Business
When I began my career as a business journalist, I was blessed to have the guidance of tough editors who equipped me with what would eventually develop into a fine-tuned bullshit detector. Many years later, when I switched over to “the dark side,” meaning public relations, my bullshit detector almost immediately went on the fritz, burned out by an overload of fluff speak.
But let’s go back to my early days as a reporter. Perhaps the first lesson my editors taught me was to sniff out misleading information on press releases. For instance, one particular press release noted that a certain company had grown “100%” in the past year. Innocently, I thought that this was a great news peg and went to my editor with the release. He sat me down and explained why this was not necessarily important news. “100% could simply mean that the staff grew from two people to four. It could mean that the company had one office and now has two. Call the contact person back and ask exactly how it was that the company grew.” He was right. There was no story.
Read more: Culture Shock: Moving from Journalism to Public Relations
There's a storm brewing on the horizon. The chances of another financial crisis are gaining intensity.
On one front, we have lenders practically showering companies with billions of dollars in loans. On the other hand, companies are more than eager to take on those loans, especially now that they are dirt cheap and basically free of covenants.
- Written by: Bonnie Bertelson
- Category: Business
“A-tisket, A-tasket, I lost my yellow basket. And if that girlie don't return it, don't know what I'll do” - Ella Fitzgerald (1938)
About 33 miles east of Columbus in Newark, Ohio, sits an empty basket. Tami Longaberger, whose father founded the Longaberger Company, an Ohio-based manufacturer of hand-made goods for the home, lost her yellow basket while leaving the city of Newark holding the bag. (You may remember her from 2005, when George W. Bush appointed her chair of the National Women’s Business Council, or from Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign as co-chair of “Ohio Women for Mitt”.)
- Written by: Deborah Baron
- Category: Business
Dear Boss,
Please accept this as my letter of resignation. I have come to the conclusion that I am ‘not a fit’ for the company. I know that you will file this letter in my file which will then be stored in a cabinet to be moved to a box in a dark room where it will sit until it passes the cut off period and you can legally destroy the record but formality dictates that I submit it to you. It will occupy about 1 millimeter of space in your mind and will be purged as soon as you finish reading it. It would be nice if you absorbed the information but you are too busy so you won’t and let’s be honest, you really don’t care. My position will either be replaced or absorbed. Everyone will move on. Sort of.
- Written by: Curtis W. Long
- Category: Business
The denomination, Puerto Rico evokes a destination rife with abundance. By substituting, Pobre for Rico, it suggests a place of great need. Thus it is currently in Puerto Rico. The small Caribbean island within the U.S. orb is on the verge of bankruptcy.
- Written by: Eric J. Kiser
- Category: Business
"There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it."
~ William Jennings Bryan, 1896
- Written by: Tom Hedges
- Category: Business
No not Coca Cola. No not Cola Coka. If you've never heard of Coca, look it up. It used to be, many, many decades ago, as an additive in the old Coca Cola. Until somebody found out about what it really is. It was put on a Schedule 1 drug list, where it remains today.
- Written by: Patrick Julius
- Category: Business
JDN 2457326
This video is instructive, not as a serious economic policy argument, but as a glimpse into the thought processes of people who support conservative economic policies. It doesn't tell you much of anything about how the world works; but it does tell you about how their minds work.
- Written by: Patrick Julius
- Category: Business
(This is a repost due to a bug that deleted some recent posts.)
JDN 2457285 EDT 18:33.
