Eubie's notes

NY Times: Wages for the average American worker fell last year, after adjusting for inflation – the first such drop in nearly a decade.

American Society of Newspaper Editors: The number of full-time journalists working at daily newspapers continues to fall while the number of minority journalists inched up nearly a half of a percentage point to 13.42 percent in 2004. Since the economic downturn of 2001, newsrooms have lost a net of more than 2,200 journalists while the number of minority journalists has increased.

NY Times: The National Geographic Society is starting a project to reconstruct a genealogy of the world’s populations and the migration paths of early humans from Africa.

National Geographic site

In Wednesday’s WSJ, “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economists Explains the Hidden Side of Everything” was reviewed. The book was written by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.

I’ve never forgotten Dubner’s August 2003 profile of Levitt for the NY Times and his unorthodox exploration of topics such as falling crime rates in the 1990s and inflating of standardized test scores by Chicago teachers and other issues. I wanted to read more about his economic findings after reading the profile. Until now, Levitt’s work has been primarily in academic journals. Now it’s as handy as a bookstore.

The review was by Steven E. Landsburg, an economist and author of “Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Experience.” I want to read that book too, though it will have to wait. “Freakonomics has had good reviews by others too.

There’s also a blog by the authors.

Top 5 stories

Need a sale? Add a little bit of sugar — Sell More, Feb. 28

Stage fright can cost you big bucks in business — Sell More, March 28

Four Missourians among Forbes’ world’s richest people –St. Louis daily, March 11

Winn-Dixie CEO says possible store closings coming — Jacksonville daily, March 17

You often get one opportunity to sell — don’t squander it — Gitomer, March 14

Top 5 Entreprenuer/SalesPower

Entrepreneur — Risk and reward: He felt disenfranchised by cubicle culture. So he started his own business. — March 16

Entrepreneur — Beating Murphy’s law: In his business, what can go wrong, will. His job is to find ways to make it right. — March 18

SalesPower — A living online: He built a business on eBay. — March 21

Entrepreneur — Steady growth: Her business has gone from operating out of a spare bedroom to a $2.25 million concern. — March 1

Entrepreneur — Turning garbage to gold: Her firm grossed more than $20 million last year by knowing garbage. — March 17

Greensboro News & Record profiles Roch Smith Jr., the owner of Charlotte 101 and Greensboro 101, which I did not mention earlier.

In the past, it has been nearly impossible to prove to local advertisers that local people are reading a particular Web site. If Smith can prove to advertisers that those blogs’ readers are local and interested in local products, he’ll have a shot at success.

Tip: Ed Cone, who is a source in the story.

This is a piece from February still worth noting: WSJ — The Blogs Must be Crazy: Or maybe the MSM is just suffering from freedom envy by Peggy Noonan.

Points I liked:

Blogging changes how business is done in American journalism. The MSM isn’t over. It just can no longer pose as if it is The Guardian of Established Truth. The MSM is just another player now. A big one, but a player.

Bloggers, unlike reporters at elite newspapers and magazines, are independent operators. They are not, and do not have to be, governed by mainstream thinking.

Some brilliant rising young reporter with a growing reputation at the Times or Newsweek or Post is going to quit, go into the blogging business, start The Daily Joe, get someone to give him a guaranteed ad for two years, and become a journalistic force. His motive will be influence, and the use of his gifts along the lines of excellence. His blog will further legitimize blogging.

The Business Review of Albany — Rising gas prices don’t slow RV sales

Baltimore Business Journal — Jos. A. Bank says no to kids,’ but maybe to women’s wear

BizDemographics — Norfolk most dependent on government jobs, ACBJ study finds

Charlotte Business Journal — Lowe’s takes NBA over NFL

Cincinnati Business Courier — H-1B backlash: Federal program meant for hard-to-fill jobs, but critics cite company misuse

Denver Business Journal — Federal court ruling hits ‘junk fax’ industry

San Francisco Business Times — Rising economy injects new blood into venerable business clubs

NY Times — ‘Blockbuster’ and ‘The Big Picture’: I Am Large, I Contain Multiplexes: New books by Tom Shone and Edward Jay Epstein describe the seismic change in the way movies are conceived, made and marketed.

Hollywood, like the world of “Terminator 3,” seems on the verge of becoming a self-perpetuating machine, no human participation needed. The audience is obsolete. Large parts of many films are already computer-generated, so flesh-and-blood actors may become extinct too. Movies will be made on microchips and marketed to microchips, while still other microchips tally the profits. And out here in the real world we’ll go back to doing what we did before there were movies. Er, what was that exactly, anyway?

Shone’s book was also used in the February New Yorker article summarized at There’s no business like show business

Wired News: The Need for Feed(s) — “For online newspapers, news aggregators like Google News are a mixed blessing: They can generate big traffic, but maybe they’re also stealing a bit of thunder. Some newspapers are about to fight back with services of their own.”