NYT Changes Reasoning For Recent Oil Rise

I covered this one off myself at http://www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com/, this Friday last, although in the rather unusual style of that blog.

However, here's a more 'on the nose' posting about this, pointing out discrepancies between the NYT and its global edition.

Here's what 'Moon of Alabama' had to say:

NYT Changes Reasoning For Recent Oil Rise: Friday June 7th 2008
Oil prices had their biggest gains ever on Friday, jumping nearly $11 to a new record above $138 a barrel, after a senior Israeli politician raised the specter of an attack on Iran and the dollar fell sharply against the euro.
Reasons given for the oil rise: A. Israel, B. Dollar
The above is how Laura Rozen and dozens of other people quote the first graph of a story in today's New York Times.
But when I read the piece under the same URL a bit later the sequence of the NYT's explanation for the rise of oil prices had changed.
The rise in oil prices turned into a stampede on Friday with futures jumping a staggering $11 a barrel to set a record above $138 a barrel. The unprecedented surge came as the dollar fell sharply against the euro and a senior Israeli politician once again raised the possibility of an attack against Iran.
Reasons now given for the oil rise: A. Dollar, B. Israel
It is not only the opening paragraph that changed.
The complete earlier version of the piece is still carried by the International Herald Tribune. It expands on the threat from Israel in the sixth paragraph and on the dollar fall in the ninth.
The later 'corrected' version at the NYT site expands on the dollar in the fifth paragraph and on a possible Israeli attack on Iran in the eighth.
Which version is factual more correct in its emphasis?
Yesterday the US dollar index fell by 0.93% from 73.066 to 72.390. Crude futures for August delivery went up by 7.8% from 128.13 to 138.16.
Is a less than 1% change in the U.S. dollar the prime explaining factor for a 7.8% rise in crude oil?
Or is a threat of another war on the second biggest OPEC producer by Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz the more important reason for the oil rise?
"If Iran continues with its programme for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it. The sanctions are ineffective," said Mr Mofaz, referring to pressure by the United Nations security council to end Iran's disputed programme of uranium enrichment. "Attacking Iran, in order to stop its nuclear plans, will be unavoidable."
The answer seems obvious to me. The market freaked because of the war drums, not because of a slight dollar move.
So why did the NYT editor change the piece and preferred to cite the dollar fall as the primary explanation?
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2008/06/nyt-changed-oil.html?cid=118000718#comment-118000718






http://www.ianwalthew.com/
http://www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com/

Roger Cohen: It's the networks stupid.

Here's 'You Didn't Really Think That Was Funny Did You?' http://tumbldown.tumblr.com/post/36008628/roger-cohen-its-the-networks-stupid-international

on Roger Cohen's recent column about how the internet networks helped propel Obama to victory:

Interesting thoughts. The dilemma, bypassed by Mr. Cohen, is that while the new upper middle class elite is and the younger generation (across most income levels) are embedded within the networks he describes, there is a large body of folks who decidedly are not. That is the body keeping Hillary’s sad campaign alive, the body that is likely to find greater appeal in McCain’s words than those of Obama.


www.ianwalthew.com
www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com

This was such a nice logo (and the comments of drunken expats).

Kris Dale pooting at http://www.robbmontgomery.com/home/2008/newspaper/design/05/international-herald-tribune-drops-logo-from-nameplate/?rcommentid=24845&rerror=incorrect-captcha-sol&rchash=932a2460ab6263f55b34457a2ae891b1#commentform

wrote
Jun 4th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
This was such a nice logo. My friend showed it to me a few months ago and raved about it’s exquisite detail and symbolism.

All true, but it had its time, and that time is over.

Others, including, literally, 'drunken expats' are very unhappy indeed. Witness this:

Letter To The International Herald Tribune

Mr. Oreskes,

As a long time reader of the International Herald Tribune, I want to voice my strong complaints about the changes you have made to your newspaper over the past few days.

I have lived in France for eight years and during that time, picking up a copy of the IHT and reading it in a cafe has been one of the highlights of my day. While some would say it would be easier to simply get my news online – for free – I'm old fashioned enough to be willing to pay 2.5 euros for your publication.I always felt it was worth it – until yesterday.

The changes you've made to the comics section are inexcusable. I'm only 39 years old, but you have made the comics so small I had to put on my glasses to be able to read them. Plus, you have removed some of the most comforting strips – like Beetle Bailey – simply to be able to run a daily Sudoku puzzle.
I understand that Sudoku is popular – but to be honest, if that's what I was looking for I can buy a book of 100 Sudoku puzzles for two euros at the train station.
The new editorial pages also are disappointing. If there is one feature that has always made the IHT stand out, it has been the quality and caliber of your Editorial and Op-Ed page. To see the amount of space reduced in favor of a large advertisement is deeply disappointing.
As to the new logo: Sorry, but I don't want to be reading “The International Edition of The New York Times.”
If all I wanted was to read The New York Times I'd either read it online, or have my family buy and mail me copies of it. (In fact, it would probably end up being cheaper for my family to buy and send me 30 days’ worth of the Times once a month than it is to purchase the IHT everyday.)
One of the bright spots of the IHT over the years has been the sense of its independent editorial slant. That's why when I'm in the United States, I purchase the IHT instead of the Times when I can find it.
I hope you do not take my complaints lightly. I come from a newspaper family. My mother has been a newspaper executive her entire life and I was journalist for Gannett for 10 years before I moved to France.
It would take a lot for me to no longer purchase the only American-produced printed news source in France – but that is a choice I am seriously considering.
Thank you for your time,
Bart Calendar
http://bart-calendar.livejournal.com/937884.html

Much of it makes a lot of sense. I for one resent the time my wife is spending with the bloody Sudoko thingie, time we used to spend chatting. (Sudoko has never entered our home before.)

I am 42, and I can't read the comics either. Lord knows what the troiseme age are doing - getting out a magnifying glass I would think.

It's a pitty really, that Bart's letter wasn't published in the IHT. I was a way a bit during April and May so maybe I missed some published reader reaction. Do let me know if there was some.




http://www.ianwalthew.com/
http://www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com/

Amazon, Kindle and the IHT

We've had a couple of good articles about Amazon's Kindle this past week, including a large piece on Thursday about the unease Kindle is causing publishers (http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/05/technology/ebook.4-282603.php) and then Krugman's prediction that anything that can be digitized will eventually be given away for free (http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/06/opinion/edkrugman.php) , including I presume the IHT.

I've had my own set of issues with Amazon this week (as a published author) because my publisher (which is owned by Hachette Livre) is having its books blocked from being promoted on Amazon, because Hachette Livre won't cave in to Amazon's ceaseless demands for ever deeper discounts.

I've blogged on this at http://aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com/2008/06/friday-6th-june-2008.html including posting the full text of an email that the CEO of Hachette Livre sent me, and my completely insane response (but if we're all going to be the Grateful Dead anyway, as Krugman predicts, earning money from 'readings', what's the worry about upsetting my publisher?).

Anyway, all that aside, this is what Amazon have to say about the IHT, and very reasonable I find it too.

The International Herald Tribune collects and distributes world news, information, entertainment and opinion of the highest journalistic integrity. Its balanced perspective addresses all areas of human interest and is trusted and enjoyed by people in all corners of the globe.
The Kindle Edition of International Herald Tribune contains most articles found in the print edition, but will not include some images and tables. Some features such as the crossword puzzle, box scores and classifieds are not currently available. Also, please note that International Herald Tribune features a combined weekend edition on Saturday, and therefore does not publish on Sundays. For your convenience, issues are automatically delivered wirelessly to your Kindle so you can read them each morning.
Order The International Herald Tribune from Amazon for $9.99 per month
Don’t have Amazon Kindle? You can always purchase it from here
Or if you prefer to read the Print editions instead, you can get it from here
http://kbooks.wordpress.com/2008/05/30/b000n8v468-2/#comment-109


QUESTION: IF HACHETTE LIVRE'S EXPERIENCE IS ANYTHING TO GO BY, WHERE IN THE UK THEY ESTIMATE AMAZON WILL HAVE 50% OF THE UK BOOK MARKET LOCKED UP IN THREE YEARS, FOR JUST HOW LONG WILL THE IHT BE ABLE TO HOLD THAT $9.99 PRICE - WHICH BY THE WAY, IS AN ABSOLUTE BARGAIN FOR THE READER.

I'd say we're moving towards Krugman's model. Whither the IHT/NYT?

This is what http://www.koozie.org/ says about it all:

International Herald Tribune: New Newspaper Addition for Kindle
By recently adding "International Herald Tribune", a $9.99 Kindle newspaper subscription, Amazon bumps up their newspaper subscription offerings to 19.
As I mentioned earlier, I'm still surprised that USA Today hasn't jumped on board with the Kindle.




http://www.ianwalthew.com/
http://www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com/

Dingbat gone; Rolf very upset about The Global Edition thing,

This is how Businessweek ran the story:

New logo from IHT.com
The International Herald Tribune is dropping its ornate, 142-year-old logo for a more modern, simpler look. The detail-rich logo is being replaced by a phrase, "The Global Edition of the New York Times," highlighting that the paper is fully part of the New York Times Co. after a 2002 deal.
The "dingbat" first appeared in 1866 on the New York Tribune that later merged into the International Herald Tribune, wrote Richard Kluger in "The Paper: The Life and Death of the Herald Tribune." The logo has been altered over the years. The logo's panorama of symbolic images features pyramids and camels, an ox pulling a plow, a bridge, an hourglass, a soaring airplane and a bald eagle atop a clock showing the time of 6:12 -- for unknown reasons, Kluger wrote.

If you can't remember what it looked like you can remind yourself, if you are truly pining, at http://www.editorsweblog.org/special.php?IncludeBlogs=1&order=date&query=International+Herald+Tribune

Rolf wrote to me and said that he was a "tad surprised" about my lack of concern about the "subname, "The Global Edition of the International Herald Tribune." Non-American readers don't care about the NYTimes -- it's the International Herald Tribune, NOT the New York Times."

Rolf, I'm afraid those days are over.

It is owned by the NYT, and a global edition of the NYT does not have to mean that the IHT can't continue to have its own name and editorial identity distinct from the NYT. The dingbat is neither here nor there. What matters is how the paper is edited and the perspective of its staff.

What has been dropped is 'The World's Daily Newspaper' strapline.

Now, that was a great line, devised by an agency called Ambler Rodford (or something like) under the supervision of the IHT's current MD for Asia, Randy Weddle and then me when I became worldwide marketing director. I fired Ambler Rodford but kept the strapline.

It was the ex-FT man Richard McClean as publisher who iniated the Ambler Rodford brand campaign, the strapline being about the best part of it.

Sadly, it was an aspiration for, rather than a reflection of, the content of the newspaper at that time, and since. And all good advertising must fall out of a fundamental truth, as one Piers Warburton once remarked. (Actually remarked to me wisely so many times, I have never forgotten it.)

It never could truly be the World's Daily Newspaper for as long as it continued to prefer the information needs of Americans overseas as opposed to any other readership group. Conquering that Manhattan reflex from the NYT is an uphill battle, because when the new staff arrive off the boat in Paris, they are themselves exactly that, Americans overseas who want an American perspective.

Certainly called the paper the Global Edition of the NYT doesn't preclude the ambition of still becoming the World's Daily Newspaper, but I agree with Rolf, the signal is a little opaque at best, alarming at worst.

Perhaps it's a statement of intent that the NYT would like to be the world's daily newspaper. If it wants to do that, it needs to decide which brand name to go forward with, and furthermore, invest a very large amount of money before someone else does.

Like Mr. Murdoch who is now printing the U.S edition of the WSJ in London. For example.

Axel Krause: clarification

Back in January, I posted about ex-IHT journalist, Axel Krause.

Here's what I wrote:


International Herald Tribune "Where are they now?" : Axel Krause
This is only for old-timers but anyone remember Axel Krause, side-lined into Sponsored Sections and other vague pojects by John Vinocur back in the early 1990s if memory serves me?But Axel is still going strong, here quoted by a Libe Blog on Sarko's press management style.http://contrejournal.blogs.liberation.fr/mon_weblog/2008/01/axel-krauze-la.html
Posted by Ian at 08:11


I received an anonymous comment, fleshing out some info about what Axel is up to now (to which I posted my own comment suggesting that Anonymous might indeed be Axel himself).

Anonymous said...
Axel Krause is also contributor to TV5 MONDE's excellent weekly news magazine "Kiosque": http://www.tv5.org/TV5Site/kiosque/intervenant.php?id=12

Subsequently it has been brought to my attention, what the exact role of Axel Krause at the IHT was, and what he is now up to. In fact, from an email from Axel, so I am happy to clarify matters further.

Here's what Axel wrote:

+ In 1987, as Bob McCabe, the paper's first corporate editor, returned to the news operation, I, as you recall then economics correspondent, became his successor with the support of not only John Vinocur but the publisher, Lee Huebner. As John's announcement to the staff described the move, "Axel Krause goes on loan from the editorial department to the publisher's office as corporate editor."

+ Maintaining my journalist's status, and with the support of Lee and others on the staff, I proposed and helped launch and editorially supervised the IHT series, sponsored by a group of multinationals, "1992- The World's Rendezvous With Europe." The series, which ran from 1988 to 1992, drew wide praise for its editorial quality, and brought in, according to Lee, some $1 million the paper would not otherwise have generated.

+ Meantime, I worked closely with the conference department in London, helping develop themes, find speakers and regularly moderating the conferences around the world, occasionally filing news stories when no correspodent was available. And perhaps, when you cite "other vague projects," you may be referring to the IHT's plans for launching a weekly television news program for the US, with the NYT and the Washington Post and PBS; the plans for the project in which I, among others were actively involved, were advanced, anything but vague, and dropped only when the Times expressed reservations.

+ In short, it was an exciting, productive assignment.

+ Finally in response to your question about posting, this is my first written response to your web which I enjoy reading. And, PS, my role as a regular contributor to TV5's "Kiosque" program is only one of my current activities - I remain secretary general of the Anglo-American Press Association since 1992; I remain a contributing editor of Transatlantic Magazine in Washington and board member of the French Economic and Financial Writers Assn, going back many years, and have other activities you can find via Google or Who's Who in France; nothing anonymous about any of them!

Now, if I were a proper journalist I would fact check all this and verify from independent sources, but I'm not, this site is not the IHT and I am happy to take Axel at his word. This type of biography is, I know, the sort of thing that can find its way on to Wikipedia, and get people upset, but again, nor is this blog Wikipedia.

Axel's biography is now out there in the ether for all to find.

My apologies for my previous vagueness and any suggestion of 'side-line-lyness'.

In Our Pages 100, 75, and 50 years ago.

It was Eugene O'Neil who wrote that there is no such thing as the present or the future, only the past endlessly repeating itself.

Which is why In our Pages 50,75 & 100 Years Ago is a must read for me: mostly prescient and topical, sometimes off-beat and amusing.

It's also been identified in reader research as one of the most popular and well-read sections of the International Herald Tribune.

But I can't find it on http://www.iht.com/ which is a shame.

Michael? Why not?



www.ianwalthew.com
www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com