URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT

1094 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
February 8, 2008 Friday

Late Edition - Final

'An Intolerable Fraud'
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; EDITORIAL; Pg. 18
LENGTH: 573 words
An envelope arrived in our office the other day. It had the bulky, tawdry look of junk mail: pink and lavender Easter eggs, a plastic address window and a photo of a young man in fatigue shorts using crutches to stand on his only leg. ''Thousands of severely wounded troops are suffering,'' it read. ''Will you help them this Easter?''

It was a plea for money from the Coalition to Salute America's Heroes, one of the worst private charities -- but hardly the only -- that have been shamefully milking easy cash from the suffering and heartache caused by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The coalition and its sister organization, Help Hospitalized Veterans, were among a dozen military-related charities given a grade of F in a study last December by the American Institute of Philanthropy, a nonprofit watchdog group. These and other charities have collected hundreds of millions of dollars from kind-hearted Americans and squandered an unconscionable amount of it on overhead and expenses -- 70 percent or 80 percent, or more. The usual administrative outlay for a reputable charity is about 30 percent. Money that donors surely assumed was going to ease the pain and speed the healing of injured soldiers went instead to junk-mail barrages, inflated executive salaries and other forms of corporate-style bloat.

It's all legal. There is very little regulation in the charity game, and if someone like Roger Chapin, the ''nonprofit entrepreneur'' who founded the Coalition to Salute America's Heroes and Help Hospitalized Veterans, wants to mismanage your money, he has great leeway in doing so. His veterans' charities raised more than $168 million from 2004 to 2006, but spent only a pittance -- about 25 percent -- to help veterans. The rest, nearly $125 million, went to fund-raising, administrative expenses, fat salaries and perks. Mr. Chapin gave himself and his wife $1.5 million in salary, bonuses and pension contributions over those three years, including more than $560,000 in 2006. The charities also reimbursed the Chapins more than $340,000 for meals, hotels, entertainment and other expenses, and paid for a $440,000 condominium and a $17,000 golf-club membership.

And what did the soldiers get? Try almost $18.8 million in ''charitable'' phone cards sent to troops overseas in 2006 -- not to let them call their families, but rather to call up a stateside business that sells sports scores.

Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, whose Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has held hearings on the issue and documented the above abuses, has rightly called the conduct of charities like Mr. Chapin's ''an intolerable fraud.''

Mr. Waxman deserves credit for exposing it, but Congress should follow through with stricter oversight and disclosure rules so Americans don't have to rely on House committee hearings to know where their money is being misspent.

Meanwhile, if you happen to get a mailing from the Coalition to Salute America's Heroes, by all means open it. Look the contents over -- the glossy bunny greeting card, the earnest letter from the retired Brig. Gen. Chip Diehl -- then shred or recycle it or both. And think of what Mr. Chapin told the House committee when asked what would happen if his charities ever told donors where their money went.

''If we disclose, which I'm more than happy to do,'' he said, ''we'd all be out of business. Nobody would donate. It would dry up.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: EDITORIALS & OPINIONS (90%); CHARITIES (90%); WAGES & SALARIES (89%); ARMED FORCES (89%); FUNDRAISING (77%); PHILANTHROPY (75%); US DEMOCRATIC PARTY (70%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (69%); PERSONAL FINANCE (68%); EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION (65%); EASTER SEASON (78%); IRAQ WAR (76%)
PERSON: HENRY WAXMAN (51%)
GEOGRAPHIC: CALIFORNIA, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (94%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); IRAQ (56%)
LOAD-DATE: February 8, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Editorial
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

1095 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
February 8, 2008 Friday

Late Edition - Final

Is It Too Late For Yahoo?
BYLINE: By MIGUEL HELFT and BRAD STONE
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1423 words
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO
One of the first questions that Jerry Yang and his top lieutenants pondered after he became chief executive of Yahoo last summer was whether the company could remain independent. They quickly answered yes.

But Mr. Yang, who founded Yahoo along with David Filo in 1995, had a harder time coming up with convincing answers for many of the more complex questions facing the company. How exactly would an independent Yahoo sharpen its focus, shed marginal projects and become a stronger competitor to Google, the runaway leader in online search and advertising?

Mr. Yang, a cerebral, highly analytic executive who, by all accounts, cares deeply about the company he helped build and its workers, appears to have run out of time to answer those questions. A $44.6 billion bid from Microsoft is once again forcing Mr. Yang and his board to consider the viability of Yahoo as an independent company.

This time, Mr. Yang, 39, faces enormous pressure as he decides whether to try to rescue the company from the clutches of Microsoft, or accept the bid and watch Yahoo become part of Microsoft's arsenal in its no-holds-barred brawl with Google.

Some analysts and several current and former Yahoo executives are, meanwhile, wondering whether things would be different had Mr. Yang been quicker at making some of the tough choices that Yahoo faced.

''He came on board, announced a 100-day strategic review and promised there would be no sacred cows,'' said Mark Mahaney, an analyst with Citigroup. ''One hundred days went by, and no cows were slaughtered.''

It took until last week, more than six months into Mr. Yang's tenure, for him to announce that Yahoo would cut 1,000 employees. At the same time, however, Mr. Yang warned investors that he had decided to make larger-than-expected investments in the business. The announcement sent the company's shares down to their lowest level in more than three years, precipitating Microsoft's bid.

''Why couldn't those things be hashed out in the first 100 days?'' Mr. Mahaney asked.

Yahoo declined to make Mr. Yang available for an interview. But other Yahoo executives strongly defended his short tenure, saying Mr. Yang had quickly set priorities and laid out a precise strategy for making Yahoo more competitive.

''We have moved quickly and aggressively to implement our strategy,'' said Hilary Schneider, an executive vice president in charge of Yahoo's network of advertisers and publishers.

By most measures, Mr. Yang is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley history. He helped build Yahoo from an early directory of Web sites into a sprawling Internet giant that offers services from online dating to e-mail that are used by nearly 500 million people around the globe. His wealth is estimated to top $2 billion.

Early on, as Yahoo's business grew, Mr. Yang and Mr. Filo recognized that they did not have the experience to run the company. They called themselves Chief Yahoos and hired others to fill the chief executive post: Tim Koogle and then Terry S. Semel. Mr. Filo worked as an architect of Yahoo's computer systems. Mr. Yang played the role of strategic adviser and represented Yahoo in front of investors and business partners.

Last June, Yahoo investors became increasingly disenchanted with Mr. Semel, as Yahoo struggled to compete with Google in the online search business and faced growing threats from successful social networks like MySpace and Facebook.

Mr. Semel resigned and Mr. Yang was unexpectedly thrust into the chief executive job. He inherited a long list of problems, including a demoralized work force and a company that had grown bureaucratic and cluttered with too many projects.

At the time, Mr. Yang said his years as a Yahoo strategist had prepared him well for the job. And he dismissed speculation that his tenure would be short-lived.

But many Yahoo executives, as well as some of Mr. Yang's friends, say he accepted the job only reluctantly, out of a sense of responsibility and care for his company.

Mr. Yang himself, at times, suggested that some of the burdens of his new role weighed heavily on him. Speaking to Yahoo advertisers at a conference in October, he described the chief executive job as ''lonely.''

''As a founder everybody loves you,'' he said. ''When you become C.E.O., you can tell somewhat the behaviors change.'' He later added: ''You have to make tough calls.''

Mr. Yang is generally well liked by Yahoo's workers, and his appointment helped improve employee morale. He took steps to restore aspects of the company's start-up culture, for example, by being more open about the challenges facing it. He held some meetings with executives in the middle of the cafeteria.

Mr. Yang and Yahoo's president, Susan L. Decker, also moved quickly to hash out a strategy. The two thought that Yahoo's business plan was basically sound but that the company needed to be better managed and had to get out of some businesses that were not vital to its future. They reorganized to make business units more accountable, and they made some acquisitions to build Yahoo's advertising and e-mail technology.

''They have moved faster than they have in the past and focused on increasing the value they provide to the advertiser,'' said David W. Kenny, chief executive of Digitas, an interactive marketing agency that is part of the Publicis Groupe.

Mr. Yang and Ms. Decker also began meeting regularly with an expanding group of top executives in the offices of Stone Yamashita Partners, a consulting firm in San Francisco. According to executives who attended those meetings, Mr. Yang and Ms. Decker were quick to outline Yahoo's top priorities: becoming a starting point for consumers on the Web, developing technology and relationships to sell ads on Yahoo and other Web sites, and opening up Yahoo to outside programmers and publishers.

But to achieve those, Yahoo also had to cut some things. In particular, it had to prune its sprawling Internet portal so that employees could be reassigned to crucial projects.

''You can't place your chips on every spot and every color and every number,'' said Dan Finnigan, an executive vice president who ran Yahoo's HotJobs site and left last year. ''Businesses like travel, shopping, music and even HotJobs were all great products, but none were going to make a huge difference in the fight with Google unless we used them to drive the main search business.''

Many other executives agreed that Yahoo had to focus on fewer things. To stress the point, Mr. Yang invited Steven P. Jobs, Apple's chief executive, to give a pep talk to some 300 Yahoo vice presidents. Mr. Jobs told them that years earlier many Apple insiders wanted the company to compete with Palm's personal digital assistants. Mr. Jobs said he decided against it, and noted that had Apple gone after Palm, it might not have been able to develop the iPod.

But cutting was not easy for Mr. Yang, who choked up in front of employees years ago when Yahoo made its first significant layoffs after the dot-com crash. When a group of executives presented options, he stalled.

''Instead of saying yes or no, there were no decisions,'' said a person who attended many of the meetings. ''These decisions are agonizing for him. It's his caring about the people and the company that make him both great for this job and difficult for the job.''

One top executive countered that Mr. Yang had already shuttered some projects and turned Yahoo into a more efficient company, without jeopardizing profitable businesses.

Some analysts said the only move that could have averted Microsoft's bid was for Yahoo to outsource its search advertising business to Google -- something the company is now considering.

Jordan Rohan, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, noted that this decision would have required Mr. Yang to admit defeat in a critical area. ''It would also have required a sense of urgency that Jerry has not necessarily shown,'' he said.

On Wall Street, patience was running thin. Yahoo shares kept declining, from a high of more than $34 in October to about $24 at the end of the year and a low of $18.58 last week.

''We are still trying to do too many things, and fund them in a way that we need to in order to win,'' said a senior executive who has grown disillusioned with Mr. Yang. ''With the stock at $24 or $25, we'd be having a very different conversation now. But there were decisions made that were naive that have left us in a position where we can't control our destiny.''

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: ENTREPRENEURSHIP (78%); INTERVIEWS (78%); INDUSTRY ANALYSTS (76%); ONLINE MARKETING & ADVERTISING (75%); INTERNET & WWW (75%); ONLINE DATING SERVICES (70%)
COMPANY: GOOGLE INC (57%); MICROSOFT CORP (56%); CITIGROUP INC (54%); YAHOO INC (95%)
TICKER: GOOG (NASDAQ) (57%); GGEA (LSE) (57%); MSFT (NASDAQ) (56%); CGP (LSE) (54%); C (NYSE) (54%); 8710 (TSE) (54%); YHOO (NASDAQ) (95%); YAH (LSE) (92%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS518112 WEB SEARCH PORTALS (95%); SIC8999 SERVICES, NEC (57%); SIC7375 INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SERVICES (95%); NAICS511210 SOFTWARE PUBLISHERS (56%); SIC7372 PREPACKAGED SOFTWARE (56%); NAICS523120 SECURITIES BROKERAGE (54%); NAICS522210 CREDIT CARD ISSUING (54%); NAICS522110 COMMERCIAL BANKING (54%); SIC6021 NATIONAL COMMERCIAL BANKS (54%); NAICS518111 INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS (95%); SIC7373 COMPUTER INTEGRATED SYSTEMS DESIGN (95%); NAICS519130 INTERNET PUBLISHING & BROADCASTING & WEB SEARCH PORTALS (95%); NAICS517110 WIRED TELECOMMUNICATIONS CARRIERS (95%)
PERSON: JERRY YANG (96%)
GEOGRAPHIC: SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, CA, USA (79%) CALIFORNIA, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (79%)
LOAD-DATE: February 8, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: The Yahoo tent at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Microsoft has offered $44.6 billion to buy the company. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBYN BECK/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE)((pg. C5)

Yahoo's chief executive, Jerry Yang, is facing his toughest challenge: whether to keep his company independent. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN G. MABANGLO/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY)(pg. C1)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

1096 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
February 8, 2008 Friday

Late Edition - Final

A New Venture for Jay-Z, on Madison Avenue
BYLINE: By STUART ELLIOTT
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; ADVERTISING; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 1072 words
JAY-Z is a Grammy-winning rapper, a club owner, a clothier, a fledgling hotelier, the part-owner of a basketball team and the former president of a record label. Now, he gets to add adman to his resume.

Jay-Z -- real name, Shawn Carter -- is joining forces with another African-American entrepreneur, Steve Stoute, to open Translation Advertising in New York, an agency that will help marketers reach multicultural consumers.

The new agency will be part of Translation Consultation and Brand Imaging, which has worked for mainstream advertisers like General Motors, Hewlett-Packard, McDonald's and Reebok.

Translation Advertising expects to announce its first clients soon, said Mr. Stoute, who sold Translation Consultation last October for an estimated $10 million to $15 million to the Interpublic Group of Companies in New York.

Interpublic, the third-largest agency company (behind the Omnicom Group and the WPP Group) also owns agencies like Campbell-Ewald, Deutsch, Draft FCB, GolinHarris, R/GA and Universal McCann. Interpublic and Translation Consultation share clients like the Chevrolet division of G.M.

Interpublic will own 49 percent of Translation Advertising. The majority stake will be owned by Mr. Stoute, 37, and Jay-Z, 38, who will be the co-chairmen.

''You know his story,'' Mr. Stoute said of his new partner, who grew up in the Marcy Projects in Brooklyn. ''He came from nothing and turned it into something before our eyes.''

Mr. Carter, in a telephone interview, said he considered his involvement in an agency ''part of the natural growth'' of his career.

''As an artist, you make music,'' Mr. Carter said. ''And if you see people who don't know how to market your music, you get involved in it.''

Otherwise, what you want to accomplish ''gets lost in translation,'' he added, ''no pun intended.''

Mr. Carter was referring to his work first at Roc-A-Fella Records and later at Def Jam Recordings. Mr. Carter stepped down last month as president at Def Jam, part of the Universal Music Group.

''He left his day job at Def Jam; he has to do something,'' Mr. Stoute said, laughing.

The Interpublic venture, which is to be announced on Friday, is indicative of the intensifying interest on Madison Avenue in minority consumers.

One reason is the growth of the African-American, Hispanic and Asian-American populations in the United States, which together account for an estimated $2 trillion in consumer buying power.

Another is the increasing influence of minority consumers on the general market, by setting trends and influencing buying decisions in categories like apparel, automobiles, beverages, food, music and sports.

For instance, think back to the commercials that appeared nationally on Sunday during the Super Bowl, the biggest night of the year for advertising.

A spot for Diet Pepsi Max featured musicians like Missy Elliott, Macy Gray, LL Cool J and Busta Rhymes. Naomi Campbell danced in a commercial for SoBe Life Water to a song by Michael Jackson.

Another Super Bowl spot, for Bud Light, was centered on the comedian Carlos Mencia. And the basketball players Charles Barkley, Shaquille O'Neal and Dwyane Wade appeared in commercials for T-Mobile and Vitaminwater.

Some advertisers already believe there is no longer ''a so-called general market,'' said Lisa Skriloff, president at Multicultural Marketing Resources, a consulting company in New York, but rather a coalition or collection of diverse consumer groups.

''It's especially true for companies doing business in 'minority majority' states'' like California and Texas, she added.

Despite those demographic and cultural changes, Ms. Skriloff said, estimates are that ads aimed at minority consumers account for less than 4 percent of the total ad spending in the United States.

''There are major advertisers that are still not getting it, that don't have anyone in-culture helping them, in the company or at an agency,'' she added, while others ''are afraid of missteps, afraid they will do the wrong thing.''

That apprehension is not totally unfounded.

''There are people who don't understand the culture,'' Jay-Z said, citing as an example a commercial for a wireless carrier ''that shows guys break-dancing in the phone store.''

''It's just not something we do,'' he added dryly.

''We go into the stores and want the same thing as everyone else,'' Jay-Z said, adding: ''We may care about the style of the phone a little bit more, but we want our phone to work. We care about the functionality.''

Mr. Stoute described multicultural consumers as ''a very loyal audience if you come to them in the right way -- if you speak to them, and not speak down to them.''

Interpublic owns 49 percent stakes in several agencies that specialize in multicultural marketing to primarily Hispanic and Asian-American consumers, among them Accentmarketing, the IW Group and Siboney USA.

But Interpublic has not been represented in the multicultural/African-American realm for several years, since selling a 49 percent stake in an agency named GlobalHue back to its managers.

''It's all part of the integrated-offering approach,'' said Michael I. Roth, the chairman and chief executive at Interpublic -- integrated not in a racial way but in a marketing way, providing clients with a multitude of advertising services that ''we can bring to the table all at once,'' Mr. Roth said.

Jay-Z is not the only urban entertainment figure to become involved in advertising.

Spike Lee leads an agency, Spike DDB, that is part of the DDB Worldwide division of Omnicom. And Damon Dash has announced the start-up of BlockSavvy.com, an interactive ad agency and social-networking Web site.

''If we sit in a room,'' Mr. Carter said, ''and offer our ideas of how to reach consumers, how to speak to them -- and this is not a cocky statement -- put us up against anything, and we'll win our fair share of battles.''

Mr. Carter said his role at Translation Advertising would be to offer his creative and entrepreneurial ideas. Mr. Stoute described it as not ''day-to-day operations'' but rather ''using his eye, his taste, his understanding of the culture.''

''As an owner of the New Jersey Nets, he's not coaching,'' Mr. Stoute said of Mr. Carter.

Mr. Carter's work as an endorser in ads will be independent of what he does for Translation Advertising. He has appeared as part of campaigns for brands like Hewlett-Packard and Reebok.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: MARKETING & ADVERTISING (90%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING AGENCIES (90%); RAP MUSIC (89%); HIP HOP CULTURE (89%); MUSIC INDUSTRY (89%); MINORITY BUSINESSES (89%); AFRICAN AMERICANS (89%); SPORTS TEAM OWNERSHIP (78%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (78%); ENTERTAINMENT & ARTS AWARDS (78%); CLOTHING & ACCESSORIES STORES (78%); APPOINTMENTS (77%); INTERVIEWS (77%); HISPANIC AMERICANS (76%); AUTOMAKERS (75%); FAST FOOD (75%); BASKETBALL (78%); SPORTS (73%); RESUMES & CURRICULA VITAE (89%)
COMPANY: OMNICOM GROUP INC (84%); INTERPUBLIC GROUP OF COS INC (85%); HEWLETT-PACKARD CO (57%); GENERAL MOTORS CORP (57%); WPP GROUP PLC (56%); LINTAS: CAMPBELL-EWALD (56%); UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP (55%); CAMPBELL-EWALD (57%); UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP INTERNATIONAL LTD (52%); WPP PLC (56%)

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