AP Hires Worst CEO in Newspaper Industry

Ouch.

The Associated Press hired the worst CEO in the newspaper industry as its 13th chief executive. Its board of directors should be ashamed, as should anyone who works at the news company. Gary Pruitt, the head of McClatchy NYSE: MNI, will move to the AP after destroying the newspaper chain he has run. He will move on with his former firm still in tatters.

Pruitt became the CEO of McClatchy in 1996. The chain took on about $2 billion in debt, a great deal of it to buy rival Knight Ridder for $4.6 billion in 2006. In 2009, it teetered close to bankruptcy. A restructuring of obligations saved it, for a while at least. McClatchy is in financial trouble again. Pruitt leaves for the AP just in time to avoid leading McClatchy as it heads toward a new crisis.Pruitt has decided to leave his company, and its shareholders, at a time when they are in great peril, again.

After his AP appointment, Pruitt said, “The Associated Press is the most important news organization in the world and an essential force in democracy.’ That it true. As such, it deserves a better leader.

via AP Hires Worst CEO in Newspaper Industry – 24/7 Wall St..

Nighttime bad weather and accidents

The commute has been a challenge the past few mornings, with several accidents making a mess of the roads. I can’t help but think that perhaps the many nights of slow-moving thunderstorms have been disturbing people’s sleep and making them more prone to accidents. The weather at the time of many of these wrecks is fine, so you can’t say it’s due to road conditions.

Of course, there are a million distractions confronting today’s driver, so it’s hard to say for sure if there’s one cause. Certainly a restless night caused by thunderstorms can’t be good for one’s concentration the next day!

Little Raleigh Radio’s board meets

Little Raleigh Radio


We had the first meeting of the board of directors for Little Raleigh Radio last night and, in a fit of insanity on the board’s part, I was elected chair. I stressed that it was an interim position until we get more board members and I sort out how much time I have to devote to it.

I’m excited about the progress, though. It’s a good team and last night’s meeting was very productive. We can certainly get this done, and before we know it a new station will be on the air from downtown Raleigh.

Equal pay doesn’t exist

Shortly after my employer at the time imploded and closed up shop, I got to talking to one of my former coworkers. He and I had done the very same job. We were peers and had similar qualifications. Somehow, though, he was getting paid about 40% more than I was! Losing my job smarted, of course, but finding out how I was getting screwed really added insult to injury.

I think about that experience whenever debate comes up about how women should be the paid the same as men for doing the same work. The truth is that almost no one gets paid the same as anyone else. Your boss will pay you whatever amount she thinks you’ll accept, you’ll work for whatever amount you’ll accept, and rarely will anyone else be the wiser.

In today’s workforce, with nearly all gender barriers gone, women and men are now equals. That means women workers can now be as grossly undervalued or overpaid as their male counterparts.

Home sales are hopping

Home For Sale


I’ve been watching from my window this afternoon as car after car of prospective homebuyers drive through my neighborhood. A few days ago I Tweeted that nearly every home that’s been on the market in my East Raleigh neighborhood have been snapped up within the past few weeks. Some of these homes were vacant for many months and now they’re occupied. It’s been stunning to see how quickly things have taken off again.

The News and Observer reported last week that home sales in the Triangle have jumped 35% over last year. My real estate agent friends have confirmed the brisk sales. It’s great to see all the new neighbors coming to Raleigh!

Digiboo DVD download kiosks

Movie Booth DVD download kiosk


Remember last year when I spied that intriguing DVD download kiosk in the Seattle airport? Looks like it is similar to the kiosk service put together by a startup company called Digiboo, according to a news story today.

The rental service, from Santa Monica, Calif.-based Digiboo, is being introduced at a time when consumers are shifting away from movie rentals to online movie streaming. Whether the Digiboo kiosks mark the next evolution in watching video, or just another dead end like the Betamax VCR, they illustrate the enduring allure of the movies even as technology morphs them into new forms.

[snip]

The first kiosks were installed at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Next up: the Seattle and Portland airports, Thomas said. If the concept is successful, thousands of kiosks will be put in a variety of public places, he said.

I thought initially today that the booth I saw might have been a Digiboo booth but the article seems to indicate that Digiboo hasn’t been installed at the Seattle airport after all.

I guess the mystery remains as to who owns the DVD download kiosk at SEATAC.

Update 12:10 PM: I did a little Google sleuthing and believe the “Movie Booth” kiosk I saw was from a company called LightSpeed Cinema in Los Angeles. I found one press release from December 2008 that mentions that LightSpeed Cinema is Santa Monica-based, as is Digiboo. Are these companies one and the same? I’m guessing they are and the DVD kiosk I saw in Seattle is an early Digiboo model.

Here’s Digiboo’s website. Also, this press release offers more details on the company.

Ides of March

It was mid-March when I first arrived in North Carolina 29 years ago. Charlotte was still small town and a New Yorker named Jimmy Valvano had just coached his team to the national championship. I was a 14 year old kid moving from Columbia, South Carolina and North Carolina seemed to be an exciting place, a great place to grow.

I attended Quail Hollow Junior High School, where I was one of the AV kids who worked the camera during homeroom for principal Charlie Daniels’s morning broadcast throughout the school. I also got elected to the student council during my junior year at South Meck High School.
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A high bar for refinancing

Kelly and I recently decided to jump on the recent (and absurdly low) 4% mortgage rates and started the process to refinance our home. Though we have sterling credit, this is the third home we’ve owned, and would be our fifth mortgage, by the hoops we’ve had to jump through you’d have thought we were clueless about the whole process.

Certainly this isn’t the go-go 2000s, when I could buy a house without having a job (while erroneously having my brother’s mortgage on my credit report, too!), but the due diligence of the mortgage broker has been remarkable. We’ve had an appraisal of the house done, supplied far more financial documentation than ever, and had employment verification calls done on our behalf. I was even asked about a business the former owner of our home used to have here, possibly because it showed up on some report.

While the one we’ve been working with has been pleasant throughout the process, it seems mortgage brokers are going out of their way to make this as challenging as possible. It made Kelly ponder that if we have great credit and it’s this hard for us to get a loan, just who exactly are they lending money to?

Creepy guy at Chik-Fil-A playground

A friend who’s a parent told me of an incident that happened yesterday at the newly-opened Chik-Fil-A at Cameron Village. While the kids played at the restaurant’s playground they were joined by a man who played with the kids but didn’t seem to have a kid of his own in the mix. After watching the man for a bit, my friend realized the man was intoxicated and continually tried to engage the kids. When the kids eventually moved on, the man would take a break and smoke a cigarette before approaching whatever new kids showed up.

After an hour of watching this guy my friend alerted the restaurant’s manager, who then asked the man to leave. They guy was looked much like a frat boy would, only older. He was a white male in his upper 20s wearing a button-down shirt and backwards baseball cap.

Keep an eye on your kids at all times, folks.