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URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT: ELECTRIC POWER PLANTS (90%); DIESEL FUEL (90%); FOSSIL FUEL POWER PLANTS (90%); DEVELOPING COUNTRIES (90%); WATER POLLUTION (89%); RENEWABLE ENERGY (89%); RURAL COMMUNITIES (89%); SOLAR ENERGY (89%); DIESEL FUEL PRICES (78%); AIR POLLUTION (78%); EMISSIONS (78%); HYDROELECTRIC POWER (77%); INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (77%); ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT (76%); ENERGY DEMAND (76%); BIOMASS (76%); GLOBAL WARMING (75%); PRICE INCREASES (75%); AIR QUALITY (74%); HYDROELECTRIC POWER GENERATION (72%); ELECTRICITY TRANSMISSION & DISTRIBUTION (71%); CONSUMER ELECTRONICS REPAIR (71%); INTERNATIONAL ASSISTANCE (70%); UNITED NATIONS INSTITUTIONS (68%); DAMS & RESERVOIRS (63%) Electric Light and Power; Television; Diesel Power; Air Pollution; Prices (Fares, Fees and Rates); Rural Areas; Third World and Developing Countries; Electric Light and Power COMPANY: CNINSURE INC (93%) ORGANIZATION: INTERNATIONAL ENERGY AGENCY (59%); UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME (55%) International Energy Agency TICKER: CISG (NASDAQ) (93%) PERSON: Keith Bradsher GEOGRAPHIC: NEW DELHI, INDIA (79%) NORTHEAST INDIA (92%); SOUTH CHINA (78%); PONDICHERRY, INDIA (56%) INDIA (97%); CHINA (94%); ASIA (92%); NEPAL (79%); AFRICA (79%); SOUTH EAST ASIA (79%) China; India LOAD-DATE: January 9, 2007 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH SERIES: THE ENERGY CHALLENGE: Global Warming Frontiers GRAPHIC: Photos: A generator, above, fueled in part by biomass in Baharbari, India, and, below, biogas production units in the village of Pondicherry. (Photographs by Scott Eells for The New York Times)(pg. C1) Ranvir Kumar Mandel, 22, built a bamboo hut in Baharbari to serve as a television repair shop. Before diesel generators, TV was not possible. Rice, jute and dhaincha fields in the village of Baharbari. Dhaincha, a weed that grows 10 feet tall in just four months, is a source of biomass. (Photographs by Scott Eells for The New York Times)(pg. C7)Map of India highlighting Baharbari.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company 1235 of 1258 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final For Journalists, Politics Not as Usual BYLINE: By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE SECTION: Section C; Column 2; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1 LENGTH: 1367 words DATELINE: ROSSLYN, Va. The newsroom of The Politico, the (mostly) online news venture starting publication in two weeks, looks like a typical one -- reporters tap on computers at adjacent desks while banks of televisions hum overhead. But unlike a standard daily newspaper, The Politico will be devoted to a single topic: national politics. Another big difference: It is hiring. As many newspapers across the country are cutting their staffs and trimming back on Washington coverage, The Politico is finding younger journalists and some veterans -- including John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei from The Washington Post, Mike Allen from Time magazine and Roger Simon from Bloomberg News -- who are willing to leave the once-secure confines of traditional print to join a start-up. ''It seems riskier to stay in print than to go to something new,'' said Ben Smith, 30, a reporter for The Daily News in New York, who will be writing a blog for The Politico about the 2008 presidential campaign. If The Politico succeeds, it could signal that the Web has become a more plausible alternative for mainstream journalists. (Most bloggers offer their Web logs free, and rare is the site that pays reporters to create original content.) But there are skeptics who say that the focus of The Politico is too narrow and that the marketplace too crowded with sources of political news, from sites like RealClearPolitics.com to scores of other publications, including newspapers and their Web sites. Partisans, especially, feast on sites that affirm their views; The Politico says it will be nonpartisan. The Politico, financed by Allbritton Communications and based here in suburban Washington in a glassy tower that once housed Gannett, has smoothed the transition for print journalists with handsome salaries, though no one is talking exact figures. Its publisher, Robert L. Allbritton, 37, scion of the banking and media family that once owned the defunct Washington Star, said in an interview that he would finance The Politico for ''the foreseeable future'' and has committed to paying for expensive campaign travel. He has hired a staff of about 50 people, almost half of them journalists. ''Newspapers have to be all things to all people,'' Mr. Allbritton said. ''On the Internet, there is no one site that delivers everything. It's broken down into mini-mini-subdivisions of interests and they attract people who are passionately interested in one subject.'' Mr. Allbritton also said he has no political agenda and is in the business because it could be profitable; if Google or some other entity eventually wanted to buy it, he said, ''that would be great,'' but that it is not part of his business plan. (He had briefly considered buying The Hill last year, but declined; the asking price was a reported $40 million.) He is best known for following his father, Joe L. Allbritton, as chief executive of the Riggs Bank, which was sold in 2004 after a Senate investigation found that Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the late Chilean dictator, had kept millions of dollars in secret accounts at Riggs. Robert Allbritton has been chairman and chief executive of Allbritton Communications, which owns television stations in Washington and a half dozen other markets, since 2001. He predicted that The Politico would start turning a profit in less than five years, from advertising in all of its incarnations -- on the Web, with its own television program and in a limited print edition, with 30,000 copies three days a week while Congress is in session and one day a week when Congress is in recess. The Politico will be free for readers, both online and in print. It is hoping to attract the kind of advertisers that already pay to be in other publications aimed at Washington -- chiefly, political advocacy groups that are trying to influence Congress, as well as local businesses. One of the few models for what The Politico is trying to do might be Inside.com, a media-oriented Web site that tried to branch into print and conferences. It started in 2000 with venture capital backing and it, too, attracted well-known journalists eager for the promise of riches and fame from the Web. Alas, it vanished almost two years later after the dot-com bust. ''We were ahead of our time,'' said Kurt Andersen, one of the founders of Inside.com and now a contributing editor at New York magazine. He said The Politico had an advantage because ''there is now this huge online ad sales culture.'' ''But,'' he added, ''you wonder, with this narrowly defined, very Washington-centric political focus, no matter how great it is, what is the size of that audience? You can be the best, but if it doesn't have a gigantic audience, advertisers won't be interested.'' Mr. Harris, 43, who left his job as political editor of The Post to become editor in chief of The Politico, said the site would distinguish itself with lively writing, scoops, video and behind-the-scenes reporting from the campaign trail. The goal, he said, is not to steal audiences from other publications but for The Politico to become part of their routine as they surf the entire multimedia landscape. And as they surf, Politico reporters will pop up everywhere. The Politico is planning its own regular half-hour program on Allbritton's 24-hour cable news service, Channel 8, which reaches 1.1 million viewers in the region. Its reporters are to appear on CBS News programs. And The Politico is planning a five-minute daily segment in the late afternoon on WTOP, Washington's all-news radio station. And unlike many old-school newspapers, The Politico is encouraging its reporters to promote their work elsewhere. Mr. Allen, 42, who covered the White House for Time, will continue to write a column for Time's print version. Mr. Simon, 58, The Politico's chief political columnist, said that he had arranged for his Politico column to be syndicated in newspapers across the country. ''The most successful journalists these days have a promotional ethic that would be uncomfortable for a traditional journalist,'' Mr. Harris said. ''I admire those people who say, 'I don't want to go on TV; my work speaks for itself,' but I don't think that's realistic for people who want to have an impact.'' Mr. VandeHei, 35, who left his job as a national political correspondent at The Post to become The Politico's executive editor, said he initially had some concern that sources whom reporters had developed at other papers might not follow them to The Politico. ''Yes, it was easier to get someone on the phone because I worked for The Post,'' he said, ''but I can count on one hand the number of stories that were leaked to me because I worked at The Post. Reporters here will transcend the organization.'' That investment in the individual over the organization is relatively new for print journalists, emerging more as the Web has increasingly offered alternatives and newspapers have hit economic turbulence. While The Post, for example, has been investing in its Web site, advertising revenue at its print edition fell by 11 percent in the third quarter last year compared with the previous year, and circulation was down more than 3 percent. Last year, 170 people, including 70 in the newsroom, took buyouts and left the paper. ''Allbritton has created a lot of excitement,'' said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, an affiliate of the Pew Research Center. ''At a time when people in journalism feel frustrated that newsrooms are shrinking and their horizons are shrinking, this is a sign of a new economic model of a specialized site, where journalists can be entrepreneurial.'' Michael Kinsley, the founding editor of Slate.com, said it was a positive sign that mainstream journalists were signing up to work for The Politico. When Slate.com started in 1996, he said, ''you couldn't get anyone from the establishment.'' But he questioned whether The Politico could carve out a niche for itself in a world glutted with political news. ''I'm thinking, 'God, I can't keep up with it all,' '' he said. ''But, then again, I would have thought there was no more room for another Starbucks in Dupont Circle, and there always is.''
The Washington press corps as it looked in the 1950s, above. Now, journalists for The Politico, top, will cover politics online as well as on television and in print. (Photo by George Tames/The New York Times) (Photo by Ken Cedeno for The New York Times)(pg. C1)
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company 1236 of 1258 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final Requiem for a Bookstore SECTION: Section A; Column 4; Editorial Desk; Pg. 18 LENGTH: 56 words To the Editor: Re ''A Princeton Maverick Succumbs to a Cultural Shift'' (Arts pages, Jan. 3): A society that squelches independent bookstores deprives itself of exactly what this country was founded to encourage: open expression, entrepreneurship, neighborhood and respect for individual choice. Mary B. Caskey Rockford, Ill., Jan. 3, 2007 URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT: LETTERS & COMMENTS (90%); EDITORIALS & OPINIONS (86%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (83%); BOOKSTORES (90%); BOOK REVIEWS (87%); LITERATURE (87%) Books and Literature; Book Trade; Shutdowns (Institutional) PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (74%) Mary B Caskey GEOGRAPHIC: ILLINOIS, USA (65%) UNITED STATES (65%) LOAD-DATE: January 8, 2007 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH DOCUMENT-TYPE: Letter PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company 1237 of 1258 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final A Teacher After All BYLINE: By JULIA A. STEWART; As told to Claudia H. Deutsch. SECTION: Section 3; Column 4; Money and Business/Financial Desk; OFFICE SPACE: THE BOSS; Pg. 8 LENGTH: 699 words BOTH my parents were teachers, and they saw teaching as the noblest profession. They never thought their only daughter would end up running a business. And it took a long time before they were proud of me for doing so. I was born in Visalia, Calif., in the middle of a farming community in the San Joaquin Valley. My mom taught physical education, and I grew up with this sense that you have to take care of your body as well as your mind. Snacking meant fruits and vegetables; steamed vegetables were a way of life; and if you ate ice cream on Sunday, you made sure to exercise more on Monday. My dad did his four-year Army stint as a trainer, then got his teaching credentials and taught high school and, later, college. He tried selling Reader's Digest books in Salt Lake City, but he really missed teaching. A year later, we were back in California and he was teaching again. He taught American history and civics, and his hope was that I would be a teacher and maybe even run for office. Back then it was unusual to be an only child, and it was unusual to have a working mom. They didn't spoil me, but they took me to the theater and other places my friends' parents could not afford. I was proud that both my parents were teachers, and I always wanted to emulate them. I remember, even when I was very young, my father would teach me a new word every morning, and make me promise to use it at least four times that day. And even when I didn't have homework, if they were working on lesson plans, I'd read a book or write a report. My parents divorced when I was in the seventh grade, and I spent most of my high school years living with my father. Money was tight, and when I was 15 I got a job serving food at a local IHOP, then later busing tables at a fancy steakhouse. I loved the hospitality business, and I slowly lost any desire to be a teacher. I remember going to class with my mom, seeing how unruly the kids were and thinking, ''This is so much effort for so little money.'' I got a scholarship to the University of California at Santa Barbara, but I wasn't happy there. It was 1973; students were concentrating more on protesting than education. So I transferred to San Diego State. I still had an idea I should teach, so I compromised in a sense: I was pre-med, majoring in pathology audiology, and I was going to be a speech therapist. But it was all so regimented; they seemed to think there was just one way to teach speech. One of my professors persuaded me to sit in on a couple of communications classes, and I got hooked. I switched my major to marketing communications. I figured as a businesswoman, I could still educate and transfer knowledge, but I'd make a better living. My parents were incredibly disappointed. My father kept shaking his head, saying, ''We raised you to believe that money isn't the most important thing.'' I said, ''It's not, but I want to make a better living than you made.'' When I graduated I got a marketing job at Braniff Management, and later at Applebee's and at Taco Bell. And my dad kept saying, ''Julia, you're going to eventually leave this rat race and teach, right?'' I kept trying to explain that managing was teaching, too. But he wouldn't buy it. So, one day, when I was a zone vice president at Taco Bell, I invited him to shadow me while I worked. We went to a Taco Bell, and he listened to me give advice, do some coaching, talk to the staff about how they dealt with customers. We went to another, and he heard me talk to them about their internal systems. He'd hear me call each one by name, talk to them about their futures. And he'd see them beam when I praised them. When the day was over, we went for a cocktail, and finally he said, ''You do teach, you do coach, and I really am proud of you.'' My dad died three years ago, but I still tear up when I talk about this. I'm so glad that he realized that I did find my passion, just as he had found his.
Chairwoman and C.E.O. of IHOP BIRTH DATE Aug. 4, 1955 HOME Pasadena. Calif. ''I can see the Rose Bowl games from my backyard.'' HOBBIES Cooking, especially roast lamb with a homemade rub, and wine, especially Harlan cabernet from California. URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT: TEACHING & TEACHERS (90%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (89%); STUDENTS & STUDENT LIFE (78%); WORKING MOTHERS (78%); PHYSICAL EDUCATION (78%); TEACHING MATERIALS & MEDIA (78%); EXERCISE & FITNESS (78%); AUDIOLOGY (69%); HISTORY (67%); RESTAURANTS (66%); HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY (61%); PRIMARY & SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS (90%); COLLEGE & UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS (78%); SPEECH THERAPY (60%) Restaurants; Biographical Information COMPANY: READER'S DIGEST DEUTSCHLAND (56%); READER'S DIGEST NV-SA (56%); READER'S DIGEST PTY LTD (56%) PERSON: Julia A Stewart; Claudia H Deutsch GEOGRAPHIC: SAN DIEGO, CA, USA (79%); SALT LAKE CITY, UT, USA (79%) CALIFORNIA, USA (94%); UTAH, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (94%) LOAD-DATE: January 7, 2007 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH GRAPHIC: Photo: JULIA A. STEWART PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company 1238 of 1258 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final So Many Millions, So Little Body Armor BYLINE: By BEN STEIN. Ben Stein is a lawyer, writer, actor and economist. E-mail: ebiz@nytimes.com. SECTION: Section 3; Column 1; Money and Business/Financial Desk; EVERYBODY'S BUSINESS; Pg. 3 LENGTH: 1131 words THE current state of corporate ethics, and the governmental and public policy response to that state, are so bewildering, so upsetting, so impossible to understand except in terms of the famous phrase, ''Follow the money,'' that it makes my poor old head spin. Start with Steven P. Jobs. This worthy gentleman is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in history. Avatar of Apple, potentate of Pixar, recalled to be the savior of Apple, he is a genius at technology and finance. He's been well rewarded for it, with a fortune in the hundreds of millions, if not billions. Apparently that was not quite enough. Recent reporting tells that in the period from about 1998 to about 2002, Mr. Jobs helped to choose the dates for some stock option grants in the form of backdating. That's where you -- if you're a big wheel at a corporation -- get to choose the date and price of the options after you have seen when the yearly low was and seen how much recipients could make starting the options from times earlier on the calendar than the dates when the awards were actually awarded. It's sort of like getting to pick lottery numbers after the winning numbers are drawn -- and your stockholders supply the prize money. Not only did Mr. Jobs benefit after his company did that with millions of stock options for his own self, but company records showed that the board (of which he is a member, of course) ratified that grant at a special meeting in October 2001. The problem is, an internal investigation has now concluded that there was no such meeting on that date. It simply never happened. It was totally made up. That is, the options were awarded in a highly unethical way and then condoned -- if I may use that term -- in a way that would make John Dillinger blush. Wait. It gets much better. After all of this happened, a special subcommittee of the Apple directors was convened, led by that pillar of rectitude who is trying to save us from the evil oil companies and coal miners, none other than the founder of the Internet himself, Al Gore, and by a colleague who is another bedrock of rectitude, Jerome B. York, late of trying to save General Motors for the benefit of Kirk Kerkorian. The special committee found that despite the fact that the date of Mr. Jobs's stock options was chosen ex post facto, that it was ratified by that made-up meeting, and that he later traded in those options, and some others, for five million shares of restricted stock (then worth more than $70 million), he was innocent of any wrongdoing and the board still had full confidence in him. Yes. I am not making this up. Now there is an investigation into backdating of options at Pixar, the animation studio, when Mr. Jobs was running it, although the evidence so far is that the backdating did not help him directly. We'll see. It pays to have some skepticism in these matters. So now add Apple and Pixar to about 130 other large companies where backdating -- which is wildly unethical self-dealing, with powerful tax and accounting issues and possible criminal implications -- has been found. And note that in all the main cases, backdating was not found until much later by some very smart academic sleuths and gifted newspaper reporters. And now let's look at the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, a k a the Paulson committee. It's the group of academic and finance worthies that was sponsored informally by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and studied the harsh burdens under which the corporate pooh-bahs and Wall Street chieftains labored. Recently, that group, along with many others of the hired intelligentsia of the management class, came out with their report that said that the Sarbanes-Oxley law was too strict on corporate America, and was hurting Wall Street by making companies register and do their initial public stock offerings in Europe. (Quelle horreur!) In particular, Sarbanes-Oxley was supposedly too strict in requiring audits of internal controls. This was supposedly a painful, unnecessary burden in a world where a corporate boss's word is his bond and the word of any corporate boss is worth more than all the bonds in Christendom. And the Sarbanes-Oxley section on internal controls was supposedly cruelly tormenting Wall Street to the detriment of the whole world of decent people. But hold on. Isn't backdating precisely an example of a failure of internal controls? Haven't we just found out that internal controls are far too lax, not too strict? For the Paulson committee to say that we need less stringency in corporate audits is a bit like the War Department saying we needed less watchfulness at our naval bases after Dec. 7, 1941. It's also a bit like Willie Sutton saying it would be good as a matter of national financial policy to have fewer guards at banks. The amazing thing is that intelligent people are taking it seriously, this matter of rolling back corporate controls to make life even easier for misbehaving corporate wheeler-dealer types. What's more amazing is that anyone is even thinking of rolling back corporate controls to make life richer for Wall Street. The Street just finished paying out tens of billions in bonuses -- even as the Army and Marines are so starved for money that untrained soldiers are sent to Iraq because there is not enough equipment to properly train them first. There is an acute shortage of Ferraris because of those bonuses, and there is a long waiting list for Lurssen yachts. But somehow, we are supposed to feel bad for Wall Street and for the class that has wrought so much mischief at the corporate helm, most recently with backdating. But no committees of powerful corporate leaders and academicians are at work computing the moral and mortal costs of starving the Army and Marines of the equipment and training they need to do their jobs with minimal loss of life. What a world -- where smart people worry about helping those suffering from a shortage of Ferraris, but hardly anyone outside the Pentagon notices the shortage of lifesaving equipment for the soldiers fighting our wars. WHERE is the outcry? Where is the rage? It's not a partisan thing. The Democrats are just as complaisant about this as the Republicans. Have the leaders of both parties and the boys at the research groups been so thoroughly blinded -- or corrupted -- by the plutocrats that no one will say ''boo'' about it? I guess so. My letters tell me that there are a lot of angry people out there, and some of them have children in Iraq and wonder why all this looting is allowed while their sons and daughters are at war for a law-abiding and just America. I'm no longer sure what to tell them, except that it's all about money, and if you don't get it, you don't get it. And it's deeply sad.
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