Eubie's notes

NY Times: For Wallflowers, a Time to Dance — Clear Channel is the latest media company to be swept up by private equity, in a trend that could raise new regulatory concerns.

Wired News: Kevin Mitnick’s Security Advice — The hacker-turned-security consultant shares his best tips for securing your desktop against internet villains.

NY Times: Step 1 in Starting a Small Business: Hire a Lawyer — When starting a business, even the most sophisticated of businesspeople find that they need a lawyer to guide them through the most basic of decisions.

NY Times: Stolen Lives: Identity Thief Is Often Found in Family Photo — Though most victims never learn who stole their identities, half of those who do say the thief was a family member, a friend or neighbor.

Washington Post: Caught in the Web — A few months ago, it wasn’t unusual for 47-year-old Carla Toebe to spend 15 hours per day online. She’d wake up early, turn on her laptop and chat on Internet dating sites and instant-messaging programs — leaving her bed for only brief intervals. Her household bills piled up, along with the dishes and dirty laundry, but it took near-constant complaints from her four daughters before she realized she had a problem….

For Toebe, the “addiction” ended when she found others, including a boyfriend.

NY Times: Health Disparities Persist for Men, and Doctors Ask Why — From diabetes to flu to AIDS, almost every disease kills men sooner than women, causing some to ask: Is men?s health getting short shrift?

NY Times: As Older Students Return to Classrooms an Industry Develops — Continuing education ? noncredit classes taken after formal education ? is booming among the older set and is now a $6 billion business.

Also: Free educations classes — Yale Video Lecture www.yale.edu

NY Times: Brands Produce Their Own Shows — More marketers are creating their own TV shows in the hopes of endearing viewers to the brands behind them.

MediaWeek: Time Mag: Buy by Audience or by Slashed Rate Base — Time magazine announced late today that it will implement sweeping changes to the way it sells advertising. Rather than the standard sale of ad pages by circulation, the newsweekly will offer media buyers either a dramatically reduced rate base of 3.25 million (a drop of 750,000) or an audience-based model (of 19.5 million readers per issue) that emulates the television selling process. The magazine will be the first publisher ever to make use of MRI’s new Issue Accumulation Study as a foundation for this new sales approach.

Wired News: Gannett to Crowdsource News — The initiative emphasizes four goals: Prioritize local news over national news; publish more user-generated content; become 24-7 news operations, in which the newspapers do less and the websites do much more; and finally, use crowdsourcing methods to put readers to work as watchdogs, whistle-blowers and researchers in large, investigative features.. Also Editor and Publisher: Gannett to Revamp All Newsrooms for New Age and Washington Post: Gannett To Change Its Papers’ Approach