION DESIGNERS (90%); RETAILERS (90%); RETAIL BAKERIES (71%); CITY LIFE (65%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (50%) Travel and Vacations; Apparel
COMPANY: CHRISTIAN DIOR SA (58%); CNINSURE INC (91%)
TICKER: CDI (PAR) (58%); CISG (NASDAQ) (91%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS316992 WOMEN'S HANDBAG AND PURSE MANUFACTURING (58%); NAICS315232
WOMEN'S AND GIRLS' CUT AND SEW BLOUSE AND SHIRT MANUFACTURING (58%); SIC3171 WOMEN'S
HANDBAGS & PURSES (58%); SIC2331 WOMEN'S, MISSES', & JUNIORS' BLOUSES & SHIRTS (58%); NAICS316992 WOMEN'S HANDBAG & PURSE MANUFACTURING (58%); NAICS315232 WOMEN'S & GIRLS'
CUT & SEW BLOUSE & SHIRT MANUFACTURING (58%)
PERSON: Andrew Yang
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A High-Fashion Lane in China The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
GEOGRAPHIC: SHANGHAI, CHINA (92%); TAIPEI, TAIWAN (79%); NEW YORK, NY, USA (79%) EAST
CHINA (91%); NEW YORK, USA (79%); XIZANG, CHINA (50%) CHINA (94%); TAIWAN (79%); UNITED
STATES (79%); HONG KONG (78%); TIBET (54%) Shanghai (China); China
LOAD-DATE: March 4, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Shopkeepers on Lane 248, where the restoration of old buildings has created a chic shopping district. (Photo by Ariana Lindquist for The New York Times)Map of China highlighting Lane 248 and surrounding areas.
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1074 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 4, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
The People's Republic of Sex Kittens and Metrosexuals
BYLINE: By DAVID BARBOZA
SECTION: Section 4; Column 1; Week in Review Desk; THE WORLD: Naughty Little Red Book; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 1156 words
DATELINE: SHANGHAI
WHEN Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue hit the newsstands last week in China for the first time, with the sexy
singer Beyonce on the cover, the competition was fierce.
Readers here had already seen the February issue of For Him Magazine, which features a Chinese singer named A
Duo on its cover wearing a white V-neck leotard that reveals every other inch of her rather substantial figure.
Inside, A Duo poses like a dominatrix, clutching her breasts, wrapping her naked body in celluloid and bending,
sweat-drenched, over a submissive man.
The racy For Him Magazine also offers tips on ''how to do it in five minutes'' (because a ''sex break is the same as
a coffee break'') and features stories with titles like ''The Dangerous Sex Journey of QiQi.''
The images and text would hardly be shocking to American or European readers. And the magazine's photographs
are tame compared with what appears in magazines in Japan and other parts of Asia.
But in China, where sex is still a taboo subject and pornography is outlawed by the ruling Communist Party, the
images are not only highly provocative but perhaps the latest sign that sex and sexuality are infiltrating the mainstream
media.
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The People's Republic of Sex Kittens and Metrosexuals The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
And this powerful burst of sexual energy seems both a symbol of how rapidly China's transformation is unfolding
and, to some, a harbinger of the troubles ahead for a nation that will inevitably struggle to absorb its newfound freedoms. ''There is a fine line between the open mind and sexual indulgence,'' said Xie Xialing, a professor of sociology at
Fudan University in Shanghai.
Even five years ago, Chinese books and magazines were censored or banned from showing pictures of scantily
clad models or publishing content that was deemed offensive or morally corrupt. The only sexual content to be found
was in sex education pamphlets or books of nude Chinese women sold as ''art works'' at big city airports.
Today, however, with China's economy booming and the government loosening its hold on the personal lives of
everyday citizens, magazines are beginning to publish soft-core pornographic photographs, sexual fantasies, even clues
about where to pick up call girls.
Popular Chinese Web sites are going further, posting erotic videos and creating forums for women eager to market
their sex appeal and post their photographs on the Internet: images of traveling with friends, undressing at home, even
striking erotic poses.
''This is a kind of grass-roots sexual revolution,'' said Annie Wang, author of ''The People's Republic of Desire,'' a
satirical novel about the country's mad race to modernization.
The government announces periodic crackdowns on pornography and often censors sexual content in magazines
and on the Web. But since about 2000, the censors have started to look the other way. Political activism is still a no-no
in New China. Entertainment is a different matter. Even the Web site of Xinhua, the state-run news agency, offers slide
shows of the ''10 Hottest Babes of 2006'' and ''Rarely Seen Photos of Sexy Men.''
Many say the trend is being driven by the market, and by entrepreneurs eager to cash in on the country's freer
lifestyles.
''The market is the No. 1 driving force behind the boom of such magazines,'' said Pan Suiming, a professor of sociology at Renmin University in Beijing.Western luxury brands entering the Chinese market want to advertise in popular magazines and on Web sites that draw consumers. And in China right now, pictures of sex kittens draw.
For Him Magazine is one of the success stories of this genre, with a circulation of about 480,000. (It probably
helps that the magazine is published by a government agency, the National Tourism Administration, an indication of
official interest in investing in the phenomenon.) Jacky Jin, the editor in chief, says he wanted to affirm a new kind of
lifestyle for readers that he calls China's new metrosexuals, guys who love cars, gadgets and girls.
''We're opening a new window for Chinese men,'' he says, noting that he's been criticized by government censors
on several occasions.
A decade ago, the private lives of people in China were still quite restricted. Whom you married, where you lived
and what was considered permissible were tightly controlled or closely monitored by the government, employers and
parental authorities.
But urbanization, greater mobility and the power of the World Wide Web have challenged all that.
Now, experts say, China is going through a period of enormous personal and sexual freedom. Young people -most of whom grew up without siblings under the country's one-child policy -- are wearing more hip and provocative
clothing. And they're growing addicted to entertainment online, where they can also search for love and indulge their
lust.
Professor Pan said he thought one reason for the cultural change was a change in women's attitudes.
''Today's women, especially young women in the cities, no longer think it's a bad thing to expose their bodies,'' he
said. ''Five or six years ago, when some women started to wear clothes that exposed their midriff, most people couldn't
understand why belly buttons should be regarded as beautiful and deserve public exposure. Today, young women think
it is natural to bare their midriff.''
Zha Jianying, a Beijing writer and author of ''China Pop,'' says the growing openness is actually a good thing.
''This trend of being more open about sex is definitely healthy, coming after all those years of puritanism and
Maoist suppression,'' Ms. Zha says. ''Now, maybe we're seeing the pendulum swing in the other direction.''
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The People's Republic of Sex Kittens and Metrosexuals The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
But Professor Xie at Fudan University says things have gone too far.
''In certain periods in history, such as the decadent Ming Dynasty, sex was not a taboo and even intellectuals
would talk about their sex skills casually over tea,'' he said. ''Today's society is still better than that. But I do find that
people care less about dignity.''
He went on to call for limits on how much skin can be shown publicly, and said: ''Human beings should have a
sense of shame.'' Other critics say the new freedoms have brought degeneracy, a boom in prostitution, and what Ms.
Wang, the author, called ''the concubine mentality.'' Hard-core pornography, of course, is under assault by the government, which can exact heavy fines on trespassers. One pornography kingpin was recently sentenced to life in prison.
And censors are wary of influences from the West, like ''Sex and the City,'' which has a huge following here,
mostly on pirated DVDs. Even ''The Vagina Monologues'' show was canceled here recently, apparently because of the
title.
But in a country that also happens to be the largest manufacturer of sex toys, being naughty is catching on.
In November a man here in Shanghai was selling condoms in packages bearing the likeness of Chairman Mao.
His shop was closed, of course, for selling condoms in ''inappropriate packages.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: WOMEN (89%); PORNOGRAPHY & OBSCENITY (89%); CENSORSHIP (89%); BOOK REVIEWS
(89%); INTERNET & WWW (84%); NOVELS & SHORT STORIES (77%); HUMANITIES & SOCIAL SCIENCE
(68%); POLITICAL PARTIES (66%); SEX EDUCATION (50%); AIRPORTS (50%); HUMOROUS LITERATURE
(63%); CHILDREN (73%); TRENDS (60%); HUMAN RIGHTS (59%); COLLEGE & UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS
(50%); SINGERS & MUSICIANS (90%) Freedom and Human Rights; News and News Media; Sex ; Life Styles;
Children and Youth; Social Conditions and Trends
COMPANY: CNINSURE INC (93%)
TICKER: CISG (NASDAQ) (93%)
PERSON: BEYONCE KNOWLES (74%) David Barboza
GEOGRAPHIC: SHANGHAI, CHINA (92%) EAST CHINA (92%) CHINA (96%); ASIA (79%); JAPAN (79%);
UNITED STATES (79%) China
LOAD-DATE: March 4, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Party Girls -- A photo layout in the Chinese edition of Esquire goes light on ideology, lighter on
clothing.
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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March 4, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Point and Shoot for Bonus Points
BYLINE: By SETH KUGEL
SECTION: Section 5; Column 3; Travel Desk; WEEKEND IN NEW YORK SCAVENGER HUNT; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 998 words
ONE reason people visit New York is to catch a glimpse of things they'd never see in the average American city.
Some such sights are mystifying, some charming, some jaw-dropping -- and some are even legal.
This week, Weekend in New York offers a photo scavenger hunt, in which you (working alone or in a group) seek
out scenes and objects intrinsically New York and capture them with your camera. The hunt could be the centerpiece of
your weekend, but also could serve as just a way to enhance your downtime as you wander from restaurant to park to
museum, observing the natives in their natural habitat.
If competing against others, award two points to the team that does the best in each category, and one point to anyone coming in a reasonably close second. Or, if you're playing alone, just award a whole bunch of points to your own
team and declare yourself the winner.FOOD
Biggest crowd waiting for a brunch table: Sociologists are unable to explain it, so why should you even try? New
Yorkers like to wait -- arms crossed and toes tapping, of course -- as long as possible for their first meal on Sunday. To
qualify, those waiting must be huddled on the sidewalk.
Worst bagel/cream cheese or spread combo: Blueberry bagel with olive tofu spread? You can do better (worse)
than that. Either a photo of the offending sandwich or, if you don't dare order it, separate photos of the elements qualify.
Most expensive pizza slice -- cheese only: The price of a slice of plain old cheese pizza is always creeping up.
What's the highest you can find? (Hint: $2 probably won't win.)
Most expensive slice, no toppings barred: Add chicken or basil or bacon or artichokes or gold leaf, and watch the
price take off like a pickpocket being chased in the subway.
Most unusual-looking fruit or vegetable for sale: If it can get through customs, it's somewhere in this city. BUSINESS
The A.T.M. charging you the most outrageous amount for a withdrawal: $2 minimum.
Most newspaper/magazine dispensers on one street corner: They're often chained together, and the ones with
things you'd actually want to read are empty or require your pockets to be jingle-jangle-jingling with quarters.
Most out-of-town and/or foreign language newspapers at one newsstand: In some parts of town, you'd think fans
of Le Monde and La Gazzetta dello Sport and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung had never heard of the Internet.
Cheesiest Statue of Liberty-related tourist souvenir.
Multiple Starbucks in one picture: Two, certainly; three is a challenge.TRANSPORTATION
Best parallel parking job: The city's drivers know that if a parking space is an inch longer than their car, they can
ooze in. Be sure to photograph both the front and back ends.
Vehicle with multiple parking tickets: The easy-to-spot orange envelopes should be on the windshield or clearly
visible inside the car. Old tickets that truck drivers place to avoid reticketing are valid, as are tickets ripped apart in
rage.
Most yellow cabs in one photo: No fair taking an aerial shot from the top of the Empire State Building.LIVING
CREATURES
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Point and Shoot for Bonus Points The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
Most unlikely companions: Some New York restaurants specialize in unusual wine and food pairings, but the entire city specializes in unusual people pairings. Is that fashionable babe really dating that pitiful slob? Is that silverhaired guy about three times that woman's age? Is that a rabbi necking with a Senegalese hair stylist? (100 points for the
last one.)
Best-dressed dog: And by that, we mean worst-dressed dog.
Most dogs with one human: In New York, money buys anything, including the guy or gal who comes to your
house, picks up your dog and drags it and a bunch of others to the park. Absolute minimum: four dogs.
Pedestrian triple-tasking: Someone doing at least three things at once, one of which is walking down the street -plus eating and talking on cellphone; listening to iPod and reading magazine; or knitting and screaming at friend.
Pedestrian stupid-tasking. Someone who is text-messaging while crossing a hyper-busy street, something that
could soon be illegal in New York City.
Picture of a celebrity on the street: Trick question! In New York you're supposed to ignore celebrities. Minus 20
points.
Someone using a pay phone: Not too common these days; even less common, two people using adjacent pay
phones (double points).
A traffic police officer smiling: It's a tough life giving out tickets to the roughly seven million cars that are breaking parking laws at any one time. Subjected to nasty looks and verbal lashings, these officers don't have much to smile
about.
Anyone wearing George W. Bush paraphernalia (hat, T-shirt, full body tattoo): Manhattan voted 82 percent to 17
percent for John Kerry over Mr. Bush in 2004. The word on the street is that the president's popularity has not increased. NONEDIBLE INANIMATE OBJECTS
Public advertisements or notices in languages other than English: one point for each language. Spanish is a freebie, kind of like the space in the middle of a bingo card. (Starting clue: Check out the signs about being in one of the
first five cars on the No. 1 train to South Ferry.)
Most amusing spelling or translation error: Combine immigrant store owners with immigrant sign makers and
what do you get? An entrepreneurial spirit that keeps the city's economic engine humming? Yeah, sure, but also errors
terrible enough to drive language sticklers insane.
Most monstrous baby stroller: It's not that strollers aren't monstrous everywhere, but here the sidewalks, store
aisles and bystander tolerance are narrower.
Most unusual piece of refuse: A city that collects the strangest things also discards the strangest things, and they
don't all fit in a trash bag.
Most intellectual book being read in public: O.K., or perhaps just used as a prop to attract a Ms. or Mr. Right
prone to lugging around a copy of ''Gravity's Rainbow.'' If you hear someone say, ''Oh, you're into Kierkegaard'' -whirl, point and shoot.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: CITY LIFE (89%); RESTAURANT REVIEWS (89%); CITIES (78%); TRAVEL HOSPITALITY &
TOURISM (75%); SOCIOLOGY (71%); RESTAURANTS (70%); NEWSSTANDS (66%); ECOSYSTEMS & HABITATS (54%) Scavenger Hunts; Travel and Vacations
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (83%) Seth Kugel
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (79%) NEW YORK, USA (96%) UNITED STATES (96%) New York City
LOAD-DATE: March 4, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
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Point and Shoot for Bonus Points The New York Times March 4, 2007 Sunday
GRAPHIC: Photos: Shoots, and scores: Garlic bagel with scallion-tofu cream cheese and jelly
rare phone booth in use
smiling traffic officer
and snug parking. (Photographs by Robert Caplin for The New York Times)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1076 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 3, 2007 Saturday
Correction Appended
Late Edition - Final
Social Networking's Next Phase
BYLINE: By BRAD STONE
SECTION: Section C; Column 3; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1283 words
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO, March 2
Next week Cisco Systems, a Silicon Valley heavyweight, plans to announce one of its most unusual deals: it is buying the technology assets of Tribe.net, a mostly forgotten social networking site, according to people close to the companies' discussions.
It is a curious pairing. Cisco, with 38,000 employees, makes networking equipment for telecommunications providers and other big companies. Tribe.net, run by a company with eight employees, has been trampled by newer social
sites like MySpace and Facebook.
But along with the recent purchase of a social network design firm, Five Across, the deal will give Cisco the technology to help large corporate clients create services resembling MySpace or YouTube to bring their customers together
online. And that ambition highlights a significant shift in the way companies and entrepreneurs are thinking about social networks.
They look at MySpace and Facebook, with their tens of millions of users, as walled-off destinations, similar to
first-generation online services like America Online, CompuServe and Prodigy. These big Web sites attract masses of
people who have dissimilar interests and, ultimately, little in common.
The new social networking players, which include Cisco and a multitude of start-ups like Ning, the latest venture
of the Netscape co-creator Marc Andreessen, say that social networks will soon be as ubiquitous as regular Web sites.
They are aiming to create tools to let ordinary people, large companies and even presidential candidates create social
Web sites tailored for their own customers, friends, fans and employees.
''The existing social networks are fantastic but they put users in a straitjacket,'' said Mr. Andreessen, who this
week reintroduced Ning, his third start-up, after a limited introduction last year. ''They are restrictive about what you
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Social Networking's Next Phase The New York Times March 3, 2007 Saturday Correction Appended
can and can't do, and they were not built to be flexible. They do not let people build and design their own worlds, which
is the nature of what people want to do online.''
Social networks are sprouting on the Internet these days like wild mushrooms. In the last few months, organizations as dissimilar as the Portland Trailblazers, the University of South Carolina and Nike have gotten their own social
Web sites up and running, with the help of companies that specialize in building social networks. Last month, Senator
Barack Obama unveiled My.BarackObama.com, a social network created for his presidential campaign by the political
consulting firm Blue State Digital.
Many of these new online communities cater to niche interests. Shelfari, a Seattle-based start-up, recently began a
service to let book lovers share their opinions. This week it received an investment from Amazon.com.
Mr. Andreessen's Ning, based in Palo Alto, Calif., is fashioning itself as a one-stop shop catering to this growing
interest in social networks. Anyone can visit the site and set up a community on any topic, from the television show
''Battlestar Galactica'' to microbrew beers. Ning users choose the features they want to include, like videos, photos, discussion forums or blogs. Their sites can appear like MySpace, YouTube or the photo sharing site Flickr -- or something
singular.
Those setting up Ning communities can pay $20 a month if they want the site free of text advertisements delivered
by Google. They also have the option of delivering their own advertising, as CBS does on Ning-based social networks
for its shows ''CSI'' and ''The Class.''
Mr. Andreessen said that even with its two acquisitions, Cisco might be underestimating the ease of combining
technologies behind Tribe.net and its earlier acquisition, Five Across.
''The idea that Cisco is going to be a force in social networking is about as plausible as Ning being a force in optical switches,'' he said.
Tribe.net, which developed the technology that Cisco is now acquiring, almost led this new social networking
phase. In 2004, the U2 singer Bono approached the company and asked it to create a separate network for his antipoverty campaign, One.org, according to several former employees. Tribe.net, founded by Mark Pincus, a prominent
Silicon Valley angel investor, decided to remain focused on building a destination site, like Friendster and MySpace.
Bono went on to create the One.org network with Yahoo. Mr. Pincus left Tribe.net in 2005 but repurchased the
company from lenders last summer when it was nearly out of money. Today, Tribe.net is primarily used by artists who
attend the annual Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert.
Executives at Cisco and Utah Street Networks, Tribe.net's parent company, declined to comment on their deal or
its terms. But people close to the discussions said Tribe.net would remain an independent site, while its underlying
technology would go to Cisco.
Several former employees have left Tribe.net to start their own firms offering social network tools. Alex
Muldoven, who had been a product manager there, started a company called Crowd Factory to design social networks
for large companies. He is now building services for several telecommunications customers and says the new model
makes more sense for Internet users.
''If I'm into fly-fishing, that is where I'm going to spend my energy online,'' he said. ''I don't think it is easy for
MySpace and Facebook to adapt and bend to the needs of individual brands.''
One challenge is getting users to join new social networks when there are few other members. For example,
Google helped Nike design its soccer community site, called Joga.com, but it does not appear to have significantly attracted users.
''I think this will work for certain kinds of brands, and other brands are just barking up the wrong tree,'' said Paul
Martino, a former Tribe.net chief technology officer who is now the chief executive of Aggregate Knowledge, a service
that taps the online behavior of other users to provide shopping advice.
Another challenge is persuading users to enter their information over and over when they join new online communities. To solve the problem, several firms are pushing a standard called OpenID, which would let users sign on and
easily transfer profile information among social sites.
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Social Networking's Next Phase The New York Times March 3, 2007 Saturday Correction Appended
Marc Canter, a former Tribe.net consultant who has created his own social networking firm, People Aggregator,
was an early supporter of OpenID. ''Humans are migratory beasts, and we do not want to re-enter our data every time
we join a new site,'' he said. ''Users own their data and should be able to move it around freely.''
Cisco is positioning itself for the day when mainstream consumers are spending much of their time taking part in
these online communities. With the acquisition of Tribe.net, it is also trying to further its quest to become a consumeroriented company. In the last few years, it has purchased the wireless router company Linksys and the set-top-box maker Scientific Atlanta, giving it a significant presence in many American homes.
Dan Scheinman, the mergers and acquisition chief who led the Linksys and Scientific Atlanta purchases, now runs
a new division at Cisco called the Media Solutions Group, which has been responsible for the deals for Five Across and
Tribe.net.
After the Five Across acquisition, Mr. Scheinman said in an interview that Americans were quickly changing their
media consumption habits. He said his new group would let Cisco help its media customers, like TV networks and cable
companies, develop their sites and move more of their content onto the Web.
''Part of our job is to form a relationship with media companies and deliver technologies and services to them, so
consumers can consume what they want online,'' he said.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: INTERNET SOCIAL NETWORKING (95%); TELEPHONE EQUIPMENT MFG (78%); TELECOMMUNICATIONS EQUIPMENT (78%); POLITICAL CANDIDATES (78%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (78%); INTERNET & WWW (90%); COMPUTER NETWORKS (77%); TELECOMMUNICATIONS (76%); TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES (71%); CAMPAIGNS & ELECTIONS (69%); DIVESTITURES (72%) Computers and the
Internet; Mergers, Acquisitions and Divestitures; Computers and the Internet
COMPANY: MYSPACE.COM (92%); CISCO SYSTEMS INC (58%); AOL LLC (56%); AMAZON.COM INC
(50%); FACEBOOK INC (57%)
ORGANIZATION: Cisco Systems; Tribe.net; Myspace.com; Youtube; Ning (Social Networking Web Site); Netscape
Communications Corp
TICKER: CSCO (NASDAQ) (58%); CSC (LSE) (74%); AMZN (NASDAQ) (50%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS334210 TELEPHONE APPARATUS MANUFACTURING (97%); SIC3661 TELEPHONE &
TELEGRAPH APPARATUS (97%); SIC5961 CATALOG & MAIL-ORDER HOUSES (50%)
PERSON: BARACK OBAMA (51%) Marc Andreessen; Brad Stone
GEOGRAPHIC: SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA (79%); SEATTLE, WA, USA (79%); SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, CA, USA (90%) CALIFORNIA, USA (92%); WASHINGTON, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (92%)
LOAD-DATE: March 3, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
CORRECTION-DATE: March 7, 2007
CORRECTION: An article in Business Day on Saturday about new ventures in online social networking for the workplace misstated the number of employees of Cisco Systems, which is reportedly acquiring technology to provide such
services. It is 55,000, not 38,000. The article also misspelled the surname of the founder of a company called Crowd
Factory, which designs social networks for large companies. He is Alex Mouldovan, not Muldoven.
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GRAPHIC: Photo: Gina Bianchini and Marc Andreessen founded Ning, a social network. (Photo by Randi Lynn Beach
for The New York Times)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1077 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 3, 2007 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
A Double Shot Of Nostalgia For Starbucks
BYLINE: By JOE NOCERA
SECTION: Section C; Column 1; Business/Financial Desk; TALKING BUSINESS; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1739 words
Is it possible that there are actually two Howard Schultzes lurking around Starbucks headquarters in Seattle? I think
it is.
The first Howard Schultz is the man who has coffee in his veins. He's the one who bought what was then the tiny
Starbucks company in 1987 and turned it into one of the dominant brands of the age. Starbucks coffee was a step above
other coffee, and it also offered a ''coffee experience'' that made customers willing to pay $4 for something that used to
cost them 60 cents.
Starbucks was a place where people could hang out, read the paper, and make friends with the ''baristas'' behind the
counter; Mr. Schultz used to call it the ''third place,'' a respite from both the workplace and the home front. Starbucks
had its own language and culture. Its part-time staff got stock options and health insurance. It didn't exploit its coffee
growers. It had a huge social responsibility program. And Mr. Schultz, who is chairman of Starbucks, took deep pride in
all the things that made Starbucks special.
Last week, this Mr. Schultz was on vivid display when an internal memo he wrote to his top executives was
leaked to Starbucksgossip.com. The memo is a cri de coeur from Mr. Schultz, a lament for what has been lost as Starbucks has grown from 6 stores in 1987 to more than 13,000 stores today. He pointed, for instance, to the company's
decision some years ago to install automatic espresso machines, which, he wrote, ''solved a major problem in terms of
speed and service,'' but also made buying a cup of Starbucks coffee a more antiseptic experience.
He complained about the loss of aroma because the baristas no longer scooped fresh coffee beans from bins and
ground them in front of customers. He said that streamlining the company's store designs had caused them to lose ''the
soul of the past and reflect a chain of stores vs. the warm feeling of a neighborhood store.'' He said that the Starbucks
experience was becoming commoditized, and he urged the executive team to ''go back to the core.''
The memo was widely lauded as an example of an entrepreneur who understood the importance of recapturing
what made his business special before it was too late. ''While I wouldn't argue that the Starbucks brand is in its death
knell, I would argue that the efficiencies and economies of scale have introduced a virus in need of serious care,'' wrote
Mike Neiss on the Web site of the Tom Peters Company. ''And it looks like Howard Schultz just might be the healer
they need.''
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A Double Shot Of Nostalgia For Starbucks The New York Times March 3, 2007 Saturday
Warren Bennis, the leadership guru who has served as an informal mentor to Mr. Schultz, said, ''This is something
every successful chief executive should do every once in a while.''
But then there's the other Howard Schultz, the one who signed off on the very compromises he complained about
in the memo, precisely because they would help the company grow faster. This second Howard Schultz can talk Wall
Street's language: he goes on the quarterly conference calls and spits out data about same-store sales, return on investment, and, most of all, growth. Though it has lagged recently, his company's stock price has risen 5,000 percent since it
went public in 1992, in large part because Mr. Schultz has been so fanatical about growth. It closed yesterday at $29.88.
''Starbucks is the fastest-growing retail story of all time,'' said John Glass, an analyst with CIBC. ''It has grown
faster than McDonald's ever did.''
This second Howard Schultz shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. ''I want to say this as loud as I possibly can,'' he told Maria Bartiromo on CNBC last November, after Starbucks released its quarterly earnings. ''Three to
five years, 20 percent revenue growth, 20 to 25 percent earnings per-share growth. And we're headed to 40,000 stores.''
Those are astounding goals for a company the size of Starbucks: no company in history has ever built 40,000 retail outlets. (McDonald's, by contrast, has 30,000 stores worldwide.) And 25 percent earnings growth is something only the
most aggressive of growth companies shoot for.
The quandary Mr. Schultz faces, assuming there is only one of him, is that he wants two things that are incompatible. If he wants to recapture the soul of the old Starbucks, then he has to slow down the company's growth. But if he
slows the growth, the stock will collapse. He has to choose. Truth is, though, Mr. Schultz has already chosen.
ONCE, maybe 10 years ago, Mr. Bennis asked Mr. Schultz why it was so important to him that Starbucks grow so
rapidly. ''He said something to the effect that if he didn't do it, Starbucks could be cannibalized by another chain that
would wipe it out,'' Mr. Bennis told me.
As I discovered when I asked around, Mr. Schultz is an enormously competitive businessman; I wound up thinking that the idea of relentless growth is just as powerful a driving force for him as coffee itself. In the memo, he complained that Starbucks' competitors have become emboldened to go after Starbucks customers. ''This must be eradicated,'' were the startling words he used.
But to give him his due, Mr. Schultz has always struggled with the problem of trying to stay true to the company's
roots while growing aggressively. ''Last October or November, he made comments very similar to the thoughts in the
memo at a dinner with investors,'' Mr. Glass said. And according to Anne Saunders, Starbucks' senior vice president for
global brand strategy, what he wrote in the memo was nothing Starbucks executives hadn't heard from him many times
in the past. ''Howard is often challenging us,'' she said.
''We have grown as a company because we have chosen to do business in a different kind of way,'' she continued.
''If growth comes from doing things that are out of whack, then it is not the right kind of growth.'' Ms. Saunders went on
to say that she, and the rest of the company's managers, believed that the company had grown in ways that remained
compatible with its culture.
Maybe. But from where I'm sitting, it just looks as though whenever push has come to shove, the growth imperative has usually won out.
Take, for instance, food. ''I remember when Starbucks went public,'' said Ron Paul of Technomic, a food retail
consulting firm. ''I went to one of the roadshow presentations. Howard said that they would never serve food. He
thought it would dilute the experience.'' (A Starbucks spokeswoman said Mr. Schultz was pointing out that Starbucks
was a coffee company, not a restaurant chain.)
But one of the most important metrics for Wall Street is same-store sales increases. If growth is being generated
purely from the opening of new stores -- and not from increased sales in stores that are already open -- that's viewed as a
bad sign. It means that once the company runs out of places to put stores, it will stop growing. For Starbucks, there was
always going to be a limit to how much coffee it could sell in any one location, so to goose same-store sales, it began
selling food. (Not very good food either, but that's a whole other story.) Most recently, it has begun selling hot breakfast
sandwiches in a number of markets, yet another move it would never have made, say, five years ago. The same principle applies to music, to books and all the other things Starbucks now sells in its stores.
The food and brand consultants I spoke to were unanimous in their feeling that Starbucks had hurt itself by expanding so far beyond its coffee and coffeehouse roots -- and that it needed to return to those roots. ''He is right that
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Starbucks is losing its soul,'' said Harvey Hartman, who heads the Hartman Group in Bellevue, Wash. ''They were built
on the coffee experience, and by moving so far beyond that, they are jeopardizing everything else.''
Robert Passikoff, president of the brand consultant Brand Keys, said that Starbucks had taken its eye off the
brand. ''In trying to migrate from a coffee brand to a lifestyle brand, there has been a certain brand dilution.'' He agreed
that the ''whole European coffeehouse experience'' was no longer how people thought about Starbucks, to the company's
detriment. Mr. Passikoff's firm just completed a survey of 20,000 people by phone and in person that showed that
Dunkin' Donuts now had higher customer loyalty than Starbucks. He also pointed out that Consumer Reports recently
asserted that McDonald's coffee was superior to Starbucks's. Both Mr. Passikoff and Mr. Hartman felt that the memo
made a great deal of sense.
The Wall Street folks I spoke to, though, saw the memo differently -- as a kind of longing for a memory that will
never return. ''When you grow as big and as fast as they have, you have to make compromises,'' said Howard Penney,
who covers the company for Prudential. ''The complexity of the menu has changed dramatically since it first opened,''
he said. That complexity required automation and other techniques to keep waits for coffee from being too long. (As
anyone who buys Starbucks coffee in New York knows, the company doesn't always succeed.)
Mr. Glass of CIBC said: ''If it remained a coffee destination and nothing else, same-store sales would not increase.
It's a public company. Their job is to make money for the shareholders by selling more stuff.'' Both Mr. Glass and Mr.
Penney pointed out that Starbucks plans to open 2,400 stores this year. That's more than six new stores every day. Tell
me how you're going to do that if the baristas start grinding coffee by hand again?
Of course, that's never going to happen, as Ms. Saunders of Starbucks quickly acknowledged when we spoke.
''Our business has never been better,'' she said. ''We are really doing well.'' But the company didn't want to ever rest on
its laurels -- and it didn't want to sacrifice what made it special just for the sake of growth, she said. ''The question is
always, How do you keep things in balance?''
For lovers of Starbucks, I suppose it's comforting to know that Mr. Schultz and his team sit around worrying about
whether they are watering down the customer experience. But it would be even more comforting if they actually did
something about it. Because someday, the growth will slow and the stock will slide -- that's inevitable. And how will
customers feel if, when that happens, their customer experience has been turned into a drive-through window, just like
McDonald's.
Oops, I forgot. Starbucks has already started putting in drive-through windows.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: COFFEE & TEA STORES (90%); COFFEE (89%); COFFEE FARMING (77%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (77%); RETAIL MERCHANDISE MANAGEMENT (76%); COMPANY STRATEGY (69%); RETAILERS
(69%); BUSINESS COACHING & MENTORING (68%); ANTI-INFECTIVES (64%); HEALTH INSURANCE
(53%); LANGUAGE & LANGUAGES (53%); RESTAURANTS (69%); STOCK OPTIONS (68%) Restaurants; Company and Organization Profiles; Coffee; Restaurants
COMPANY: STARBUCKS CORP (93%)
ORGANIZATION: Starbucks Corp
TICKER: STB (LSE) (93%); SBUX (NASDAQ) (93%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS722213 SNACK AND NONALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE BARS (93%); SIC5812 EATING
PLACES (93%); NAICS722213 SNACK & NONALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE BARS (93%)
PERSON: HOWARD SCHULTZ (97%) Joe Nocera; Howard Schultz
GEOGRAPHIC: SEATTLE, WA, USA (92%); BEIJING, CHINA (78%) WASHINGTON, USA (92%); NORTH
CENTRAL CHINA (65%) UNITED STATES (92%); CHINA (79%)
LOAD-DATE: March 3, 2007
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LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: Howard Schultz has made Starbucks, and its cups, ubiquitous. (Photo by Ted S. Warren/Associated Press)(pg. C1)
Starbucks's 13,000 stores include one in the Forbidden City in Beijing. Howard Schultz, the company chairman, says
he wants 40,000. (Photo by Peter Parks/Agence France-Presse -- Getty Images)(pg. C8)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1078 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 1, 2007 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
TODAY IN BUSINESS
SECTION: Section C; Column 5; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 857 words
CALM AFTER THE STORM -- Stocks rose modestly in United States markets, a day after a global sell-off. The
Dow Jones industrial average, which tumbled as much 545 points on Tuesday, closed yesterday up 52.39 points, or 0.4
percent. [Page C1.] AND A REBOUND IN SHANGHAI -- The Chinese stock market in Shanghai rebounded, recovering a substantial amount after Tuesday's 9 percent drop. But elsewhere in Asia markets fell in reaction to the sharp drop
on Wall Street and to disappointing figures on the American economy.
[C4.] SLOWER PACE IN LATE '06 -- The Commerce Department reported that economic growth inched ahead by
2.2 percent in the fourth quarter -- a downward revision of 1.3 percentage points. The new rate is substantially below the
economy's long-term trend rate of growth. [C6.] A NEW DIRECTION AT S.E.C.?-- Christopher Cox, the chairman of
the Securities and Exchange Commission, is signaling that he is moving toward the view that the administration overreacted to the corporate scandals that began with the collapse of Enron in 2001, some investor advocates and securities
law experts say. [C1.] REASSURING WORDS -- Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, said that he
saw little cause for alarm in either stock market plunge or new evidence of slowing economic growth. [C5.] HAVEN'T I
SEEN YOU BEFORE? -- Madison Avenue is hiring venerable actors, once known for serious, straight roles, to display
cleverly self-mocking sides of their personalities in campaigns aimed at younger as well as older consumers. The spots
offer celebrities like William Shatner, above, another day in the limelight. Advertising. [C11.] FEELING THE PRESSURE -- NBC has made plans to replace the executive producer of its ''Nightly News with Brian Williams,'' according
to several NBC executives -- a sign that its dominance in the evening news race is undergoing its most serious challenge
in a decade. [A1.] ORACLE NEARS A PURCHASE -- Oracle is near a deal to acquire Hyperion Solutions, which
makes software that allows corporations to analyze and track their performance, for about $3 billion, according to people briefed on the deal. [C1.] HURRICANE KATRINA CLAIMS -- Mike Moore, a lawyer who engineered a settlement
with State Farm, argued in court that the deal should be approved partly because it could put hundreds of millions of
dollars into the hands of victims of Hurricane Katrina by the end of the year. [C2.] READY TO DEAL -- Mel
Karmazin, the architect of a proposed merger between the nation's two satellite radio companies, XM and Sirius, announced at a hearing in Congress that the companies would agree to government-imposed price controls and other unspecified measures to gain regulatory approval. [C3.] AIRBUS WALKOUT -- Nearly 14,000 blue- and white-collar
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TODAY IN BUSINESS The New York Times March 1, 2007 Thursday
employees at four Airbus production sites in France stopped work as long as two hours to protest the company's decision to eliminate 10,000 jobs and sell as many as six factories over the next three to four years, union officials said.
[C3.]A COOKIE JUGGERNAUT -- With a sales force of 2.7 million, the Girl Scouts have kicked off their 90th season
of cookie sales -- but with some modern entrepreneurial twists aimed at encouraging more bulk sales. Small Business.
[C7.] A PACT TO FREE KOREAN FUNDS -- China and the United States are close to an accord to let North Korea
regain some of the $25 million in its funds frozen in a bank in Macau now that it has agreed to start dismantling its nuclear arms program, American officials said. [A13.] GETTING THE WORD OUT -- Some writers, rejected by book
publishers, are attracting audiences by turning their novels into podcasts. And sometimes the podcasts become so popular that they attract publishers who want to publish the book. [E7.] MERCK RAISES FORECASTS -- Citing strong
revenue in the current quarter, Merck released a forecast for first-quarter profit well above analysts' expectations, and
also increased its forecast for 2007. [C11.] FOUNDER OF HOTEL EMPIRE DIES -- Charles Forte, the owner of a
hotel and restaurant empire that ranged from the Waldorf Hotel in London to the budget chain Travelodge, died at his
home in London. He was 98. [C14.] ONLINEBusiness BriefingArticles on these developments are at nytimes.com/business.MOTOROLA, the cellphone maker, said that the billionaire investor, Carl Icahn, who is already the
leading shareholder, had notified the company that he might buy more shares. (AP)LOUIS W. ZEHIL, a former lawyer,
was charged by federal prosecutors with earning more than $10 million by obtaining and fraudulently selling securities
in companies he represented. Separately, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil complaint against Mr.
Zehil in Federal District Court in Manhattan. (REUTERS)THE INTERPUBLIC GROUP of Companies posted slightly
lower quarterly revenue but swung to a profit as expenses fell and public relations clients increased spending. Wall
Street gave the results a tepid response, suggesting that the company still must persuade investors that it has overcome
past client losses, earnings restatements and management changes. (REUTERS)
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: US FEDERAL GOVERNMENT (90%); STOCK INDEXES (90%); ECONOMIC GROWTH (90%);
EMERGING MARKETS (90%); SECURITIES LAW (90%); HURRICANE KATRINA (89%); MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS (89%); STATISTICS (78%); BANKING & FINANCE (78%); BANKING & FINANCE REGULATION
(78%); TRENDS (77%); COMMERCE DEPARTMENTS (75%); ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (74%); MATURE
MARKET (73%); BANKING & FINANCE AGENCIES (72%); APPROVALS (72%); EVIDENCE (70%); CELEBRITIES (69%); LAWYERS (67%); COMPANY STRATEGY (66%); CORPORATE WRONGDOING (66%); ENTERTAINMENT & ARTS (65%); HURRICANES (64%); TROPICAL STORMS (60%); SATELLITE RADIO (60%);
CABLE & OTHER DISTRIBUTION (60%); MERGERS (78%); STOCK EXCHANGES (90%) Terms not available
from NYTimes
COMPANY: ENRON CORP (55%); STATE FARM MUTUAL AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE CO (51%); AIRBUS
SAS (50%); ENRON CREDITORS RECOVERY CORP (55%)
ORGANIZATION: SECURITIES & EXCHANGE COMMISSION (83%); US DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
(57%)
INDUSTRY: SIC4911 ELECTRIC SERVICES (55%); NAICS336411 AIRCRAFT MANUFACTURING (50%);
SIC3721 AIRCRAFT (50%)
PERSON: BEN BERNANKE (55%); CHRISTOPHER COX (56%)
GEOGRAPHIC: SHANGHAI, CHINA (93%) CHINA (94%); UNITED STATES (93%); ASIA (92%)
LOAD-DATE: March 1, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PhotoGraph tracks XM Satellite Radio's share price for last week.
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Summary
Page 209
TODAY IN BUSINESS The New York Times March 1, 2007 Thursday
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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Late Edition - Final
Girl Scout Cookies in Bulk
BYLINE: By ELIZABETH OLSON
SECTION: Section C; Column 1; Business/Financial Desk; SMALL BUSINESS; Pg. 7
LENGTH: 1271 words
In an annual rite that is still going strong, Girl Scouts across the country have kicked off their 90th season of cookie
sales-- but with some modern entrepreneurial twists.
The Thin Mints, Samoas, Tagalongs and other cookie stalwarts remain remarkably the same (although trans fats
were removed this year). And Girl Scout cookies remain a sales juggernaut: some 200 million boxes now generate $700
million in sales yearly.
But the Scouts, with a sales force of 2.7 million, have moved from traditional box-by-box selling methods to more
varied approaches to get bulk sales. Now there are cookie academies and cookie colleges, as well as more intense sessions in marketing, selling and business skills for girls 11 and over.
The cookie season today is all about individual entrepreneurship -- using cookie selling to teach Girl Scouts how
to manage money, create a business plan and win customers.
Kicking off the selling season, a Kentucky Scout group last month held a five-hour cookie college in three cities,
with 10 classes in marketing, money management, goal setting and the etiquette of approaching customers. In January,
600 Girl Scouts attended a one-day cookie college in Sacramento, sponsored by Merrill Lynch; the seminars included
''Entrepreneur 101'' and ''Creative Marketing.''
Displaying the entrepreneurial flair the Scouts movement encourages, Sarah Cain, 16, reaped a batch of orders
last year from local businesses in her hometown, Arlington, Wash., north of Seattle. She found a number of car dealership listings when she researched possible customers in the phone book, and, she said, that gave her the idea of ''asking
them to give a box to people who take a test drive.''
Stephen C. Brown, general sales manager of Smokey Point Buick Pontiac GMC, bought eight cases initially (there
are 12 boxes of cookies in a case, and a box costs $2.50 to $4 depending on locale) then ordered four more cases after
he ran out.
''My understanding of Girl Scout cookies was one box at a time in front of a grocery store,'' Mr. Brown said, ''but
she went for volume and bulk.''
For this cookie-selling season (which usually begins in February or March), Ms. Cain has prepared a Power Point
presentation and is aiming at hotels -- she is already lining up appointments -- hoping to persuade them that every room
needs a box of familiar cookie comfort.
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Girl Scout Cookies in Bulk The New York Times March 1, 2007 Thursday
Ms. Cain, a high school sophomore, who hopes this year to nearly double her sales -- from 1,114 boxes to 2,000
boxes -- is among the youthful cookie-sellers who are using innovative methods to sell large quantities of the boxes.
The proceeds go for Scout activities and special trips. Scouts who make a certain number of sales may receive small
prizes like a T-shirt.
Leah Koch, 14, of Chicago uses e-mail messages to snag cookie orders. Starting two years ago, in sixth grade, Ms.
Koch began e-mailing a list of prospects, drawing on names from previous order forms. She went from selling 700 boxes a year to 1,000. Then, expanding her e-mail efforts, sales zoomed up to 1,510 last year -- making her a top seller locally.
''It saves me time,'' she said of e-mailing, ''because I used to make a lot of phone calls, and people weren't there so
I would have to call back again. Now people respond when they're ready to order.''
Officially, Internet sales are banned -- although cookies can still be found on eBay -- because the Scout umbrella
group, the Girl Scouts of the USA, wants to forestall confusion over the cookies' price. Even so, the scouting movement
moved this year to expand its Web presence, setting up www.girlscoutcookies.org, so buyers can use their ZIP code to
find their nearest cookie-selling troop.
For the first time this year, the Scouts also posted vintage cookie ads and other information on social-networking
Web sites including MySpace, YouTube and Friendster.
But the essence of cookie sales is still on the ground. The stepped-up sales training was prompted by teenage
Scouts who wanted to sell cookies but had limited time because of schoolwork and sports, and also who found they had
tough competition from adorable little Brownies (who also sell Girl Scout cookies).
In 2001, the Girl Scouts Tres Condados Council in Santa Barbara, Calif. -- one of 315 councils across the country
-- developed an initiative that became the C.E.O. in Training Program, to teach entrepreneurship fundamentals.
Grace Tynan, 16, a Tres Condados Scout, took part in the program, where, with one-on-one mentoring, she
learned how to set a sales goal, find prospects among local businesses and service organizations, make appointments,
create a sample script for telephone contacts, prepare and make a presentation, take orders, coordinate deliveries and
make a final report.
Her pitch, which she used successfully last year with a local bank and realty firm, was to provide cookies as incentives for employees, as a treat at the company's weekly staff meeting or to show client appreciation.
''This has really helped me understand business,'' she said.
And that's exactly what it should do, according to Katherine Cloninger, the Girl Scouts chief executive, who says
cookie selling fosters independence, self-esteem and confidence.
''We see this as a cutting-edge leadership experience,'' she said. And it is often a girl's first exposure to the working world, where women own about 10.6 million businesses, according to government data. That and the number of Girl
Scout alumnae among women executives and members of Congress have encouraged the Scout movement to recruit
mentors.
Last year, Catherine M. Coughlin, president and chief executive of AT&T Midwest, along with some sales and
marketing colleagues, gave feedback on the sales plans of a dozen Chicago-area girl scouts, including Leah Koch. They
plan to do so again this year.
Ms. Coughlin, a former Girl Scout, said: ''Selling cookies used to be pounding the pavement, calling on family and
friends, but now these girls really know so much more.
''We asked one girl, for example, how she defined success. And she said: 'We have to make more money than we
spend,' '' said Ms. Coughlin, adding ''I wish everyone in business was that smart.''
Members of the National Association of Women Business Owners are mentoring girls in Chesapeake, Va., where
Deborah Mollura, who owns a custom gift basket business, is helping local Scouts put together cookie gift baskets -complete with recipes -- to attract large orders from local companies.
Scouts are also looking for customers at new sales sites, away from the usual like grocery stores. In Chicago, Girl
Scouts will be selling cookies at downtown office buildings like the Sears Tower. Troops in other parts of the country
have set up sales booths in tax preparation offices, churches, barber shops, beauty salons and even at marathons.
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Girl Scout Cookies in Bulk The New York Times March 1, 2007 Thursday
Despite the emphasis on training, sometimes entrepreneurial moxie just mixes with chance, as happened to Kaitlyn Richardson, 9, who was at her mother's office in Springfield, Va., early last year when a marketing director for Paxton Van Lines asked her mother for corporate client gift ideas.
''I thought about Thin Mints because they come in a green box,'' she said, ''and that would be good for St. Patrick's
Day.'' So she piped up with her suggestion, and Frederick D. Paxton, the marketing officer, agreed that they would be
great in the company's holiday gift bag for corporate relocation directors.
''Everybody enjoys them,'' said Mr. Paxton, whose order for 320 boxes more than doubled the amount of cookies
that Kaitlyn already hadsold, ''and the money goes to a good cause.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: ENTREPRENEURSHIP (93%); YOUTH CLUBS & ACTIVITIES (90%); BAKED GOODS (91%);
STUDENTS & STUDENT LIFE (78%); SALES FORCE (78%); SALES & SELLING (78%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING EXPENDITURE (76%); SALES MANAGEMENT (76%); PERSONAL FINANCE (68%); NEW CAR
DEALERS (50%); BAKERIES (78%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING (74%); BUSINESS PLANS (77%) Bakeries
and Baked Products; Cookies; Advertising and Marketing; Entrepreneurship; Sales; Bakeries and Baked Products
COMPANY: MERRILL LYNCH & CO INC (56%)
ORGANIZATION: SCOUT ASSOCIATION (83%) Girl Scouts
TICKER: MLY (LSE) (56%); MER (NYSE) (56%); 8675 (TSE) (56%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS523930 INVESTMENT ADVICE (55%); NAICS523920 PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT (55%);
NAICS523120 SECURITIES BROKERAGE (55%); NAICS523110 INVESTMENT BANKING AND SECURITIES
DEALING (55%); SIC6282 INVESTMENT ADVICE (55%); SIC6211 SECURITY BROKERS, DEALERS, & FLOTATION COMPANIES (55%)
PERSON: Elizabeth Olson
GEOGRAPHIC: SEATTLE, WA, USA (79%) WASHINGTON, USA (79%); CALIFORNIA, USA (70%) UNITED
STATES (79%)
LOAD-DATE: March 1, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Leah Koch, 14, of Chicago uses e-mail messages to snag cookie orders. She sold more than 1,500
boxes last year, making her a top seller locally. A few weeks ago, she was sorting more than 1,700 boxes in her home.
(Photo by Peter Wynn Thompson for The New York Times)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1080 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
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March 1, 2007 Thursday
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Tainted by Corruption, Mayor in Russia Is Stripped of Authority The New York Times March 1, 2007 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
Tainted by Corruption, Mayor in Russia Is Stripped of Authority
BYLINE: AP
SECTION: Section A; Column 1; Foreign Desk; Pg. 5
LENGTH: 571 words
DATELINE: MOSCOW, Feb. 28
The mayor of Vladivostok, the largest city in Russia's Far East, was stripped of his authority on Wednesday in a
criminal investigation into suspect land deals and embezzlement, the latest bout of corruption to hit the city.
Vladivostok, which has 584,000 residents and is home to the Russian Pacific Fleet, was notorious in the 1990s as
a haven for corruption, violent crime and government incompetence.
As President Vladimir V. Putin has reined in Russia's regions and tightened federal control, however, the city has
lost some of its lawless character.
The prosecutor general's office said Leninsky District Court in Vladivostok had approved the prosecutors' motion
to strip Mayor Vladimir Nikolayev of his post while an investigation for abuse of office continues.
Prosecutors in the Primorsky region, of which Vladivostok is the administrative center, said they were investigating Mr. Nikolayev after reports that he had given land to individuals for private use even as other applications for building permits were pending, and that he had used city funds to pay for private security guards.
''In this connection, prosecutors of the city of Vladivostok have protested 20 illegal decisions on land allocation,''
the local prosecutors said in a statement.
Irina Nomokonova, of the regional prosecutor's office, said in televised comments that Mr. Nikolayev had also authorized use of $765,000 in city funds to back a car-racing team.
Prosecutors said five related criminal investigations have also been opened, including one involving the deputy
mayor.
Mayor Nikolayev, backed by the pro-Kremlin United Russia Party, won office in 2004 after a scandal-plagued
campaign in which candidates traded accusations and resorted to underhanded methods to beat their opponents.
His opponent was Viktor G. Cherepkov, who was also accused of corruption and incompetence during his tenure
as mayor in the 1990s and who waged epic political battles with the governor of the Primorsky region, Yevgeny I.
Nazdratenko.
Mr. Nikolayev was arrested in 1998 and accused of making threats, hooliganism and extortion, but he was amnestied and freed a year later under a decree by the lower house of Parliament.
In Vladivostok's main square, dozens protested the court decision to strip Mr. Nikolayev of his authority. Several
carried signs reading ''Hands Off The Mayor'' and ''How Much Does It Cost to Remove Nikolayev?''
At a televised news conference, Mr. Nikolayev denied the allegations and said he would fight any charges against
him.
''This is all completely made up,'' he said. ''The evidence contains not one shred of proof, not one bank payment
that would be able to show any of this.''
Persistent corruption nationwide has clouded the record of President Putin, who has made fighting corruption a
major goal. But the problems have worsened at all levels of government since he came to office in 2000.
The prosecutor general's office also announced a nationwide investigation of the widely loathed traffic police.
There have been growing complaints that bribe-taking and extortion by officers are on the rise.
Page 213
Tainted by Corruption, Mayor in Russia Is Stripped of Authority The New York Times March 1, 2007 Thursday
It noted cases in which traffic police officers sold driver's licenses, apparently referring to the common practice of
handing out licenses in exchange for bribes to applicants who have not completed the required classes or tests. It also
said some officers ''mix entrepreneurial activity with their service.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: JUSTICE DEPARTMENTS (92%); INVESTIGATIONS (91%); CITY GOVERNMENT (90%); EMBEZZLEMENT (90%); CITY LIFE (90%); FRAUD & FINANCIAL CRIME (90%); PROTESTS & DEMONSTRATIONS
(87%); CRIMINAL OFFENSES (78%); REGIONAL & LOCAL GOVERNMENTS (78%); LAND USE PLANNING
(78%); EXTORTION (77%); SETTLEMENTS & DECISIONS (75%); LAW COURTS & TRIBUNALS (75%); LITIGATION (75%); DECISIONS & RULINGS (75%); VIOLENT CRIME (73%); APPROVALS (73%); AMNESTY
(73%); ARRESTS (73%); LEGISLATIVE BODIES (73%); PRESS CONFERENCES (66%); BUILDING PERMITS
(53%)
PERSON: VLADIMIR PUTIN (84%) Vladimir (Mayor) Nikolayev; Vladimir V (Pres) Putin
GEOGRAPHIC: MOSCOW, RUSSIA (79%) RUSSIA (95%) Russia; Vladivostok (Russia); Russia
LOAD-DATE: March 1, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1081 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 1, 2007 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
Paid Notice: Deaths HORTON, JULES
SECTION: Section C; Column 1; Classified; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 130 words
HORTON--Jules founder and former Chairman of Horton Lees Lighting Design died at his home on February 23rd
at the age of 87. Jules was born in Warsaw, Poland, came to New York in 1947 after WWII to pursue a Masters at Columbia University in engineering. He was one of the first generation of architectural lighting designers and in 1970
started his own firm. He was greatly admired for his entrepreneurial spirit, love of art, classical music and travel. He
inspired many around him including his friends, family and business partners, Stephen Lees and Barbara Horton (his
former wife) who both lovingly cared for him until his passing. A private memorial service will be held in May with
close friends and professional colleagues to celebrate his achievements and honor his memory.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: DEATHS & OBITUARIES (91%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (86%) Terms not available from NYTimes
Page 214
Paid Notice: Deaths HORTON, JULES The New York Times March 1, 2007 Thursday
ORGANIZATION: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY (57%)
GEOGRAPHIC: WARSAW, POLAND (71%) NEW YORK, USA (90%) UNITED STATES (90%); POLAND (71%)
LOAD-DATE: March 1, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Paid Death Notice
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1082 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
March 1, 2007 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
Stephen Hawking Plans Prelude to the Ride of His Life
BYLINE: By DENNIS OVERBYE
SECTION: Section A; Column 1; National Desk; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 964 words
Stephen Hawking, the British cosmologist, Cambridge professor and best-selling author who has spent his career
pondering the nature of gravity from a wheelchair, says he intends to get away from it all for a little while.
On April 26, Dr. Hawking, surrounded by a medical entourage, is to take a zero-gravity ride out of Cape Canaveral on a so-called vomit comet, a padded aircraft that flies a roller-coaster trajectory to produce periods of weightlessness. He is getting his lift gratis, from the Zero Gravity Corporation, which has been flying thrill seekers on a special
Boeing 727-200 since 2004 at $3,500 a trip.
Peter H. Diamandis, chief executive of Zero G, said that ''the idea of giving the world's expert on gravity the opportunity to experience zero gravity'' was irresistible.
In some ways, this is only a prelude. Dr. Hawking announced on his 65th birthday, in January, that he hoped to
take a longer, higher flight in 2009 on a space plane being developed by Richard Branson's company Virgin Galactic,
which seeks to take six passengers to an altitude of 70 miles.
Dr. Hawking says he wants to encourage public interest in spaceflight, which he believes is critical to the future of
humanity.
''I also want to show,'' he said in an e-mail interview, ''that people need not be limited by physical handicaps as
long as they are not disabled in spirit.''
Coming at a time when human spaceflight is at a crossroads, his trip into space is likely to shine a giant light on
the burgeoning and hopeful industry of space tourism.
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Stephen Hawking Plans Prelude to the Ride of His Life The New York Times March 1, 2007 Thursday
NASA has redesigned the space program around finishing the International Space Station and sending people to
the Moon again and then to Mars, much to the unhappiness of many scientists who fear that the growing costs of human
flight will squeeze science out of the program.
Some voices, including Martin Rees, Dr. Hawking's old friend and president of the Royal Society, have been saying that space may be explored more economically and faster by private entrepreneurs, who can take risks and weather
the occasional disaster without having to worry about a Congressional cancellation of financing.
Last summer, at a news conference in Hong Kong, Dr. Hawking said humanity's ultimate survival depended on
colonizing the solar system and beyond.
''Life on Earth,'' he said, ''is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of.''
At an age when many of his contemporaries are thinking about retirement, Dr. Hawking seems determined to add
yet another chapter to a tale of already legendary adventurousness and determination, not to mention scientific achievement.
He was only a graduate student at Cambridge University in the 1960s when he was found to have amyotrophic
lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, which usually kills its victims in two to five years. He persevered to get his
degree and become the world's reigning expert on black holes, the bottomless pits in which gravity has crushed dead
stars, space and time out of existence.
Along the way he has married twice, fathered three children (he is now a grandfather), written the best-selling ''A
Brief History of Time'' among other books, traveled the world and appeared as a guest on ''Star Trek: The Next Generation'' and ''The Simpsons.''
Dr. Hawking has been to the White House, the Great Wall of China and Antarctica, met the Dallas Cowboys
Cheerleaders and been lowered into the pit of an underground particle accelerator. Lawrence M. Krauss, a cosmologist
from Case Western Reserve University, who once took him down in a submarine, said, ''Stephen is a dreamer and an
adventurer who enjoys the opportunities his celebrity brings in a way that happily perhaps compensates, although only
minuscule-ly, for his physical affliction.''
The image of him floating through the stars in his wheelchair has become a symbol of humanity's restless curiosity and wonder.
Now it seems that the symbol is about to become the real thing, sans wheelchair.
Dr. Diamandis, a space entrepreneur who is a founder of the $10 million Ansari X Prize, awarded in 2004 for the
world's first private spacecraft, on which the Branson craft is based, said he had offered Dr. Hawking a ride after hearing him express enthusiasm for spaceflight.
There followed long discussions between Dr. Hawking's doctors and the company's to make sure that it would be
safe. Almost completely paralyzed, and frail after decades in a wheelchair, Dr. Hawking long ago lost the power of
speech and communicates with a computerized voice synthesizer that is controlled by his eye movements.
Zero Gravity, founded in 1993 by Dr. Diamandis and Byron K. Lichtenberg, a former astronaut, has flown some
2,500 people, only 1 or 2 percent of whom, Dr. Diamandis said, have become spacesick.
The aircraft has about 35 seats. Once the plane reaches some 24,000 feet, he said, the passengers leave their seats
and lie in a large padded open area. As the plane flies its roller-coaster trajectory, they experience repeated swings between feeling heavier than normal, at the dip, and then weightless, at the peak, where they drift gently off the floor in
what Dr. Diamandis, who has been on 40 or 50 such flights, described as a ''really a joyous experience, almost Zenlike,'' lasting about half a minute.
Dr. Hawking's flight will probably be even shorter, Dr. Diamandis said, with the pilots consulting with Dr. Hawking and his doctors after each cycle.
In the e-mail interview, Dr. Hawking said, ''I'm not worried about the zero gravity section, but the high-G part will
be difficult.''
Asked what his family thought of the adventure, he replied, ''My family say 'Good on you!' ''
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Stephen Hawking Plans Prelude to the Ride of His Life The New York Times March 1, 2007 Thursday
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: ASTROPHYSICS (90%); ASTRONOMY & SPACE (90%); WHEELCHAIRS & MOBILITY AIDS
(89%); SPACE EXPLORATION (89%); PLANETS & ASTEROIDS (89%); SPACE & AERONAUTICS AGENCIES
(87%); SCIENCE NEWS (86%); INTERVIEWS (78%); DISABLED PERSONS (78%); SPACE INDUSTRY (72%);
SPACECRAFT (72%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (71%); PRESS CONFERENCES (68%); SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY (68%); BIOTECHNOLOGY & GENETIC SCIENCE (64%); SPACE STATIONS (63%); GENETIC ENGINEERING (50%) Space; Weightlessness; Prices (Fares, Fees and Rates); Gravitation and Gravity; Space
COMPANY: BOEING CO (57%)
ORGANIZATION: Zero Gravity Corp; Virgin Galactic
TICKER: BOE (LSE) (57%); BAB (BRU) (57%); BA (NYSE) (57%); 7661 (TSE) (57%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS336414 GUIDED MISSILE & SPACE VEHICLE MANUFACTURING (57%); NAICS336412
AIRCRAFT ENGINE & ENGINE PARTS MANUFACTURING (57%); NAICS336411 AIRCRAFT MANUFACTURING (57%); SIC3761 GUIDED MISSILES & SPACE VEHICLES (57%)
PERSON: RICHARD BRANSON (91%) Dennis Overbye; Stephen (Dr) Hawking; Richard Branson
GEOGRAPHIC: MARS (79%) HONG KONG (73%)
LOAD-DATE: March 1, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: In a warm-up for a trip to space, Stephen Hawking is to take a zero-gravity flight on a plane in
April. (Photo by Paul Hilton/European Pressphoto Agency)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1083 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 28, 2007 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Music Chief At EMI to Join Sony Venture
BYLINE: By JEFF LEEDS
SECTION: Section C; Column 6; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 337 words
Page 217
Music Chief At EMI to Join Sony Venture The New York Times February 28, 2007 Wednesday
Martin Bandier, the chairman and co-chief executive of EMI Group's EMI Music Publishing unit, will take the
reins of the music-publishing unit at the rival Sony Corporation after his EMI contract expires at the end of next month.
As part of the arrangement, which was announced yesterday, Mr. Bandier is making an unspecified investment in
the Sony unit, known as Sony/ATV Music Publishing, where he will become chairman and chief executive. His compensation will be linked to increasing the value of the unit, which controls more than 400,000 copyrights, including
songs by Joni Mitchell, Brooks & Dunn and the Beatles. The unit is a venture with the pop star Michael Jackson.
Mr. Bandier's future in the music business has been the subject of much speculation since he announced in October
that he would resign from EMI, which he had helped transform into the industry's biggest music publisher, with control
of an estimated one million copyrights.
Mr. Bandier held talks with one rival, the Warner Music Group, about taking charge of its publishing division,
Warner-Chappell, and also consulted with private investors about various possible ventures.
But Mr. Bandier said he was not interested in starting his own company. ''I'm not about starting from scratch
again,'' he said yesterday. ''I'm used to playing on a big stage.''
Mr. Bandier was recruited to the Sony job primarily by Robert S. Wiesenthal, the company's chief financial officer, who has directly overseen Sony/ATV since 2004, when the Japanese electronics giant split off its recorded music
division and folded it into a venture with Bertelsmann, the German media conglomerate.
Since then, Mr. Wiesenthal has moved to consolidate Sony's control of the unit, in part by working out a complex
arrangement that provides the company with an option to buy half of Mr. Jackson's stake.
Mr. Bandier had been a top executive at EMI since 1989, when he and his business partners sold their music company, SBK Entertainment World, to EMI for $337 million.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: MUSIC INDUSTRY (93%); MUSIC PUBLISHING (93%); ENTERTAINMENT & ARTS (78%); EXECUTIVE MOVES (78%); MUSIC (78%); RECORD INDUSTRY (74%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (74%); POP &
ROCK (73%); CELEBRITIES (73%); RECORD PRODUCTION & DISTRIBUTION (72%); ELECTRONICS (72%);
PUBLISHING (93%); RESIGNATIONS (73%); SINGERS & MUSICIANS (73%) Music; Appointments and Executive Changes; Biographical Information; Suspensions, Dismissals and Resignations
COMPANY: SONY CORP (91%); SONY/ATV MUSIC PUBLISHING INC (83%); BERTELSMANN AG (66%);
EMI GROUP PLC (58%); EMI MUSIC PUBLISHING ITALIA SA (58%); EMI MUSIC PUBLISHING BELGIUM
SA/NV (58%); EMI MUSIC PUBLISHING LTD (58%); EMI MUSIC PUBLISHING SOUTH AFRICA PTY LTD
(58%); EMI MUSIC PUBLISHING HOLLAND BV (58%); EMI MUSIC PUBLISHING GERMANY GMBH (58%);
EMI MUSIC PUBLISHING SWEDEN AB (58%); EMI MUSIC PUBLISHING MALAYSIA SDN BHD (58%);
WARNER MUSIC GROUP CORP (55%); EMI GROUP LTD (92%)
ORGANIZATION: Emi Group Plc; Sony Corp
TICKER: SON (LSE) (91%); SNE (NYSE) (91%); 6758 (TSE) (91%); WMG (NYSE) (55%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS512220 INTEGRATED RECORD PRODUCTION/DISTRIBUTION (93%); NAICS339932
GAME, TOY, AND CHILDREN'S VEHICLE MANUFACTURING (94%); NAICS334310 AUDIO AND VIDEO
EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURING (94%); SIC3944 GAMES, TOYS, & CHILDREN'S VEHICLES, EXCEPT
DOLLS & BICYCLES (94%); SIC3652 PHONOGRAPH RECORDS & PRERECORDED AUDIO TAPES & DISKS
(92%); SIC3651 HOUSEHOLD AUDIO & VIDEO EQUIPMENT (94%); NAICS515120 TELEVISION BROADCASTING (66%); SIC4833 TELEVISION BROADCASTING STATIONS (66%); NAICS339932 GAME, TOY &
CHILDREN'S VEHICLE MANUFACTURING (93%); NAICS334310 AUDIO & VIDEO EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURING (93%); NAICS512230 MUSIC PUBLISHERS (83%); SIC2741 MISC. PUBLISHING (83%)
PERSON: MICHAEL JACKSON (56%) Jeff Leeds; Martin Bandier
GEOGRAPHIC: GERMANY (69%)
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Music Chief At EMI to Join Sony Venture The New York Times February 28, 2007 Wednesday
LOAD-DATE: February 28, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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The New York Times
February 28, 2007 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Sohmer Piano Factory Gets Landmark Status
BYLINE: By SEWELL CHAN; Compiled by Lawrence Van Gelder
SECTION: Section E; Column 5; The Arts/Cultural Desk; Arts, Briefly; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 190 words
The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission voted unanimously yesterday to designate the Sohmer &
Company piano factory as a landmark. Built around 1886, the L-shape structure, dominated by a clock tower, is at the
southeast corner of Vernon Boulevard and 31st Avenue, along the East River in Long Island City, Queens. ''As the
Bloomberg administration continues to revitalize the East River waterfront, this distinguished landmark will serve as a
vivid reminder of the area's industrial past,'' said the commission's chairman, Robert B. Tierney. In 1872 Hugo Sohmer,
a German immigrant, founded the company, which specialized in upright pianos. Irving Berlin was a customer. The
German Romanesque Revival structure was designed by the architectural firm Berger & Baylies, which was responsible
for many buildings in TriBeCa. The window patterns and monumental brick facades made the building a distinctive
symbol for Sohmer, which made pianos at the site until 1982, when it was sold. The building was bought by a furniture
manufacturer and then by a developer, which plans to convert the structure to residential use. SEWELL CHAN
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: MUSICAL INSTRUMENT MFG (92%); HISTORIC SITES (90%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (78%);
REAL ESTATE (73%); FURNITURE MFG (73%); ARCHITECTURAL SERVICES (73%); KEYBOARD INSTRUMENTS (90%); HISTORIC DISTRICTS & STRUCTURES (78%) Pianos; Historic Buildings and Sites; Sohmer Piano
Factory (NYC); Factories and Industrial Plants
PERSON: Sewell Chan
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (94%) NEW YORK, USA (94%) GERMANY (92%); UNITED STATES
(94%) New York City
LOAD-DATE: February 28, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
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Sohmer Piano Factory Gets Landmark Status The New York Times February 28, 2007 Wednesday
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1085 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 27, 2007 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
Internet Renegades Go by the Book
BYLINE: By JEREMY W. PETERS
SECTION: Section C; Column 1; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 833 words
Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis made names for themselves as renegade Internet entrepreneurs by taking conventional tasks like talking on the phone or listening to music and giving consumers an unconventional -- and free -way to do it.
Sometimes that meant pushing legal boundaries.
But with their latest creation, a Web video venture called Joost, Mr. Friis and Mr. Zennstrom, who were behind the
file-sharing service Kazaa and the Internet telephone service Skype, are doing everything by the book. Revenue-sharing
agreements have been signed. Licenses have been granted.
''The reason we're doing this is because of our history,'' Mr. Friis said in a telephone interview last week. ''We
know how these things work. And above all, we know that we don't want to be in a long, multiyear litigation battle.''
The two men met in the late 1990s at Tele2, a European telecommunications company then emerging as a serious
competitor to Sweden's telephone monopoly. They left in 1999 to start their own Internet company.
Soon after, they developed the technology behind Kazaa. The music industry fought Kazaa with the same fury that
it fought Napster, another file-sharing service that was forced to become a legitimate pay service after lengthy court
battles.
Mr. Friis, a Dane, and Mr. Zennstrom, a Swede, sold Kazaa in 2002, but their legal worries did not end there.
Movie studios and recording companies pressed ahead with their lawsuits, and for years neither man set foot in the
United States.
In November, Kazaa's new owners settled the last of the lawsuits. In all, they have agreed to pay at least $125 million to the record industry and movie studios.
Today Mr. Friis and Mr. Zennstrom work out of Skype's offices in the Soho neighborhood of London. Though
they sold Skype to eBay for $2.6 billion in 2005, they remain active in the company. Mr. Zennstrom is Skype's chief
executive. Mr. Friis is the executive vice president for innovation, a job that has allowed him more time to spend developing Joost.
With the Kazaa lawsuits behind him, Mr. Friis's feet are back on American soil. He was in Los Angeles on Friday
promoting his latest endeavor.
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Internet Renegades Go by the Book The New York Times February 27, 2007 Tuesday
Joost (pronounced ''juiced'') said last week it had reached what amounts to the mother lode of television programming: agreements to broadcast programs from Viacom networks like MTV, Comedy Central and VH1. While the deal's
terms were not disclosed, Viacom and Joost will share advertising revenue.
''We are very happy with the Viacom deal because it spans all their big properties,'' Mr. Friis said. ''It has content
from their biggest properties -- MTV, Comedy Central -- that are very good for our demographic.'' (Mr. Zennstrom was
on vacation and unavailable to comment, a Joost spokeswoman said.)
The Joost-Viacom partnership gives Viacom a degree of control over its programming that it has been unable to
obtain so far from the video-sharing Web site YouTube. Joost must have Viacom's approval to put a program online. In
addition, Joost addressed Viacom's concerns about piracy and copyright infringement by designing a platform that Joost
says is piracy-proof.
This month, Viacom demanded that YouTube, now owned by Google, remove more than 100,000 clips of its programming because the two companies could not reach an agreement on licensing and revenue sharing. That deprived
YouTube of popular Viacom content like clips of ''The Daily Show.'' YouTube responded by replacing some Viacom
content with the message ''removed at the request of Viacom International.''
Just because YouTube does not have Viacom programming, however, does not mean it is at a disadvantage, analysts said. Joost ''is not a competitor to YouTube in most ways,'' said Allen Weiner, an analyst at Gartner, a market research company in Stamford, Conn. ''It's a competitor to cable television.''
Joost is meant to replicate the way viewers watch television at home. It streams full-length programs in full-screen
format. Users can flip through channels that offer everything from documentary news programs to videos on surfing.
Programs can last a few minutes or more than an hour. (Viacom programming is not available now for the test phase,
but Joost said it would be online by the time its software is introduced publicly, sometime before this summer.)
The Joost format differs greatly from YouTube's, which allows users to upload to the site snippets of television
programs or self-produced content. ''It's not Web video; it's TV,'' Mr. Friis said.
But some analysts said Joost had the potential to change how consumers watch television on the Web. It will have
content that is, for now, unavailable elsewhere on the Web.
''Should YouTube worry?'' said Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies, a consulting firm. ''I think YouTube
is a legitimate channel in its own right. At the same time, I think any company that comes out there and lands big distribution deals with large content partners like Viacom is a serious competitor.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: INTERNET & WWW (92%); MUSIC INDUSTRY (91%); RECORD INDUSTRY (90%); MOVIES &
SOUND RECORDING SECTOR PERFORMANCE (90%); ENTERTAINMENT & ARTS (90%); RECORD PRODUCTION & DISTRIBUTION (89%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING (84%); TELEVISION INDUSTRY (84%);
RECORD REVENUES (78%); TELECOMMUNICATIONS (78%); ONLINE MARKETING & ADVERTISING
(78%); INTERNET SOCIAL NETWORKING (78%); INTERNET VIDEO (78%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (78%);
INTERNET TELEPHONY (78%); BROADCASTING INDUSTRY (76%); MOVIE & VIDEO PRODUCTION (76%);
TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES (76%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING REVENUE (75%); INTERVIEWS (74%); PUBLIC FINANCE (71%); TELEVISION PROGRAMMING (63%); TELECOMMUNICATIONS
SECTOR PERFORMANCE (78%) Computers and the Internet; Music; Recordings and Downloads (Video); Television; Computers and the Internet; Advertising and Marketing
COMPANY: VIACOM INC (81%)
ORGANIZATION: Joost (Co); Viacom Inc; Music Television Networks Inc (Mtv); Comedy Central; Vh1; Youtube
TICKER: VIA (NYSE) (81%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS515210 CABLE AND OTHER SUBSCRIPTION PROGRAMMING (81%); NAICS512110
MOTION PICTURE AND VIDEO PRODUCTION (81%); SIC7812 MOTION PICTURE & VIDEO TAPE PRODUCTION (81%); SIC4841 CABLE & OTHER PAY TELEVISION SERVICES (81%); NAICS515210 CABLE &
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Internet Renegades Go by the Book The New York Times February 27, 2007 Tuesday
OTHER SUBSCRIPTION PROGRAMMING (81%); NAICS512110 MOTION PICTURE & VIDEO PRODUCTION
(81%)
PERSON: ANN LIVERMORE (52%); MICHAEL MCMAHON (57%) Niklas Zennstrom; Janus Friis; Jeremy W Peters
GEOGRAPHIC: LONDON, ENGLAND (53%) CALIFORNIA, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (92%); SWEDEN
(79%); ENGLAND (53%); UNITED KINGDOM (53%)
LOAD-DATE: February 27, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: A music video in a Joost demonstration, with the user interface superimposed. Joost said a deal
announced last week would allow it to offer programming from Viacom channels by the time its service is available.
(Photo by Joost)
Niklas Zennstrom remained Skype's chief after its sale to eBay. (Photo by Daniel Acker/Bloomberg News)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1086 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 27, 2007 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
Top Lawyer At WellPoint Is Selected As Next Chief
BYLINE: By MILT FREUDENHEIM
SECTION: Section C; Column 1; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 621 words
As pressures mount in Congress and the states for a larger government role in financing and regulating health care,
WellPoint, the nation's largest health insurer, has picked a lawyer and public policy specialist to become its next chief
executive.
WellPoint said yesterday that Angela F. Braly, its general counsel and government affairs strategist, would succeed Larry C. Glasscock, 58, who will stay on as chairman when the change takes effect on June 1. Mr. Glasscock said
he was retiring from the chief executive's job for family reasons, declining to elaborate.
Ms. Braly, 45, an executive vice president of WellPoint since April 2005, was promoted over several more senior
executives, in part for her knowledge of public policy, Mr. Glasscock said.
WellPoint, which serves more than 34 million health plan members, operates large Blue Cross companies in California and New York as well as Blue Cross or Blue Shield associations in 12 other states.
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Top Lawyer At WellPoint Is Selected As Next Chief The New York Times February 27, 2007 Tuesday
It is the largest processor of claims for Medicare, the federal program for the elderly and disabled, a unit that Ms.
Braly also ran. WellPoint is also the largest operator of managed care programs for state Medicaid plans for low-income
people.
''We bring a lot of data and resources as well as ideas to the discussions about solutions for health care,'' Ms. Braly
(pronounced BRAH-lee) said in a telephone interview.
Charles Boorady, a health care securities analyst at Citigroup, said Ms. Braly had not been very ''visible'' to investors, which he described as ''the biggest knock against her.'' But he said that at WellPoint. she was well known and respected.
''She has been running a business within WellPoint as a Medicare contactor,'' Mr. Boorady said, noting that ''the
government is already a large payer and becoming even larger.''
He added, ''She is experienced in communicating with the government at a time when several Democrats in Congress are planning hearings involving the managed care companies, and the companies all expect their C.E.O.'s to testify on the Hill.''
Ms. Braly gained operating experience as president and chief executive of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Missouri, where she worked for six years before she moved to the Indianapolis headquarters of WellPoint after it merged
with Anthem in 2004.
Mr. Glasscock joined Anthem Insurance in 1998 and took it on an eight-year acquisition spree that increased revenue to $57 billion last year, from $6 billion when he started.
The biggest deal after the Anthem-WellPoint merger was the acquisition in 2005 of WellChoice, the New York
parent of Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield for $6.5 billion.
He was paid about $8.5 million that year, including a $1.25 million salary and bonuses and stock awards, according to a WellPoint filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission last May. Ms. Braly will be paid a salary of $1.1
million as chief executive.
With Ms. Braly's promotion, WellPoint will become the nation's largest company -- 38th on the Fortune 500 list -with a female chief executive.
Alluding to that status, Ms. Braly observed that ''70 percent of health care decisions are made by women.'' She
said that on a personal level, she is getting firsthand experience in navigating the medical system, as she and her siblings
help their mother, a widow who lives in Texas, deal with ''a complicated health care situation.''
Ms Braly said her husband, Douglas, had retired from his family's trucking company in Texas a few years ago to
move with her to Indianapolis and ''support me and our three children.''
In trading yesterday, WellPoint's shares dipped 37 cents, closing at $81.13, as many health insurance stocks, and
the markets generally, had an off day.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: HEALTH INSURANCE (91%); LAWYERS (90%); PUBLIC POLICY (90%); MEDICARE (89%); INSURANCE (89%); MANAGED CARE ORGANIZATIONS (89%); MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS (64%); US FEDERAL GOVERNMENT (78%); BANKING & FINANCE AGENCIES (78%); SECURITIES LAW (78%); INTERVIEWS (77%); EXECUTIVE MOVES (77%); POOR POPULATION (75%); WAGES & SALARIES (75%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (74%); MEDICAID (58%); MERGERS (69%); LOW INCOME PERSONS (66%) Biographical
Information; Appointments and Executive Changes
COMPANY: WELLPOINT INC (92%); EMPIRE BLUE CROSS & BLUE SHIELD (81%); CITIGROUP INC (54%)
ORGANIZATION: MEDICARE (56%); MEDICAID (55%) Wellpoint
TICKER: WLP (NYSE) (92%); CGP (LSE) (57%); C (NYSE) (54%); 8710 (TSE) (54%)
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Top Lawyer At WellPoint Is Selected As Next Chief The New York Times February 27, 2007 Tuesday
INDUSTRY: SIC6321 ACCIDENT & HEALTH INSURANCE (81%); NAICS523120 SECURITIES BROKERAGE
(54%); NAICS522210 CREDIT CARD ISSUING (54%); NAICS522110 COMMERCIAL BANKING (54%); SIC6021
NATIONAL COMMERCIAL BANKS (57%)
PERSON: ANGELA BRALY (94%); LARRY GLASSCOCK (94%) Angela F Braly; Larry C Glasscock; Milt
Freudenheim
GEOGRAPHIC: INDIANAPOLIS, IN, USA (92%) NEW YORK, USA (92%); INDIANA, USA (92%); CALIFORNIA, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (92%)
LOAD-DATE: February 27, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Angela F. Braly, WellPoint's chief counsel, entering a news briefing in Indianapolis yesterday to
discuss her appointment as chief executive. Ms. Braly, 45, was chosen in part for her knowledge of public policy. (Photo by A. J. Mast for The New York Times)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1087 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 27, 2007 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
Accusations of Agency Error in Disaster Loans
BYLINE: By RON NIXON and LESLIE EATON
SECTION: Section A; Column 4; National Desk; Pg. 10
LENGTH: 836 words
Last September, the Small Business Administration, which provides most long-term rebuilding aid to disaster victims, accelerated its lending to homeowners and businesses in the Gulf Coast, responding to criticism that it had been
slow to respond to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita of 2005.
But now federal investigators are looking into accusations that in speeding up its work, the agency made thousands of loans without following its own rules to avoid fraud. Current and former employees of the agency have told
investigators that agency workers failed to secure proper proof that borrowers owned the houses they were supposed to
rebuild or had the required insurance.
Caroline Pankove, who worked as a lawyer for the disaster-loan program at the agency from June through December of last year, complained to the agency's managers and its inspector general that employees were improperly pressured to approve loans quickly.
Loan policies were applied inconsistently, Ms. Pankove said, and disaster victims' paperwork was often misplaced
or mailed out with errors.
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Accusations of Agency Error in Disaster Loans The New York Times February 27, 2007 Tuesday
''The rush to disburse loans put everyone at risk: the taxpayer, the agency and especially the borrowers,'' Ms.
Pankove said in an interview. ''The people that we needed to serve the most were the ones getting hurt the most.''
Her complaints were echoed by Brian Cook, who worked at the agency as a paralegal last year, and by others who
spoke on the condition that their names not be used because they were still employed by the agency at the disaster loan
office in Fort Worth.
A spokesman for the agency's inspector general confirmed that his office was looking into the accusations but said
he could not comment on a continuing investigation.
Agency officials said that they were taking the complaints seriously, but that the problems described by Ms.
Pankove and others were isolated, not systemic.
''We never pushed for disbursement to be made without the proper documentation,'' said Steven C. Preston, who
promised to reform the troubled disaster loan program when he was appointed administrator of the agency last summer.
The agency was trying to empower managers to make case-by-case judgments about loan documentation, Mr.
Preston said, adding, ''We can't have a cookie-cutter approach.''
Mr. Preston also disputed the possibility that efforts to speed the process had opened the door to abuse. ''Of course
we want to get the disbursements out faster,'' he said, ''but it's very dangerous to assume that this would lead to fraud
and losses to the taxpayer.''
When Mr. Preston took over the agency in July, he inherited a huge backlog of loan applications, which had
grown to 94,000 by September, according to the agency. Since then, 51,000 people have received all the loan money
they qualified for, 19,000 have gotten some, and 24,000 have canceled their applications.
The agency has made more than $5 billion in hurricane-related disaster loans, more than half of them since Mr.
Preston took over, said Sean Rushton, the assistant administrator for communications.
One way the agency reduced its backlog was by rewarding the employees who got money into the hands of the
largest number of borrowers. E-mail messages obtained by The New York Times promised cash bonuses and overtime
to the most productive workers, even though at least one supervisor acknowledged that this emphasis made people uncomfortable.
''I will be honest,'' a supervisor, Michael V. Cremer, wrote in an e-mail message in October. ''Disbursements =
cash awards & overtime opportunity. I don't like it, you don't like it but it is what it is.'' The message continued, ''Work
with your people to make these numbers look good.''
Mr. Cremer did not respond to voice mail messages left at his agency office in Texas.
Leaders of the House and Senate committees overseeing the agency said they were concerned about the accusations of improper lending.
''I'm worried that there may have been too much of a focus on quotas over quality of service for disaster victims,''
Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts and chairman of the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, said in a statement.
''And if that's true, it's unacceptable,'' Mr. Kerry said. ''If in a rush to get paperwork off their desks the S.B.A.
shifted the burden to borrowers who have lost everything to Katrina, that's not a policy, that's an abdication of responsibility.''
Despite the agency's new emphasis on speeding the lending process, disaster victims say they continue to experience problems. Donna Colosino, whose family owns a small company in Louisiana that sells power generation equipment, told the House Small Business Committee earlier this month that more than 20 loan officers had dealt with her
case. And she said she sent the same documents to the agency more than a dozen times.
''Working with S.B.A. after a disaster is like having a second job,'' Ms. Colosino said. ''I swear to you on my father's grave that this is the story. I am not an anomaly.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
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Accusations of Agency Error in Disaster Loans The New York Times February 27, 2007 Tuesday
SUBJECT: HURRICANES (90%); INVESTIGATIONS (90%); WEATHER (90%); TROPICAL STORMS (90%);
SMALL BUSINESS (90%); NATURAL DISASTERS (90%); HOMEOWNERS (89%); HURRICANE KATRINA
(78%); PARALEGALS (74%); SPECIAL INVESTIGATIVE FORCES (72%); APPROVALS (71%); LAWYERS
(68%); INTERVIEWS (66%); INSURANCE REGULATION & POLICY (76%) Hurricanes and Tropical Storms;
Katrina (Storm); Rita (Storm); Insurance; Housing; Credit; Hurricanes and Tropical Storms
ORGANIZATION: SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION (91%) Small Business Administration
PERSON: Ron Nixon; Leslie Eaton
GEOGRAPHIC: Gulf Coast (US)
LOAD-DATE: February 27, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1088 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 25, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Street Theater at the Pull of a Curtain
BYLINE: By ANDREW FERREN
SECTION: Section 5; Column 1; Travel Desk; JOURNEYS ROOMS WITH A VIEW; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 1147 words
VIEWS are a relatively modern travel discovery. Granted, much of the stuff they are made of has very likely been
there awhile, but historically speaking, one stopped at the inn to get off the congested and foul-smelling streets, not to
look out at them.
It took the French to show us that cities -- their cities anyway -- were worth ogling. First, Baron Haussmann prettied up Paris, and then Eiffel built his tower from which to look out over it. Pissarro and Sisley took to painting the
views from their studios, and photographers like Eugene Atget and Alfred Stieglitz showed us that our modern cities
weren't ugly ducklings after all. And as with almost any aesthetic innovation out of Paris, the Japanese have taken the
ball and run with it up to the 50th floor.
But now that we've accepted the charm of traffic lights and neon, how to find the best face a city puts forward? At
many hotels, the best views have been commandeered by upper-category rooms, but almost every property has a few
standard rooms with views, so it's a question of knowing -- or asking -- when you book. Hotel reservation agents and
sales directors can be surprisingly candid in assessing the value of their vistas. ROME
With seven hills, Rome ought to offer some spectacular vistas, and the city does not disappoint those with a penchant for sun-drenched rooftop gardens and horizons of domes and spires. The best lookout is most likely in the grand
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Street Theater at the Pull of a Curtain The New York Times February 25, 2007 Sunday
Hotel Hassler (Piazza Trinita del Monte, 6; 39-06-69-93-40; www.hotelhasslerroma.com) at the top of the Spanish
Steps. The luxuriously paneled and tapestry-hung suites like the San Pietro offer the most panoramic views for 2,950
euros a night (nearly $4,000 at $1.33 to the euro). There are several ''classic'' rooms with similar vistas and one deluxe
room, 506, which for 710 euros has a balcony over the Piazza di Spagna, offering a big-eyed peek at the skyline, from
the marble Victor Emmanuel monument to the domes of the Pantheon and St. Peter's. Rooms like 720 (2,300 euros)
peer into the Borghese Gardens and the Villa Medici. Next door, Room 718, a single, costs 460 euros.
For those who like history at closer range, there is the Hotel Forum (Via Tor de' Conti, 25-30; 39-06-679-24-46;
www.hotelforumrome.com; rooms with a view from 350 euros). The lobby reads old-world pensione with marble
floors, creaking staircases and fringed swags galore. More than a dozen rooms overlook the Roman forum, with its parade of columns and arches.PARIS
Paris's prized views are more about the city's refined urban context, where even a courtyard view is inspiring. For
those with deep pockets, one of the five penthouse suites at the Hotel de Crillon (10, Place de la Concorde; 33-1-44-7115-00; www.crillon.com), overlooking the Place de la Concorde, is the ideal. The Bernstein Suite is perhaps the most
dramatic, with its slightly lowered ceiling adding to the drama of stepping out onto its terraces from which one recent
female guest commented, ''You feel like you own Paris.'' Marie-Antoinette did own Paris, and she came to the Crillon
for her piano lessons. As you scan the view of the Egyptian obelisk, the giddy fountains of the Place (where the French
queen later lost her head), and beyond to the Pont de la Concorde, the Musee d'Orsay, the Tuileries Gardens, the BeauxArts glass roof of the Grand Palais and the Eiffel Tower, issues of ownership seem irrelevant. All you'll need is 8,200
euros. Regrettably, there are no standard rooms that deliver such an eyeful.
Thankfully, other hotels offer commanding views. At the elegant Hotel Pont Royal (7, rue de Montalembert; 33-142-84-70-00; www.hotel-pont-royal.com; from 380 euros) in St.-Germain-des-Pres, the windows of at least 10 rooms
on Floors 6 and 7 frame the city's most romantic images like Impressionist canvases. Room 605 is one such chamber: to
the west you see the Eiffel Tower and to the north Sacre-Coeur. VIENNA
Vienna's grandest hotels, like the Imperial and Bristol, offer enough gilded, overstuffed splendor that you may
never draw the curtains back and look out at the city's architectural pomp and glory. But a few modern additions allow
you to get above the action. The recently opened DO & CO Hotel (Stephansplatz 12; 43-1-24-188-444; www.doco.com;
350 euros for a city-view room) provides a heavenly perch above the city's 12th-century St. Stephen's Cathedral. The
hotel is owned by the Istanbul-born entrepreneur Attila Dogudan, and the cozy rooms have a Turkish accent -- dark
wood, low-slung sofas and kilims. Many of the new sixth- and seventh-floor rooms at the Hotel Sacher (Philharmonikerstrasse 4; 43-1-51-456-0; www.sacher.com) feature balconies overlooking grand edifices like the Opera and the Albertina museum. Most of these rooms are suites (from about 850 to 2,500 euros), but there are a few rooms for around
555 euros that feature a slice of the same imperial splendor. NEW YORK
As befits the most famous of high-rise cities, New York City has many rooms with a view -- especially those of
the High Gotham variety like the Four Seasons and the St. Regis, to name but a few. Others, like the Pierre and the
Mandarin Oriental, sell their pastoral Central Park vistas as if they were gold. But in a classic New York story, a downtown upstart is giving the uptown dowagers a run for their money. The 22-story Hotel on Rivington (107 Rivington
Street; 212-475-2600; www.hotelonrivington.com; doubles with unimpeded views from $425) on the Lower East Side
is removed enough from Midtown's concrete jungle to let you take in the whole sweep of the city, from the Woolworth
Building downtown past the Empire State Building and up to the towers of the George Washington Bridge, best viewed
from the three-story penthouse. With its minimalist design and floor-to-ceiling views, it has become an obvious choice
for fashion photo shoots, especially the spacious Room 185 on the 18th floor, from which one can watch the city that
never sleeps while soaking in the free-standing tub.TOKYO
Speaking of soaking up Japanese ambience, no sound stage could have provided the flickering-neon Tokyo backdrop of Sofia Coppola's ''Lost in Translation.'' The vertiginous views from Tokyo's Park Hyatt (3-7-1-2 Nishi Shinjuku;
81-3-5322-1234; www.parkhyatt.com), which occupies Floors 41 through 52 of the three graduated towers designed by
Kenzo Tange that rise above the Shinjuku neighborhood, were for many the real star of the film. The hotel's New York
Grill on the 52nd floor seems to float above the video-game street life buzzing below. Bill Murray's suite will set you
back about $3,000 a night, but a park-facing room looking toward Mount Fuji can be nabbed for $500. The Mandarin
Oriental (2-1-1 Nihonbashi Muromachi; 81-3-3270-8800; www.mandarinoriental.com) hovers over the livelier Ginza
district, so you can save on cab fare and upgrade to a higher floor.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
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Street Theater at the Pull of a Curtain The New York Times February 25, 2007 Sunday
SUBJECT: Hotels and Motels
PERSON: Andrew Ferren
GEOGRAPHIC: PARIS, FRANCE (95%); ROME, ITALY (93%); VIENNA, AUSTRIA (92%); NEW YORK, NY,
USA (79%); TOKYO, JAPAN (71%) NEW YORK, USA (79%) FRANCE (95%); ITALY (93%); AUSTRIA (92%);
UNITED STATES (79%); CENTRAL EUROPE (79%); JAPAN (71%) Rome (Italy); Paris (France); Vienna (Austria);
New York City; Tokyo (Japan)
LOAD-DATE: February 25, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: St. Stephen's Cathedral, seen from a room at the DO & CO Hotel in Vienna. Rome from a room at
the Hotel Hassler. (Photographs by Chris Warde-Jones for The New York Times)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1089 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 25, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
'Grey's Anatomy' and Closet
BYLINE: By MARCELLE S. FISCHLER
SECTION: Section 9; Column 1; Style Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1466 words
AFTER watching an episode of ''Grey's Anatomy,'' Sarah Grace McCandless, 32, a novelist from Washington, went
shopping. The $160 Citizens for Humanity jeans that she bought online had a special appeal that wasn't about the label.
''I bought jeans that Meredith was wearing,'' said Ms. McCandless, a self-described pop culture addict, referring to
the character Meredith Grey. ''I don't have Meredith's body, but you can order them in different sizes.''
Ms. McCandless also has a pair of the True Religion jeans that Izzie wore, along with brown boots like the pair
from Frye worn by Cristina, also characters on ''Grey's Anatomy.''
Ms. Candless shops on SeenON.com (also known as SeenON!), one of a cluster of TV- and movie-themed Web
sites offering breathless behind-the-scenes chatter, as well as instant gratification for those with a taste for celebrity
style. Fans are now just clicks away from owning not only the clothes and accessories worn by characters on more than
100 television shows and movies, but also the sofas they sit on and the martini glasses they drink from.
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'Grey's Anatomy' and Closet The New York Times February 25, 2007 Sunday
Screens big and small are already full of recognizable brands like Coke and Cheerios placed in strategic view, a
practice known as explicit product placement. But, until recently, viewers had to work at identifying the shoes or earrings characters wore.
Because of the Internet, the selling of more than 20,000 products that are not easily recognizable or never identified in a script, called shopping-enabled entertainment, is taking off, driven by consumerism and celebrity worship.
''There are thousands and thousands of products that are naturally embedded in these shows,'' said Ashley Heather,
a new-media entrepreneur and chief executive of Entertainment Media Works, which last March started an entertainment shopping site, StarStyle.com.
StarStyle lets fans buy a soup-tureen set from Nora Walker's pantry on the ABC series ''Brothers & Sisters,'' the
polka-dot halter dress like the one that Diane Keaton's Daphne character wears in the film ''Because I Said So'' or a velvet blazer like the one Taylor Hicks wore on ''American Idol.'' (Many products are the same as what the stars wore, but
sometimes a similar, less expensive version is offered, and identified as such.)
Viewers can shop by show, character, product or brand. Starting Tuesday, SeenON! will feature a ''Look for Less''
Oscar tie-in, selling versions of the dresses, shoes and earrings worn on the red carpet.
As more consumers use digital video recorders and watch fewer commercials, ''brands are looking at ways to connect with viewers,'' said Travis Schneider, the founder of StarBrand Media, which started StarBrand.tv in 2004. ''It's a
marriage of consumers' fascination with celebrity culture and new technologies that is allowing this to happen,'' Mr.
Schneider said.
Taken to the extreme, the idea of selling clothes right from the backs of drama queens offers the possibility of
endless moneymaking, involving online sites, traditional retailers, manufacturers, production companies and networks
in an incestuous web of marketing and sales. It may not be too far-fetched to imagine a day when ''Desperate Housewives'' spins off Desperate Housewares, a line of products made for the show, written into the show and then sold off
through a Web site.
Explicit product placement generates $4 billion, Web site executives said, and some have estimated that extending
this model to things like clothing that is incorporated into a set but never identified creates a market potentially worth
$100 billion.
Which explains why retailers, brands and networks are scrambling to sign on. StarStyle has deals with about 25
networks, shows and studios, including FremantleMedia, the producer of ''American Idol''; MTV's ''Real World: Key
West''; and daytime soap operas like ''The Young and the Restless.'' The site also markets apparel and accessories from
music videos.
Shoppers can click on an item on the site, which links them to retailer sites like Nordstrom, Macy's and the Gap to
make the purchase.
At SeenON!, some of the most-viewed items are the Gucci 85th anniversary bag from ''Ugly Betty,'' Meredith
Grey's JBrand jeans and Gabrielle's Aldo purse from ''Desperate Housewives.'' At StarBrand.tv, the top sellers include
the Adriano Goldschmied jeans that Rory wears this season on ''Gilmore Girls'' and the Lucky Brand belts worn by Veronica on ''Veronica Mars.'' Not surprisingly, most shoppers on these sites are women ages 18 to 34.
Fans have long been doing for themselves what the new Web sites have made effortless. When Carrie Bradshaw
wore stilettos on ''Sex and the City,'' viewers hungrily eyed her Manolo Blahniks and made the brand a household name.
The new Web sites are not just for fashionistas, though. In recent months, Ms. McCandless purchased the dishwashing gloves and Tupperware set used by Bree on ''Desperate Housewives'' as a shower gift, and is hankering for
Bree's Bosch washing machine and dryer -- all of which can be ordered, along with the Benjamin Moore paint on Bree's
walls -- through an online tour of the ''Housewives'' homes on SeenON.com.
While none of the Web sites would disclose revenues, they said they made money through commissions on sales
and profit-sharing with their network partners. SeenON! sometimes acts as a direct retailer, buying products wholesale
from manufacturers, then selling them at retail and sharing the profit with the show or network. (SeenON! also runs
about 40 stores for Web sites including for ABC, NBC and ET Online; it started its own site in December.)
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'Grey's Anatomy' and Closet The New York Times February 25, 2007 Sunday
Bruce Gersh, senior vice president for business development for ABC Entertainment, said that for a few years, the
network has been heading in this direction, placing, say, jewelry on characters in daytime dramas, then encouraging
viewers to visit abc.com to buy copies.
More recently, prime-time goodies, like Betty's paisley pajama pants from ''Ugly Betty'' and Lynette's J. Crew
cashmere hoodie from ''Desperate Housewives,'' were on abc.com and SeenON!, and Mr. Gersh said sales from this type
of commerce have been ''growing steadily.''
WEB site executives said products are not intentionally placed on shows, but that doesn't mean nobody is trying.
Some sites are pushing for cross-pollination -- offering producers and stylists a look-book of brands where they can
order products for shows for free. And those who dress the sets and the stars say they are suddenly being bombarded by
brands that want exposure.
Dina Cerchione, the wardrobe designer for NBC's ''Deal or No Deal,'' which has a partnership with SeenON.com,
said she is too focused on creating a look for the show to even think about what may appeal to fan shoppers, though she
does get ''hounded'' by companies that want their fashions chosen.
Nonetheless, she said, she is aware that how she dresses Howie Mandel and the show's models influences people
when they shop. Seeing it on a recognized figure, she said, ''takes the guesswork out of, 'Is this O.K.?' ''
Mike Fitzsimmons, the founder of Delivery Agent, which runs SeenON!, said his company doesn't try to do the
job of the professionals. ''The costume designers and the stylists behind the scenes, they truly are the trend drivers in our
pop culture environment,'' he said.
William B. Helmreich, a professor of the sociology of consumer behavior at the City University of New York's
Graduate Center, said that shopping-enabled entertainment is par for the course in a celebrity-obsessed culture. ''It is
called the game of realizing your fantasies to a minimum extent,'' Dr. Helmreich said. ''They are not only getting satisfaction from wearing the item, they are also sending a message to other people about who they are, that they are like a
star.''
Indeed, Kathryn Hnatio, 29, an account manager in Manhattan, was smitten by a ''flirty but fun'' dress worn by
Katharine McPhee on ''American Idol.'' When she wore a similar, less-expensive version she bought on StarStyle.com,
friends complimented her and, she said, ''Everyone recognized it because they were watching the show, too.''
But if everyone recognizes it and can buy it just as easily, is it still special? ''You have the potential of killing the
goose that laid the golden egg,'' Dr. Helmreich said. ''Cachet has to do with availability.''
The risk is that people will eventually focus more on the stuff than the story. Lauren Honig, 23, an executive assistant in Manhattan, bought a $595 Botkier bag through StarStyle.com after noticing Holly Harper carrying it on ''Brothers & Sisters.''
The ability to shop from television shows ''definitely opens new doors,'' Ms. Honig said. ''I am paying more attention to what they are wearing in the shows rather than the plot.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: INTERNET RETAILING (90%); TELEVISION INDUSTRY (90%); INTERNET & WWW (89%); CELEBRITIES (88%); WRITERS & WRITING (78%); PRODUCT PLACEMENT (78%); TELEVISION PROGRAMMING (78%); RETAILERS (78%); FASHION ACCESSORIES (77%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING (74%);
REALITY TELEVISION (73%); TELEVISION ADVERTISING (73%); NOVELS & SHORT STORIES (73%); MEDIA CONVERGENCE (72%); BRANDING (70%); RELIGION (70%); PRODUCT PROMOTION (70%); BRAND
EQUITY (65%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (62%); CD & DVD DRIVES (60%); CONSUMER ELECTRONICS
(73%); DIGITAL RECORDERS (88%) Television; Apparel; Motion Pictures; Advertising and Marketing; Retail Stores
and Trade; Computers and the Internet; Recordings and Downloads (Video); Digital Video Recorders
ORGANIZATION: SeenON.com
PERSON: Marcelle S Fischler
LOAD-DATE: February 25, 2007
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LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: DRESS LIKE A STAR -- Sarah Grace McCandless wears jeans and a top like some seen on
''Grey's Anatomy,'' with a clutch from ''Desperate Housewives.'' (Photo by Linda Spillers for The New York Times)(pg.
1)
IDOL WORSHIP -- Lauren Honig bought a Botkier bag, left, and tank top she saw on ''Brothers & Sisters.'' (Photo by
Liz O. Baylen for The New York Times)(pg. 13)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1090 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 25, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Shaking Riches Out of the Cosmos
BYLINE: By ALLEN SALKIN
SECTION: Section 9; Column 4; Style Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1834 words
THERE are some surprising secrets behind ''The Secret.''
For one, most of the millions of people who have seen ''The Secret,'' a documentary that is the biggest thing to hit
the New Age movement since the Harmonic Convergence, may not know that there are two versions of the film.
In both, ''The Secret'' intersperses interviews with authors and inspirational speakers who specialize in personal
transformation with short dramatized episodes to deliver a message about how positive thinking will improve one's
health, wealth and love life.
The secret that the movie purports to reveal after millenniums of obscurity is ''the law of attraction.'' This principle, said to be known by an elite few, including Beethoven and 19th-century robber barons, holds that the universe will
make your wishes come true if only you really, truly believe in them.
''Ask, believe, receive,'' the movie instructs.
There is no better example of the magic than the staggering success of ''The Secret'' itself and of its creator, Rhonda Byrne, an Australian documentary producer turned spiritual entrepreneur. With no paid advertising or theatrical
release, the movie has sold 1.5 million copies of a DVD at $34.95, according to the producers. More than half the copies
have sold in the last month, as word-of-mouth appeal crossed over from New Age circles to the mainstream.
A book based on the movie, also called ''The Secret,'' which Ms. Byrne wrote in less than a month, jumps to No. 1
this week on the New York Times best-seller list of hardcover advice, how-to and miscellaneous books. ''Secret'' support groups have formed around the country. In Southern California, real estate brokers show the 92-minute movie to
motivate sales representatives. Oprah Winfrey, in the first of two shows dedicated to ''The Secret,'' said its positive philosophy is the way she has long lived her own life.
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Shaking Riches Out of the Cosmos The New York Times February 25, 2007 Sunday
In the film a woman says the law of attraction cured her cancer, but many followers settle for more prosaic victories. Victoria Moore, a saleswoman in Silicon Valley, said the principles of ''The Secret'' help her snag coveted parking
spots. ''But if I let in the slightest bit of doubt, it doesn't happen,'' she added. Elizabeth Cogan, a self-described shaman
from Sparks, Nev., said the principle works at restaurants, where she envisions herself not having to wait for a table.
But behind the success of ''The Secret'' is a seamier story about the origins of the film. It involves big money and
what some participants say are the broken promises of Ms. Byrne. The star of the first version of the movie, released in
March last year, demanded to be cut out of the current version, which has been on the market since Oct. 1.
That star, Esther Hicks, 58, has been promoting her own version of the law of attraction with her husband, Jerry
Hicks, in books and seminars for two decades. ''We teach that you keep saying it the way you want it to be, and if you
keep saying it the way you want it to be, the universe will line up and give you exactly what you've said you wanted,''
Ms. Hicks said.
Ms. Byrne had promised Ms. Hicks 10 percent of DVD revenues to appear in ''The Secret,'' both parties said. But
they had a falling out, and Ms. Hicks could not even bring herself to watch Ms. Byrne this month on ''Oprah,'' the
movement's moment of triumph.
In a backhanded compliment Ms. Hicks said, ''I've got to give Rhonda credit,'' adding that her former collaborator
has shown a monomaniacal dedication to the law of attraction. ''I've never seen anybody do that like she's doing it,'' Ms.
Hicks said. ''And never mind honesty, and never mind doing what you said you were going to do, and never mind anything. Just stay in alignment.''
Although ''The Secret'' is an overnight phenomenon, its message of think-and-grow-rich is but the latest version of
a self-help formula dating back more than a century, with roots both secular and religious, and branches that have included Napoleon Hill's best-selling ''Think and Grow Rich'' in 1937 and Norman Vincent Peale's ''Power of Positive
Thinking'' in 1952.
J. Gordon Melton, the director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion in Santa Barbara, Calif., traces
the origins of ''prosperity consciousness'' to 19th-century Christian Science. ''It's always waiting for slightly different
forms of expression, the same old message,'' he said.
Last Sunday evening the Hickses relaxed in their $1.4 million luxury bus parked outside the Rancho Cordova
Marriott near Sacramento, where they had just finished a six-hour workshop on the law of attraction in the hotel ballroom. Three hundred people had paid $195 each to hear Ms. Hicks, a former secretary, summon otherworldly spirits she
says speak through her. The spirits, who collectively use the name Abraham, answered participants' questions.
''I don't have a lover yet,'' one woman said.
Abraham, whose speaking voice is rounder, quicker and more computerlike than Ms. Hicks's natural voice, replied
by repeating the woman's phrase roughly 20 times and then explained it contained its own negativity, which was leaving
the woman paddling upstream on the river of life.
The audience applauded.
The Hickses spend most of the year traveling the country, leading workshops based on the teachings they say
Abraham has given them. They record the workshops and have 10,000 subscribers, who pay up to $50 a month for CDs
and DVDs of Abraham's wisdom.
When Ms. Byrne asked Ms. Hicks to appear in ''The Secret,'' as the most prominent interpreter of the law of attraction, she agreed to give the Hickses approval over much of the movie, according to a contract. But when the couple saw
the first cut, they were livid. Ms. Hicks's voice, chaneling Abraham, was used as narration throughout the film, but her
face was never shown.
After negotiation, Ms. Hicks's image was edited into the film and it was released, ultimately netting the Hickses
$500,000 from sales, Ms. Hicks said. But the couple were unhappy with the distribution. They said they understood it
would be shown first on Australian television, but instead it was being sold as an Internet download and later as a DVD.
Cynthia Black, the president of Beyond Words Publishing, a New Age imprint, who is both a longtime friend of
the Hickses and the publisher of Ms. Byrne's book version of ''The Secret,'' tried to broker a peace. She enlisted the help
of Jack Canfield, the author of ''Chicken Soup for the Soul,'' one of the ''transformational experts'' who appears in ''The
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Shaking Riches Out of the Cosmos The New York Times February 25, 2007 Sunday
Secret'' (and whose nephew Zach Canfield says he used the law of attraction to score a date with the hip-hop singer Lady Sovereign). But Mr. Canfield was also unable to bring the parties together.
The Hickses consulted their lawyer, and Ms. Byrne in turn demanded changes to the contract, both sides said. No
agreement could be reached. Ms. Byrne moved forward with a second version of ''The Secret'' without the Hickses. Advised by their lawyer to sue, the Hickses said they declined because litigation would take energy from their own pursuit
of the law of attraction. ''We don't sue,'' said Mr. Hicks, a former circus acrobat and Amway distributor.
Ms. Byrne does not seem overly troubled by the rupture. ''I'm grateful to have had the journey with them for the
time that we had,'' she said, sitting on a plush chair next to a honeysuckle candle in her apartment in Santa Monica, Calif. With a glittering silver circle affixed with false-eyelash glue to the center of her forehead, she related how she hadmortgaged her home in Melbourne, where she worked as a television producer, to finance ''The Secret'' and also received an investment from a former Internet executive in Chicago, Bob Rainone. The cost of the films was about $3
million, Ms. Byrne said.
Ms. Byrne, 55, seems possessed by the energy of her success, jumping from side to side as she speaks. Her gray
eyes shine with the fervor of the true believer as she talks about setting the goal of taking her vision to the world and
watching it come true. ''It's incredible to actually experience an intention that is so big, to experience it is '' She paused
as her voice crested and swooped as if on the edge of breaking. ''It's like I can feel the lives, every life changing, the
joy,'' she said.
Without the Hickses' 10 percent cut, Ms. Byrne and her Chicago investor will reap millions in additional profits.
None of the film's other self-help gurus were paid. But ''even though money was involved,'' Ms. Byrne insisted, ''it was
never about that.''
And the Hickses agreed. ''We earn millions of dollars a year'' already, Mr. Hicks said.
No, the clash seems mainly over who deserves credit, and the wave of mainstream publicity, for this latest version
of prosperity consciousness. The Hickses have preached the law of attraction while traveling with Abraham for 21
years. Ms. Byrne's exposure to the notion is more recent: she was going through a rough patch in her life in 2004, when
her daughter gave her a copy of ''The Science of Getting Rich,'' first published in 1910.
The book discussed how focusing on gratitude can help a person take control of life. Ms. Byrne delved into the
works of other self-help gurus, like Charles Haanel's ''Master Key System'' from 1912; Prentice Mulford's 19th-century
''Thoughts Are Things''; and Robert Collier's ''Secret of the Ages'' from 1926.
By contrast, Ms. Hicks reads no self-help or spiritual material, she said, wanting to keep her mind clear for Abraham's messages. Without knowing what others have written, friends of the Hickses said, it is easy to understand why
they believe they did the most to popularize the law of attraction before ''The Secret.''
''Some of the people who are in the movie, I agree, have clearly listened to Abraham tapes, said Ms. Black, the
publisher. ''But Abraham has never said 'This is just mine, don't share it with everyone.' ''
For the second version of ''The Secret,'' Ms. Byrne used Lisa Nichols, an author of ''Chicken Soup for the AfricanAmerican Soul,'' and Marci Shimoff, an author of ''Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul,'' to fill gaps left by Ms. Hicks's
removal. (The DVD of the Hicks version of ''The Secret'' is going for $104 on Amazon.com.)
Walking along the Pacific Ocean at surf's edge on a sunny day last week, Ms. Byrne said no one owns the law of
attraction because it is universal, like another famous law. ''I can't go 'law of gravity, that's mine,' '' she said.
What the Hickses say bothers them most about the second version of ''The Secret'' is that those who watch it are
not receiving enough explanation of the law or being told that its discovery was made by ''vibrationally accessing
broader intelligence,'' Ms. Hicks said.
Bringing forth the voice of Abraham as she sat on a buttery leather seat in her motor home, speaking of herself in
the third person, she said, ''Esther's concern is that they will destroy this information because they do not really know
it.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
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Shaking Riches Out of the Cosmos The New York Times February 25, 2007 Sunday
SUBJECT: BOOK REVIEWS (90%); LITERATURE (89%); MOVIE INDUSTRY (77%); SALES & SELLING
(72%); SALES FORCE (71%); REAL ESTATE AGENTS (66%); REAL ESTATE (65%); RESTAURANTS (60%);
FILM (90%); DOCUMENTARY FILMS (90%) Motivation and Incentive Systems; Books and Literature; Books and
Literature; Computers and the Internet; Motion Pictures; Motivation and Incentive Systems
PERSON: OPRAH WINFREY (53%); RHONDA BYRNE (92%) Marcelle S Fischler; Jerry Hicks; Esther Hicks;
Rhonda Byrne
GEOGRAPHIC: NEVADA, USA (79%); CALIFORNIA, USA (68%) UNITED STATES (79%); AUSTRALIA
(70%)
LOAD-DATE: February 25, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: INSPIRATIONAL -- Rhonda Byrne, left, the producer of the film and book called ''The Secret.''
Above, Esther and Jerry Hicks, authors of ''The Law of Attraction,'' in their bus. (Photos by Stephanie Diani for The
New York Times
top, Peter DaSilva for The New York Times)(pg. 2)
(Illustration by Tony Cenicola/The New York Times
background photograph by Mark L. Stephenson/Corbis)(pg. 1)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1091 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 25, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
BYLINE: By RICHARD B. WOODWARD
SECTION: Section 5; Column 5; Travel Desk; ARMCHAIR TRAVELER; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 474 words
Dragon SeaBy Frank PopeHarcourt, 341 pages, $25 hardcover
The bottom of the sea is the last undiscovered country. Millions of precious and not-so-precious objects have
drifted to rest there over five millenniums, making it a museum of lost treasures as well as a mass grave.
Frank Pope thought he knew the risks of poking around these nether regions when he signed on as project manager
to help explore and salvage a 15th-century wreck in the South China Sea. As a student at Oxford, he had volunteered on
other archaeological dives, including Admiral Horatio Nelson's flagship, Agamemnon, sunk in 1809 off the coast of
Uruguay.
But nothing in Mr. Pope's experience prepared him for the scale of the Asia operation -- the crew of 160 made it
the largest underwater excavation ever attempted -- or the human frailties and compromises it would expose. ''Dragon
Sea: A True Tale of Treasure, Archeology and Greed Off the Coast of Vietnam,'' his account of raising the contents of
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The New York Times February 25, 2007 Sunday
the Hoi An, a junk laden with some 750,000 pieces of Vietnamese pottery dating from the Le dynasty, is as cautionary a
ballad about greed, hypocrisy and disappointment as ''The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.''
Mr. Pope is not a natural writer but a thorough one. After a bumpy start, he finds his theme in the struggle between the demands of scholarship and those of commerce. The protagonists are Mensun Bound, an Oxford maritime
archaeologist hired to supervise the mapping of the wreck and cataloging of the ceramics, and Ong Soo Hin, a Malaysian businessman who finances the project in return for the right to sell a large share of what is brought up.
They are surrounded by an extraordinary cast of minor characters -- divers from around the Pacific, lazy Communist party officials, a rival treasure hunter named Mike Hatcher whose motto is ''finders keepers,'' and a Czech linguist fluent in 12 languages. All of them battle typhoons and Mr. Ong's deadlines.
On long dives, over a taxing 59 days, the men pull up dishes that alter understanding about trade in the era. Ancient gaming pieces are found along with skeletons of hundreds of rats. The discovery of a human skull requires sending
for a priest; the Vietnamese crew members refuse to work until there is an exorcism. Thousands of pieces must be left
behind for fear that too much material too soon would jeopardize the market.
Mr. Pope sides with those who prefer to study shipwrecks, not empty them for profit. Treasure hunters have, he
writes, ''systematically destroyed the time capsules that archeological investigators had learned to value so highly.'' But
he is also sympathetic to entrepreneurs like Mr. Ong, who believes the sale of plundered artifacts should pay for the
scholarship about them. This book shows how inadequate a solution that often turns out to be. RICHARD B.
WOODWARD
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: ANTHROPOLOGY & ARCHAEOLOGY (89%); WRITERS & WRITING (78%); LITERATURE (78%);
MARINE TRANSPORTATION ACCIDENTS (78%); OCEANS (78%); BOOK REVIEWS (78%); HUMANITIES &
SOCIAL SCIENCE (75%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (71%); INVESTIGATIONS (63%); POLITICAL PARTIES
(50%); ARCHAEOLOGY (89%) Books and Literature; Reviews
COMPANY: CNINSURE INC (71%)
TICKER: CISG (NASDAQ) (71%)
PERSON: Richard B Woodward; Frank Pope
GEOGRAPHIC: PACIFIC OCEAN (79%); SOUTH CHINA SEA (79%) ASIA (79%); VIETNAM (79%); MALAYSIA (79%)
LOAD-DATE: February 25, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Review
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1092 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
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Digital Deprivation in a Land of Affluence The New York Times February 25, 2007 Sunday
The New York Times
February 25, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Digital Deprivation in a Land of Affluence
BYLINE: By WOODY HOCHSWENDER.
E-mail: conn@nytimes.com
SECTION: Section 14CN; Column 3; Connecticut Weekly Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 831 words
DATELINE: SHARON
MANY Americans take high-speed Internet service for granted. But in Connecticut, the state with the highest percapita income in the country, there are still pockets of people without broadband, perhaps the keystone utility of the
digital age.
For all its suburban affluence, Connecticut remains a fairly rough-hewn state -- 60 percent is still agricultural or
open space -- and in the woodlands between cities, there are areas where broadband connections are difficult and expensive to wire.
Without a high-speed connection, life slows to a standstill. Photos and music files move through dial-up phone
wires like a pig being ingested by a snake. Surfing the Net is like crawling up a huge sand dune. Telecommuters are
bereft. Small, independent businesses languish.
''You're not able to compete economically and intellectually with other areas,'' said Jessica Clerk, an artist and
writer who lives on a dirt road in the back country of Sharon and needs broadband to do music research.
Nearby, Brian Wilcox, an equine photographer who depends almost entirely on e-commerce for his business,
spent more than five years mailing CDs of his horse show pictures to a commercial Web site as he waited and hoped for
a high-speed connection.
For homeowners deep in the woods or far from a telephone company switching station, waiting to get broadband
is a bit like waiting for Godot. It can take years. High-speed Internet providers are quick to point out that when you
choose to live in a remote or rural area, you can expect problems with your utilities.
However, there is an existential dimension. As the digital age transforms the culture and the economy, it seems
there are more people who wish to live life on their own terms. Ms. Clerk refers to such people as ''a brain cottage industry'' -- writers, booksellers, artists, craftsmen, traders and entrepreneurs to whom the Internet can be indispensable.
By leaving parts of the state unwired, she said, ''we're creating pockets of economic discrimination.''
Seth Bloom, a spokesman for AT&T Inc., the biggest telephone and D.S.L. provider in the state, acknowledges
the problem. ''There are areas all over the state where there are topographic anomalies and very spread-out neighborhoods,'' he said, noting that Litchfield County in the northwest and Windham County to the northeast both present challenges. Nevertheless, he says, 93 percent of Connecticut residents now at least have access to D.S.L.
D.S.L. is a distance-driven product. If you live more than 18,000 feet from a switching station, for example, you
may be out of luck. Beyond a mile and a quarter, bandwidth becomes attenuated, resulting in slower speeds.
To extend D.S.L.'s reach, AT&T in December introduced AT&T U-verse, a program that runs an advanced fiberoptic cable into neighborhoods, then uses the existing copper wire to connect to homes.
Cable companies have greater infrastructure obstacles than the phone company. For example, cable providers do
not own the telephone poles and can be reluctant to bring a cable line across a state road without an existing pole crossing, since burying the line involves expensive excavation. They will not generally do it for a handful of homes.
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Digital Deprivation in a Land of Affluence The New York Times February 25, 2007 Sunday
''There are definitely pockets of remoteness,'' said Robert Spain, the director of governmental relations at Charter
Communications, a cable company active in rural Connecticut. In the southern part of the state, including towns around
Danbury like Brookfield and Woodbury, and extending as far as Trumbull, Charter's franchise communities are ''fully
built out,'' he said, while in rural Windham County -- towns like Canterbury, Chaplin, Pomfret, Willington and Woodstock -- ''we're still in the process.''
Typically, cable providers sign agreements with individual towns to obtain the franchise for wiring the area. For
example, several towns in northwest Connecticut are wired by Comcast. An examination of all 24 franchise agreements
filed with the Connecticut Department of Public Utility Control shows that the key clause regarding ''line extensions'' -or the wiring of outlying ''new growth'' neighborhoods -- always contains the phrase ''as expeditiously as possible.'' This
has been interpreted in various ways.
''We have certain criteria from a business perspective,'' Mr. Spain said. ''If it doesn't provide a reasonable return on
investment, you have to look at it on a case-by-case basis.''
Paul Cianelli, president of the New England Cable and Telecommunications Association, a trade group, said that
with satellite companies competing with cable for television subscribers, the industry dynamics have changed. No longer can cable companies assume that line extensions will net dual subscribers -- television and Internet. This makes it
costlier to offer cable to every corner of the state.
Meanwhile, absent government subsidies or a technological breakthrough, some people, like digital Flintstones,
will be without broadband for years to come.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: BROADBAND (92%); INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS (90%); COMPUTER NETWORKS (89%);
TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES (86%); BANDWIDTH (78%); INTERNET & WWW (89%); TELECOMMUTING (76%); PHOTOGRAPHY (75%); MUSIC INDUSTRY (75%); ELECTRONIC COMMERCE (73%); SUBURBS (72%); RURAL COMMUNITIES (76%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (69%); BOOKSTORES (50%); ARTISTS
& PERFORMERS (89%) Computers and the Internet; Rural Areas
COMPANY: AT&T INC (85%)
TICKER: T (NYSE) (85%); T (LSE) (82%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS517212 CELLULAR & OTHER WIRELESS TELECOMMUNICATIONS (82%); NAICS517110 WIRED TELECOMMUNICATIONS CARRIERS (86%); NAICS511140 DIRECTORY & MAILING
LIST PUBLISHERS (86%); SIC4813 TELEPHONE COMMUNICATIONS, EXCEPT RADIOTELEPHONE (82%);
SIC4812 RADIOTELEPHONE COMMUNICATIONS (82%); SIC2741 MISC. PUBLISHING (82%); NAICS517210
WIRELESS TELECOMMUNICATIONS CARRIERS (EXCEPT SATELLITE) (86%)
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (70%) Woody Hochwender
GEOGRAPHIC: CONNECTICUT, USA (96%) UNITED STATES (96%) Connecticut
LOAD-DATE: February 25, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo (Photo by Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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The New York Times
February 24, 2007 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
Some Leveraged Buyout Myths
BYLINE: By PAUL B. BROWN
SECTION: Section C; Column 4; Business/Financial Desk; WHAT'S OFFLINE; Pg. 5
LENGTH: 679 words
THE leveraged buyout boom shows no sign of abating. But Robert F. Bruner, dean of the University of Virginia's
business school, asks a troubling question about the trend, which has been driven by past success in increasing cash
flow, asset utilization and real rates of return:
Why can't the executives who are running these companies deliver the same success for their shareholders? Why
must these companies go private to produce these kinds of gains?
Writing in Directors and Boards, Mr. Bruner refutes the explanations given by top executives of the companies that
have become more efficient once they have been acquired.
For example, one reason typically given for increased performance is ''these gains derive from cuts in advertising,
maintenance, capital spending or R.& D., but the research does not support this,'' Mr. Bruner writes.
Chief executives of public companies say going private frees them from Wall Street's constantly punishing them
for sacrificing short-term gains for long-term success, or for undertaking necessary restructurings. But Mr. Bruner
points out that public companies like Berkshire Hathaway and Progressive Insurance ''refuse to play the quarterly earnings game,'' and many companies have been able to restructure without their stock plummeting.
Finally, he says, much is made of the skills of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and other successful private equity investors -- ''they have the secret recipe that converts the sagging mature firm into a veritable Schwarzenegger'' and so these
companies need to go private to benefit from these special skills.
But why, Mr. Bruner asks, ''don't the directors of public firms hire some of these boys and girls to learn their secrets.''
After all, there is no patent on what the buyout firms know. C.E.O. SUPERMAN -- One reason corporate leadership seems so bad is that we expect too much of the people at the top, say four M.I.T. business school professors in a
Harvard Business Review article, ''In Praise of the Incomplete Leader.''
''It's time to end the myth of the complete leader: the flawless person at the top who's got it all figured out,'' they
write. ''In fact, the sooner leaders stop trying to be all things to all people, the better off their organizations will be.''
The professors argue that leadership comprises four main traits: Understanding the context in which the company
operates; building relationships within and across the organization; creating a compelling vision of the future; and determining how to achieve that vision.
Typically, leaders are strong in only one or two of those areas. The authors say that instead of trying to excel in all
four, executives should concentrate on their strengths and rely on others to compensate for their weaknesses.C.E.O.
D.Y.I. -- ''We are in the midst of the largest entrepreneurial surge this country has ever seen,'' Phaedra Hise writes in
Fortune Small Business. A record number of businesses were created in 2005 and ''the trend shows no sign of abating.''
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Some Leveraged Buyout Myths The New York Times February 24, 2007 Saturday
''The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that more businesses were created in the first quarter of 2006 than during
the same period the previous year,'' she adds.
Among the findings:
Recent immigrants started 25 percent more businesses per capita than native-born citizens did last year.
From 1997 to 2006 the number of women-owned small businesses climbed 42 percent, to 7.7 million.
More than 37 percent of individuals in the highest tax bracket are business owners.
Americans working at companies with more than 2,500 employees: 37 percent; Americans working at companies
with fewer than 100 employees: 36 percent.
66 percent of people surveyed said they wanted to start their own company one day; more than a third of those
said they planned to do so in the next five years.FINAL TAKE -- Here's an easy way to save money, courtesy of Kiplinger's, based on a study by Synergistics Research: ''Nearly 80 percent of credit card users who asked their lenders for a
lower rate got one.''
Half of the people who were turned down canceled their card. PAUL B. BROWN
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: LEVERAGED BUYOUTS (91%); TRENDS (90%); PRIVATE EQUITY (90%); GOING PRIVATE
(90%); BUYINS & BUYOUTS (90%); RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT (90%); EDUCATION (89%); MANAGEMENT BUYOUTS (89%); CORPORATE RESTRUCTURING (78%); UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATION (90%);
COMPANY EARNINGS (77%); INTERIM FINANCIAL RESULTS (72%); CAPITAL EXPENDITURES (72%);
SHAREHOLDERS (71%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING EXPENDITURE (69%); DIVESTITURES (78%);
SMALL BUSINESS (78%); COLLEGE & UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS (89%); BUSINESS EDUCATION (90%);
CASH FLOW (77%) Mergers, Acquisitions and Divestitures; Small Business; Mergers, Acquisitions and Divestitures
COMPANY: BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY INC (55%); PROGRESSIVE INSURANCE AGENCY INC (55%);
KOHLBERG KRAVIS ROBERTS & CO (54%); KKR & CO LP (67%)
ORGANIZATION: UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA (91%) Directors and Boards (Magazine); University of Virginia;
Harvard Business Review; Fortune Small Business (Magazine)
TICKER: BRK (NYSE) (55%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS524210 INSURANCE AGENCIES AND BROKERAGES (55%); NAICS524130 REINSURANCE CARRIERS (55%); SIC6411 INSURANCE AGENTS, BROKERS, & SERVICE (55%); SIC6331 FIRE, MARINE, & CASUALTY INSURANCE (55%); NAICS524210 INSURANCE AGENCIES & BROKERAGES (55%)
PERSON: Robert F (Prof) Bruner; Phaedra Hise; Paul B Brown
LOAD-DATE: February 24, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1094 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
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Family Hands Off Its Business, and Its Philosophy The New York Times February 24, 2007 Saturday
The New York Times
February 24, 2007 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
Family Hands Off Its Business, and Its Philosophy
BYLINE: BY JEFF BAILEY
SECTION: Section A; Column 4; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1526 words
DATELINE: HOLLAND, Mich.
Right up there with putting an aging parent in a nursing home stands the wrenching job of handing over a family
business to be run by outsiders.
It happens to any family firm that lasts long enough, from Wal-Mart Stores on down. And, as the experience of
the 102-year-old Louis Padnos Iron and Metal Company shows, the transition can be as quirky as the founding family.
The problem for the Padnoses is an age gap. Third-generation members who run the scrap metal company, which
employs about 400 people and has annual sales of about $300 million, are in their 50s. They want to work less. But the
fourth-generation Padnoses who might someday want to run the place are still only in their teens.
So, the company hired a local philosophy professor, a man who also spends time tutoring convicts at a nearby
state prison in classic literature and other topics, to help groom six hired managers to become, well, more Padnos-like.
What does that mean? For starters, as the Padnoses themselves point out, they are politically liberal, Jewish and,
having grown up wealthy enough to travel widely, they are worldly. Mitchell W. Padnos, one of four third-generation
owners who run the company, worked after college at a Barcelona steel mill. His cousin, Jeff Padnos, now the company
president, once gave a speech to a Katmandu science club in the middle of a six-month, around-the-world vacation before starting business school, he said.
The managers, on the other hand, are mostly conservative, from Protestant backgrounds with working- class roots,
and have spent much less time outside Western Michigan.
''We just happen to be a Jewish family sitting in the middle of this,'' said Mitch Padnos, growing up and living in
an area that has historically been heavily Dutch. He added that the elder Padnoses expected their children to behave in
ways that reflected well on their religion. ''My dad was very sensitive,'' he said.
As a result, the third-generation Padnoses view themselves as part entrepreneur, part social worker. And it is the
latter quality they seem most anxious to pass along to the managers. ''I'm becoming more and more missionarylike,'' said
Jeff Padnos. ''Doing business right really is like applied religion.''
He said he recently agreed to hire a man with a criminal record. If it works out, he said, ''you remember that better
than any buy-low, sell-high deal you've made.'' The company said it never laid off workers.
A family foundation holds about $7 million and contributes to many local organizations each year. The Padnos
name is all over Western Michigan, adorning the Amtrak station here, the engineering school at nearby Grand Valley
State University and sculpture gardens in the area.
''They're wonderful benefactors,'' said the mayor of Holland, Al McGeehan.
Sure, the Padnoses could sell the company and probably collect considerably more than $100 million. But selling,
said Mitch Padnos, would make him just another idle, rich guy. ''I have friends who have no place to go every day,'' he
said, his bow tie carefully knotted, mustache precisely trimmed. ''Once you've sold your business, you're done.''
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Family Hands Off Its Business, and Its Philosophy The New York Times February 24, 2007 Saturday
Indeed, many entrepreneurial dynasties build family customs around the business itself, meaning a sale can emotionally upend the family. ''It's really a quagmire,'' said Ted Clark, executive director of the Northeastern University
Center for Family Business. ''We hear all the time: I never want to sell.''
Thus three years ago, the Padnoses began talking to the managers about taking on more responsibility and perhaps
one day running the company. ''The first thing they all said was, 'O.K., when?' '' said Shelley Padnos, Mitch's sister.
She went to a business ethics seminar two years ago and met the speaker, Michael DeWilde. He teaches philosophy at Grand Valley State. A one-time carpenter and labor organizer, he became known in the Grand Rapids area for a
program that brought literary classics to groups that normally do not read them, including some prisoners.
Ms. Padnos was impressed, and invited Mr. DeWilde to meet with the managers. They communicated poorly with
one another, often running problems through a family member, she said. She said she felt they were uncomfortable with
ambiguity, seeing issues as black and white. And she worried their conservatism would change the way Padnos was run.
''They would tell you, God helps them who help themselves,'' she said. In her view, though, ''that only works if the
playing field is level.''
''They need to be exposed to the big wide world,'' Ms. Padnos recalled thinking. (She gave each one a Sunday
New York Times subscription.) ''It is not unusual to grow up in Holland and think most of the world is Christian Reformed and white.''
The managers, mostly in their 30s, grew up in the area, went to college and, after a job or two, came to Padnos. Al
Tomes, director of operations and a 16-year Padnos employee, grew up in a one-stoplight town near here, where his
parents operated a campground, he said.
Before enlisting in the Army and graduating from college, Mr. Tomes said, he mulled a career at his hometown
grocery store. But he decided he would always be beneath the owner's several children. ''There just wasn't going to be
room,'' he said.
Perhaps it is too easy for the Padnoses to think of the managers as still-developing personalities, rather than merely as fellow adults with a different point of view. ''We all came in here young,'' said Matthew Heitmeier, a manager who
buys and sells metals for Padnos. ''It's a parent-child relationship. I don't think we're as closed-minded as they think we
are. They hire conservative people. They want us to appreciate the liberal mind-set.''
When Mr. DeWilde, the professor, started meeting with the managers every two weeks in September 2005, he
said they initially focused on traditional career concerns. Some saw the meetings as a way to advance themselves as
candidates to run the company.
Over time, however, they were persuaded that the Padnoses had no intention of naming a single heir apparent. The
four family members practice an unusually democratic management. Each is paid exactly the same and no major decision is made unless all four agree.
Beginning to think like a team, the managers offered each other constructive criticism.
They told Scott O'Neil, the sales manager, he shoots from the hip at times.
They told Al Tomes to dress more nicely and work on his grammar.
And Mr. O'Neil told Timothy Beers, who manages administrative functions, to stop hanging around the office into
the evening just because Jeff Padnos stays late (he also starts late). ''Tim was always there,'' Mr. O'Neil said. Mr. Beers
denied hanging around unnecessarily.
The managers were assigned readings of Thoreau, Sophocles and a recent essay on Freud. They spent a long
weekend in Chicago seeing plays, touring exhibitions of art and architecture and eating at fancy restaurants. And in recent weeks they have debated how to give away $40,000 of the Padnoses' money, an exercise in becoming philanthropists.
Mr. Beers, a 12-year Padnos employee, said: ''I've enjoyed it. But it hasn't been an easy transition. While you're
sitting there watching a Shakespeare play, it's hard not to think about all the things you could be getting done at work.''
The founder, Louis Padnos, fled Russia at age 13, made his way to Amsterdam, learned to speak Dutch and got on
a ship to the United States. He had relatives in Chicago. He became a junk peddler, common work among Dutch immi-
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Family Hands Off Its Business, and Its Philosophy The New York Times February 24, 2007 Saturday
grants at the time. Because he did not speak English, someone suggested that he move across Lake Michigan to Holland, the Dutch enclave.
From a cart and later a horse and wagon, his business prospered. He essentially scoured the area for scrap metal
and other discards, then sold the stuff to mills as raw material. Two sons joined and expanded the business. By 1979,
Mitch and Jeff Padnos, cousins, joined their fathers. Shelley and Jeff's brother, Doug Padnos, joined later.
It remains a tough business and it is dangerous. Two workers have died at Padnos plants in recent years. One was
hit last year by a giant blade he was changing on a metal shredder. The other was run over in 2001 by a freight train as
he swept scraps away from the tracks.
Scrap prices, meanwhile, move wildly, and a dealer stuck with a lot of inventory in a plunging market can be
wiped out. Padnos will not disclose profits on its annual sales of about $300 million. However, if its profit margin last
year roughly matched the industry's biggest company, Metal Management, Padnos could have had after-tax profit of
$15 million to $20 million.
The managers, implored to ''act like owners,'' do not see the financial statements, and that irks some of them.
''If they want these people to be more like them, they need to have access to the same information,'' said Mr.
Clark, the Northeastern University family business director. Without the context of financial information, he added, the
managers cannot be expected to make informed decisions.
''It's an inconsistency,'' Jeff Padnos conceded. ''It's something we wrestle with.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: FAMILY COMPANIES (90%); FAMILY (90%); SALES FIGURES (78%); CHILDREN (78%); COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES (73%); PHILOSOPHY (73%); JEWS & JUDAISM (71%); RELIGION (71%); FOUNDATIONS (70%); SCULPTURE (69%); LITERATURE (68%); IRON & STEEL MILLS (51%); COLLEGE & UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS (68%); BUSINESS EDUCATION (78%)
COMPANY: LOUIS PADNOS IRON & METAL CO (72%); WAL-MART STORES INC (58%); NATIONAL
RAILROAD PASSENGER CORP (AMTRAK) (50%)
ORGANIZATION: Padnos, Louis, Iron and Metal Co
TICKER: WMT (NYSE) (58%); WAL (LSE) (58%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS452910 WAREHOUSE CLUBS AND SUPERCENTERS (58%); NAICS452112 DISCOUNT
DEPARTMENT STORES (58%); SIC5411 GROCERY STORES (58%); SIC5399 MISC. GENERAL MERCHANDISE STORES (58%); SIC5311 DEPARTMENT STORES (58%); NAICS452910 WAREHOUSE CLUBS &
SUPERCENTERS (58%)
PERSON: Jeff Bailey; Mitchell Padnos; Shelley Padnos; Doug Padnos
GEOGRAPHIC: MICHIGAN, USA (94%) UNITED STATES (94%) Holland (Mich)
LOAD-DATE: February 24, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: The managers at Padnos are mostly in their 30s, grew up in Western Michigan and attended college.
Tony Soto, a trailer mechanic in the machine shop at Padnos, has worked for the company for 40 years.
Mitchell Padnos, from left, Shelley Padnos and Doug Padnos, with family portraits at the scrap yard of Louis Padnos
Iron and Metal Company. (Photographs by Sally Ryan for The New York Times)(pg. C9)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
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Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1095 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 24, 2007 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
President Promotes Alternative Energy With a Car Show of Sorts
BYLINE: By MATTHEW L. WALD
SECTION: Section A; Column 1; National Desk; Pg. 10
LENGTH: 322 words
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Feb. 23
President Bush turned to alternative fuels, and alternative companies, to argue Friday that his goal for reining in
gasoline consumption in the coming decade was realistic.
On the South Lawn of the White House, Mr. Bush inspected a version of the Toyota Prius, the popular Japanese
gas-electric hybrid, that had been rigged with a Canadian-built battery pack to allow it to operate more of each day on
electricity, along with a South Korean sport utility truck modified by a small California company to run entirely on batteries.
Neither is now a mass-market product, but each, the president said, is evidence that entrepreneurs will rush in to
solve the nation's oil addiction. He called on Congress to approve financing that he has requested for research.
The administration has set a goal of reducing gasoline consumption within 10 years by 20 percent from current
forecasts. The question is, Which technologies will prove viable?
The modified Prius shown Friday carried an extra battery pack in the space intended for the spare tire and had undergone software modification, so that it used more battery power than a standard Prius, reaching higher speeds before
starting up the gasoline engine.
Ric Fulop, vice president of A123 Systems of Watertown, Mass., which modified the car, said a battery that would
power it for about 40 miles between overnight chargings cost $10,000 and would last through 7,000 cycles of charging
and discharging -- ''more than the life of the vehicle.''
The electric truck can go 130 miles between chargings, said Bryon Bliss, vice president at Phoenix Motorcars of
Ontario, Calif. The company has orders for 75, at $45,000 each, and hopes to sell 500 this year and 6,000 next year, Mr.
Bliss said.
To a repeated question as to whether he would consider one of the vehicles for his ranch in Texas, Mr. Bush simply wished the assembled reporters a good weekend and returned to the Oval Office.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: AUTOMOTIVE FUELS (91%); GASOLINE (90%); US PRESIDENTS (90%); ALTERNATIVE FUEL
VEHICLES (90%); CONSUMPTION (90%); HYBRID VEHICLES (90%); AUTOMAKERS (89%); ENERGY EFFI-
Page 243
President Promotes Alternative Energy With a Car Show of Sorts The New York Times February 24, 2007 Saturday
CIENCY & CONSERVATION (78%); SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES (78%); AUTOMOTIVE TECHNOLOGY
(77%); MOTOR VEHICLES (77%); ELECTRIC VEHICLES (77%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (73%); PETROLEUM
PRODUCTS (72%) Automobiles; Fuel Efficiency; Electric and Hybrid Vehicles; Batteries; Utility Vehicles and Other
Light Trucks; Automobiles; Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline; Research; Finances
ORGANIZATION: Toyota Motor Corp
PERSON: GEORGE W BUSH (93%) Matthew L Wald; George W (Pres) Bush
GEOGRAPHIC: MASSACHUSETTS, USA (73%); CALIFORNIA, USA (71%) CANADA (88%); UNITED
STATES (79%) Japan; Canada; South Korea
LOAD-DATE: February 24, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1096 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 23, 2007 Friday
Late Edition - Final
Working in France, in Style of Silicon Valley
BYLINE: By JOHN TAGLIABUE
SECTION: Section C; Column 3; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1325 words
DATELINE: AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France
Jacques Souquet had gone through several start-ups in Seattle, but he still was not entirely prepared for beginning a
high-tech company in his native France.
Failure is still a no-no here, creating a challenge for any start-up. Not to mention the idea that difficulty here
seems a contradiction in terms for, after all, the word ''entrepreneur'' is French.
And Mr. Souquet, 58, a compact man with a gentle manner, has a lot of rules to learn. When he once had to meet a
deadline, he asked his colleagues to come in on a Sunday, which they did; but Mr. Souquet got a scolding from his lawyer, who lectured about the legal limits on the French workweek.
Now, Mr. Souquet's company is up and running smoothly, and that is a testimony to recent changes in France and
greater Europe: start-ups are no longer rare. Moreover, Europe's new entrepreneurs are turning West to learn the startup culture bred in Silicon Valley before coming back here to apply their learning.
Page 244
Working in France, in Style of Silicon Valley The New York Times February 23, 2007 Friday
After the Internet bust, the number of European start-ups in the computer and telecommunications sectors began
growing again in 2003, according to the Center for European Economic Research, in Mannheim, Germany. And venture
capital is pouring into start-ups, which last year attracted about $970 million, the highest level in a decade since the Internet boom ended in 2000.
Overall venture capital fund-raising in Europe is more than twice the levels of 2002. In France, the number of new
businesses set up last year rose 4 percent, to 233,052, over 2005, according to the Agency for the Creation of Businesses, a government body. The number of small American businesses also grew that much, at 4.5 percent, but at 671,800,
there are nearly three times as many such American companies, according to the Small Business Administration.
Mr. Souquet's experience illustrates how far the Continent has to go if it hopes to match the United States. He was
able to lure eight of his 27 employees back from the United States. And after two years, he is preparing to offer his
product in 2008, a device that measures the elasticity of living tissue, to assist doctors in diagnosing and treating cancer.
Still, Aix is not Seattle. French attitudes are a bit rigid, compared with the American approach of if-at-first-youdon't-succeed. And French law, which mandates a 35-hour week, still crimps entrepreneurial flair.
''In a start-up environment, you cannot work a 35-hour week,'' Mr. Souquet said, referring to the time he asked his
colleagues to work on a Sunday. ''My lawyer was furious,'' he said, fearing the company could be penalized.
Mr. Souquet also recounted that at Stanford University, where he got his Ph.D. in applied physics, one of his
teachers, William Shockley, a pioneer in transistors who shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in physics, taught by discussing
failed experiments.
''Then he would turn to another page, showing why the experiment failed,'' Mr. Souquet said, recalling images of
his professor's Bell Labs notebooks. ''He called them constructive failures.''
Mr. Souquet's company began with a colleague's fear that France was failing to retain its scientists. Georges
Charpak, the winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in physics, came to him.
''He told me, 'It's dramatic,' '' Mr. Souquet said, describing how his French colleague begged him to help stanch a
drain of French talent to the United States by promoting start-ups here. ''He said his best laboratory talent was going to
the United States, that he was about to lose 15 people who were being offered grants by U.C., San Diego.''
So two years ago, Mr. Souquet began gathering patents, including several from a Russian emigre, Armen Sarvazyan, whose own start-up, Artann Laboratories, in West Trenton, N.J., held key patents for working with shear waves
crucial to Mr. Souquet's device. A shear wave is so named because it moves through the body of an object, unlike a surface wave.
At his previous start-up, SonoSite, which is based in Seattle, Mr. Souquet helped develop hand-held ultrasound
devices that were essentially conventional technology, drastically miniaturized.
Mr. Souquet's latest device is ''a new concept,'' Mr. Sarvazyan said. ''It opens an era, not only for elasticity, but for
imitating the sense of touch, the feeling of a doctor,'' which is now often crucial in diagnosing cancer.
Mr. Souquet had broad experience in ultrasound, having worked in the United States for Varian Semiconductor,
before moving to ATL Ultrasound in Seattle. Together with a small group of ATL researchers, he founded SonoSite.
When Mr. Charpak approached him, Mr. Souquet was the head of research in the medical division of Philips, the Dutch
electrical giant.
Weary of the constant travel and the bureaucracy of a global giant like Philips, Mr. Souquet heeded Mr. Charpak's
cry for help. His idea, as outlined on the company's Web site, is to develop a device that would use ultrasound to measure the elasticity of human tissue.
Since cancerous tissue loses much of its elasticity, such a device would be useful in helping diagnose and treat
cancer in the breast, he said, but also the prostate gland, the thyroid and the liver.
SuperSonic Imagine, with headquarters in a glass-and-steel corporate park outside this southern French resort city,
was floated with Mr. Souquet's own savings, plus money from French government sources. Last March, a group of venture capital funds led by Credit Agricole Private Equity pumped 10 million euros ($13 million), into the company.
Page 245
Working in France, in Style of Silicon Valley The New York Times February 23, 2007 Friday
Amounts of capital like this are still only a fraction of the money flowing into start-ups in the United States, but in
Europe, their impact is widening. The European Private Equity and Venture Capital Association, set up in 2001, has
seen its membership grow to almost 950 members.
Representatives of the association tell of many technology success stories, like that of Xavier Niel, 39, a entrepreneur based in Paris who in 2002 started Free, now the No. 2 Internet access engine in France, after Orange, the
France Telecom unit.
Vectrix began in Italy about a decade ago, but came into its own only in 2003 when Carlo Di Biagio, the former
Ducati Motorcycle chief executive, became its boss. It is about to bring to market a novel electric-engine scooter, with a
top speed of about 62 miles an hour, developed with help from about $50 million in venture capital.
''From the point of view of technology, this was a real innovation,'' said Alexia Perouse, director of life science investments at Credit Agricole, explaining why they gave the money to Mr. Souquet. Later this year, the venture capital
funds will consider a second grant of 20 million euros, Mr. Souquet said.
In April, Mr. Souquet plans to talk with the Food and Drug Administration to have the devices certified. By next
year, he hopes to begin delivering them.
SuperSonic is focusing primarily on breast cancer, and its device employs different types of ultrasound waves that
produce better images than existing diagnostic methods -- X-ray, ultrasound echography and magnetic resonance imaging.
Conventional ultrasound, said Dr. Stephen B. Corn, who teaches at Harvard Medical School and is director of
clinical innovation at Children's Hospital Boston, ''is not always sensitive and specific enough, particularly in cases of
dense breast tissue.''
''It looks very intriguing,'' he said of the company's work, ''very exciting.''
Mr. Souquet has hired a marketing director, opened an office in Seattle, and has chosen the tentative design for the
first product. And his company has some of the Silicon Valley feel. People sit in open carrels, rather than closed offices;
dress is casual. At lunch, employees sit around an open counter in the center of the building.
''It's easy in the States,'' Mr. Souquet said, still bemoaning the French hardships. ''You know what to do; you go to
Barnes & Noble, you buy a book, 20 tips to create a start-up.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: ENTREPRENEURSHIP (90%); VENTURE CAPITAL (89%); SMALL BUSINESS ASSISTANCE
(78%); SMALL BUSINESS (78%); LAWYERS (71%); FUNDRAISING (70%); TELECOMMUNICATIONS (66%);
CANCER (65%); RESEARCH INSTITUTES (65%); ECONOMIC NEWS (51%) Computers and the Internet; Venture
Capital; Telephones and Telecommunications; Computers and the Internet
ORGANIZATION: SuperSonic Image
PERSON: Jacques Souquet; John Tagliabue
GEOGRAPHIC: SEATTLE, WA, USA (93%); SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, CA, USA (90%) WASHINGTON,
USA (93%); PROVENCE-ALPES-COTE D'AZUR, FRANCE (79%); MANNHEIM, GERMANY (50%); CALIFORNIA, USA (90%) FRANCE (97%); EUROPE (94%); UNITED STATES (94%); GERMANY (76%) Europe; France
LOAD-DATE: February 23, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Jacques Souquet's French company plans a medical device. (Photo by Owen Franken for The New
York Times)(pg. C1)Chart: ''More Start-Up Cash''European venture capital fund-raising has more than doubled since
2002, though it remains far lower than amounts raised in Silicon Valley. Investments in European start-ups more than
tripled.Graph shows INVESTMENTS IN EUROPEAN START-UPS since 1997.Graph shows EUROPEAN VENTURE CAPITAL FUND-RAISING (IN U.S. DOLLARS) since 1997.(Source by Thomson Financial)(pg. C6)
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PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1097 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 23, 2007 Friday
Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section C; Column 5; Business/Financial Desk; TODAY IN BUSINESS; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 861 words
HEDGE FUND RULES -- The Bush administration said that there was no need for greater government oversight of
the rapidly growing hedge fund industry and other private investment groups. It announced instead an agreement on a
set of nonbinding principles. [Page A1.]EXECUTIVES LEAVE BANK -- The deterioration in the United States mortgage market has forced the departures of two top executives at HSBC Holdings. The departures come after HSBC surprised investors by announcing that it needed to increase its reserves for bad loans.
[C1.]MICROSOFT LOSES PATENT CASE -- A federal jury ordered Microsoft to pay $1.52 billion in a patent
dispute over the MP3 format, which is at the heart of the digital music boom. If upheld, the patent judgment would be
the largest on record. [C1.]LABOR BILL -- Organized labor is fighting for a pro-union bill as if its life depended on it.
The bill would make it far easier for workers to join unions, through a process known as a card check or majority signup. [A18.]OIL-FOR-FOOD SENTENCE -- In federal court in Manhattan, Tongsun Park, a South Korean businessman
convicted of illegally representing Saddam Hussein in the United Nations' oil-for-food program for Iraq, was sentenced
to five years in prison. [A10.]THE AMERICAN WAY -- With recent changes, start-ups are no longer rare in France
and elsewhere in Europe. And Europe's new entrepreneurs are turning west, to learn the start-up culture bred in Silicon
Valley. [C1.]NEW COOL -- Until recently, it looked as if the depleted ozone layer protecting the earth from harmful
solar rays was on its way to being healed. But thanks in part to an explosion of demand for air-conditioners in places
like India and China, the ozone layer is proving very hard to repair. [C1.]OPTIONS BACKDATING -- Lawyers and
executives have watched the case of Brocade Communications to see how government investigations into stock option
backdating will play out. But Brocade's $7 million settlement has offered little guidance. [C2.]CBS CABLE DEAL -CBS announced it had concluded a series of agreements in which cable systems will compensate the network for the
right to carry its programming. [C3.]BUILDING ON MYSPACE -- Fox Interactive Media, the News Corporation unit
that operates MySpace, said it had acquired the Strategic Data Corporation, an advertising technology company, to help
increase revenue from the popular Web site. [C7.]IRAN RATTLES MARKET -- Wall Street turned in a mixed performance as Iran's refusal to suspend uranium enrichment rattled investors and tempered a tech rally. The Dow fell 52.39
points, to 12,686.02. [C9.]FORECAST HITS PENNEY SHARES -- J. C. Penney reported better-than-expected fourthquarter earnings, but its shares fell sharply after it forecast a first-quarter profit below Wall Street estimates. [C4.]THE
WAIT AT CHRYSLER -- A week after DaimlerChrysler signaled its plans to put the Chrysler Group on the auction
block, an e-mail message sent to employees by Chrysler's chief executive, Thomas W. LaSorda, above, indicated it
might be weeks or months before the automaker's future can be determined. [C3.]CANCER DRUG TEST -- Genentech
said a low dose of its cancer drug Avastin worked just as well as a high dose in a clinical trial. Its shares fell amid concern that it would receive less revenue from the drug. [C7.]EXECUTIVES INDICTED -- Three executives of a cleaning
and maintenance company, Rosenbaum-Cunningham International, were indicted on charges of defrauding the federal
government of taxes owed on behalf of illegal immigrant workers. [A18.]AIRLINES ADDRESS RUNWAY DELAYS
-- Working to head off passenger-rights legislation, the Air Transport Association, a trade group for United States airlines, has suggested voluntary fixes for long runway delays. [C9.]AMONG GENTLEMEN -- To help commemorate its
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The New York Times February 23, 2007 Friday
50th anniversary, GQ magazine is starting a charitable project called the Gentlemen's Fund. Advertising: Stuart Elliott.
[C4.]ONLINELEFT HOLDING THE BAG -- When a fast-food chain runs into trouble, franchise owners often take the
hardest hit. A special report on Small Business is at nytimes.com/business.YOUR TAXES -- Suggestions on surviving
an audit, and tax tips on pleasing Uncle Sam. A special report is at nytimes.com/business.Business BriefingArticles on
these developments are at nytimes.com/business.Gamco Investors, the asset manager headed by Mario Gabelli, said on
Thursday it offered to settle a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into mutual fund share trading and, as
a result, has increased its legal and regulatory reserves by $3 million. (REUTERS)Johnson & Johnson's Centocor unit
received a subpoena in connection with an investigation into pricing of its drug Remicade, a treatment for rheumatoid
arthritis and other inflammatory diseases. (REUTERS)The tax preparer H&R Block swung to a loss in the third quarter
as losses in its troubled mortgage lending arm offset a strong beginning of the tax season. (AP)Getty Images, the provider of stock and editorial photographs, said it planned to buy the celebrity photo distributor WireImage for $200 million and was in talks to acquire another rival. (REUTERS)
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
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(90%); PATENTS (89%); NETWORK TELEVISION (84%); INTERNET SOCIAL NETWORKING (84%); CABLE
INDUSTRY (78%); MUSIC INDUSTRY (78%); MORTGAGE BANKING & FINANCE (78%); SETTLEMENT &
COMPROMISE (77%); MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS (77%); HOLDING COMPANIES (76%); LAW COURTS &
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(72%); JURY TRIAL (70%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (69%); STOCK OPTIONS (66%); BACKDATED STOCK
OPTIONS (66%); FOOD CHARITIES (66%); UNITED NATIONS INSTITUTIONS (66%); INTERACTIVE MARKETING & ADVERTISING (64%); INTERIM FINANCIAL RESULTS (63%); AIR POLLUTION (63%); COMPANY EARNINGS (63%); INVESTIGATIONS (61%); PATENT INFRINGEMENT (75%); OZONE DEPLETION
(68%); CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS (75%); JURY TRIALS (75%); JAIL SENTENCING (70%) Terms not available
from NYTimes
COMPANY: NEWS CORP (62%); FOX INTERACTIVE MEDIA (62%); MICROSOFT CORP (57%); HSBC
HOLDINGS PLC (73%); CNINSURE INC (64%)
ORGANIZATION: UNITED NATIONS (55%)
TICKER: NWS (NYSE) (62%); NCRA (LSE) (62%); MSFT (NASDAQ) (57%); HSBA (LSE) (73%); HSB (PAR)
(73%); HBC (NYSE) (73%); NWS (ASX) (62%); CISG (NASDAQ) (64%); 0005 (HKSE) (73%); NWS (NASDAQ)
(62%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS511210 SOFTWARE PUBLISHERS (57%); SIC7372 PREPACKAGED SOFTWARE (57%)
PERSON: SADDAM HUSSEIN (55%)
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (79%) NEW YORK, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (94%); IRAN (92%);
INDIA (79%); CHINA (79%); FRANCE (79%); IRAQ (79%); EUROPE (92%)
LOAD-DATE: February 23, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PhotoGraph shows HSBC A.D.R. shares for the week.
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Summary
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
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The New York Times February 23, 2007 Friday
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1098 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 22, 2007 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
The Magic Is in the Tweaking
BYLINE: By ANNE FIELD
SECTION: Section C; Column 4; Business/Financial Desk; SMALL BUSINESS; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 1105 words
About five years ago, Sarah Lurie, a personal trainer in La Jolla, Calif., learned about a demanding form of exercise
she had never tried before. A longtime staple of the Russian military, the workout used something called kettlebells,
cast-iron weights which Ms. Lurie describes as ''cannon balls with a handle.''
In short order, Ms. Lurie said, she became much stronger, without building up muscles that were too bulky. That
is when it occurred to her, ''Why not start my own gym, focused on teaching customers how to use the equipment?'' She
decided to call it Iron Core Kettlebell Strength and Conditioning, which she opened for business in October 2004.
The response, according to Ms. Lurie, was exceedingly underwhelming. Clients trickled in to try out the new
workout, but seldom returned. After six months, with sales at a standstill, Ms. Lurie knew she had to try something else
-- and fast.
Ms. Lurie's experience is far from unusual. Entrepreneurs are stubborn souls, not easily discouraged by something like initial failure. And, while there are no exact figures, according to small-business specialists, it is quite common for a founder to stumble at first, only to find a way to bounce back soon after.
''Many entrepreneurs learn as they go along,'' said Phyllis Ezop, president of Ezop & Associates, a strategy consulting firm in La Grange Park, Ill. ''With each lesson, they find out a little more about what new direction to take.''
In Ms. Lurie's case, she started calling patrons when they failed to return, to find out what was turning them off.
The problem wasn't the kettlebells, it was how she was approaching the public. Her brochures, her Web site, even
the instructions used in class, all relied on what Ms. Lurie calls ''brutal strength-type language,'' and were simply too
intimidating for most customers.
So, she revamped everything: the promotional material and the Web site to emphasize the workout's fat-burning
effectiveness and other more conventional benefits. Business picked up.
Sales have not only tripled, but there is a waiting list of people for most of her classes. She has also sold 5,000 instructional DVDs, is moving into a 4,000-square-foot gym, three times the size of her original one, and is in the process
of franchising the business.
While Ms. Lurie found the answer in marketing, other companies reach success by discovering different uses for
their original technology, changing their sales philosophy or repositioning a product, among other tacks. ''There are
many different types of reinvention,'' Ms. Ezop said.
Consider AdvancedMD in Salt Lake City, which opened in 1999 to sell Web-based practice-management software
for doctor's offices. After three years of flat sales, the company's investors brought in a new chief executive, Jim Pack,
to turn things around. After studying the situation, Mr. Pack pinpointed what seemed to be the culprit, the sales system.
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The Magic Is in the Tweaking The New York Times February 22, 2007 Thursday
''The philosophy was, all we have to do is let doctors see our product and they're going to want to switch,'' he said.
As a result, sales representatives spent most of their time cold-calling and making door-to-door sales visits, with little
success.
What was needed, Mr. Pack determined, was a complete sales overhaul. As long as doctors were satisfied with
their software, they weren't likely to change. The only way to make a sale, then, was to find offices that were looking
for something else. Mr. Pack pulled the plug on cold-calling and started putting more effort into search optimization and
Web-based advertising. Leads soon jumped to 600 a month from 40.
What's more, with fewer face-to-face sales calls, he was able to cut costs in half. Three years later, the company
has 120 employees and revenue has soared.
For StillSecure, the solution came from taking one element of the company's original technology and turning that
into the main product. The company in Superior, Colo., was formed in 2002 to provide customers with a way to manage
software applications distributed via the Internet. But, when the Internet bubble burst, many potential clients pulled
away. It only became worse in the economic downturn after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
''We realized that it didn't make any sense going forward with our old business model,'' said Alan Shimel, cofounder and chief strategy officer. After further research, however, they discovered that clients were especially interested in the security applications -- systems for intrusion prevention and analyzing areas of potential vulnerability -- that
were part of the initial product.
So they decided to focus entirely on those applications, transforming the company into an Internet security business. The firm introduced the first product in April 2002. With a total of three products on the market and around 100
employees, sales are now ''more than $5 million,'' Mr. Shimel said, and, from 2002 to 2004, grew about 2,000 percent.
How do small businesses figure out just what their next steps should be? Some companies, like StillSecure that
have considerable venture backing, can take advantage of help from their backers. The company's two investors, Mobius Venture Capital in Palo Alto, Calif., and the 3i Group in London, which had put in about $21 million, introduced
executives to specialists in the security market. Also, the firms allowed StillSecure to interview other businesses in their
portfolio, for further research.
Even so, StillSecure, as Ms. Lurie did, also turned to existing customers for inspiration. Indeed, it was during talks
with a few clients that Mr. Shimel learned that their primary attraction was the security elements in the original technology.
Other people tapped the insights of distributors and other important players in their market. When Michael Sands
helped found LesserEvil Brand Snack Company in March 2004, at the top of the low-carb fad, he expected his specially
designed popcorn to be an instant hit.
Unfortunately, by the time he was ready to introduce the product on the market, the fad had fizzled. But, after discussions with distributors, brokers and retailers, he learned that a similar product promoted as ''all natural'' would probably have a better reception. So, he redid the product using a new sweetener, revamped the packaging and introduced a
new popcorn called All Natural Kettle Corn in 2005.
Last year, his company introduced a second product, a reduced-fat potato stick.
''Like any good entrepreneur, we knew how to admit when we'd made a mistake and how to adapt quickly to the
market,'' Mr. Sands said. ''And we never thought about closing up shop.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: EXERCISE & FITNESS (92%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (88%); LAW PRACTICE (74%); SMALL
BUSINESS (90%); PHYSICIANS & SURGEONS (67%); INTERNET & WWW (67%); CONSULTING SERVICES
(65%); EDUCATIONAL SOFTWARE (50%); FRANCHISORS (67%); COMPUTER SOFTWARE (62%) Small
Business
PERSON: Anne Field
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The Magic Is in the Tweaking The New York Times February 22, 2007 Thursday
GEOGRAPHIC: SALT LAKE CITY, UT, USA (70%) CALIFORNIA, USA (73%); UTAH, USA (70%) UNITED
STATES (73%); RUSSIA (73%)
LOAD-DATE: February 22, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Sarah Lurie started her own gym in 2004 centered on using kettlebells. When sales faltered at first,
she found success by fine-tuning her marketing campaign. Now she is in the process of franchising the business. (Photo
by Jack Smith for The New York Times)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1099 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 22, 2007 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
Far From Music Capitals, an Ohio Conservatory Fosters Contemporary
Sounds
BYLINE: By VIVIEN SCHWEITZER
SECTION: Section E; Column 1; The Arts/Cultural Desk; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 875 words
''It's a little like Haydn must have felt at Esterhazy,'' said Lewis Nielson, a professor of composition at the Oberlin
Conservatory in Ohio, explaining some of the factors that make the institution a hotbed for new music. ''We aren't isolated any more than he was, but just isolated enough to focus our energies.''
In recent years Oberlin has produced some of the top names in contemporary music, including the innovative ensembles International Contemporary Ensemble and Eighth Blackbird and soloists, like the violinist Jennifer Koh, who
champions new repertory. Oberlin students are encouraged to experiment by Timothy Weiss, director of the conservatory's respected Contemporary Music Ensemble.
The ensemble will perform the high-tech American premiere production of ''Lost Highway,'' the opera that Olga
Neuwirth, the Austrian modernist composer, based on David Lynch's film of the same name, at Columbia University's
Miller Theater tomorrow and Saturday.
It's a risky production, said David H. Stull, dean of the conservatory, but Oberlin fosters the idealism essential to
encourage risk taking in an industry where the prevailing wisdom is often that music students are teetering on the precipice of a jobless abyss, or even a classical music Armageddon. But because the school is primarily an undergraduate
institution, students can freely experiment without the job worries facing musicians doing graduate degree work elsewhere.
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Far From Music Capitals, an Ohio Conservatory Fosters Contemporary Sounds The New York Times February 22,
2007 Thursday
Ms. Koh, who received a degree in English from Oberlin College while taking violin lessons at the conservatory
(the two institutions share a campus), said that the conservatory gave her ''the freedom to explore different things.''
''I was so naive and idealistic,'' she said, ''that I didn't even think about making a living, and maybe that was due to
the incredibly low rent out there. In that sense it is a protected place.''
Dan Lippel, a guitarist and member of the International Contemporary Ensemble and Flexible Music, a quartet focusing on new repertory, studied at Oberlin for two years and attributed the culture of contemporary music to the ''overall vibe of the school.''
''It's very activist and encourages entrepreneurial attitudes,'' he said, ''in contrast to other conservatories, which
teach you how to fit into the orchestral box.''
That spirit of adventure pervades the programming at the conservatory, which was founded in 1865. For instance
Lisa Kaplan, a pianist and member of Eighth Blackbird, said that although she loves Bach and Beethoven, for her senior
recital she played an all-contemporary program that might have met with resistance at other schools. She added that at
other schools often the contemporary music ensemble is ''the lowest on the totem pole,'' and that students all want to be
concertmaster in the orchestra. At Oberlin, meanwhile, the highest honor is to be asked to play in Mr. Weiss's ensemble.
(The conservatory also has an excellent orchestra, which gave a successful concert at Carnegie Hall last month.)
Mr. Weiss, who agreed that his ensemble has a certain ''sex appeal'' on campus, encouraged his students to help
with programming. ''In an orchestra you play what you're told, when you're told and how you're told,'' he said. ''But in
new-music groups the choices are made by the players.''
He also pointed out that new music requires extraordinary technical skills, the development of which are an important part of Oberlin's training. ''New music is almost elitist in that the technical demands prevent every player from
getting involved. You have to have chops, especially in area of new complexity,'' he said.
Composition, Mr. Nielson said, is an integral part of Oberlin's music scene, ''instead of just cranking out soloists
for 19th-century repertoire.'' And composers have plenty of willing students to try out their pieces, said Huang Ruo, a
New York composer and founding member of International Contemporary Ensemble.
''It's a great place with a lot of experimental ideas and a free environment to do whatever you want, he said. ''It's in
the middle of nowhere, and no one cares what you are doing. You can be as noisy as possible.'' He added that because
there are fewer professional concerts at Oberlin than in major cities, students frequently get together to create their own
events, often focusing on new music.
Given the number of young musicians applying annually to conservatories around the country, warnings about the
purported demise of classical music seem to be exaggerated. Oberlin's rural experimental haven has resulted in successful music careers in a cutthroat marketplace.
But perhaps it's not so surprising. In any industry the best way to penetrate a saturated market is to offer a highquality product. Mr. Stull aims to train musicians to take risks professionally. ''Previous to Eighth Blackbird's success,''
he said, ''if we had said that we thought a small group of students would make a living commissioning new works and
performing nationally, people would have laughed. But we let students dream.'' The Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble performs ''Lost Highway'' tomorrow and Saturday nights at 8 at Miller Theater, Broadway at 116th Street, Morningside Heights, (212) 854-7799; millertheatre.com.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: MUSIC (94%); STUDENTS & STUDENT LIFE (90%); POP & ROCK (90%); CLASSICAL MUSIC
(89%); TEACHING & TEACHERS (89%); COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES (78%); MUSIC INDUSTRY (77%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (67%); MUSIC COMPOSITION (78%); ARTISTS & PERFORMERS (77%); KEYBOARD
INSTRUMENTS (72%); THEATER (55%); COLLEGE & UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS (90%); SINGERS & MUSICIANS (90%) Opera; Motion Pictures
ORGANIZATION: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY (56%) Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble
PERSON: Vivien Schweitzer; David Lynch; Olga Neuwirth
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Far From Music Capitals, an Ohio Conservatory Fosters Contemporary Sounds The New York Times February 22,
2007 Thursday
GEOGRAPHIC: OHIO, USA (94%); NEW YORK, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (94%)
LOAD-DATE: February 22, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: The Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, led by Timothy Weiss, prepares for its New York
concert. (Photo by Richard Perry/The New York Times)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1100 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 21, 2007 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Bringing Laboratory Space Back to New York
BYLINE: By ALISON GREGOR
SECTION: Section C; Column 1; Business/Financial Desk; SQUARE FEET; Pg. 7
LENGTH: 1131 words
When Eric Kandel, a Nobel laureate at Columbia University, formed a life sciences company, Memory Pharmaceuticals, in 1998, a lack of lab space options in New York City eventually forced the business to Montvale, N.J.
In March, the same real estate developer that built those Montvale laboratories, Alexandria Real Estate Equities,
will break ground on New York City's first substantial campus for the life sciences, called the East River Science Park.
The first tenants are expected in 2009.
Upon completion, the $400 million complex will have three buildings encompassing 1.1 million square feet of specialized laboratories and office space. It will occupy 3.5 acres in Manhattan between East 28th and 29th Streets and
First Avenue and Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive.
Proponents of the East River Science Park said they hoped it would induce start-up life sciences companies like
Memory Pharmaceuticals, which now has 65 employees, to set up operations in the city.
''There is huge investment in basic research in the life sciences through our medical research institutions, but we
have failed to commercialize our science in New York City,'' said Kathryn Wylde, president and chief executive of the
Partnership for New York City, a nonprofit group composed of 200 chief executives from companies in the city.
''There are about 30 bioscience companies a year coming out of New York institutions, and essentially, they're all
going elsewhere.''
To change that, the partnership's economic arm contributed $10 million toward creating East River Science Park.
The group also worked to enlist the cooperation of an array of top scientific institutions, including Columbia University,
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Mount Sinai Hospital, Rockefeller University, New York University School
of Medicine, the Hospital for Special Surgery and Weill Medical College of Cornell University.
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Bringing Laboratory Space Back to New York The New York Times February 21, 2007 Wednesday
Some of the institutions are within a 50-block corridor on the East Side of Manhattan, creating a natural cluster
around the planned East River Science Park campus.
''The reason we think New York City is going to be particularly competitive is most other clusters have one or two
institutions,'' Ms. Wylde said. ''Here, we have seven or eight major institutions, so the critical mass of science and of
talent is greater here.''
In the life sciences, private businesses often collaborate with research institutes, medical centers and government
agencies. The efforts tend to be clustered in a handful of cities, including Boston and Cambridge, Mass., and San Diego.
Laboratories used by life sciences businesses tend to have special features, like higher ceilings, heavier floor-load
capacities and advanced mechanical, electrical, ventilation and plumbing systems.
Alexandria Real Estate Equities, a real estate investment trust based in Pasadena, Calif., specializes in this type of
development. The company, which is publicly traded, owns 159 properties, encompassing about 11.2 million square
feet; six million more square feet are planned.
It is building the East River Science Park as a speculative development, said Joel S. Marcus, the chief executive of
Alexandria. The company's tenants are mainly biotechnology and pharmaceutical businesses, but also include biodefense companies that might, for example, produce a vaccine for anthrax; concerns that develop medical devices; nonprofit organizations; and branches of government agencies and universities.
''We've got quite a few clients that we're going to recruit there, and we're in discussions with a number of people,''
he said. ''We've got a pretty good handle on the market.'' Mr. Marcus said the new center would have dozens of tenants.
Property development in New York City is notoriously expensive, and life sciences space can cost two to four
times that of conventional office space to develop.
Alexandria did not have to purchase the land, however. It negotiated a land lease with the city for 49 years with
two 25-year options. The parcel holds a parking lot and an old laundry building that is part of the Bellevue Medical
Center campus.
Once construction is complete, Alexandria will pay the city $2 million a year, a figure that will escalate over time,
said the New York City Economic Development Corporation.
Alexandria will also receive subsidies. Infrastructure work, like relocating a sewer and other utilities and cleaning
up the site, will be paid for with $13.9 million from the city, $27 million from the state and possibly $2 million in federal money. There will also be property tax abatement over 25 years worth $251 million, and breaks on city and state sales
tax and recording taxes worth about $22.7 million.
That should enable the developer to keep rents at a reasonable level, helping attract start-up companies, said Bill
Fair, the managing director of health care and bioscience at the city's Economic Development Corporation. ''What we
strongly encouraged Alexandria to do, since it's on city-owned land, is to make sure the rents are appropriate to allow
some percentage of early-stage companies to come into the East River Science Park,'' he said.
Lab space that has been fully built out at the Audubon Business and Technology Center, affiliated with Columbia
University, is running at $55 a foot; the 100,000-square-foot center is full, with about 16 life sciences companies, said
Carol Shuchman, director of commercial leasing and development at Columbia.
The only other complex offering life sciences space in the city is in Brooklyn at the Advanced Biotechnology Park
of the State University of New York's Downstate Medical Center. It currently has about 24,000 square feet of ''incubator'' space for start-up companies.
Mr. Marcus, Alexandria's chief, said his company was designing the buildings to attract both start-up and midstage companies, as well as biotech venture capital companies. Besides trying to keep new bioscience companies in the
city, Alexandria will also try to recruit companies from the region, as well as pharmaceutical and biotech companies
based worldwide.
But even if Alexandria is able to hold down rents to recruit early-stage companies, there is no guarantee that the
life sciences will flourish in New York City, said Sheridan Snyder, entrepreneur in residence at Rockefeller University.
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Bringing Laboratory Space Back to New York The New York Times February 21, 2007 Wednesday
Those institutions turn only a tiny percentage of that research into applied science, products and clinical solutions
each year, said Mr. Snyder, who founded the biotech company Genzyme in 1981 and has since founded other bioscience businesses.
The East River Science Park ''is akin to when the football coach says, 'I need a new stadium to recruit players,' ''
Mr. Snyder said. ''It's a great step, but there's so much more than just putting up that building.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: BIOTECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY (90%); REAL ESTATE INVESTING (89%); REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT (89%); RESEARCH INSTITUTES (89%); RESEARCH (89%); MEDICAL RESEARCH (78%); NOBEL PRIZES (78%); EXPERIMENTATION & RESEARCH (78%); CONSTRUCTION (77%); HOSPITALS (77%);
CITIES (77%); REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT TRUSTS (77%); COMMERCIAL RENTAL PROPERTY (77%);
OFFICE PROPERTY (77%); GOVERNMENT RESEARCH FUNDING (74%); CANCER (73%); RESEARCH &
DEVELOPMENT (73%); REAL ESTATE (72%); INVESTMENT TRUSTS (67%); HEALTH CARE (72%); NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS (66%); PATENTS (74%); DIVESTITURES (73%); ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER
(59%) Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder; Drugs (Pharmaceuticals); Mergers, Acquisitions and Divestitures; Inventions and Patents; Science and Technology; Building (Construction)
COMPANY: MEMORY PHARMACEUTICALS CORP (58%); ALEXANDRIA REAL ESTATE EQUITIES INC
(58%); CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS (53%)
ORGANIZATION: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY (84%) Shire Plc; New River Pharmaceuticals (Co)
TICKER: MEMY (NASDAQ) (58%); ARE (NYSE) (58%)
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (54%) Alison Gregor
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (94%); SAN DIEGO, CA, USA (79%); BOSTON, MA, USA (79%) NEW
YORK, USA (98%); CALIFORNIA, USA (79%); MASSACHUSETTS, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (98%) New
York City
LOAD-DATE: February 21, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: A rendering of the East River Science Park, which is expected to begin housing tenants in 2009.
Construction is scheduled to start in March. (Photo by Alexandria Real Estate Equities)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1101 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 21, 2007 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
In a Fat Nation, Are Thin Mints On Thin Ice?
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In a Fat Nation, Are Thin Mints On Thin Ice? The New York Times February 21, 2007 Wednesday
BYLINE: By PETER APPLEBOME.
Email: peappl@nytimes.com
SECTION: Section B; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk; OUR TOWNS; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 775 words
DATELINE: WHITE PLAINS
It's hard not to take one look at MeMe Roth's call for boycotting Girl Scout cookies and think, ''Lady, lighten up.''
In the grand scheme of the world's horrors, those Thin Mints, Do-Si-Dos and Tagalongs don't quite register up
there with Al Qaeda, global warming or the cable television coverage of Anna Nicole Smith's death as clear and present
dangers to the general health and welfare.
And yet. Given the astronomical growth in childhood obesity and juvenile diabetes, the overall supersizing of the
American body, the degree to which diet is about as mainstream a concern as there is, is it really so nutty to ask if the
Girl Scouts need to be in the business of selling 200 million boxes of cookies a year -- and pushing madly for more? Or
to put it another way, if the Girl Scouts were created today, as an organization devoted to helping raise healthy, empowered girls who make smart choices, would the ideal fund-raiser be something that makes all of us even fatter?
Of course, it's not just Girl Scout cookies. Food is about emotional comfort as well as nutrition: think of all those
church bake sales and school cookie sales and candy sales, each nestled in a warm spot in the national psyche. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington research group, released a study last week saying that of schools
with fund-raisers, 76 percent sell chocolate, 67 percent sell baked goods, and 63 percent nonchocolate candy.
But there's no iconic junk binge as beloved as Girl Scout cookies, one of those sugar-coated (and partially hydrogenated oil-laden) bits of Americana too mythic to be subject to rational analysis.
Still, wading into the food wars is Ms. Roth, who was a mom from Milburn, N.J., who got slightly obsessed over
the American Way of Junk and started National Action Against Obesity which, in truth, is essentially her and a Web
site. She has since made herself enough of a nag to get her name out there, even appearing on ''The O'Reilly Factor.''
This week Ms. Roth called for a boycott of Girl Scout cookies and suggested that the organization come up with a fiveyear plan to move away from high-calorie morsels as its primary fund-raiser.
''The Girls Scouts are a civic organization that does good things, but they shouldn't be using children to sell junk
food when we're in the midst of an obesity epidemic,'' she said. ''Hopefully they will see this as an opportunity to take a
leadership role for all civic organizations to move away from junk foods.''
Of course, nothing stays the same, least of all the Girl Scouts, now 95 years old. The cookies have been around for
90 years, starting out with scouts baking sugar cookies at home with their mothers, wrapping them in wax paper and
selling them door to door, a dozen for 25 cents.
You're just as likely to buy your cookies from some girl scout's father at work as from some 9-year-old coming to
the door, and the Scouts, too, have ginned up their marketing for the Internet age. They hired Ripple Effects Interactive
to design a Web site (girlscoutcookies.org) and to post vintage cookie clips on 14 sites like MySpace and YouTube, a
far cry from the early days when girl scouts actually baked Girl Scout cookies.
''They want to use the Web to really grow their audience and get a presence in those niches where they might not
be a household name yet,'' said Natalie DiPasquale of Ripple Effects Interactive.
Denise J. Pesich, vice president of the Girl Scouts, said the cookie program taught girls entrepreneurial and personal skills as well as raising money. ''What we're really doing through the free enterprise system is selling items to the
American public that they have come to expect, to enjoy and to love over 90 years.'' As for obesity, she says, ending
Girl Scout cookies won't end obesity.
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In a Fat Nation, Are Thin Mints On Thin Ice? The New York Times February 21, 2007 Wednesday
It's hard to beat the cookies, even in their slightly slimmed-down guise this year: no trans fats, or at least few
enough to meet federal labeling standards. And it's almost certainly impossible to beat the revenues: $700 million to
support Girl Scout activities. Try selling enough carrots and broccoli to match that.
Who's enough of a Grinch to really want to go to the mat over this one?
Still, Dr. Susan Rubin, a dentist-turned nutritionist and a former Girl Scout leader who founded the Westchester
Coalition for Better School Food, asked: Where do you start changing the food culture? It's not likely to be Girl Scout
cookies, but it's not clear where it would be.
''This is just another part of this toxic food chain that kids are awash in,'' she said. ''At some point, communities
are going to have to walk away from the Do-Si-Dos.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: YOUTH CLUBS & ACTIVITIES (90%); FUNDRAISING (90%); BOYCOTTS (90%); BAKED GOODS
(90%); OBESITY (89%); NUTRITION (75%); CHILDREN (75%); OILS & FATS (75%); CHILDREN'S HEALTH
(75%); DISEASES & DISORDERS (75%); GLOBAL WARMING (71%); EPIDEMICS (70%); RESEARCH INSTITUTES (69%); TELEVISION PROGRAMMING (56%); DIABETES (55%); BAKERIES (78%) Bakeries and Baked
Goods; Cookies; Weight; Calories; Boycotts; Sales; Bakeries and Baked Goods
ORGANIZATION: AL-QAEDA (57%); CENTER FOR SCIENCE IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST (54%) Girl Scouts;
National ACtion Against Obesity
PERSON: BILL O'REILLY (52%); MICHAEL MCMAHON (50%) Peter Applebome; MeMe Roth
GEOGRAPHIC: UNITED STATES (93%)
LOAD-DATE: February 21, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1102 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 21, 2007 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
As Newark Neighbor Moves Toward Rebirth, Some Pains Are Felt
BYLINE: By RICHARD G. JONES
SECTION: Section B; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 1379 words
DATELINE: HARRISON, N.J., Feb. 20
Page 257
As Newark Neighbor Moves Toward Rebirth, Some Pains Are Felt The New York Times February 21, 2007
Wednesday
For decades, the nicest thing said about this town of withered factories, toxic waste sites and dried-up ambitions
was that at least it was not Newark. Or that it was a great place to park and catch a train for Manhattan.
It was a sobering descent from the days when Harrison, which juts into the Passaic River just across from Newark,
was the city where the likes of R.C.A., Otis Elevator and Thomas A. Edison helped forge the town's motto: ''Beehive of
Industry.''
''The factories left, everything left, some of us stayed,'' said Manny Amaral, the owner of a car dealership and a
parking lot, who has witnessed the ups and mostly downs in Harrison for the past 25 years. ''We tried to make it better.''
But now, even as a proposed $1 billion redevelopment project on 300 acres of abandoned industrial land along the
waterfront has captured a good deal of attention and large-scale investment, some residents are already asking if their
city's much-heralded rebirth is worth the trouble.
After more than a decade of discussions, preliminary work has begun on the first of a handful of projects that
would almost double the town's housing stock, replace punched-out factories with more than a million square feet of
retail space and make Harrison the home of a professional soccer team with a new 25,000-seat stadium.
The concerns about the redevelopment project are nearly as plentiful as the abandoned factories. For one thing,
residents question whether the city is prepared to handle all the new commercial development and housing, which could
double Harrison's current population of about 14,000 and strain the school system and other services. They are also puzzled by a plan to build so close to the waterfront, an area with a history of flooding.
Others question the presence of so many politically connected developers, like the company founded by Joseph
Barry, Applied Development Company. Mr. Barry was released from federal prison in April 2006 in a public corruption
case.
Others with connections include the law firm of Alfred C. DeCotiis, a Democratic National Committee official,
which played a role in the stadium deal; McManimon & Scotland, a Newark law firm whose lawyers have contributed
tens of thousands of dollars to county and state party officials, which was hired to handle a $40 million bond sale; and
one of the principal developers, the Roseland Property Company, which is led by the chairman of the agency that runs
the Meadowlands sports complex.
Then there is the issue of the city's plans to seize several properties for redevelopment through the use of eminent
domain.
''We don't mind the development,'' said Mr. Amaral, a plaintiff who recently lost a round in an eminent domain
lawsuit. ''We want to see the town get better. It's just the way they're doing it.''
Change usually comes slowly to Harrison, as evidenced by Frank E. Rodgers, who was elected mayor in 1946 and
went on to serve in that post for 48 years. The town's current mayor, Raymond J. McDonough, who has held office
since 1995, referred telephone calls about the project to Gregory Kowalski, executive director of the Harrison Redevelopment Authority.
Mr. Kowalski dismissed the notion that politics played a role in the selection of Applied Development and Roseland Property Company, which is headed by Carl Goldberg, the chairman of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, to develop the area. ''I don't see it,'' he said.
The grand plan for Harrison, which officials say could take 10 years to complete, encompasses four projects -- two
involving the construction of condominiums and townhouses, which is the first phase of an estimated 7,000 new housing units, and another for construction of a retail complex, and the stadium, which will be the home of the New York
Red Bulls of Major League Soccer.
Among the concerns is a tax abatement plan that calls for a lump-sum payment up front in lieu of annual taxes later. Critics say tax abatement is not needed here since the site is desirable enough to attract developers without added
inducements.
Mr. Kowalski defended the abatements, and said that if the project was seen to fruition it would generate more
than $2 billion in taxable revenue. He deflected the question of whether the town has sufficient roads, schools and parking spaces to accommodate such a sharp increase in population.
Page 258
As Newark Neighbor Moves Toward Rebirth, Some Pains Are Felt The New York Times February 21, 2007
Wednesday
''We're envisioning this as a mass-transit-oriented project,'' Mr. Kowalski said, adding that he expected most of the
newcomers to commute to jobs in Manhattan. ''We're not going see this huge increase.'' He said Harrison had already
seen benefits from the redevelopment, describing a new Hampton Inn that opened recently as a ''rousing success.''
''We had big industry,'' Mr. Kowalski said. ''We got into the '70s and virtually all of it was gone, we had brownfields'' -- low-level toxic waste sites concentrated mainly near abandoned factories.
By the time R.C.A. shut down operations in 1976 -- it had made vacuum tubes -- Harrison was already in a
downward spiral.
It was not always that way. During World War II -- perhaps the city's most prosperous period -- there were an estimated 90,000 workers commuting to factories within a 1.3-square-mile patch of industry here.
The city has long been defined by the river and its working-class population, which over the last 30 years has
shifted from European to Hispanic immigrants, who now make up more than a third of Harrison's population. And it
was the river that insulated Harrison from some of the racial strife in 1967 and the subsequent white flight from Newark. The neighborhoods of low-slung row houses have largely remained stable, although in many cases in need of improvement.
Yet despite the prospect of new residents and new revenue, some residents remain unconvinced that growth here
is a good thing. ''I don't know, until it's all built up we'll see what it'll do to this town,'' said Joseph DiBenedetto, 49.
Seth Schneider, 29, who lives in Rockaway, N.J., and commutes on the PATH train from Harrison to Manhattan,
worried about the traffic the project could bring. ''It's already congested,'' he said.
Mr. Schneider, who works in the financial industry, also wondered that with the Newark hockey arena under construction and the Meadowlands sports complex just 15 minutes away, ''Why a stadium here?''
Property owners like Mr. Amaral and Steven Adler, whose father was a scrap metal dealer, with adjoining properties near the town's PATH train station, have been made targets for seizure under eminent domain laws.
Mr. Adler said he had been negotiating with developers over four acres of land he owns when he abruptly received
notice that his property had become a target for eminent domain proceedings. ''I don't mind selling,'' said Mr. Adler,
adding that he had been offered about $20 million for his property. ''I do mind doing so under the compulsion of condemnation.''
Mr. Amaral said that he was not even allowed a chance to negotiate and only learned that his property was identified for condemnation last fall. ''It's sick what's happening here,'' said Mr. Amaral, 55.
Last week, a Superior Court judge ruled that the town could appoint commissioners to begin considering the condemnation of Mr. Amaral's property. On Friday, Mr. Amaral received notice that he had 90 days to vacate the premises.
Mr. Kowalski declined to comment on the dispute over the use of eminent domain because it is in litigation.
The two property owners have an ally in Steve McCormick, a member of an all-Democratic City Council who upset some members of his party last year by running a campaign that questioned the development deals. ''This town is an
unpolished stone,'' he said. ''But this town is basically being given away.''
One day last week, Mr. Amaral pointed out the abandoned factory across the street from his businesses and spoke
of the workers who used to fill the street now known as Frank E. Rodgers Boulevard. He also pointed out a sign in his
storefront window that reads: ''Stop Eminent Domain Abuse.''
''People come in and they don't know what it is,'' Mr. Amaral said. ''I say, 'It's where the government can take your
property.' They say, 'That can't happen in this country.' I tell them, 'Yes, it can.' ''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: EMINENT DOMAIN (89%); PROPERTY LAW (88%); LAWYERS (86%); HAZARDOUS WASTE
(78%); INDUSTRIAL PROPERTY (78%); SPORTS & RECREATION FACILITIES & VENUES (77%); TOXIC &
HAZARDOUS SUBSTANCES (73%); COMMERCIAL PROPERTY (72%); PROPERTY VACANCIES (72%);
CONSTRUCTION (70%); STADIUMS & ARENAS (89%); REAL ESTATE (74%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (67%);
BONDS (67%); RETAIL PROPERTY (65%); SPORTS (64%); SPORTS & RECREATION (64%); POLITICAL
PARTIES (61%); NEW CAR DEALERS (54%); SOCCER (64%); POLITICS (66%); ETHICS (65%); LEGAL SER-
Page 259
As Newark Neighbor Moves Toward Rebirth, Some Pains Are Felt The New York Times February 21, 2007
Wednesday
VICES (86%); SOCCER TOURNAMENTS (69%) Area Planning and Renewal; Population; Ethics; Soccer; Stadiums
and Arenas; Politics and Government
COMPANY: DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE (52%); MCMANIMON & SCOTLAND (51%)
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (92%) NEW YORK, USA (92%); NEW JERSEY, USA (79%) UNITED
STATES (92%) Harrison (NJ); Harrison (NJ)
LOAD-DATE: February 21, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: Miguel Gavilanez, one of the workers at Infinite Sign in Harrison
the building is on property the city is trying to acquire by eminent domain.
Steven Adler, in the old Driver-Harris building in Harrison, N.J., said property he owns had become a target for eminent domain proceedings. (Photographs by Aaron Houston for The New York Times)Map of Harrison, New Jersey,
highlighting proposed development area: A redevelopment plan would almost double Harrison's housing stock, replace
punched-out factories with retail space and add a stadium.
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1103 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 21, 2007 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
The World of Black Theater Becomes Ever Bigger
BYLINE: By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
SECTION: Section E; Column 1; The Arts/Cultural Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1525 words
DATELINE: BALTIMORE, Feb. 18
Urban theater -- or what has been called over the years inspirational theater, black Broadway, gospel theater and the
chitlin circuit -- has been thriving for decades, selling out some of the biggest theaters across the country and grossing
millions of dollars a year.
In the last two years, however, the tenor of the business has changed, especially since Tyler Perry, the circuit's
reigning impresario, took in $110 million at the Hollywood box office with ''Diary of a Mad Black Woman'' and
''Madea's Family Reunion,'' movies that were based on his plays; they cost less than $7 million each to make.
The bigger players are developing television series, and veterans who have been part of the circuit for years suddenly have movie deals. The word in the industry is that urban theater is about to go mainstream.
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The World of Black Theater Becomes Ever Bigger The New York Times February 21, 2007 Wednesday
''A year and a half from now, if you're not coming with a play, film script and sitcom spinoff, you're not going to
be able to go anywhere in this business,'' said Gary Guidry, one of the founders of I'm Ready Productions, based in
Houston, another of the circuit's big producers.
But the sight of crowds of theatergoers slowly streaming into the Lyric Opera House here on Saturday and Sunday, continuing to walk through the door throughout the first act and eventually filling just about every one of the 2,564
seats for a performance of ''Men, Money and Gold Diggers,'' prompts the question: If this is not already mainstream,
what is?
As white theatergoers were lining up for ''Wicked'' at the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center across town, the
audience filling up the Lyric, a slightly larger theater, was almost exclusively black, mostly middle-aged women. Many
said they had heard about the play through the traditional lines of the circuit's promotion: radio ads, fliers in local business and church parking lots and an astonishingly effective word-of-mouth network that precedes the show from city to
city.
Some aspects of urban theater are set in stone. Top tickets average about $30 less than those of touring Broadway
shows. And it has become standard practice to sell DVDs of the plays after the tour; Mr. Perry has reportedly sold more
than 11 million.
The plays, which typically take place in contemporary settings, are often sprinkled with R&B solos and duets, and
tend to be a mix between melodrama and farce, with clownish archetypes, like churchy grannies and two-bit entrepreneurs. And they all have uplifting plots, usually about a woman torn between a glamorous philanderer, whose speech is
laden with double-entendres, and a humbler, more dependable man, whom she eventually chooses. (The more muscular
actors also have a tendency to take off their shirts.)
More than a marketer's demographic description, urban theater is a genre like the sitcom or courtroom thriller, and
experiments tend to fare poorly. David E. Talbert, a 15-year veteran of the circuit, said he once wrote a pure comedy
without an inspirational message and was bluntly advised by audience members not to try it again.
Mr. Talbert, 40, is the other powerhouse on the circuit, along with I'm Ready Productions and Mr. Perry. By Mr.
Talbert's own estimate, he has grossed $75 million over the last decade and a half with 12 plays, and counting. He likens
himself to Neil Simon as a playwright who tries to cater to his audience's wants and tastes rather than hew to some establishment idea of high art.
Mr. Guidry, 33, and his producing partner, Je'Caryous Johnson, 29, the author of ''Gold Diggers,'' are not so content with the status quo. They have departed from the form somewhat by adapting popular romance novels to the stage;
like many younger people in the business, when they first began attending the plays, they felt the quality was, well, not
great. Granted, they added, theatrical distinction has never really been the main point. That point, in the view of many,
has been simply to have theater by, for and about contemporary black people.
Antonio Banks, who was snapping and selling souvenir photographs in the lobby of the Lyric, summed up a prevailing attitude among theatergoers: ''Not much is offered to them,'' he said. ''If they can find an outlet, even if it's not
really good, it helps them escape from reality for a while.''
That attitude has been changing. One reason, said Laterras R. Whitfield, a 28-year-old from Dallas who broke into
the field four years ago with ''P.M.S. -- It's a Man Thang,'' is that the market is becoming saturated.
''It appears to be so easy,'' he said, ''that a lot of people say, 'Hey, I can do this,' and they just write a play and find
somebody silly enough to promote it, and then people go see it and say, 'What is this mess?' ''
The target audiences, in general, do not have much disposable income, and having been burned too often with bad
plays, they are more discriminating. The excitement of going to see theater made explicitly for them, Mr. Johnson said,
is no longer enough. Without the equivalent of a Broadway imprimatur to guarantee a certain level of production quality, though, reassuring theatergoers is not easy.
''If I tell you 'Les Miz' or 'Cats' or 'Hairspray,' you immediately know what I'm talking about,'' said Brian Alden,
whose North American Entertainment Company promotes Mr. Johnson's plays. ''In urban theater, we're marketing an
unknown product, so generally we're marketing a name.''
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The World of Black Theater Becomes Ever Bigger The New York Times February 21, 2007 Wednesday
But outside of Mr. Perry -- who has also acted in many of his plays, most notably in drag as the vigilante grandmother, Madea -- there are no writers or producers everyone knows by name, except for some of the older gospel impresarios, who no longer have the buzz they once did.
So active producers are now heavily casting recognizable film and television actors and singers.
At a recent, crowded performance of Mr. Talbert's new play, ''Love in the Nick of Tyme,'' at Newark Symphony
Hall, none of the dozen or so audience members interviewed knew Mr. Talbert. They did, however, know the name of
the male lead, Morris Chestnut, the heartthrob film and television actor. Mr. Chestnut and other familiar faces in the
circuit are not in the top ranks of fame; former sitcom stars tend to be particularly well represented. But they are celebrities of a caliber that would have been unheard of in a gospel play 10 years ago.
Increasing star power and the box office success of Mr. Perry, who is now developing three television series and a
few more movies, are signs of the circuit's move into big business.
But there are still few signs of acceptance by the cultural establishment. Reviews of Mr. Perry's first two movies,
which were based on his plays, were overwhelmingly negative.
For now, critical disregard can be a selling point. On Feb. 13, the day before the opening of ''Daddy's Little Girls,''
Mr. Perry's latest film, he sent an e-mail message to the members of his database, complaining of the skepticism from
Hollywood insiders and journalists.
''It is as though we are all so unsophisticated that we won't support a great movie about a good father,'' the message read. ''We know the truth, so let's show them at the box office.'' (The first weekend grosses were estimated at a
robust $17.8 million.)
Mr. Perry declined to comment for this article.
The circuit's position in the universe of black theater -- particularly as distinct from the work of black playwrights
presented in literary theater -- is a topic that has long been discussed. While some scholars and theater professionals
have criticized gospel plays for trafficking in stereotypes, others see it as another kind of drama, even finding, as Henry
Louis Gates Jr. put it in a 1997 article in The New Yorker, ''something heartening about the spectacle of black drama
that pays its own way.''
Kenny Leon, who is directing the Broadway-bound production of August Wilson's last play, ''Radio Golf,'' works
in the same building as Mr. Perry in Atlanta. ''I look at theater that is produced at some of the regional theaters and theater that is produced on that circuit as two different things,'' he said. ''We shouldn't try to make them be the same things.''
No figure attracts more conflicting opinions than Mr. Wilson, who died in 2005. Mr. Talbert, being almost hypnotically unflappable, is not shy about his view: if the audiences who go to Mr. Wilson's plays are predominantly
nonblack, he asked, then how significant could he be to black people?
But Mr. Guidry and Mr. Johnson, the young Turks, think the genre can continue to develop while still staying true
to its traditions. In 2002, when they produced an adaptation of Michael Baisden's ''Men Cry in the Dark,'' they did not
advertise its basis as a best-selling romance novel, fearing it would alienate the church-based audiences. Now a play's
origin as a novel is a selling point.
And as for Mr. Wilson, Mr. Guidry said that ''Fences,'' Mr. Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, could do perfectly well with some judicious trimming, a little more comedy and, of course, a savvy marketing campaign.
''Man, if it were called 'Big Man, Stronger Woman,' '' Mr. Guidry said, ''this thing could tour.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: THEATER & DRAMA (90%); ENTERTAINMENT & ARTS (78%); MOVIE REVENUES (77%); MOVIE INDUSTRY (76%); WOMEN (75%); TELEVISION INDUSTRY (74%); BROADCAST ADVERTISING (74%);
DRAMA LITERATURE (73%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (71%); TELEVISION PROGRAMMING (69%); FILM
(90%); VISUAL & PERFORMING ARTS (78%); THEATER (58%); JAZZ & BLUES (86%); MUSIC (70%); ACTORS & ACTRESSES (78%) Theater; Blacks; Music; Recordings and Downloads (Audio); Prices (Fares, Fees and
Rates)
Page 262
The World of Black Theater Becomes Ever Bigger The New York Times February 21, 2007 Wednesday
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (91%) Campbell Robertson
LOAD-DATE: February 21, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: Carl Payne and Robin Givens in ''Men, Money and Gold Diggers,'' on tour in Baltimore on Friday.
Mr. Payne gained fame for playing Cockroach in ''The Cosby Show'' on television. (Photo by I'm Ready Productions)(pg. E1)
Members of the production of ''Men, Money and Gold Diggers'' take a moment to pray backstage at the Lyric Opera
House in Baltimore. (Photo by Michael Temchine for The New York Times)
Above left, David E. Talbert. Above right, Je'Caryous Johnson, foreground, and Gary Guidry. The three are big producers on the urban theater circuit
the shows offer black settings and uplifting messages. (Photo by Michael Temchine for The New York Times)
(Photo by Dith Pran/The New York Times)(pg. E5)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1104 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 20, 2007 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
Recipe for Success: Take Mentos, Diet Coke. Mix.
BYLINE: By KEITH SCHNEIDER
SECTION: Section H; Column 1; Small Business; ENTERTAINMENT; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 1094 words
DATELINE: BUCKFIELD, Me.
IT'S easy to find Fritz Grobe's house outside this wooded hamlet north of Portland. It's the one with rows of empty
two-liter Diet Coke bottles on the front stoop. Inside, there are more pallets of full Diet Coke bottles, stacked waist-high
alongside cases of Mentos mints, a drill press, plastic caps and a pile of plastic cuttings.
Mr. Grobe, a 39-year-old juggler, performance artist and Internet video celebrity, has turned his large 19th-century
house into a studio for EepyBird.com, an entertainment site distinguished by ''Experiment 137,'' one of the Web's mostwatched videos.
Mr. Grobe and Stephen Voltz, a 49-year-old lawyer and performer, turned the chemical reaction between Mentos
mints (523, to be exact) and Diet Coke (101 bottles, to be precise) into a hilarious short film of geysers, which they
posted on the Internet on June 3. The response, like mixing sugar with soda (doesn't have to be diet, as it happens), was
an online eruption that has not subsided.
The two comedians, who perform in white coats and goggles, have appeared on the ''Late Show With David Letterman'' and the ''Today'' show, as well as at fairs and exhibitions on two continents. In addition, they have signed video
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Recipe for Success: Take Mentos, Diet Coke. Mix. The New York Times February 20, 2007 Tuesday
production contracts with the Coca-Cola Company and Perfetti Van Melle USA, the American unit of the Europeanbased makers of Mentos.
The two have also attracted 10 million to 20 million viewers on the Internet. Nobody is sure of the exact count.
Still, the creators of EepyBird, named after a character that a friend invented, know that their tale of entrepreneurial adventure on the Internet is just the first act of a larger media drama overtaking their lives, where little players
are drawing the attention of big players. It is also making them important players in shaping the young business of selling entertainment on the Web.
The second act of the drama, turning EepyBird.com and other such sites into durable enterprises, is also happening, as video file-sharing Web sites, including YouTube and Revver.com, attract tens of millions of viewers and hundreds of millions of page views daily.
Advertisers spent $180 billion in the United States last year, $15 billion of it on click-through, display and classified advertising on the Internet, the fastest-growing sector in the industry, analysts say.
EepyBird.com is among the small but growing fraternity of entertainment sites -- like Askaninja.com, Rocketboom.com, Jibjab.com and Roosterteeth.com -- that are starting to reap a tiny part of that ad revenue, while benefiting
from sponsorships, celebrity appearance fees and other sources.
''The Internet is a social space, a new town square,'' said Mr. Voltz, who was raised in San Francisco, where he
performed as a juggler and fire eater on street corners. ''If you're an entertainer or an advertiser, you need to be there.''
Judson Laipply, a motivational speaker and comedian from Cleveland, is already there. His ''Evolution of Dance''
video on YouTube has attracted 41 million viewers. Last month, he was in Florida working on promotional projects
with the Walt Disney World Resort.
OK Go, the power-pop band that earned a Grammy nomination, has relied on choreographed homemade videos to
stir strong music sales, including one that has soared to the top of the YouTube most-viewed list.
Askaninja.com, a two-man production company in Los Angeles that has been showing short weekly comedy episodes for about a year, said that it had just signed a ''seven-figure'' deal allowing Federated Media Publishing to sell ads
for the episodes.
Analysts aren't sure whether these business models represent more than a splash.
''Where there are eyeballs, there's money,'' said Jeremiah Owyang, the director of corporate media strategy for a
media network in Palo Alto, Calif., PodTech.net. ''Producers are putting interesting content on the Web that they're getting paid for. It's just the start.''
Shelly Palmer, a managing director for Advanced Media Ventures Group in New York, was more skeptical. For
now, the online entertainment business is producing ''digital snacks,'' he said.
''Anybody can become famous for 15 megabytes,'' Mr. Palmer added. ''But to be a real business, they have to be
able to promote themselves without a viral success.''
So far, EepyBird.com is performing better than Mr. Grobe or Mr. Voltz had imagined, although neither would say
how much they had earned. ''Online viral video is a form of word of mouth, which is the most powerful way to build an
audience,'' Mr. Grobe said. ''There is a lot of room online for the guy with a great idea.''
In October, the company posted a second three-minute Diet Coke and Mentos video, ''Experiment 214,'' which
was produced under sponsorship agreements, one with the Coca-Cola Company and the other with Perfetti Van Melle
USA. Everybody seems satisfied. Mentos sales in the United States climbed nearly 20 percent last year, their highest
such increase ever. ''It is safe to say the whole EepyBird Mentos geyser craze was a big part of the increase,'' said Pete
Healy, the company's vice president for marketing.
Coca-Cola is so enthusiastic about EepyBird's use of its product that it ran ''Experiment 214'' for more than three
months on its home page at coca-cola.com. It also promoted a competition this month to encourage people to submit
their own videos.
Mr. Grobe and Mr. Voltz said they were talking to the Discovery Channel and the History Channel about making
a television program on science.
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Recipe for Success: Take Mentos, Diet Coke. Mix. The New York Times February 20, 2007 Tuesday
Great adventures often begin small; with EepyBird, that occurred in November 2005, when Mr. Voltz and Mr.
Grobe discovered the reaction made by mixing Mentos and Diet Coke. The next evening, they conducted their first experiment before a live audience. People went wild, Mr. Grobe said.
Six months later, after working to produce more interesting geysers, they finished ''Experiment 137,'' and submitted it to an E! Online competition. Hearing nothing, they created their Web site, and posted it there. Mr. Voltz e-mailed
his brother in San Francisco to tell him about the video. His brother e-mailed a friend, who e-mailed another, who posted the link on Fark.com, an information and technology site. By day's end, 14,000 people had viewed the video.
The next day, Slashdot.org, another technology site, posted a link to the video. By the third day, a television producer who had seen the video on a German technology site called from the David Letterman show.
''We told one person, one person!'' Mr. Grobe said. ''The thing just took off.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: INTERNET & WWW (90%); ONLINE ADVERTISING (89%); CELEBRITIES (89%); SUGAR & CONFECTIONERY MFG (89%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING (85%); SOFT DRINK INDUSTRY (77%); ONLINE
MARKETING & ADVERTISING (76%); INTERNET SOCIAL NETWORKING (76%); INTERNET VIDEO (76%);
SPONSORSHIP (75%); INDUSTRY ANALYSTS (71%); LAWYERS (70%); MOVIE & VIDEO PRODUCTION
(70%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING EXPENDITURE (69%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (64%); MARKETING
& ADVERTISING REVENUE (60%); FILM (90%); ARTISTS & PERFORMERS (90%); VISUAL & PERFORMING
ARTS (76%) Terms not available from NYTimes
COMPANY: COCA-COLA CO (66%); VAN MELLE BV (54%)
TICKER: KO (NYSE) (66%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS312111 SOFT DRINK MANUFACTURING (66%); SIC2086 BOTTLED & CANNED SOFT
DRINKS & CARBONATED WATER (66%)
PERSON: DAVID LETTERMAN (55%)
GEOGRAPHIC: UNITED STATES (90%)
LOAD-DATE: February 20, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: BACK AT THE LAB -- Stephen Voltz, foreground above, and Fritz Grobe manufacture the fittings that turn exploding bottles of soda into beautiful fountains. (Photo by Herb Swanson for The New York Times)
(Photo by EepyBird.com)
EUREKA! Soda geysers are tested in the lab, left. The wildly popular ''Experiment 137'' video, below, used 523 mints
and 101 bottles of Diet Coke. That video and others appear on EepyBird.com. (Photo by Herb Swanson for The New
York Times)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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How to Walk a Mile in Your Dream Career The New York Times February 20, 2007 Tuesday
February 20, 2007 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
How to Walk a Mile in Your Dream Career
BYLINE: By MATT VILLANO
SECTION: Section H; Column 1; Small Business; JOB CAMP; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 1424 words
AFTER 28 years at an electronics plant in her hometown, Mount Pleasant, Iowa, Toni Cory found herself out of a
job when the plant closed. Instead of looking for another manufacturing job, she vowed to start a dog day-care and kennel business.
Although she had dogs of her own, she had no clue where to start. To help, she called on VocationVacations, a
company based in Portland, Ore., that enables the curious to spend time trying out potential new jobs. The company
hooked up Ms. Cory with Dawn Walton, an owner of the Dog Zone, a dog day care business in nearby Cedar Rapids.
There, Ms. Cory had an experience she says she will never forget.
Over two and a half days, she walked dogs; she washed them; she groomed them and fed them. When she wasn't
dealing with dogs directly, she cleaned kennels, calmed cranky customers and balanced budget sheets.
Ms. Cory returned home, she said, exhausted but fulfilled. Three months later, she opened Almost Home, a dog
day care and boarding service in Mount Pleasant.
''It was hard work, but that experience changed my life,'' Ms. Cory said. ''I had a good idea I was going to do doggie day care, but getting out there and doing it was the period at the end of the sentence that convinced me to make it
real.''
This is the idea behind VocationVacations -- putting dream careers into practice. The company sells one- to threeday immersions in 110 vocations, ranging from alpaca farming to sports announcing. The experiences are part getaway,
part professional development.
The company's president, Brian Kurth, was himself a frustrated marketing executive when he founded the enterprise in 2004. Since then, nearly 1,000 customers have paid $399 to $1,999 for a potentially life-changing experience.
''The whole idea was to create a place where people could try an entirely new career without having to quit their
day jobs,'' said Mr. Kurth, who is 40. ''That kind of risk-free freedom and flexibility can be priceless if you're seriously
considering making a change.''
Mr. Kurth's service is a commercial twist on an old idea -- mentoring. The small-business world is full of such
programs, often free and offered by nonprofit groups, in which business owners provide knowledge and advice to
would-be entrepreneurs. The Small Business Administration, for example, sponsors the Service Corps of Retired Executives, or Score, a free program to help young businesses.
VocationVacations differs in its immersive approach. The experience begins when a customer calls or logs on to
the company's Web site, vocationvacations.com, and selects a job. The company then connects customers (whom Mr.
Kurth calls ''vocationers'') with participating ''mentors'' -- small-business owners who get a percentage of the fee.
Next, the staff members (Mr. Kurth has eight part-time employees) arrange for independent career coaches to chat
with customers about their expectations and long-term goals. These meetings are optional, but Mr. Kurth said that most
customers have obliged. The coaches are available to meet after the experience, too.
The highlight of every vocation vacation, of course, is the experience. In some cases, customers follow along with
their mentors as observers. In others, mentors toss customers right into a daily routine, commanding them to prepare
hors d'oeuvres, crunch spreadsheets or clean bird cages.
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How to Walk a Mile in Your Dream Career The New York Times February 20, 2007 Tuesday
Jessica Caulfield, 28, a former real estate agent, took a vocation vacation with the Global Purchasing Companies,
a retail fashion buyer in New York, and spent two days following clothes buyers on their chores. A few months later,
she opened a women's clothing boutique named Jesse James in Hoboken, N.J.
In Grand Forks, N.D., Paul Holje and George Kelley opened Dakota Harvest Bakery after two days of intensive
study at Pearl Bakery in Portland, Ore. The men kneaded dough, helped customers and balanced books. Mr. Kelley, 44,
a former air-traffic controller, said the experience enabled him and Mr. Holje to experiment with their new careers before jumping in.
''Pearl headed us off from making a bunch of pretty significant mistakes,'' Mr. Kelley said, referring, for example,
to preparing for the lunch rush. ''It was more than just an immersion; it was a lesson in how to succeed.''
The VocationVacations model does not work for everyone, however. Chris Ronan, a systems architect with eMarket Solutions, an Internet company in Dallas, said his experience with Linda Lindsay, the owner of Stone Wolf Vineyards in McMinnville, Ore., was eye opening in a different way.
Mr. Ronan signed up in October 2004, convinced that winemaking was his next career. After spending two days
working at the winery, however, Mr. Ronan, 38, said he decided the business wasn't for him.
''It was a lot more intensive than I thought it would be,'' said Mr. Ronan, who recounted pulling grapes off a truck,
crushing them and working in the barrel room among his activities. ''I learned that if I were to go into wine, I would not
want to have to make a living at it,'' but would do it for fun.
This kind of disillusionment is not always bad, particularly if it saves someone from going down the wrong career
path. Mr. Kurth said that while he aimed to make every vocationer happy, he recognized that sometimes the best thing
for a person is to affirm a negative.
''Just because you don't like something doesn't mean the experience hasn't been good for you,'' he said. ''Better that
you try something and learn that you don't like it than make a life change and realize a few weeks in that you've made a
total mistake.''
The VocationVacations immersion was entirely positive for Bill Sweat and Donna Morris. After 20 years as financial advisers for Fidelity Investments in Boston, the couple retired in 2005 to try something new.
Their something was also wine. Mr. Sweat and Ms. Morris were paired with Ms. Lindsay at Stone Wolf Vineyards
as well, where they spent two days blending, bottling and making wine. They learned about bookkeeping and other aspects of running a wine business, too.
''They were very eager to learn everything,'' Ms. Lindsay said. ''They walked away with enough information to
make informed decisions regarding their own future in the business.''
The two days proved invaluable for Mr. Sweat, 48, and Ms. Morris, 47. Last year, the couple moved to Dundee,
Ore., and bought the former Goldschmidt winery, which they renamed Winderlea. Mr. Sweat said they planned to release 600 cases of pinot noir, the winery's specialty, next year.
Technically, this will make Mr. Sweat and Ms. Morris competitors of Ms. Lindsay's -- a risk that she and most
other mentors accept. A handful require vocationers to sign agreements stipulating that they won't open a business within a 50-mile radius.
Other risks exist, too. Marci Alboher, the author of ''One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life
Success,'' said that for many VocationVacations customers, one or two days is hardly enough time to get a complete
sense of what a new vocation may entail.
''To me, all you're doing on vocation vacations is flirting,'' said Ms. Alboher, who lives in New York. ''If you like
what you see, it's up to you to take it to the next level and make it into a legitimate career transition exercise.''
Mr. Kurth acknowledged that the experiences his company offered were meant only as ''tastes,'' and that he encouraged customers to seek more training if they were still interested in switching after the immersion.
He said that some customers -- nearly 30 percent, according to interviews -- sign up out of curiosity, and never intend to change careers.
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How to Walk a Mile in Your Dream Career The New York Times February 20, 2007 Tuesday
Although Mr. Kurth declined to reveal exactly how much his business earned last year, he said that VocationVacations was profitable and expanding. After starting with just a few immersion programs, the company's vocations now
have 225 mentors in 35 states.
Most of these experiences, including cheese maker, clock restorer and voice-over artist, cost less than $1,000 for
two days. At the other end of the spectrum, a three-day immersion with Mary Dann, a Southern California wedding coordinator whose clients include Hollywood and sports stars, costs $1,999.
Mr. Kurth said the company would add 30 more immersion experiences this spring, in marine biology, sports umpiring and landscape architecture, among other fields.
''As long as someone has dreamed about a second career, we've probably got an experience that will make that
person happy,'' he said. ''It's never too late to give something a try.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: PET CARE SERVICES (91%); PLANT CLOSINGS (90%); PETS (90%); SMALL BUSINESS (89%);
COMPUTER & ELECTRONICS MFG (78%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (77%); SMALL BUSINESS ASSISTANCE
(76%); EMPLOYMENT GROWTH (75%); EMPLOYEE TRAINING (69%); SPONSORSHIP (69%); NONPROFIT
ORGANIZATIONS (67%); BUSINESS COACHING & MENTORING (64%); BUDGET (53%); LLAMA & ALPACA PRODUCTION (50%); DOGS (90%); EMPLOYMENT SEARCH (78%) Small Business; Vocational Training
ORGANIZATION: VocationVacations (Co)
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (52%) Brian Kurth; Matt Villano
GEOGRAPHIC: PORTLAND, OR, USA (72%) IOWA, USA (91%); OREGON, USA (88%) UNITED STATES
(91%)
LOAD-DATE: February 20, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: BREAD AND WINE -- Donna Morris and Bill Sweat, far left, were in finance. Now they make
wine. George Kelley, above left, and Paul Holje became bakers. (Photo by Julie Keefe for The New York Times)
(Photo by Dan Koeck for The New York Times)
PAWPRINTS ALL OVER -- Toni Cory did some investigating -- and a lot of dog washing and grooming -- through
VocationVacations. ''It was hard work,'' she said, ''but that experience changed my life.'' Now she runs a day-care center
and boarding service for dogs. (Photo by Brian Ray for The New York Times)
A STORE OF HER OWN -- Jessica Caulfield worked in real estate. Then she spent two days working with clothing
buyers, and later opened Jesse James, a clothing boutique. (Photo by Michael Nagle for The New York Times)
NONSTARTER -- Chris Ronan thought he wanted to make wine until he tried it. (Photo by Mark Graham for The New
York Times)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1106 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
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February 20, 2007 Tuesday
Page 268
With Money in Their Pockets The New York Times February 20, 2007 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
With Money in Their Pockets
BYLINE: By ROY FURCHGOTT
SECTION: Section H; Column 1; Small Business; Pg. 7
LENGTH: 883 words
KDMA doesn't look like the kind of company that attracts venture investors. It's not in Silicon Valley, nor is it involved in biotechnology. It doesn't even have a fully working Web site.
The company, which has its headquarters near Grand Rapids, Minn. (population 7,764), makes fishing tackle. It
has two owners, three employees and annual revenue well under a million dollars.
But that didn't stop the North Star Fund in Grand Rapids from putting money into the company. In fact, KDMA
was exactly what North Star was looking for -- a start-up it could nurture in its own backyard.
North Star, an angel investment group, has two bankers, a real estate broker and two grocery-store owners among
its 14 members. They all live in Grand Rapids, and their fund is dedicated to financing new businesses in or near town.
''That's a higher priority than actually making money on the deal,'' said Keith Anderson, a lawyer and a member of
the group.
Angel investors, historically a private lot, usually work quietly by themselves or with a few other individuals, investing their own money in early-stage or start-up businesses.
When angel investors band together, they share their research, money and expertise, and they increase their clout.
This allows them to spread their investment more efficiently to local businesses.
Individual angels tend to focus more on profits, not community growth. And since most angels are in their 50s and
60s and retired, they are not necessarily suited to overseeing long-term investment projects.
Banding together, angel groups ''create an entity that is longer lived than any single angel can be,'' said Ian
Sobieski, a founder of the $50 million Band of Angels Fund in Menlo Park, Calif.
So far, it may sound a little like ''It's a Wonderful Life,'' but as in the movie, the story takes an unexpected twist.
Some of these groups -- North Star included -- cannot find enough worthwhile local businesses to put their money into.
To stay afloat, they have had to invest in companies farther afield. ''As much as we want to help the small entrepreneur out, we don't want to lose our shirts, either,'' said Mr. Anderson of North Star.
With no road map, these angel groups are striking out in many directions, looking for a formula that will work.
Some try to preserve each angel's independence. One group, the Investors Circle of York in York, Pa., was formed
to ''fund local companies, or companies that might move to our area, or that support a business in our area,'' said Michael March, a co-chairman of the Investors Circle. It holds regular dinners where entrepreneurs present ideas; each
member independently decides whether to invest.
But groups of individuals are hard to corral. Working around members' schedules makes meeting difficult and
limits the number of deals. As a result, like many angel groups, the York circle is considering a central fund that a
committee would invest. It would mean a steadier flow of cash to community businesses, as well as benefiting the
group, Mr. March said, because more investments ''level out risk.''
Some angel groups find a greater economy of scale through a larger network. A Pennsylvania Department of Economic Development grant created the Pennsylvania Angels Network, which advises 18 angel groups, helping them to
network and share deals, some too large for the groups to handle individually.
Similarly, a regional angel network founded by a grant from the state of Minnesota became RAIN Source Capital,
which advises 20 groups in five states, and has a $16 million central fund that it can invest alongside its angel groups.
Page 269
With Money in Their Pockets The New York Times February 20, 2007 Tuesday
When the economic development agency in Orange County, N.Y., hired Robert Hannon, a self-described ''recovering banker,'' to draw in new business, he created an angel fund that invests only in companies that agree to move to
the county, about 50 miles north of New York City. ''There was the perception that one of the things keeping companies
from locating in Orange County was a lack of capital,'' he said.
The fund, started in January 2005, now has $500,000 in county money to extend the investors' coffers. So far, it
has put money into just one company, which makes a motorcycle lock.
It's easy to see why communities like this brand of investing -- it could help the economy. But because angel investing is involved in early-stage companies, it is risky and takes longer to cash out than later-stage investing. But
smaller investors have little competition for off-the-beaten-track companies. ''You can invent some pretty important
things in a pole barn in Minnesota,'' said John Reid, the chairman and a founder of Abbey Moor Medical, which developed a urinary tract stent from just such a barn in Parkers Prairie, Minn., 150 miles northwest of Minneapolis.
With initial venture financing from RAIN Source Angels, the company has 30 employees, government approval
of its device and about $13 million to take its stent to market. ''We would never had have serious venture capitalists look
at us,'' Mr. Reid said. ''The venture cap guys won't even come to Minneapolis -- it's a flyover.''
Another attraction for angels is personal satisfaction. ''They get a type of psychic income,'' said Dr. Sohl. ''They
don't want to be the ones doing payroll checks,'' he added.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: VENTURE CAPITAL (90%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (90%); STARTUPS (90%); TRANSPORTATION SUPPORT SERVICES (78%); SMALL BUSINESS (89%); BIOTECHNOLOGY & GENETIC SCIENCE
(78%); REAL ESTATE (70%); GROCERY STORES & SUPERMARKETS (55%); REAL ESTATE AGENTS (54%);
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (78%); BONDS (73%) Stocks and Bonds; Small Business
COMPANY: BAND OF ANGELS (58%)
PERSON: Roy Furchgott
GEOGRAPHIC: SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, CA, USA (91%) MINNESOTA, USA (90%); PENNSYLVANIA,
USA (79%); CALIFORNIA, USA (91%) UNITED STATES (91%)
LOAD-DATE: February 20, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: INVESTED -- Mike and Joyce Vekich, relatives of the owner of KDMA, a maker of fishing tackle.
It was nurtured by local angel investors. (Photo by Steve Burmeister for The New York Times)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1107 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
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February 20, 2007 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
Page 270
Topping the List: Health Care and Pay The New York Times February 20, 2007 Tuesday
Topping the List: Health Care and Pay
BYLINE: By ELIZABETH OLSON
SECTION: Section H; Column 1; Small Business; Pg. 5
LENGTH: 596 words
WEEKS after the Democrats took control of Congress, important issues to small businesses, like the minimum
wage and health care policy, top the agenda.
Since Congress convened on Jan. 4, bills have been introduced to address these matters, including one to require
small businesses to offer sick leave to employees; another to simplify tax filing; and one requiring that interest be paid
on small-business bank accounts.
Questions have also arisen about the financing and future of the Small Business Administration, the federal agency
set up to help the nearly 18 million small businesses nationwide.
On the legislative front, proposals to lift the federal minimum wage quickly bogged down over a disagreement on
how, or if, the added cost to businesses would be offset. Small-business lobbyists opposed raising the minimum hourly
wage to $7.25 from $5.15 over two years, saying that many small businesses could not afford it.
Wrangling continues over whether to link the minimum-wage increase to tax offsets for small businesses, like a
credit for small companies that hire disadvantaged workers, including wounded veterans or people living at the poverty
level. The House first voted to increase the minimum wage without tax offsets, but the Senate adopted a version that
included an $8.3 billion package of tax relief. House Democrats then came up with their own proposals, and the full
House approved a $1.3 billion package last week. The final bill awaits House-Senate negotiation.
On the health care issue, Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts and the new chairman of the Small
Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, introduced legislation to help small businesses lower their costs for
providing health care.
Opposition from small businesses helped sink efforts by the Clinton administration to broaden health care coverage a decade ago. But the issue persists, and health care costs are a top concern of small businesses.
In his State of the Union address last month, President Bush proposed capping the tax exemption for employerprovided insurance, and allowing individuals to take a tax deduction for their insurance cost. It is similar to some proposals floated by lawmakers, but Todd McCracken, president of the National Small Business Association, said that
broader measures were needed.
''We are actively courting change,'' Mr. McCracken said. ''Piecemeal solutions are not going to work. We need to
have universal coverage and subsidize people who are least able to afford it.''
Mr. Kerry's bill, the Small Business Health Care Tax Credit Act of 2007, is considered an interim step. It would
give a refundable tax credit to companies that have fewer than 50 employees and that pay at least half of their workers'
health care insurance premiums. The provision would cover employees earning up to $50,000 a year. It is not clear what
the chances are for the bill, but it is most likely to be among many proposals tackling the problem.
Also up for consideration is expansion of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, which would require businesses with 15 or more employees to provide workers with seven paid sick days. The Healthy Families Act, introduced
by the Massachusetts Democrat Edward M. Kennedy in the Senate and Rosa DeLauro, Democrat from Connecticut, in
the House, would also cover certain part-time workers.
But small-business lobbyists say that temporary and part-time workers less invested in their jobs may take advantage of sick leave.
All these issues may not be resolved soon, but at least they are on the agenda.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
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Topping the List: Health Care and Pay The New York Times February 20, 2007 Tuesday
SUBJECT: MINIMUM WAGE (94%); SMALL BUSINESS (92%); TAXES & TAXATION (90%); HEALTH CARE
POLICY (90%); PUBLIC POLICY (90%); LEGISLATIVE BODIES (90%); WAGES & SALARIES (91%); TAX
LAW (90%); HEALTH INSURANCE (89%); POLITICAL PARTIES (90%); SMALL BUSINESS ASSISTANCE
(90%); TAX RELIEF (89%); US DEMOCRATIC PARTY (89%); LEGISLATORS (89%); EMPLOYEE HEALTH
PLANS (78%); US FEDERAL GOVERNMENT (78%); HEALTH CARE COSTS (78%); SMALL BUSINESS LENDING (90%); EMPLOYMENT (90%); NEW ISSUES (78%); POOR POPULATION (78%); LEGISLATION (89%);
INSURANCE COVERAGE (78%); LOBBYING (78%); EMPLOYEE LEAVE (77%); TAX EXEMPTIONS (76%);
MINORITY BUSINESS ASSISTANCE (90%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (73%); RECRUITMENT & HIRING
(72%); TAX DEDUCTIONS (71%); COMMERCIAL BANKING (71%); INSURANCE PREMIUMS (68%); US
PRESIDENTS (67%); EXECUTIVE MOVES (66%); MANAGED CARE ORGANIZATIONS (78%); INCOME TAX
(70%) Labor; Finances; Budgets and Budgeting; Law and Legislation; Wages and Salaries; Health Insurance and Managed Care; Fringe Benefits ; Small Business; Labor; Minimum Wage
ORGANIZATION: SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION (83%) Small Business Administration
PERSON: JOHN KERRY (54%); GEORGE W BUSH (53%) Elizabeth Olson
GEOGRAPHIC: MASSACHUSETTS, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (92%) United States; United States
LOAD-DATE: February 20, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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The New York Times
February 20, 2007 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
A Clash of Cultures, Averted
BYLINE: By ERIC DASH
SECTION: Section C; Column 2; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1690 words
When Bank of America announced its $35 billion acquisition of MBNA in summer 2005, many people questioned
whether it would work.
MBNA, a stand-alone credit-card giant, took pride in its fast-paced and entrepreneurial spirit, its freewheeling
spending and a secretive corporate culture that seemed more like a cult.
Executives roamed its opulent headquarters in Wilmington, Del., where the phrase ''Think of yourself as a customer'' was spelled out in small gold capital letters on both sides of at least 1,700 doorways, and paintings by Andrew Wyeth and Norman Rockwell adorned the walls.
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A Clash of Cultures, Averted The New York Times February 20, 2007 Tuesday
They enjoyed generous salaries and lavish perks -- from its private golf course and fleets of corporate jets to
yachts and vintage cars. Employees carried around the MBNA corporate precepts on small note cards and sported
MBNA logo pins on their lapels.
Bank of America, based in Charlotte, N.C., was a no-nonsense, low-cost operator. With almost 5,800 branches,
the bank believed that size and smarts were far more crucial than speed. It was also an acquisition machine, transforming itself from a small regional bank into a national powerhouse by imposing its will on the companies it swallowed.
That did not exactly happen with MBNA. Even as they moved swiftly to reduce its high costs, Bank of America
executives worked hard to ensure that many of MBNA's practices remained intact.
''On Day 1, I was directed that this was not like the ones you are used to,'' said Clifford A. Skelton, a former Navy
fighter pilot who helped manage Bank of America's 2003 takeover of FleetBoston Financial before leading the MBNA
transition last year. ''For us to come in like the Huns and say, 'We are taking it over, you're doing it our way' '' just
would not work.
The MBNA acquisition perhaps signals the end of an era.
Next week, Kenneth D. Lewis, Bank of America's chairman and chief executive, is expected to present to investors his plans for a new approach: to steer the company away from acquisitions and toward more internal growth. Bank
of America is hampered by a federal deposit cap, and Mr. Lewis has said he feels no ''strategic imperative'' to do another
big deal.
But the careful measures that Bank of America took in digesting MBNA suggests an interest in acquiring skills as
much as size. Indeed, it is a case study in the lengths to which a company will go to ensure that two vastly different cultures can peacefully coexist.
When the MBNA integration began in early July 2005, the task seemed daunting. But the payoff was potentially
enormous. In one fell swoop, the transaction gave Bank of America a combined 122 million consumer cardholder accounts and vaulted it ahead of Citigroup as the country's largest credit-card issuer. The deal also placed it within striking
distance of Citigroup as the nation's biggest bank by market capitalization.
Executives began comparing thousands of practices. Everything, from high-level customer service metrics to the
role of the call-center operator, was reviewed.
On many of the bigger business issues, Bank of America elected to follow the MBNA methods it had long admired -- from its partnership marketing expertise to its aggressive debt collection techniques and reliance on high fees.
Bank of America retained MBNA's huge technology system. It kept all 12 of MBNA's major call centers while shedding a few of its own. It also locked in several top MBNA executives.
But smaller details were similarly debated as the transition team sought compromise. Take the employee dress
code, for example.
In keeping with its button-down culture, MBNA employees came to work each day in a jacket and tie. Bank of
America workers were strictly business casual.
Transition team managers surveyed employees to identify the ''voice of the associate.'' They analyzed the potential
impact of any change in the dress code on culture. Ultimately, the team reached a middle ground: business suits are still
required in the credit-card division's corporate offices and in front of clients, but back-office functions are mainly business casual.
''The good news is that we have gotten more conscious about how we look and pay more attention to it,'' Mr. Skelton, Bank of America's transition leader, said. ''Our new MBNA teammates are able to ratchet down some of the formality, and with that formality, some of the hierarchy.''
Still, Bank of America bowed to some MBNA traditions. Shortly after the merger, MBNA employees were given
pins with the Bank of America logo. They traded in their ''green and gold spirit points'' for similar Bank of America
incentives, and were steeped in the Charlotte bank's core values. Bank of America executives have put MBNA's signature gold ''Think of yourself as a customer'' letters up on their own buildings' walls.
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A Clash of Cultures, Averted The New York Times February 20, 2007 Tuesday
Even Bruce L. Hammonds, the former MBNA chief executive who now oversees Bank of America's credit-card
business, was surprised. ''I would have guessed that most companies would have bought us and said right away, 'Take
that off,' '' he said, referring to the omnipresent MBNA motto. ''Everybody commented what a great concept it was.''
Not everything, of course, has gone smoothly. Bank of America managers say some of their MBNA colleagues
can come across as arrogant and autocratic. MBNA executives, by contrast, complain that Bank of America's bureaucracy has slowed the company down. Others note that some of MBNA's best and brightest have recently departed.
Senior MBNA managers either swallowed a steep pay cut or found themselves out of a job. And with many employment agreements set to expire soon, former employees and industry analysts openly question whether others will
remain.
But financially speaking, even the most skeptical analysts say the MBNA deal has turned out better than expected.
While it is still early days, Bank of America executives say that the $1.25 billion cost savings achieved in the first
year nearly met their two-year target. And even though loan delinquency rates are rising, Bank of America is excited
about the new opportunities the deal brings.
Already, the two companies are borrowing from each others' playbooks. Bank of America, for example, is pushing
about 300 of MBNA's 5,000 affinity credit cards -- like those carrying the logo of Habitat for Humanity or a Major
League Baseball team -- through Bank of America retail branches.
Executives say that has more than doubled the number of new accounts opened at branches each month, to about
50. It is cheaper, too. At MBNA, it used to cost about $140 to sign up a new customer because of its heavy use of directmail offers. Now, it costs Bank of America less than $22 in its branches.
Tests are under way to expand the partnership strategy to other bank products, like mortgages, checking accounts
and home-equity loans. And the bank is also borrowing from MBNA's ''judgmental lending approach,'' which allows
credit analysts to override computerized lending decisions and make loans to illegal immigrants and others with little or
no credit history. MBNA had always been one of the credit card industry's leading innovators ever since its founder,
Charles M. Cawley, came up with the affinity marketing concept that ignited its growth. But success led to excess, and
in recent years its expenses soared as its growth limped along with the rest of the industry.
Mr. Hammonds, who took the helm of MBNA in late 2003, recognized the need to pare down.
He got rid of a number of the company's paintings, jets and boats and halted a major corporate expansion. The
corporate golf course was sold back to the state of Delaware. More than 1,000 employees took buyouts or started hunting for new jobs.
Instead of shocking the system, the Bank of America deal accelerated that effort. It consolidated about 26 big data
centers and call centers to 17 and shed more than 6,000 positions nationwide from both companies.
Bank of America quickly dispensed with most of MBNA's remaining cars, a helicopter and all but one of the corporate jets. Many of the paintings that were not sold are now displayed in the old MBNA headquarters in Wilmington,
where the combined credit-card division is now based. The in-house barbershop and nail salon are now offices.
More challenging, however, were many of the decisions that affected daily operations, like what to do about the
huge technology system.
MBNA had long relied on a proprietary computer system to generate monthly statements and keep track of customer accounts. That gave MBNA greater flexibility to quickly make changes to their card offerings. And because it
was designed and maintained by company programmers, the system was also a source of jobs and institutional pride.
Bank of America, in contrast, outsourced their operating platform to Total System Services, which offered more
features at a lower cost.
Executives studied the costs and benefits of each system for nearly four months before making their decision:
Bank of America would upgrade MBNA's technology, but keep the system in-house.
''It was a really big deal to the people at MBNA when they decided to keep the MBNA platform,'' said Brent Samuels, a former MBNA executive who now works for First Annapolis Consulting, a payment industry firm. That decision, he added, sent a message that ''they have a stake in the card operations,'' and helped improve morale.
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A Clash of Cultures, Averted The New York Times February 20, 2007 Tuesday
On the surface, executives at both companies say that the cultural fit is even better than they expected. It even led
two Bank of America managers to croon about how they came together. They penned new lyrics to the U2 anthem
''One,'' ironically a song about the sometimes caustic nature of relationships.
But deeper down, subtle differences remain. At Bank of America meetings, junior employees are invited to participate in discussions. At MBNA meetings, the boss's views were rarely challenged.
''I had to tell people that it was O.K. to question Bruce,'' said Henry Fulton III, once head of Bank of America's
credit card business, referring to Mr. Hammonds, the former MBNA chief who is now his boss. ''That took some adjustment.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: BANKING & FINANCE (90%); CORPORATE CULTURE (90%); PAYMENT CARDS & SERVICES
(89%); MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS (89%); CREDIT CARDS (89%); COMMERCIAL BANKING (89%); TAKEOVERS (78%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (77%); CASE STUDIES (71%); WAGES & SALARIES (69%); DIVESTITURES (66%); MOTOR VEHICLES (54%); PAINTING (73%) Banks and Banking; Mergers, Acquisitions and Divestitures; Company and Organization Profiles; Credit and Money Cards; Banks and Banking
COMPANY: BANK OF AMERICA CORP (94%); CITIGROUP INC (58%)
ORGANIZATION: Mbna Corp; Bank of America
TICKER: BAC (NYSE) (94%); BAC (LSE) (94%); 8648 (TSE) (94%); CGP (LSE) (56%); C (NYSE) (58%); 8710
(TSE) (58%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS522110 COMMERCIAL BANKING (94%); NAICS551111 OFFICES OF BANK HOLDING
COMPANIES (94%); SIC6712 OFFICES OF BANK HOLDING COMPANIES (94%); NAICS523120 SECURITIES
BROKERAGE (58%); NAICS522210 CREDIT CARD ISSUING (58%); SIC6021 NATIONAL COMMERCIAL
BANKS (58%)
PERSON: KENNETH D LEWIS (82%); MICHAEL MCMAHON (53%) Kenneth D Lewis; Eric Dash
GEOGRAPHIC: CHARLOTTE, NC, USA (79%) NORTH CAROLINA, USA (79%); DELAWARE, USA (72%)
UNITED STATES (79%)
LOAD-DATE: February 20, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo (Illustration by The New York Times)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1109 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 19, 2007 Monday
Late Edition - Final
Page 275
Help for Boomers Heading Toward Bust The New York Times February 19, 2007 Monday
Help for Boomers Heading Toward Bust
BYLINE: By JANETMASLIN
SECTION: Section E; Column 1; The Arts/Cultural Desk; BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Pg. 11
LENGTH: 1002 words
Leap!What Will We Do With the Rest of Our Lives?By Sara Davidson 317 pages. Random House. $25.95.
Oh how they laugh, the geriatric Woodstock types interviewed by Sara Davidson in ''Leap!'' Ms. Davidson is asking them about the loss of status, confidence, stability, family, sexuality and future prospects. This is serious business,
bordering on grim. No matter: stamped into commercial shape by Ms. Davidson, it elicits enough warm, huggy sentiment to fill a Hallmark store.
So celebrities laugh about their fading careers. A plastic surgeon laughs about shaving in the shower because he
can't bear to look at his aging face in the bathroom mirror. The most popular dentist in Boulder, Colo., laughs about
wanting to get away from his patients. (Funny line: ''Leave me the hell alone!'' ) Even in Macedonia, among volunteers
delivering supplies to refugees, Ms. Davidson's book finds a relief worker who is a laughing Muslim.
What's so funny? Nothing, except for Ms. Davidson's lazy use of shared-laughter shtick as the obligatory ending
for any rueful conversation. Years of writing for television and magazines (she is a contributing editor for ''O: The
Oprah Magazine'') have sapped the spontaneity from her writing and perhaps hardened her professional identity.
When Ms. Davidson wrote ''Loose Change'' in 1977, she took on the voice-of-a-generation mantle. Years passed.
Her generation didn't do anything interesting. But now it's in a pickle, and it needs a voice again.
Ms. Davidson establishes ''Leap!'' as an exploration of one overarching question: What will workaholic baby
boomers do after they are forced to switch gears but before they reach the cement-free, no-pesticide funeral parks now
being created by young entrepreneurs? Then she travels and dabbles, framing big issues with song titles (''My Sweet
Lord,'' ''Get a Job,'' ''Sea of Love,'' etc.) and coming up with a string of anecdotal answers.
Finally she packages ''Leap!'' as a Diane Keaton movie waiting to happen. She tells a story in which a plucky 60ish heroine flutters adorably through places where she doesn't quite fit in.
''What stops me is the dogma, which they take literally,'' Ms. Davidson writes, by way of explaining why she isn't
100 percent comfortable after spending a week ''in a place of beauty, with love at the core and the society of brilliant
women who're also witty and passionate.'' This is a Connecticut abbey full of boomer-age Benedictine nuns, so dogma
really shouldn't surprise her. Sounding savvier, Ms. Davidson does, in another chapter, touch base with a fellow journalist from the '60s, Sally Kempton, who spent decades in an ashram, then renounced her vows at 59 to discover Urban
Outfitters and get a spray-on tan.
All of ''Leap!'' is staged on a hill of privilege, high above the success line. Failures, drug burnouts and those with
major health problems are not part of this equation unless they have names worth dropping. Lemons become lemonade.
''I feel juicy,'' says Ray Manzarek, who still plays keyboards even though his heyday with the Doors began more than 40
years ago.
Ms. Davidson herself complains of feeling over-the-hill but then moves to Boulder, seeking a teaching job. The
response: ''Oh, my God. Are you that Sara Davidson?'' Followed by: ''I teach you in my classes. I feel like William
Faulker just dropped into my office and I didn't recognize him.''
Here are some differences between Faulkner and Ms. Davidson: He would probably not have attended tantric sex
workshops for research purposes. (''Then Zack and I found ourselves in a green and secret glade, shot through with a
sense of the wonder and love in all things.'') And he probably didn't know anyone who (like Ms. Davidson's various
interviewees) contemplated learning the sacred hula or spending time with a chamber music group or finding a house on
a cliff in Big Sur and then reading for a year. Nor would he have known anyone moving to enlightened retirement
communities with street names like Easy Rider Lane. Faulkner could not have explored a part of Costa Rica where posthippies now own condos and sushi can be found.
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Help for Boomers Heading Toward Bust The New York Times February 19, 2007 Monday
One of the names most successfully dropped in ''Leap!'' is that of ''Andy Weil.'' That's Dr. Andrew Weil to you.
Dr. Weil is the reigning expert in the booming genre of ''Now what?'' books for boomers and, as a friend of Ms. Davidson's, he occasionally figures in her story. His message about aging is better delivered than Ms. Davidson's, but it's
essentially the same: Don't fight it. Get used to it. Accept and embrace it. Take care of your health and sanity while
making the best of new opportunities. To the extent that she communicates these thoughts in more entertaining, less
medical form, Ms. Davidson really is conveying valuable information.
As a full spectrum of books on this subject emerges, and it will, Ms. Davidson's will be at the fluffy end. Her narcissism is too prominent, her compromises too apparent (she has a chronic weakness for puffery), her myopia too limiting (she spends a couple of weeks helping at an orphanage in India, then describes the ceremony in which the orphans
thank their visitors) for her book to have real heft. Whenever she has a spiritual experience that reflexively ends with
bliss rolling in, credibility rolls out.
And yet she's onto something. This subject has staying power, and it hasn't yet gotten the attention it warrants.
There is something profoundly moving -- and comical -- about what happens as the values and experiences of the 1960s
face the test of time, and Ms. Davidson fares best when she describes it without manipulation.
When a group of like-minded boomers start planning a shared community, the outcome is perfectly believable:
They can't agree about anything but can't resist the urge to make rules. Ms. Davidson's reaction is simple, funny and
real. She sees why the situation is hopeless. And she is suddenly reminded of why she never joined Students for a Democratic Society in her easier-riding days.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: GERIATRICS (90%); BABY BOOMERS (89%); WRITERS & WRITING (90%); PHYSICIANS &
SURGEONS (71%); DRAMA LITERATURE (71%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (71%); REFUGEES (69%); BOOK
REVIEWS (78%); LITERATURE (68%) Books and Literature; Reviews
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (50%) Janet Maslin; Sara Davidson
GEOGRAPHIC: COLORADO, USA (71%); CONNECTICUT, USA (58%) UNITED STATES (71%)
LOAD-DATE: February 19, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Sara Davidson (Photo by Valari Jack)
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Review
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1110 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 19, 2007 Monday
Late Edition - Final
Music Labels Offer Teasers To Download
Page 277
Music Labels Offer Teasers To Download The New York Times February 19, 2007 Monday
BYLINE: By JEFF LEEDS
SECTION: Section C; Column 6; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1086 words
For all the disquiet the Internet has fostered in the music business, almost every rock star and record executive is intrigued with the prospect of marketing to music fans directly instead of wrangling for exposure with radio programmers
or retailers.
But the expansion of the online marketplace, coupled with ever-worsening CD sales, is now all but forcing the
music companies to tread on ground they once viewed as off limits.
Starting this week, Suretone Records, a label distributed by the Universal Music Group, plans to distribute video
files featuring popular acts like Weezer and new bands like Drop Dead Gorgeous on file-sharing networks that the industry has long viewed as illicit bazaars for pirates.
Unlike the music audio and video files that major labels sell at services like iTunes, the video files will not be
wrapped in protective software to limit copying, executives say. But they will also be incomplete: users who download
them will see perhaps half the video and will be directed to the label's own Web site to watch the complete version -and the advertising planned to run alongside.
The plan represents one of the latest signs that, after years of suing individual users and file-swapping services, the
recording industry is recognizing that it might have to loosen its control to attract the giant audience found in largely
unregulated corners of the Internet.
And there is new reason for urgency. The music business has been buckling beneath the pressure of widespread
piracy and plunging sales. Album sales declined 5 percent last year, and the scarcity of hits after the holidays has put the
industry on a course to fall behind even last year's lackluster performance.
Sales for the year so far are down more than 15 percent, according to Nielsen SoundScan data. That has brought a
profit warning from one music corporation, the EMI Group, and prompted dire forecasts industrywide.
Digital sales are increasing, but not nearly enough to offset the drop. As a result, many executives are searching
for other ways to reach the people who are trafficking in music and other media files in free file-sharing networks and
on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook.
But how far the industry should go to appeal to them is now the subject of intense debate.
One big issue is whether the four music conglomerates that dominate the industry should drop copy protection
software, known as digital rights management, from the music files they license for sale online.
The industry has already been dabbling in unprotected content, allowing the sale of songs from artists like Norah
Jones, Jessica Simpson and Jesse McCartney on Yahoo and other sites.
An array of online music retailers has called for doing away with the software completely. Steven P. Jobs, the
chief executive of Apple, whose iTunes music store is the most powerful of the those retailers, recently added his voice
to the chorus, arguing that digital rights management has not halted piracy and that the industry's main format, the compact disc, carries unprotected files.
EMI has discussed the idea of distributing unprotected music files with certain retailers, but there is little indication that the four companies, which control more than 70 percent of the world's music sales, will be willing to offer
much of their catalogs without such software anytime soon.
Still, there are indications that the record labels are re-examining their practices. RCA Records, for example, plans
to advance its promotional campaign for Avril Lavigne's new album with the first in a series of short manga -- Japanese
comic-book episodes -- in a storyline featuring the singer.
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Music Labels Offer Teasers To Download The New York Times February 19, 2007 Monday
The video clips, which run two to three minutes each, are expected to be released in unprotected form as free podcasts on iTunes, among other outlets. Fans will also be able to use special software, probably offered on a label's Web
site, to take snippets of the episodes and rearrange them, executives said.
Terry McBride, a longtime talent manager who represents Ms. Lavigne and other performers, said the campaign
was a rare instance of a major label's agreeing to an uncontrolled release, and that he fully expected fans to post the
clips on file-sharing networks. ''This becomes public property,'' he said. ''We're not going to tell the consumer how to
consume.''
But Mr. McBride predicted that sharing the files would promote the album and set the stage for other ventures, including the sale of higher-quality versions of the video clips, or possibly advertising to go along with them. In any
event, he added, the more CD sales suffer, the more pressure will build on record labels to rethink the rules of distribution and to drop limits on copying digital music.
''At the end of the day the whole object should be, let's fix the problem,'' said Jordan Schur, who set up the Suretone label last year as a joint venture with Universal after leaving another Universal label, Geffen Records. ''We know
people are stealing music. We're not going to sit in judgment of them and say, 'Well, they're bad.' ''
The label's files are being distributed online in an arrangement with ArtistDirect's MediaDefender unit, which is
better known as a contractor hired by labels to place fake, or decoy, versions of songs or other media files on filesharing networks to thwart would-be pirates.
Before the Suretone video deal, the company had also begun planting fake files containing promotional messages
for advertisers like Coca-Cola. ArtistDirect separately runs one of the most popular music Web sites on the Internet,
ArtistDirect.com, and plans to have a channel there devoted to Suretone's video clips.
Record labels are not shifting their view toward file-sharing across the board. Executives at Geffen recently found
themselves at odds with the rap star Snoop Dogg, for example, after he started selling songs in unprotected form on his
MySpace page, in a partnership with a San Francisco-area rap entrepreneur. Snoop Dogg also offered to sell other performers' songs on his page for a fee, a complete ''push and promote'' package costing $1,500.
The offer was removed last week after The New York Times inquired whether it conformed to MySpace's terms
and conditions, which generally prohibit users from selling space on their pages to outsiders.
A number of independent artists offer their songs on MySpace. The reggae act Shaggy charges 99 cents a song,
for example, and the band Barenaked Ladies charges 83 cents.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: MUSIC INDUSTRY (94%); RECORD INDUSTRY (92%); ENTERTAINMENT & ARTS (91%); POP &
ROCK (90%); RECORD PRODUCTION & DISTRIBUTION (90%); MUSIC (90%); INTERNET & WWW (90%);
RECORD REVENUES (89%); MOVIES & SOUND RECORDING SECTOR PERFORMANCE (89%); INTERNET
RETAILING (89%); CELEBRITIES (89%); MUSIC STORES (89%); MOVIES & SOUND RECORDING TRADE
(89%); INTERNET SOCIAL NETWORKING (89%); RETAILERS (89%); DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT
(89%); SALES FIGURES (78%); COMPANY PROFITS (76%); INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW (74%); ARTISTS & PERFORMERS (78%); ONLINE MARKETING & ADVERTISING (78%); COPYRIGHT LAW (75%);
COPYRIGHT (74%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING (73%); COMPUTER SOFTWARE (89%) Music; Recordings
and Downloads (Video); Recordings and Downloads (Audio); Computers and the Internet; Advertising and Marketing;
Copyrights; Software; Sales; Music
COMPANY: UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP (57%); EMI GROUP PLC (53%); FACEBOOK INC (52%); EMI
GROUP LTD (84%); UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP INTERNATIONAL LTD (57%)
ORGANIZATION: Apple Inc
INDUSTRY: NAICS512220 INTEGRATED RECORD PRODUCTION/DISTRIBUTION (84%); SIC3652 PHONOGRAPH RECORDS & PRERECORDED AUDIO TAPES & DISKS (84%)
PERSON: JESSICA SIMPSON (50%); STEVEN JOBS (80%) Steven P Jobs; Jeff Leeds
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Music Labels Offer Teasers To Download The New York Times February 19, 2007 Monday
LOAD-DATE: February 19, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1111 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 19, 2007 Monday
Late Edition - Final
Saving North Korea's Refugees
BYLINE: By Nicholas Eberstadt and Christopher Griffin.
Nicholas Eberstadt is on the board of the United States Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. Christopher
Griffin is a research associate at the American Enterprise Institute.
SECTION: Section A; Column 1; Editorial Desk; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 1092 words
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
THE Bush administration can point to precious few successes in its efforts to curb North Korea's mounting menace
-- even last week's celebrated nuclear deal with Kim Jong-il's government is, for the moment, little more than a written
promise from a highly unreliable negotiating partner.
Yet inexplicably, the Bush team continues to overlook a spectacular opportunity to deliver freedom to tens of
thousands of North Koreans, to pressure the country from within for fundamental change and to lay the groundwork for
a peaceful, reunified Korean Peninsula. By fostering an underground railroad to rescue North Korean refugees living in
China, the United States could do all these things at once.
On humanitarian grounds alone, the case for action on behalf of the wretched North Koreans in hiding north of their
country's border along the Yalu River is compelling. While the exact numbers are unknown, this refugee emergency
may be second only to Darfur: the International Crisis Group speaks of scores of thousands of refugees, and recently
uncovered Chinese official documents indicate hundreds of thousands.
As illegal immigrants in China (Beijing insists North Korean border-crossers are economic migrants, or worse),
they live in constant fear and at terrible risk. Women are forced into the sex trade or coerced marriages; men and children on the run have less obvious utility and thus, by some accounts, correspondingly higher mortality.
Yet the North Korean refugees who end up as victims of exploitation, violence or crime in China may be the lucky
ones. A far worse fate awaits those whom China ''refouls,'' or deports to North Korea in violation of Beijing's commitments under the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. North Korea regards fleeing Kim Jongil's paradise as an act of disloyalty close to treason. Captives forcibly returned to North Korea face prison, torture and
death, attesting to the refugee status that official Chinese wordplay denies.
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Saving North Korea's Refugees The New York Times February 19, 2007 Monday
Despite a gradually hardening Chinese posture toward this humanitarian crisis (now entering its second decade),
over the years a few private groups have been bravely spiriting refugees out of China and into third countries. Intrepid
souls like Steve Kim of New York (jailed in China since 2003), Phillip Buck from Seattle (jailed for 15 months in 20052006), Adrian Hong (deported last December) and others from America, South Korea and elsewhere have rescued thousands of North Koreans from China, often by way of an arduous 6,000-mile overland journey into Southeast Asia,
where North Korean refugees can seek resettlement in states that accept them.
The desperation of North Korean refugees has also attracted unscrupulous entrepreneurs who guide refugees out
of China for a profit. This latter-day flesh trade has been criticized by the governments of China and South Korea -each eager, for its own reasons, to discredit any efforts at exodus from North Korea. But whether created by noble motives or mercenary ones, this continuing trickle of escapees proves that a path to freedom already exists. And that trickle
would grow if these North Koreans knew they could count on official protection along the way.
Some will worry loudly about international resettlement for tens (never mind hundreds) of thousands of North Korean refugees, but the logistical issues are basically solved in advance: as a matter of national law, South Korea is
obliged to welcome them all. Under Articles 2 and 3 of the Republic of Korea's Constitution, as reaffirmed by the country's Supreme Court in 1996, every North Korean refugee has the right to resettle in South Korea. Commitments by
Washington and other free governments to take in North Korean refugees are desirable and commendable (the United
States is already committed to doing so under the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004), but it is natural and fitting
that South Korea should be the destination for the overwhelming majority of North Korea's freedom-seekers.
The critical missing piece for getting this underground railroad up and running is safe passage through China. But
because the South Korean government fears antagonizing the North and the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees is too timid to face down Beijing, China's opposition to this rescue mission has gone unchallenged. Only the
United States is in a position to help overcome Beijing's recalcitrance.
The Chinese government's cost-benefit calculus regarding these refugees would change drastically if Washington
weighed in as their advocate. If the United States (along with other governments) provided informal assurances that
China is merely a way station for North Koreans -- assuaging any official fears about a permanent foreign refugee population -- it may well be possible to convince Beijing to cooperate in the relocation mission (or at least to look the other
way as it takes place).
Should it do so, many of the problems that Beijing seems to fear will vanish of themselves: if those refugees can
be quickly processed by the United Nations refugee commission or similar offices, for example, Beijing need no longer
worry about the risks imposed by a large, illegal population along its border with North Korea.
Additionally, with United States leadership, Seoul and the United Nations lose their cover for ignoring the North
Korean refugee crisis. The governments and organizations that have responded to the calamity in Darfur could also be
rallied to the front lines for North Korean refugees. And, under the international spotlight, Seoul would be forced to
observe its constitutional pledge of citizenship for all Koreans despite the current South Korean government's obvious
reluctance to displease Kim Jong-il on any issue.
Humanitarian rescue of North Korean refugees will also materially advance United States security interests. Mass
defections from North Korea strike at the heart of the Kim regime, giving the lie to the myths upon which North Korean
rule is based. This would further undercut the regime's authority and legitimacy, and force it for the first time to respond
to the concerns of its subjects. A North Korean underground railroad is only a first step toward an entirely free Korean
Peninsula, but a terribly important one.
Bringing North Korean refugees to freedom will redound only to America's strategic advantage and will give tangible proof to the seriousness of this country's freedom agenda. America -- and any American president -- could take
pride in such a legacy.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: REFUGEES (92%); EDITORIALS & OPINIONS (90%); TERRITORIAL & NATIONAL BORDERS
(75%); IMMIGRATION (75%); DEPORTATION (75%); ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS (73%); TREASON (69%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (65%); TORTURE (62%); TREATIES & AGREEMENTS (50%); JAIL SENTENCING (86%)
Terms not available from NYTimes
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Saving North Korea's Refugees The New York Times February 19, 2007 Monday
COMPANY: CNINSURE INC (93%)
ORGANIZATION: INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP (56%)
TICKER: CISG (NASDAQ) (93%)
PERSON: KIM JONG IL (93%)
GEOGRAPHIC: SEATTLE, WA, USA (79%); BEIJING, CHINA (71%) NORTH CENTRAL CHINA (92%);
WASHINGTON, USA (79%) NORTH KOREA (98%); CHINA (97%); UNITED STATES (94%); SOUTH KOREA
(92%); ASIA (79%); NORTHERN ASIA (79%)
LOAD-DATE: February 19, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Op-Ed
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1112 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 18, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
A Way With Words
BYLINE: By LAWRENCE DOWNES.
Lawrence Downes is an editorial writer at The Times.
SECTION: Section 7; Column 1; Book Review Desk; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 869 words
WHAT I KNOW FOR SURE
My Story of Growing Up in America.
By Tavis Smiley with David Ritz.
260 pp. Doubleday. $23.95.
Tavis Smiley is a world-class talker. He got his start memorizing speeches by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,
talked his way through high school, where he won speech contests and student council elections, kept talking in college,
on the radio and then as the celebrity host of talk shows on Black Entertainment Television, NPR, PBS and Public Radio International. His Web site, naturally, is tavistalks.com.
Page 282
A Way With Words The New York Times February 18, 2007 Sunday
Smiley hasn't stopped talking since he got here, and his new memoir, ''What I Know for Sure,'' continues the conversation, filling in the back story of his 42 years, although with uncharacteristic bashfulness on one key point. Smiley
says he hired a ghostwriter, David Ritz, to help write it, because ''I don't consider myself a storyteller,'' which is a
strange thing to hear from someone so utterly full of speech.
Ritz and Smiley give us nothing but storytelling, including page after page of supposedly verbatim dialogue from decades ago -- when Smiley was a year
old, or in grade school, or even when he wasn't around to hear. Either the authors have the biggest collection of transcripts and tapes this side of the Nixon library, or they approached the project with a disturbingly easygoing attitude
toward quotation marks. Smiley calls his book ''What I Know for Sure,'' but I wouldn't take that literally if I were you.
You can be sure of this much: Smiley grew up in a trailer outside Kokomo, Ind., with his mother, stepfather and
10 siblings and cousins. His stepfather was an Air Force airman with an entrepreneurial streak, who enlisted the kids
in a family cleaning service. Tavis was an extrovert from Day 1, and his mastery of King's speeches gave him the
equivalent of his own speaking circuit at age 16. He decided early on that he was headed for great things.
He faced serious obstacles, though, mostly having do with poverty and family discord. In the book's most affecting section, Smiley recounts the bloody beating his tightly wound stepfather gave him and his sister after church one
day, when their preacher had accused the children from the pulpit (falsely, Smiley says) of having created a ruckus in
Children's Church. The attack sends boy and girl to the hospital and into foster care, and makes Smiley's relationship
with his parents terse and bleak for years.
But Smiley wants you to be uplifted, so he offers his suffering as both a harbinger and a foundation of his success.
He sees in himself a lucky blend of grit and the kind of ''hustle'' Pete Rose embodied on the Cincinnati Reds. His tale,
told in a series of cliff-hanging chapters, follows a rigid structure: peak, valley, peak, valley and finally the summit of
multimedia fame.
It quickly becomes clear that the fuel propelling Smiley relentlessly upward is a fawning attraction to powerful
people. He attends Indiana University but leaves before graduating to work as an aide to Tom Bradley, the Los Angeles
mayor with whom he has become obsessed. Without embarrassment, Smiley shows us the pleading letter he sends the
mayor after being turned down for an internship: ''No one -- no one on Planet Earth -- will work for you with the dedication and passion and enthusiasm I'm offering,'' he writes. ''If this letter looks smudged, those smudges are from the tears
rolling down my face.'' He gets the job. He gets promoted. But then he quits after losing his ''autonomy'' to a deputy
mayor whom he bitterly belittles as a ''30-something white boy from Harvard.'' After losing a run for Los Angeles City
Council, Smiley becomes a radio commentator. He is named by Time magazine as one of 50 leaders of the future; he
joins but is later fired from BET after being accused of disloyalty; he joins and then leaves NPR, which he scorns as ''a
private club for educated white people.'' At BET, he is insulted on-air by Russell Simmons. He survives a bad romance.
He travels to Cuba and meets Fidel Castro.
Smiley is on top of the world these days, and it's poignant to see that even now he still cares what Time once
thought of him, because he is arguably a bigger phenomenon than that weary old ink-on-paper magazine. He is a great
African-American multimedia star, with radio and TV programs, best-selling books, a production company, a philanthropic foundation and even a communications school named for him at Texas Southern University. He is rich and famous, and as he basks in the reflected glow of the great people he meets every day, he seems quite in awe of himself.
However Smiley's story strikes you, as a tale of stellar achievement or a physics lesson in the buoyancy properties
of limitless self-regard, he is without doubt a natural at what he does. Incessant talkers often reveal far more of themselves than they mean to, and silent readers of this book can fill in a lot of gaps. When you add up all the boasting, the
relentlessly upbeat bromides, the breathless celebrity encounters and the earnest litany of injustices suffered and hurdles
overcome, you get an entirely plausible, unwittingly honest portrait of a natural-born talk-show host, and how he got
that way.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: BOOK REVIEWS (93%); CHILDREN (89%); AFRICAN AMERICANS (78%); STUDENTS & STUDENT LIFE (77%); PRIMARY SCHOOLS (77%); PUBLIC BROADCASTING (76%); CELEBRITIES (76%); PUBLIC RADIO (76%); PROFILES & BIOGRAPHIES (75%); WRITERS & WRITING (90%); CAMPAIGNS & ELEC-
Page 283
A Way With Words The New York Times February 18, 2007 Sunday
TIONS (71%); FAMILY (68%); LIBRARIES (65%); AIR FORCES (63%); FOSTER CARE (62%); LITERATURE
(76%); STEPPARENTS (68%) Books and Literature; Reviews
COMPANY: BLACK ENTERTAINMENT TELEVISION INC (57%); CINCINNATI REDS (50%)
PERSON: Lawrence Downes; Tavis Smiley; David Ritz
GEOGRAPHIC: CINCINNATI, OH, USA (77%) INDIANA, USA (77%); OHIO, USA (77%) UNITED STATES
(92%)
LOAD-DATE: February 18, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: (Photo by Kevin Foley/PBS, via Associated Press)
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Review
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1113 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 18, 2007 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Welcome to the Museum of My Stuff
BYLINE: By CAROL KINO
SECTION: Section 2; Column 1; Arts and Leisure Desk; ART; Pg. 30
LENGTH: 2001 words
THREE years ago Mickey Cartin, one of Connecticut's biggest contemporary art collectors, began feeling dissatisfied. For years he had been a trustee at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, his hometown, and had given money to
other museums. But he had grown frustrated with ''the general inefficiencies'' he perceived, from conflicts among trustees to a tendency to make creative decisions by committee.
''It was becoming more and more difficult for me to see how gifts that I was making were being used,'' he said in
an interview.
Then one day in 2004, Steven Holmes, the curator for Mr. Cartin's collection, happened upon an empty storefront
just down the street from the museum. Three months and a $25,000 renovation later, Mr. Cartin had his own 4,000square-foot exhibition space, where for a year and a half he mounted shows of work from his own collection, which
ranges from coolly contemporary masters like Josef Albers and Agnes Martin to obsessive outsiders like Adolf Wolfli
and Joe Coleman.
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Welcome to the Museum of My Stuff The New York Times February 18, 2007 Sunday
''I got a big kick out of doing this,'' Mr. Cartin said. ''It got a lot of people in our town talking.'' He has since vacated the space, but he continues to organize shows focused around artists he collects and admires, like a retrospective of
Mr. Coleman's work that opened at the Jack Tilton Gallery in New York last September and is now at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. While he continues to donate money to museums, he wrote in an e-mail message, he is now ''much more
inclined'' to support specific projects than the general needs of entire institutions.
Mr. Cartin is not alone. In recent years, a growing number of private collectors have been opening all manner of
exhibition sites -- from casual warehouse spaces to full-fledged museums -- to show off their holdings and assert their
aesthetic views, often subsidized by enviable tax benefits.
The trend has been hastened by an enormous flow of disposable income and an insatiable public interest in art (not
to mention keeping up with the Joneses). And then there are the practical considerations: given that so many artists are
now working on an outsize scale -- room-size installations or attention-demanding video art -- even a mansion doesn't
really cut it as an exhibition space.
Art-world savants like to point out that the United States has a long history of privately founded institutions, including colossuses like the Frick Collection in New York and the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pa. But not all are enthralled by the current explosion.
''The growth of these spaces has impacted tremendously upon public institutions,'' said Roland Augustine, president of the Art Dealers Association of America and a New York dealer. Because galleries and artists generally prefer to
sell to museums, he explained, a collector who founds one may gain an advantage.
It seems highly unlikely that in a century's time big institutions presenting a broad art-historical narrative will be
eclipsed by small, idiosyncratic museums focused around a single collector's taste. But for the moment, this new crop of
exhibition spaces suggests a power shift within the art world -- one that is leveling the playing field between collectors
and museum professionals, driving up art prices and allowing wealthy private citizens an ever greater say in terms of
how their gifts will be used.
Not all of those citizens are forthcoming about their long-term intentions. In September the industrialist Mitchell
P. Rales opened the semiprivate Glenstone Museum alongside his home in Potomac, Md., where he shows works by
artists including de Kooning, Warhol, Pollock and Matisse in a Gwathmey Siegel building. Though Mr. Rales is believed to have a long-term public institution in mind, he has released virtually no information about his plans, and no
one from his organization was willing to speak for attribution about the broad outlines -- something hard to imagine
from the director of a new public art institution.
Early next year the Los Angeles County Museum of Art plans to open a museum-within-a-museum -- a project
largely financed and named for the billionaire collector Eli Broad that will integrate art from his vast collection and the
holdings of his nonprofit art foundation with the museum's collection in a new building designed by Renzo Piano. The
project seems to give a collector extraordinary leverage over a civic institution -- especially in view of Mr. Broad's current refusal to say whether his art will ultimately go to the Los Angeles museum.
Also in a class by itself is Crystal Bridges, a new museum of American art for which Alice L. Walton, the WalMart heiress, has been snapping up masterworks. Plans call for it to open in the fall of 2009 in Bentonville, Ark., with
the aim of drawing art tourists to the locale where the first Wal-Mart was founded in 1962. Already she has raised the
hackles of the museum world's old guard by buying Asher Durand's 1849 ''Kindred Spirits'' for $35 million from the
New York Public Library -- a work some felt should stay in New York -- and offering $68 million for Thomas Eakins's
''Gross Clinic,'' owned by Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. (Local museums eventually outmaneuvered
her.)
Constructing what is, in effect, a museum to one's own taste may strike some as a vainglorious hobby. And those
involved allow that seeing your beloved possessions enshrined this way is indeed good for the ego.
''Art collecting becomes an expression of self,'' said Allan Schwartzman, an art adviser who helped create the Rachofsky House in Dallas, a Richard Meier design for the collectors Howard and Cindy Rachofsky; and the Inhotim Center for Contemporary Art, a Shangri-La nestled in a Brazilian forest, for the mining magnate Bernardo Paz. ''It's a form
of self-portraiture.''
Or as Marc Glimcher, president of the New York mega-gallery PaceWildenstein, put it, ''It's the world's most expensive MySpace.''
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Welcome to the Museum of My Stuff The New York Times February 18, 2007 Sunday
Among the most visible is the Rubell Family Collection, started by Mera and Donald Rubell, prominent Miami
collectors of post-1980s art. Frustrated by the inability to see their collection all in one place -- ''We would actually
travel to visit our own work in various exhibitions,'' Ms. Rubell said -- they moved it to a former Drug Enforcement
Administration warehouse in Miami a decade ago. In 2004 they revamped and expanded their galleries and added a cafe
and a Phaidon bookshop.
Today their gallery space, open five days a week, is as large as that of the Whitney Museum. And some of the
shows have been influential, like last year's ''Poles Apart,'' a show of paintings by young Polish artists that created considerable buzz among curators and collectors.
Ms. Rubell said the gallery, along with its educational programs and library, is run by a nonprofit foundation
whose purpose is to further exhibitions of the collection. The works themselves are owned by the Rubells. ''It gives us a
lot of freedom in terms of acquisitions,'' she said.
Most collectors who create exhibition spaces are likely to take a similar tack, said Andrew M. Grumet, an associate with the New York law firm Herrick, Feinstein who specializes in tax issues, wealth planning and nonprofits. The
collector can write off the foundation's operating costs; if the foundation also owns the collection, any artwork it buys or
sells is generally exempt from sales and capital gains taxes.
Those who retain private ownership of the artwork, like the Rubells, may still be able to win tax-exempt status if
they make a strong case that the foundation does more than just promote the art's market value. Which may be one reason so many of those foundations promote educational and art loan programs. (There are exceptions, like Mr. Cartin,
who said he finances his exhibitions with after-tax dollars.)
The Rubells' example has transformed Miami's art scene. In 1999 Martin Margulies set up a warehouse space to
show his holdings of contemporary and vintage photography, video, sculpture and installation work; since then, many
of the city's collectors have opened exhibition outlets, including Dennis and Debra Scholl, Ella Cisneros and Rosa de la
Cruz.
Most recently, the real estate developer Craig Robins, who rotates his collection between his various offices and
properties, hired the Madrid-based architects Abalos & Herreros to create a more permanent exhibition site. ''I think it
would be a very good exercise for me as a collector to think about the collection in a museum context,'' Mr. Robins said.
To some, becoming a more public institution might spoil all the fun. Six years ago Carol and Arthur Goldberg
founded an appointment-only exhibition space in an old furniture factory in Mount Kisco, N.Y. ''We decided in our final
years,'' Mr. Goldberg said, ''that we'd like to see a lot of the art that we've had in storage'' -- art that includes work by Sol
LeWitt, Louise Nevelson, Gerhard Richter and Kiki Smith.
Each of the Goldbergs' shows has been organized by outside curators. By contrast, Kent and Vicki Logan, who
built a 7,500-square-foot private museum next to their house in Vail, Colo., prefer to organize exhibitions on their own.
Each year Mr. Logan, who calls the project ''one of my great passions,'' assembles a display drawn from their holdings
of Warhol, Ed Ruscha, Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst and others.
In many cases, a separate space reassures collectors that their art is cared for in a climate-controlled setting -- one
that also allows works to be shown to best advantage.
Today these private spaces can also loom as plums for larger museums. The Logans promised their little institution, together with their house and a substantial portion of their collection, to the Denver Art Museum, along with $10
million for the museum's endowment and $5 million to maintain the property.
On Feb. 24 the Art Dealers Association plans a panel discussion at the Museum of Modern Art on ''The Museum
as Collector,'' and the competition posed by private collectors in today's market will definitely be on the agenda.
Tom Eccles, the director of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard, who will be the panel's moderator, is now
something of an expert on private collectors' spaces, having recently opened a museum at Bard that was financed by the
contemporary collector Marieluise Hessel and shows works from her collection.
In some cases, he says, private collectors have put works out of reach of civic institutions. ''A collector can actually assemble a major survey exhibition -- buy all the works in a way that no museum could do,'' he said. But the bigger
issue for museums, he and others contend, is price inflation -- which is easily fanned by collectors who covet works for
their museums and can acquire without committee approval.
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Welcome to the Museum of My Stuff The New York Times February 18, 2007 Sunday
Mr. Eccles observed that today, ''collectors feel they can contribute to the art world just like curators can, and they
want to be players.'' For museums, that can be a double-edged sword.
''The old paradigm,'' said Mr. Logan, ''is, 'Give us your money and we'll do what we want with it,' and I don't think
that's operative anymore -- the new philanthropy is activist. They'll say, 'I'm going to have a say in what the objectives
are.' ''
For today's museum directors, courting donors therefore involves a more delicate dance. ''A kind of entrepreneurial side of some philanthropy has emerged, I think because of the nature of how a number of people have made
their fortunes,'' said Glenn D. Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art.
Michael Govan, who took over last year as director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, agrees. ''You'll
find a lot of people who don't even want to use the word philanthropy,'' he said. ''They want to use a word like 'investment.' ''
In the meantime, Mr. Lowry said, ''It's a fascinating moment.'' In general, ''I think it's incumbent upon the institution to demonstrate its capacity to meet expectations.''
He added, ''But I also think a gift is a gift.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: ART & ARTISTS (90%); MUSEUMS & GALLERIES (90%); EXHIBITIONS (89%); ART DEALERS
(78%); INTERVIEWS (75%); TRENDS (74%); ARTISTS & PERFORMERS (89%) Art; Collectors and Collections
PERSON: Carol Kino
GEOGRAPHIC: HARTFORD, CT, USA (90%) NEW YORK, USA (93%); CONNECTICUT, USA (90%); COLORADO, USA (75%) UNITED STATES (93%)
LOAD-DATE: February 18, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: Top, Kent and Vicki Logan at their private museum in Vail, Colo. Above, the Rubell Family Collection in Miami. Left, Mera and Donald Rubell. Their gallery space, open five days a week, is as large as that of the
Whitney Museum and has been the site of influential shows. (Photo by Kevin Molony for The New York Times)
(Photo by Barbara P. Fernandez for The New York Times)
(Photo by Bill Cunningham/The New York Times)
Marieluise Hessel with Tom Eccles, director of Bard College's Center for Curatorial Studies. (Photo by Suzanne
DeChillo/The New York Times)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
1114 of 1258 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 18, 2007 Sunday
Correction Appended
Late Edition - Final
Page 287
A Media Mogul Tries Remote Control The New York Times February 18, 2007 Sunday Correction Appended
A Media Mogul Tries Remote Control
BYLINE: By RON STODGHILL
SECTION: Section 3; Column 1; Money and Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 3607 words
DATELINE: CHARLOTTE, N.C.
ROBERT L. JOHNSON, the black billionaire, is ringside at a charity boxing match here, awash in a sea of white
businessmen. A low-key deal maker, he prefers intimate dinners with the likes of Bill Clinton, Harvey Weinstein or
John Malone. But tonight he has joined members of the South's ultra-elite for a quasi-frat party, a swaggering, testosterone-fueled evening featuring hundreds of tuxedo-clad honchos feted with steak and martinis and greeted by scantilyclad hostesses. Mr. Johnson takes to the slugfest as the night wears on, rolling his shoulders to dodge imaginary blows,
as if he himself were up against the ropes.
Which, perhaps, he is.
Mr. Johnson, who founded and then sold the Black Entertainment Television network to Viacom for $3 billion in
2000, is working hard these days to appear as more than just an outsider in Charlotte, where he also happens to own the
beleaguered local National Basketball Association franchise, the Bobcats. So far, though, that is pretty much how the
locals view him. There may be many reasons why the label of outsider clings to Mr. Johnson, but one easy explanation
is that he rarely gives the Bobcats hands-on treatment.
As Mr. Johnson tries to recast himself as a mainstream business mogul, his calendar has become very crowded,
thanks to a high-powered push to start and buy several companies. That spree has produced a sprawling portfolio of
properties, including a hedge fund, a private equity firm, a chain of more than 100 high-end hotels, several commercial
banks and savings institutions, a film company and several gambling ventures.
And however loudly each of those businesses may clamor for his attention, however boisterously the communities
they serve may want more face time with the boss, Mr. Johnson is in no rush to soothe their nerves.
''I am not an operational executive anymore,'' he says, impatience creeping into his voice. ''I run a holding company, and my role is that of a rancher, running herd over a field of cattle.
''It's not just one ball in the air for me now, but lots of them,'' he adds. ''This is my second act.''
As Mr. Johnson zips across the business landscape, trying to defy the aphorism that there are no second acts in
American life, his handling of the Bobcats, which he bought in 2003 for $300 million, may provide a crucial litmus test.
Mr. Johnson, the first African-American owner in a league populated by African-American stars, is intent on using his
wealth and celebrity to break down economic and cultural walls that have historically marginalized black entrepreneurs, and to give black executives corner offices in a broad range of industries. So he sees a successful run as the head
of a professional sports franchise as an emblematic challenge.
For all of that noble sense of purpose, though, Mr. Johnson is a famously flinty loner. His go-it-alone attitude has
done little to soften his image among some here as a person simply looking to milk a Southern boomtown. That image,
along with a reluctance to pour more money into the Bobcats, has not endeared him to local fans -- helping to undermine his fledgling hoops franchise.
The basketball legend Michael Jordan, who joined the Bobcats last summer as a minority partner and manager of
operations, attributes Mr. Johnson's strains to the rigors of the learning curve. ''Bob is one of the most sophisticated
businessmen that I know, but being that he didn't have any experience in this business, he may have been more tight
with the dollars than he should have been,'' he says. ''But Bob knows now that he's got to spend, that being successful in
professional sports requires a whole different approach. Like me, he's very competitive and knows how to win.''
Mr. Johnson's attendance at the charity boxing match last month was a good-will gesture toward a city that has rebuffed him by considering him an absentee owner, a carpetbagger of sorts, and labeling the Bobcats as scrubs. Ever
indefatigable, he says he has plenty of time to change all that.
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A Media Mogul Tries Remote Control The New York Times February 18, 2007 Sunday Correction Appended
''We're still early in this process,'' says Mr. Johnson, whose team has a record and attendance that rank near the
bottom of the league. ''Nobody loses money on an N.B.A. franchise, and I will certainly not be the first.''
BOB JOHNSON has spent at least half his 60 years as a pre-eminent force in African-American pop culture, a
shrewd backstage operator who tied a bow around black celebrity and converted urban music, fashion and comedy into
the cash cow called BET.
While running BET, which he founded in 1980, Mr. Johnson found himself routinely criticized by blacks for
showing racy music videos day and night instead of creating original programs with socially uplifting themes. In Mr.
Johnson's pragmatic view, though, music videos were a television executive's dream: they drew huge audiences and
were cheap to put on the air. He reminded naysayers that the ''E'' in BET stood for ''entertainment,'' not ''education'' or
''enlightenment.''
''My tombstone will read: 'This is the guy who aired rap videos,' '' Mr. Johnson says. ''But you know how I deal
with that? I put it where it belongs, which is in the pretty-much-irrelevant category.''
Many blacks lashed out at Mr. Johnson again when he sold BET to Viacom, a mainstream corporate buyer. Mr.
Johnson, who has blended a surgeon's emotional detachment with an accountant's fixation on the bottom line throughout
his career, seems unaffected by those barbs as well. He says he is aware that some consider him miserly and emotionally disengaged, but he shrugs that off as the price of success.
''I never saw myself as running a family business for family benefit; I always wanted to create businesses that
were built on maximizing shareholder value,'' Mr. Johnson says. ''And my philosophy has always been predicated on the
fact that talented African-Americans ought to be given an opportunity to create real wealth in this country, and that
white Americans have to allow us to get onto the starting blocks.''
For Mr. Johnson, born in Mississippi in 1946 as the ninth of 10 children, the starting block was a grimy factory
basement in Freeport, Ill. His mother and father had jobs at the Burgess Battery plant in Freeport, and Mr. Johnson
worked there as a maintenance worker one summer while attending the University of Illinois at Champaign. According
to ''The Billion Dollar BET,'' an unauthorized account of Mr. Johnson's career by the journalist Brett Pulley, Mr. Johnson clashed often with his superiors and was fired. The boot, though, came with some advice. ''If you're going to get a
job, you better work for yourself,'' his supervisor told him, according to the book. ''Working for other people just doesn't
seem to be your cup of tea because you've got a unique way of how you want to do things.''
After graduation from the University of Illinois, where he met his wife, Sheila Crump (they divorced in 2002), Mr.
Johnson studied public administration at Princeton. The couple moved to Washington in the early 1970s, a time when
the civil rights movement was opening the door to more black voices in the media. Mr. Johnson worked in various public affairs posts before becoming a lobbyist in 1976 for a cable television trade group.
One of the group's board members was John C. Malone, who was in the early stages of turning his company, TeleCommunications Inc., into one of the nation's largest cable companies. Mr. Malone and other cable operators were
scrambling for programming that would give them an edge over traditional network television giants. Mr. Johnson approached Mr. Malone with the idea of creating a cable channel that catered to audiences in cities with large black populations.
''I was like Johnny Appleseed back then, buying up lots of things that fit our model because we needed programming,'' Mr. Malone says. ''It was great that Bob's idea had a positive social element to it, but it also fit my model.''
Mr. Malone jumped at the idea, and in 1979 invested $500,000 for a 20 percent stake in the newly formed BET.
Over the next decade, BET slowly gained traction with black audiences, gradually expanding its air time from a few
hours a day to a full weekly schedule, recruiting major advertisers and lining up other strategic partners like the HBO
unit of Time Inc. BET's gospel programs, black college sports, and black news and music gave the channel a solid
niche.
''We were the unicorn,'' Mr. Johnson says. ''People were surprised we existed.''
In 1991, Mr. Johnson took BET public, making the network the first black-owned company on the New York
Stock Exchange. Mr. Johnson retained 56 percent of the voting power in a company with a market value of $472 million, according to Mr. Pulley's book. Despite that success, BET had doubters. ''I think the public was very cynical about
a black-run and -controlled business,'' Mr. Malone says. ''There were a lot of bodies in the cable industry on the side of
the road. The attitude was, 'Let's give it a shot, but I don't expect it to be successful.' ''
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A Media Mogul Tries Remote Control The New York Times February 18, 2007 Sunday Correction Appended
TO continue attracting larger black audiences without huge investments in content, Mr. Johnson began to rely
more heavily on music videos. After all, with ad rates substantially lower than those of rivals like MTV or VH1, the
notion of creating high-minded original programming was not financially feasible, Mr. Johnson says. But by the early
1990s, gangsta rap music was gaining cultural prominence and its messages were edgier -- and more rife with images of
sex and violence -- than the R&B music that BET had offered earlier. Many adults were offended, but young viewers
loved the stuff.
''Bob took a cold view in responding to the market, and the fact was he just didn't have the financial muscle of an
MTV,'' says the media consultant Willis Smith, whose firm in Durham, N.C., specializes in black television programming. ''He could not afford to offer what many viewers wanted from him. But in the end, he kept BET profitable regardless of what people have said about the quality of his programming.''
Mr. Johnson's most vocal critic was the young black syndicated cartoonist Aaron McGruder, whose ''Boondocks''
comic strip ran in 250 newspapers nationwide and focused on a couple of brothers transplanted to the suburbs from their
inner-city neighborhood. He routinely lampooned BET. One of his most controversial strips featured a woman's round,
nearly nude backside, with text that, among other things, said: ''In order to follow the fine example set by Mr. Johnson,
we present to you, the reader, in the spirit of black uplift -- a black woman's gyrating rear end.''
Some newspapers dropped the strip, and it ignited a public spat between Mr. McGruder and Mr. Johnson. Mr.
Johnson declines to discuss the matter, and Mr. McGruder, who no longer writes the strip, was unavailable for comment.
By the late 1990s, having regained complete control of BET for himself and Mr. Malone through a stock buyback,
Mr. Johnson was ready to move on. The opportunity came when Sumner M. Redstone, the Viacom chairman, offered to
buy him out for $3 billion in 2000.
''A lot of black people were hurt when he sold BET because we have this history where our entrepreneurs are
expected to be emotionally attached to their companies,'' says Alfred Edmond Jr., editor in chief of Black Enterprise
magazine. ''But Bob Johnson has never been one to personalize his relationship to his companies. They are just assets to
him, and he prides himself on being able to drive up their value.''
However much Mr. Johnson has sought to burnish and enlarge his reputation, his ownership of the Bobcats has
resurrected some old criticisms. Like television, the basketball business is driven by ratings, advertisers and talent -- and
so far Mr. Johnson has stumbled, in large part over issues that have haunted him before: customer complaints about
product quality, and accusations of a lack of commitment to the community.
''There has been a feeling here that Bob -- and he is trying to do better -- is this rich dude from Washington, D.C.,
and comes down and buys a franchise and doesn't even show up here much, not even for games,'' says Felix Sabates, a
Charlotte businessman and minority shareholder in the Bobcats. But he expects Mr. Johnson will be successful.
Mark Packer, a local radio host, says: ''In a city like Charlotte, it is important for fans to see the owner, and we
don't see much of Bob Johnson. But even more than that, the product that he is putting on the floor is an inferior product. Over the two and half years he has had this team, he simply hasn't spent enough money to put a winner on the
floor.''
The criticism does not end there. Scott Fowler, a columnist at The Charlotte Observer, wrote recently that ''thousands of people in our area view the Bobcats with resentment or indifference.''
''These folks wouldn't go to uptown Charlotte to watch a Bobcats game if someone handed them free tickets and
pointed to a limousine to take them there,'' he added. That's a hard knock in a sports town where Mr. Johnson's polar
opposite, Jerry Richardson, the white founder of the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League, ferries his fans
around in a golf cart. The owner-as-average-guy touch and the Panthers' success on the field have endeared Mr. Richardson and his team to locals.
ON the afternoon before the charity boxing match, Mr. Johnson sits in a Charlotte eatery, a few blocks from the
Bobcats' yet-to-be-named coliseum, reflecting on the history of black capitalists in America -- a past, he says, that is
painfully slight.
''The fact is, black people do not have much of a history in creating wealth in this country. As a result, we are not
trusted to handle other people's money,'' he says. ''We are valued mostly for our physical talent, our artistic talent and
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A Media Mogul Tries Remote Control The New York Times February 18, 2007 Sunday Correction Appended
maybe our ability to sell to other blacks. But when it comes to building value in companies, or managing the money of
whites, overseeing investments, there has always been this discrimination.''
He shrugs and stabs his crab cake. ''But let's face it, on the other hand, race discrimination gives me a natural public relations advantage. Because of race discrimination, I can get a pat on the back just for being first,'' he says. ''That's
how I get the visibility, the first-mover advantage. That's what I like -- to enter the arena first.''
Mr. Johnson has just returned from Utah, where he attended the Sundance Film Festival in search of opportunities
for Our Stories, a Los Angeles-based film company he started late last year. The trip was bittersweet. While the dearth
of black-oriented films at the festival disappointed him, it also solidified his faith in the prospects for his new venture.
His partner is the indie-movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, whose own new enterprise, the Weinstein Company, will serve
as his distributor. JPMorgan Chase has sunk $175 million into Our Stories.
''What I like about Bob is that he dreams over the horizon when most people can't,'' Mr. Weinstein says. ''This is
about an African-American entrepreneur who is starting a black-owned movie studio because he stepped forward and
had the expertise to pull it together.''
In a sense, the financial model for Our Stories -- tapping the resources of mainstream white investors as a means
of gaining the economic efficiencies afforded by scale -- is how Mr. Johnson has built most of his companies, and it
distinguishes him from most of his African-American counterparts. His private equity fund, for instance, is financed
partly by the Washington-based Carlyle Group, while his hedge fund has backing from Deutsche Bank.
Other black entrepreneurs, like Madame C. J. Walker, the black hair care products maven; Alonzo Herndon,
founder of the Atlanta Life Insurance Company; and John Johnson, the publisher of Ebony and Jet magazines, also
made fortunes in niches selling products aimed at black customers -- but their financial platforms were mostly homegrown and their market visions more narrow. Bankrolled with personal savings or family loans, and powered by social
as well as economic goals, most African-American businesses were passed down to family members with little concern
for outside investors.
There are, of course, exceptions, like Wally Amos, the founder of Famous Amos cookies. ''I knew there were people who would not buy my cookies because I am black,'' says Mr. Amos, who started his company (which is now owned
by Kellogg) in 1975. ''But that was not my problem; it was theirs. To me anybody with a mouth was a potential customer.''
Mr. Johnson says his approach is like that of the late Reginald F. Lewis, the black Harvard Business School gr