i'm kaitlin
i'm 23
i live in new york and i write for a legal publication
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Treasury Not “Investigating” Freddie Mac
The New York Times is reporting today that, in response to yesterday’s ProPublica and NPR report, the Treasury Department is investigating Freddie Mac’s alleged “bets” against homeowners.
The Times, and others, are attributing the statement to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.
I looked into it, and here’s why it’s not exactly true:
The Treasury Department does not technically have the authority to “investigate” Freddie Mac, since it is an independent entity, a source at the Treasury told me.
Further, Jay Carney did not say that any arm of the administration was conducting a probe of any sort. Here are his words, as per a transcript of the press briefing on WhiteHouse.gov:
“As you know, this is an independent institution with independent governance, so we don’t make those kinds of decisions. But I believe Treasury is looking into it.”
That’s all, folks. Nothing to look at here.
Except, maybe, Freddie Mac’s own response to the allegations.
Photo reblogged from The FJP
Foxconn Employees Threaten Mass Suicide
Foxconn, the world’s largest electronic component maker (think: Apple, Amazon, Nintendo, Dell, Panasonic… well, you get the point) is not a nice place to work. So rampant have the suicides been that last year the company made workers sign pledges not to kill themselves.
Via The Atlantic Wire:
As American consumers ogle over shiny new gadgets at this week’s Consumer Electronic’s Show, the workers that make those products are threatening mass suicide for the horrid working conditions at Foxconn. 300 employees who worked making the Xbox 360 stood at the edge of the factory building, about to jump, after their boss reneged on promised compensation, reports English news site Want China Times. It’s not like this is the first time working conditions at Foxconn have made news outside China. But iPhone and Xbox sales surely haven’t lagged in the wake of those revelations and neither Apple nor Microsoft has done much of anything to fix things.
As The Atlantic Wire points out, this week’s This American Life features a trip to a Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, China where approximately 350,000 to 450,000 people are employed.
You can listen to the episode here.
Image: Workers at Foxconn via China Southern Weekly
(Source: futurejournalismproject)
Link reblogged from DC Decoder
DC Decoder: In a world of Bain: Is Mitt Romney going to get Swift Boat-ed? →
“I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.”
It’s a strange turn of phrase, to be sure, but will it turn out to be Mitt Romney’s political albatross?
Speaking at the Nashua Chamber of Commerce on Monday, Romney opened an entire world of hurt when uttering those words. Let’s…
Also interesting - will politicians start paying more attention to private equity firms?
Link reblogged from The Longest Week
Twinkies Maker Hostess Files for Chapter 11 Protection →
Pick up Twinkies now if you want your grandkids to know what they taste like. Because, you know, Twinkies last forever. (They actually don’t; they have a shelf-life of about 25 days.)
What’s going on with all of these snack food companies?? Friendly’s is having trouble, along with Dip’n Dots and a few others.
Also, when we found out about this in the newsroom, my Canadian colleague said he’d never had a Twinkie. *_*
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Conurbation
— n a large densely populated urban sprawl formed by the growth and coalescence of individual towns or cities.
Word of the day from Britain’s Department for Transport.
They’re adding high speed rail to connect Britain’s “major conurbations.”
Link reblogged from Journal of a Journalist
Use An iPhone? Yup, The Government Tracks That | Fast Company →
Recently leaked documents indicate that the Indian government was spying on USA-based iPhone, Nokia and BlackBerry users… and that all three companies gave them secret access. Just wrote about it for Fast Company.
Not cool, guys.
Photo reblogged from The FJP
Guardian Starts Charging 280,000 iPad Readers From Friday; How Will It Go?
From paidContent (a subsidiary of the Guardian)
Starting Friday, The Guardian, a stalwart of free content, will find out just how many people will pay to read its news on tablets.
Free since its mid-October launch thanks to a Channel 4 sponsorship, the publisher’s newspaper-like, iOS 5-only iPad app will require a £9.99 monthly subscription from January 13.
How will it fare? Guardian News & Media claims 500,000 downloads since launch, but the real number of users is half that - the app had 280,000 active users in December, the publisher tells paidContent.
If The Guardian converts 17 percent of last month’s readers (that’s the proportion of its iPhone users who have subscribed), itcould achieve 47,600 paying iPad customers, yielding about £475,000 in monthly sales, before 30 percent is given to Apple.
Half a million people have tried the app so far in three months. For new users, the conversion tactic will be free trial - they getseven days of free access before a hard-stop subscription requirement.
That is unlike The Guardian’s iPhone app, which gives all users three free stories every day before requiring a monthly subscription (£2.99 for six months, £4.99 for 12 months, free in the U.S.).
If there is a challenge to the plan, however, it is that The Guardian gives readers an easy choice to revert to using its free Guardian.co.uk website.
The attractive iPad app was designed to showcase stories from the daily newspaper. Exploring related and other articles take users out of the paid app experience and to the same website nobody pays anything for.
Guardian.co.uk is also pushing some of the same content found in the app out for free to Facebook and Tumblr, while the app lacks some of the editorial components Guardian.co.uk trades most heavily on, like live blogs.
Link reblogged from Los Angeles Times
A long sentence is worth the read →
Pico Iyer says writing longer phrases is a way to protest the speed of information bites people are subjected to each day.
(Source: Los Angeles Times)
Link reblogged from The FJP
The FJP: FJP Internships, 2012 Edition →
Over the holidays we posted about our 2012 internships. We begin interviewing candidates next week. We repost here what we posted then for those who might have been doing non-Tumblry things the past few weeks.
Please pass along to those you believe would be interested.
As we head into the…
(Source: futurejournalismproject)
Link reblogged from The FJP
CMRUBINWORLDAUTHOR: How Will We Read: Newspapers? →
“Nothing replaces a good editor, and I would add, a good visual editor, creating the news for the reader so that it makes enjoyable and interesting reading.” — Francois DufourThere are many more ways to read news material these days, thanks to the Internet. The Internet makes news easy to…
Could a new generation, raised on print newspapers from childhood, be the key to saving print media? I hope you’ll read this fascinating interview with Francois Dufour, the editor and chief and co-founder of Play Bac, publishers of Mon Quotidien, the first daily print newspaper for kids. The aim is to get kids to read for 10 minutes per day.
Delivered six times per week with the mail, the three age-targeted dailies have 150,000 subscribers and 2 million readers in France.
Kids love them because the content is not adult news explained to kids! It is news a nine or 12 or 15 year-old is interested in. We seldom feature an article on the same day it is published in adult news. One exception was the day bin Laden was killed. Also, I think kids like the fact that our papers are short (four to eight pages long). Our papers are also very visual. Finally, the journalism in our newspapers is serious. It is not childish.
While the newspaper has been downloadable for more than one year, Dufour says that only about 150 people per day read the app version of the publication.
Very, very cool!
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