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Manufacturing in China Cools Further in June

June 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment

HONG KONG — Activity in China’s manufacturing sector continued to slow in June, two surveys showed Monday, underscoring concerns that the Chinese economy is likely to lose steam in the coming months.

The Chinese statistics bureau released an index that showed factory activity had barely expanded in June, a month that was overshadowed by a credit crunch in the banking system.

The official purchasing managers’ index came in at 50.1 points — just above the 50-point mark that separates expansion from contraction, and markedly below the May reading of 50.8.

A separate P.M.I. survey published by the British bank HSBC produced a reading of 48.3, likewise showing a marked decline from May, when it was 49.2. The June figure was the lowest in nine months, and represented a slight downward revision from a preliminary reading released on June 20.

Together, the surveys showed that a gradual slowdown that began to materialize earlier this year is continuing as the Chinese authorities — eager to wean the economy off excessive credit growth — refrain from adding stimulus.

Policy makers have made it clear in recent months that they are prepared to tolerate slower growth as they seek to shift the economy away from the headlong expansion of the past few decades and toward higher-quality and more sustainable growth.

A cash crunch in the commercial banking sector last month further underscored this, as Beijing took a tough stance on lending in a bid to foster more prudent banking activity.

The central bank last month allowed bank-to-bank lending rates to spike to record highs, sending a stern message to the banking industry that it needs to step up risk controls and improve cash management.

Although analysts said the move could be positive in the long term if it helps to instill more lending discipline, the crunch led to a big sell-off in the stock market as investors fretted about the impact that more restrictive lending could have on the already cooling economy.

Lending rates have retreated again over the past week, and continued to do so on Monday. The stock market, likewise, has calmed over the past few days, and the Shanghai composite index had edged up 0.1 percent by late morning on Monday.

Still, the manufacturing surveys reinforced concerns that activity remains fragile.

The recent cash crunch in the interbank market is likely to slow expansion of off-balance sheet lending, further exacerbating funding conditions for small and medium-size enterprises, Qu Hongbin, the chief China economist at HSBC, wrote in a commentary accompanying the release of the purchasing managers’ index.

“As Beijing refrains from using stimulus, the ongoing growth slowdown is likely to continue in the coming months,” he added.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/02/business/global/manufacturing-in-china-cools-further-in-june.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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U.S. Companies Investing in Myanmar Must Show Steps to Respect Human Rights

June 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment

For the first time, effective on Monday, American companies investing in Myanmar must detail in public reports the steps they have taken to respect human and labor rights, to protect the environment and to avoid corruption in an economy warped by international isolation and military dictatorship.

The reporting requirement represents a novel and, to some, controversial effort by the administration to shape business practices in an emerging economy that has embarked on a remarkable though hesitant opening under Myanmar’s reform-minded president, U Thein Sein.

Officials said the effort could become a model for other countries that might someday emerge from sanctions, like Cuba and Iran. It could also be used, they said, for countries with shoddy records of corruption or other abuses that have come under heightened scrutiny after disasters like the one in a Bangladesh factory in April that killed 1,129 workers.

“While these have been tailored to Burma,” said Daniel B. Baer, a deputy assistant secretary of state, referring to Myanmar by its other common name as a matter of American policy, “a similar set of issues would apply in other places — not only other countries emerging from sanctions but really any place where businesses are operating and investing.”

The requirements have generated considerable criticism. Business and industry groups have complained that they are onerous and make American companies less competitive than their European counterparts, which are also surging into Myanmar.

Human-rights advocates argue that they are not strong enough — and lack explicit penalties for companies that do not comply — to manage a headlong rush to invest in an impoverished country afflicted with ethnic conflicts and still dominated by the military and state-owned enterprises that operate with little transparency.

The U. S. Chamber of Commerce lobbied against the rules as the administration drafted them after President Obama’s decision to lift sanctions last July. American investment in Myanmar “should be encouraged, not hindered,” said John Goyer, the chamber’s senior director for the region. The organization has called on the administration to extend trade privileges to Myanmar.

“Other countries are not putting similar obligations on their own companies, so it is an additional requirement that our competitors do not have,” Mr. Goyer said. “Larger companies can put forth the resources necessary to adhere to the reporting requirements, but for smaller companies, it is much more difficult to do so.”

The administration imposed the requirements using the legal authority it has from a raft of economic sanctions that were imposed after Myanmar harshly repressed the opposition movement led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, refusing to recognize her party’s victory in elections in 1990. Her party has since been legalized, and last year she won a seat in the country’s Parliament.

Mr. Obama has welcomed the initial steps to loosen the military dictatorship and met Mr. Thein Sein in the White House in May, but the sanction laws remain on the books and can be reinstated if the reforms are reversed. The president used his authority to waive the sanctions and grant companies licenses to operate there. The State Department then spent months drafting the requirements after holding public hearings and inviting comments from companies and advocates.

The requirements apply to any company investing more than $500,000, and to all investments with the country’s state energy monopoly, Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise.

In addition to ensuring the rights of workers and providing protections for the environment, the companies must report any payment exceeding $10,000 to government agencies or officials, any contact with Myanmar’s military, arrangements with private security companies and the details of any purchase of land or real property.

Companies are required to submit their reports within 180 days of reaching the threshold and by July each year thereafter. The reports will be made public on the Web site of the newly reopened American Embassy in Yangon, also known by its colonial-era name, Rangoon. Companies can separately submit to the State Department a report with any privileged competitive information that will not be made public.

American companies are already subject to laws governing foreign investments, including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and the Securities and Exchange Commission now requires companies to report on investments in oil, gas and mineral industries overseas under the Dodd-Frank legislation that Congress adopted in 2010. But the requirements for Myanmar are the first to apply to investments across the entire economic spectrum.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/world/asia/us-companies-investing-in-myanmar-must-show-steps-to-respect-human-rights.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Regulator Says China’s Banking System Liquid Enough

June 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment

SHANGHAI — China’s chief banking regulator has said liquidity in China’s banking system is sufficient, and he has pledged to control risks from local government debt, real estate and shadow banking.

Despite a cash squeeze that sent money-market interest rates soaring over the last two weeks, banks have more than enough reserves to meet settlement needs, Shang Fulin, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, said at a financial forum Saturday.

“Over the last few days, due to multiple factors, the problem of tight liquidity has appeared in the market. But over all, liquidity in our banking system really isn’t scarce,” Mr. Shang said in a speech to the Lujiazui Forum.

Mr. Shang said excess reserves in China’s banking system totaled 1.5 trillion renminbi, or about $244 billion, which he said was more than double the amount necessary for normal payment and settlement needs.

On the issue of banks’ asset quality and, in particular, banks’ exposure to local government debt and the real estate market, Mr. Shang acknowledged risks but said they were manageable.

“Recently, some international organizations and industry insiders have expressed worry about a slowdown in China’s economic growth, local government debt, the real estate market and related areas,” Mr. Shang said. “Currently everyone is fully aware of the risks. As long as we take proper risk control measures, these risks are controllable.”

On local debt, Mr. Shang pledged to closely monitor and control the growth in local borrowing and “alleviate hidden risks.”

Outstanding bank loans to local government financing vehicles totaled 9.59 trillion renminbi at the end of the first quarter, he added.

Amid the cash squeeze last month, the banking regulator repeated previous orders to banks to report all forms of local government debt exposure, including funds channeled through wealth management products.

The central bank, the People’s Bank of China, which had let short-term borrowing costs spike to record highs to drive home a message to banks that they could no longer count on cheap cash to fund riskier operations, said it would ensure policy supported a slowing economy.

He also highlighted the risks of wealth-management products, bank-issued securities that have exploded in recent years as households and companies have searched for higher-yielding alternatives to traditional deposits.

“In reality, wealth management products are investment products. Wealth management products are not the same as savings. Investors have to bear investment risk. When banks do these products, are they clearly explaining the risks to investors?” Mr. Shang said.

Analysts have said many who invest in wealth-management products believe their investments carry an implicit guarantee from state-backed banks, even if no legal guarantee exists.

Bank-issued wealth-management products totaled 8.2 trillion renminbi by the end of the first quarter, of which 70 percent were invested in the real economy.

On the real estate market, Mr. Shang downplayed the risk to the banking system, despite a three-year campaign by the central government to restrain housing prices. Real estate loans totaled more than 13 trillion renminbi by the end of April, of which mortgages comprised about 70 percent, he added.

“Chinese people are creditworthy. The nonperforming loan ratio on mortgages is extremely low, far below 1 percent,” Mr. Shang said.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/business/global/regulator-says-chinas-banking-system-liquid-enough.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Raw Data: E.U. Reaction to Data Sharing Revelations Grew Slowly

June 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment

On a continent where courts have ruled that access to the Internet is a fundamental human right, the disclosure last month of the covert program drew criticism from privacy officials and activists in Britain, France and Germany.

But the volume in Europe on privacy issues has been greater than the actual movement on the ground: Initial reactions to the leak by Edward J. Snowden, a former worker at the U.S. National Security Agency, have not led to concrete demands for greater controls on data sharing or stricter privacy controls that could hinder the operations of those U.S. technology giants in Europe.

In Brussels, the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers are working to update the 1995 data protection law covering the E.U. countries. While the earlier Prism disclosures had given more ammunition to proponents of stricter privacy controls, their effect on the debate has seemed limited.

“The Prism revelations have made parliamentarians more receptive to stronger measures,” said Joe McNamee, the executive director of European Digital Rights, a Brussels group advocating greater restrictions in data sharing between the European Union and the United States. “But the reaction has not been as strong as we had hoped for.”

Before the allegations in the magazine Der Spiegel that the United States has bugged E.U. offices, the full European Parliament had been scheduled to debate a resolution on Wednesday that would have at least expressed concern about the broad nature of Prism and its collection of private data from E.U. residents. The resolution was also expected to do the same about a British program, Tempora, which involved tapping undersea communication cables.

It was unclear whether the debate — and a vote set for Thursday — would still be held, but the resolution was likely to have been moderate in tone to reflect support for U.S. security concerns, and it was not intended to carry any force of law.

“There are those in Parliament who want a hard line where the E.U. doesn’t share any data with the United States, but this is a minority,” said a legislative staff worker in Brussels who was involved in negotiations to draft a compromise resolution on the issue. The aide, who works for one of the Parliament’s most senior members, declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the topic.

Meanwhile, a student group in Austria asked regulators in Ireland, Germany and Luxembourg on Wednesday to bar the European arms of Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo from sending the personal data of E.U. citizens to the United States for processing.

The group, Europe-v-Facebook.org, formed two years ago to protest the social network’s privacy policies in Europe, is arguing that the existence of Prism proves that the United States cannot guarantee the necessary “adequate level of protection” required of countries that are certified to process the personal data of E.U. citizens.

“There is a reasonable suspicion that there is widespread surveillance,” Max Schrems, the founder of the group, said.

Mr. Schrems, a 25-year-old law student at the University of Vienna, said the group’s best chance of obtaining sanctions might be in Germany, which has the strictest data protection laws in the Union. The Austrian group filed a complaint with the data protection regulator in Bavaria, a German state where Yahoo has a large office, asking that restrictions be placed on the company’s U.S.-bound data transfers.

Spokesmen for Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo declined to comment on the complaint. Google was not included in the initial complaints, Mr. Schrems said, because Europeans who sign up for its services contract directly with Google in America, not with its European subsidiaries.

(The German complaint focused on Yahoo because of its big office in Munich. The Irish complaint focused on Apple and Facebook because they have large offices in Dublin. The Luxembourg complaint focused on Microsoft, whose Skype subsidiary is in Luxembourg.)

On Thursday, the Bavarian regulator transferred the case to the German federal data protection commissioner, Peter Schaar. In a June 7 blog post, Mr. Schaar had described the existence and reach of the Prism program as “outrageous,” adding that such systematic surveillance without prior judicial consent would be illegal in Germany.

But it was unclear whether his office could block any data transfer activity by Yahoo’s German headquarters in Munich. Juliane Heinrich, a spokeswoman for Mr. Schaar in Berlin, said the German regulator was analyzing the issue of jurisdiction to determine whether and how to proceed against Yahoo.

The Brussels-based American Chamber of Commerce to the European Union said it supported an E.U.-U.S. government dialogue on the data transfer issue.

“Prism needs to be addressed at government level,” said Anna McNally of the American Chamber.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/technology/eu-reaction-to-data-sharing-revelations-grew-slowly.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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From Texas Statehouse to YouTube, a Filibuster Is a Hit

June 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment

But her abortion rights advocacy and her pink sneakers might have never gained national attention had she been in a state without a reliable live stream of the Legislature. Ms. Davis’s 11-hour filibuster inadvertently illuminated the stark technological differences that exist from state to state when it comes to broadcasting the public’s business.

In nearly a dozen states, there is no live video of legislative proceedings, only audio; in some other states that purport to provide video, the Web streams barely work. Even the audio, though, is of value to reporters, activists and ordinary citizens.

As journalism organizations continue to cut back on the number of reporters stationed at statehouses across the country, state-level equivalents to C-Span on television and online are supplying new ways to bear witness to the machinations of state and local government.

Some of Ms. Davis’s supporters and detractors will surely be watching on Monday when the Texas Legislature reconvenes and takes up the bill again. In Texas last week, The Texas Tribune made up for the state Senate’s digital shortcomings. Months before Ms. Davis’s vivid protest, the nonprofit news organization, based a few blocks from the state Capitol building in Austin, had gained access to the stream provided by state-controlled cameras there and set up a live YouTube channel for the legislative session.

While the same stream was also accessible through the Senate’s own Web site, that site looked almost comically old-fashioned compared with YouTube. Thus it was through YouTube that Ms. Davis’s filibuster was widely seen and shared.

“It’s great to see a channel like The Texas Tribune using YouTube to take a local story national — and probably won’t be the only time we’ll see this happen,” said Kevin Allocca, a trends manager at YouTube.

Online videos have been going viral for almost a decade, but what came out of the filibuster in Texas was something distinct: viral live video. Whether from a statehouse balcony or an activist’s smartphone, scenes that were once edited and distilled for television are increasingly being streamed live to an audience that spreads the news, or at least the pictures, themselves.

Streams from independent journalists at Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011 sometimes drew tens of thousands of viewers. More recently, links to live streaming video of mass protests in Turkey, Brazil and, as late as Sunday, Egypt, have been popular on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

When the Texas Senate stream on YouTube peaked in popularity shortly after midnight Wednesday, as the end of the legislative session dissolved into chaos, 182,000 people were tuned in, about the same number watching MSNBC, one of the cable news channels that was mercilessly criticized for not broadcasting the Texas debate live.

People didn’t necessarily need MSNBC, though, because they had YouTube.

The theatrical aspects of Ms. Davis’s filibuster and the seriousness of what was at stake “all resulted in people saying to their friends, ‘You have to look at this!’ ” said Andrew Lih, a professor of journalism and director of new media at the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism.

Many, probably most, of the online viewers wanted to see the Senate bill fail. They organized around Twitter hashtags like #StandWithWendy. But some anti-abortion campaigners followed the filibuster too, along with the politically minded who simply enjoyed watching what The Dallas Morning News called a “knife-fight within the confines of Robert’s Rules of Order.”

The heavy online viewership helped to prompt television networks and other news outlets to follow up the next morning and subsequently. On “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Ms. Davis said she and other state Democrats would keep battling against the abortion bill and said even if it passes, as many analysts expect, “obviously there will be challenges to it going forward.”

Thanks to the heightened interest in the bill, The Texas Tribune Web site had “far and away the highest traffic day in our history,” said Evan Smith, its editor in chief. Visitors have pledged about $37,000 to the nonprofit organization, from a total of 37 states, reflecting the nationwide scope of the sudden attention.

Mr. Lih said that The Tribune had done something significant “by getting the Senate video, which existed already, into a portal where the people hang out,” that is, YouTube. “That is pretty simple but powerful,” he said. (The Texas Tribune has a partnership with The New York Times to provide expanded coverage of the state.)

Data from the National Conference of State Legislatures indicates that all 50 states stream live audio of floor proceedings. Most also stream video, but the quality and accessibility varies widely. In some states, lack of funds has caused hardware and software upgrades to be postponed.

In Texas and in most other states the productions are handled in-house, raising concerns about potential interference. (At several points during the abortion bill debate last Tuesday, the stream was muted while private discussions took place, much to the consternation of viewers who were unaware that this was standard procedure.)

But in eight states, there are nonprofit groups that produce gavel-to-gavel coverage of all three state branches of government, according to Paul Giguere, the head of the Connecticut Public Affairs Network and a national association of ones like it.

“Ordinary citizens have an inherent right to watch their state government in action if they choose to,” Mr. Giguere said.

His association is piecing together a national strategy with the hope that it can convert more states to a more independent model. “We can’t replace reporters. What reporters do is critical,” he said. “But we can be a primary source.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/business/media/from-texas-statehouse-to-youtube-a-filibuster-is-a-hit.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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With a Solid Hit, CBS Breaks the Summer Ratings Mold

June 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Borrowing heavily from the cable playbook, CBS has set out to reverse the trend toward ever-dwindling network ratings — and intense attention directed toward cable dramas — in the summer. In its new series, “Under the Dome,” CBS may have done it.

The opening ratings for “Dome” last Monday qualified as spectacular: more than 13.5 million viewers for the premiere, the biggest audience for a summer drama in more than 20 years. The show added more than three million more viewers when three days of delayed viewing was counted, CBS announced Saturday.

Maintaining numbers like that could mean significant profits for CBS, which created a can’t-miss formula for financing the show that included a presale of the episodes for streaming on Amazon Prime, and now may expect a surge in spending from advertisers looking to reach summer consumers at the same time.

Even more important, CBS’s executives are so encouraged by the early ratings results that they foresee the potential “to create a whole new model for summer programming” said David F. Poltrack, the network’s chief research executive.

That model relies on some traditional network advantages. “One of the things the premiere’s ratings illustrated was the power of network television as a marketing medium,” Mr. Poltrack said. CBS began promoting “Dome” during the spring in its highly rated shows.

But the model is also new for CBS because, in this case, it includes such elements as a highly serialized plotline with science-fiction elements and characters who would not qualify as traditionally likable heroes on the networks.

Those have been among the drama conventions on cable for years, where such shows as “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad” on AMC, “Burn Notice” on USA and “True Blood” on HBO have played in the summer. This summer, the cable networks have a full roster of prominent dramas, including “The Newsroom” on HBO, “Ray Donovan” on Showtime and “The Bridge” on FX.

But none of them are likely to come within 10 million viewers of “Under the Dome.” And this is only the first salvo in a network strategy to retake some summer territory. Already numerous projects are in the works at other networks, including shows called “limited series” on ABC, like “Resurrection,” (a town is shaken by the return of long-dead relatives) and “event series” on the Fox network, including the resumption of the action hit “24” and a “Twin Peaks”-style suspense series called “Wayward Pines.”

The last two are being prepared for summer 2014, part of an ambitious effort by Kevin Reilly, the chairman of entertainment for Fox, to shake up the scheduling paradigm that has dominated network television.

“The networks have to stop losing viewers,” said Brad Adgate, the senior vice president for research at Horizon Media. “After the season they just had they can’t afford to lose any more.”

Mr. Reilly at Fox has been saying for several years that it makes no sense for network television to keep doing the same thing year after year even as its audiences shrivel. He announced this spring that Fox would invest heavily in short-run series with high production values and A-list casts. (“Wayward Pines” has already cast Matt Dillon and Melissa Leo.)

But CBS, the network that for years resisted the concept of the serial drama, planted its flag first. “Under the Dome,” an adaptation of a Stephen King novel, was conceived as a cable entry, developed by Showtime. When that network passed, CBS (which owns Showtime) picked up the project specifically intending to reinvigorate a deteriorating summer schedule.

Networks have tried to improvise in summer, spreading a few reality shows around a diet of repeats. But this summer, reality regulars like “America’s Got Talent” on NBC and “Big Brother” on CBS have experienced early ratings erosion. “Those shows are showing the same fatigue that affected ‘American Idol’ in the regular TV season,” Mr. Adgate said.

“Viewing habits have changed,” said Jeff Gaspin, the former head of NBC Entertainment who also oversaw cable networks like USA. “Broadcasters started programming summer years ago because of cable inroads. They mostly tried weak scripted content and ultimately settled on nonscripted.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/business/media/with-a-solid-hit-cbs-breaks-the-summer-ratings-mold.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Vertigo, a DC Comics Brand, Is Rebuilding With 6 New Series

June 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Superheroes are the lifeblood of the comic book industry and have proved to be a big draw at the box office. But Vertigo, whose slate includes fantasy, horror and speculative fiction outside of the publisher’s mainstream lineup, has had difficulty building an audience and developing new properties.

DC, whose parent company is Time Warner, is hoping to change Vertigo’s fortune this fall with six new series premiering from October to December. The most anticipated project, “The Sandman: Overture,” a mini-series by Neil Gaiman, will begin on Oct. 30.

Vertigo, which was introduced in 1993, became known for developing new talent and presenting illustrated stories that eschewed the never-ending battles between superheroes and arch villains. The new series continue that trend and include “Hinterkind,” by Ian Edginton, which focuses on a post-apocalyptic world in which the creatures of myth and legend have returned, and “The Discipline,” by Peter Milligan, an erotic thriller about a woman at the center of an shadow war that spans eons. No capes or utility belts are to be found in the mix.

“It’s so liberating to know that I can talk about all these wonderful books,” said Shelly Bond, the executive editor of the imprint, who joined DC Comics a month before Vertigo began.

The future of Vertigo has been a source of speculation for reasons internal and external. In March, Karen Berger, Vertigo’s founding executive editor, left her full-time position. New concepts have struggled to build an audience. “Saucer Country,” a series about politics and alien abductions in the Southwest, which began in March 2012, had its final issue in April with estimated sales of fewer than 5,700 copies. The top DC book that month was “Batman,” with 132,100 copies.

DC’s biggest rival is Marvel Comics, which has 37.59 percent of the market, just slightly more than DC’s 36.75, according to John Jackson Miller, who tracks industry figures on his Web site, the Comics Chronicle (comichron.com). Vertigo is not tracked separately. DC’s market share has been steadily rising from just under 32 percent in 2008.

The industry overall also has been growing. Mr. Miller estimated that comic book sales were $700 million to $730 million last year, up from $660 million to $690 million in 2011.

Other companies, like Image Comics, have raised their profile as publishers for creators who want to retain full control, and profits, of their work. “The Walking Dead,” the zombie phenomenon from Robert Kirkman, began life at Image.

Although “Sandman,” which began in the late ’80s, predates the imprint, it was branded as a Vertigo book in 1993 and became one of its biggest successes: a perennial seller of collected editions, critically beloved, winner of multiple awards. “Sandman” helped shape the career of Mr. Gaiman, who seems to write in every form these days, including fantasy novels, screenplays and television scripts; his most recent novel, “The Ocean at the End of the Lane,” was published by William Morrow in June.

“The most peculiar thing for me about returning to ‘Sandman’ is how familiar it all feels,” Mr. Gaiman said. What is new, however, is the level of attention. “When I was writing ‘Sandman’ from 1987 to 1996, I never had the feeling at any point that approximately 50 million people were looking over my shoulder scrutinizing ever word.” (Mr. Gaiman has about two million followers on Twitter.)

For the six-issue “The Sandman: Overture,” Mr. Gaiman has been paired with J.H. Williams III, an illustrator known for his moody imagery and innovative page layouts. “They are the most beautiful pages I have ever seen in periodical comics,” Mr. Gaiman said. “I ask him to do the impossible, and he gives me back more than I asked for.”

The series will be published every other month and will alternate with a special edition of each issue, which will include more of the artwork (because of translucent word balloons developed by the letterer Todd Klein), as well as behind-the-scenes commentary and character sketches.

Another of Vertigo’s new series, “The Dead Boy Detectives,” due in November, is tied to the “Sandman” mythos. It features two characters that were introduced in “Sandman” No. 25 from 1991. The characters, Edwin and Charles, are boarding school students who died tragically and returned as ghost detectives. (In the new series, a girl, whose mortality status is unknown, will join them.)

Ms. Bond sees comic books as having been “accepted as an integral part of pop culture with all the TV shows and film franchises.” Among the ventures were the 2005 film “Constantine,” with Keanu Reeves as a man involved in the occult, which had ticket sales of around $75 million. She is eager to continue the legacy of Ms. Berger, who was known for developing emerging talent.

Some good news for Vertigo was found in an analysis of the imprint’s May sales on The Beat, the news blog of comics culture run by Marc-Oliver Frisch. The first issue of “The Wake,” a 10-issue series by the writer Scott Snyder and the artist Sean G. Murphy, sold an estimated 45,000 units, “the highest number for a Vertigo comic book since the year 2000,” he wrote.

Mr. Snyder is one of the recent success stories for Vertigo. His “American Vampire,” which began in 2010, is about a new breed of those bloodsucking creatures. The series is on hiatus and will return in December. Mr. Snyder also writes “Batman,” which was the second-best selling comic for May, at an estimated 129,039 copies. (The top seller was the first issue of a new X-Men series, from Marvel, at 177,633 copies.)

“Right now, we’re in the middle of Vertigo’s transformation from a relatively sheltered idea and talent farm to a much more competitive place,” Mr. Frisch wrote. “Whether or not this is going to help DC in re-establishing the Vertigo brand as a selling point, we’re going to find out in the next several months.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/business/media/vertigo-a-dc-comics-brand-is-rebuilding-with-6-new-series.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Public Radio’s Midday Show to Include Local Contributions

June 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment

After weeks of appeals, public radio stations nationwide have chosen their new midday programming to replace NPR’s 21-year-old call-in show “Talk of the Nation,” which signed off last week.

For the moment, NPR has lost some midday real estate. The replacement program it is offering — an expanded two-hour version of “Here Now,” an existing newsmagazine from Boston’s WBUR-FM, which NPR will now co-produce — will be carried by 302 stations, starting on Monday. These stations include seven of the top 10 markets and 16 of the top 25, according to NPR.

“Talk of the Nation,” by contrast, attracted 3.53 million listeners weekly on 407 stations, including nine of the 10 largest markets and 21 of the top 25, NPR said. (New York City’s WNYC did not carry “Talk of the Nation” and is not broadcasting “Here Now,” but the new show will be heard on some suburban stations.)

Another program that has also tried to expand its midday distribution, “The Takeaway” from WNYC and Public Radio International, will now be heard on 190 stations reaching almost 55 percent of the country, up from 82 stations two months ago, WNYC said.

Kinsey Wilson, NPR’s chief content officer, called the new “Here Now” lineup a huge success. “We’ve exceeded the goals we set,” he said.

Charles Kravetz, WBUR’s general manager, said that the lineup hit “the numbers we needed to reach to pay for the expansion of the program.”

While “Here Now” costs more to produce than “Talk of the Nation,” Mr. Wilson said NPR is sharing the financial risks with WBUR. Already, WBUR has added Geico as a corporate underwriter, Mr. Kravetz said.

“Here Now” will tap into NPR’s reporters and its online blogs like “Code Switch,” but both Mr. Wilson and Mr. Kravetz said contributions from local stations would be crucial. A hastily assembled contributors’ network of 15 stations nationwide, which will eventually grow, is meant to “make sure that the program has a very broad geographic sound,” Mr. Kravetz said.

Phoenix’s station, KJZZ-FM, is part of the contributors’ network, but is also working with “The Takeaway” on content-sharing, and on assembling joint reporting teams with other stations on topics like energy. The old model of buying an NPR program and simply broadcasting it is “dated” in the digital era, said Jim Paluzzi, KJZZ’s general manager. His goal, he said, is to “have more and more of the midday produced by us live,” with contributions from all the collaborators.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/business/media/public-radios-midday-show-to-include-local-contributions.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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The Media Equation: Journalism, Even When It’s Tilted

June 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The question of who is a journalist and who is an activist and whether they can be one and the same continues to roar along, most recently in the instance of Glenn Greenwald’s reporting for The Guardian on the secrets revealed by Edward J. Snowden.

Sometimes, a writer’s motives or leanings emerge between the lines over time, but you need only to read a few sentences of Mr. Greenwald’s blog to know exactly where he stands. Mr. Greenwald is an activist who is deeply suspicious of government and the national security apparatus, and he is a zealous defender of privacy and civil rights.

He is also a journalist.

Taxonomy is important, partly because when it comes to divulging national secrets, the law grants journalists special protections that are afforded to no one else. To exclude some writers from the profession is to leave them naked before a government that is deeply unhappy that its secret business is on wide display.

In that context, “activist” has become a code word for someone who is driven by an agenda beyond seeking information on the public’s behalf. I found out as much last week when an article I wrote with a colleague about WikiLeaks called Alexa O’Brien an “activist.”

Ms. O’Brien is certainly that. She played a crucial role in the digital outreach of Occupy Wall Street, was involved with the U.S. Day of Rage rally and began covering the Bradley Manning trial partly to protest the lack of information and transparency in the case.

But she also describes herself as an independent journalist, and for that matter, so have I in a previous column. She asked for (and received) a correction in The New York Times, pointing out that I had cited her work in my column.

“You are reading my journalistic work, using my journalistic work, capitalizing off my journalistic work, and linking to my journalistic work about the largest criminal investigation ever into a publisher and its source,” she wrote from Fort Meade, Md., where she has been comprehensively transcribing the Manning trial.

In other words, if I believed she was executing a political agenda rather than a journalistic one, why was I referencing her work?

The notion of journalist as political and ideological eunuch seems silly, even to some who call themselves journalists.

“Truth is not the hole in the middle of the doughnut, it is on the doughnut somewhere,” a veteran reporter whom I worked with at an alternative weekly in Minneapolis once told me. What he meant was that articles that strive only to be in the middle — moving from one hand to the other in an effort to be nicely balanced — end up going nowhere. I was just out of journalism school, brimming with freshly taught tenets of fairness and objectivity, and already those values were in question.

Still, the fight between objectivity and subjectivity is a fairly modern one. In the 1800s, journalism was underwritten by powerful people, the government or political parties. It was only when an economic incentive for information absent a political agenda took hold that an independent press also emerged.

It makes sense that as the financial rewards for traditional journalism have eroded, advocacy journalism has gained new traction. It is now up to the consumer to assemble a news diet of his or her choice, adding in news that is produced by people who have skin in the game.

“We are beginning to realize that journalists come in a variety of shapes and sizes and come with a variety of commitments,” said Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University. “It isn’t that the fact that someone is an activist is irrelevant, it’s just that it does not necessarily mean they are the opposite of a journalist.”

In the instance of Mr. Snowden and his leaks, something of a hybrid model for the big story arose. Mr. Snowden was said to have chosen Mr. Greenwald as a conduit for a leak because he felt they shared values. The matching ideologies of source and journalist made the story happen in the first place. Then The Guardian’s global presence and historically liberal audience provided a sturdy platform, and its newsroom offered editorial muscle.

E-mail:carr@nytimes.com;

Twitter: @carr2n

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/business/media/journalism-is-still-at-work-even-when-its-practitioner-has-a-slant.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

Canadian Steps In to Lead Bank of England

June 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment

It was Mark J. Carney, who was then the more or less anonymous head of Canada’s central bank. An increasingly influential, if not discreet, troubleshooter on global financial matters, Mr. Carney had become an active participant at Downing Street’s crisis huddles in late 2008. He argued that giant entities like Royal Bank of Scotland posed a danger not only to their home country but the financial system as a whole.

Mr. Carney’s advice was to consider the institutions those banks were borrowing from and lending to, recalled Alistair Darling, who was the British chancellor of the Exchequer, or finance minister, at the time. “It gave us a bigger picture that the supervisory authorities did not have at the time,” Mr. Darling said.

Britain would later become the first major country to inject capital directly into its ailing banks. And while full credit for the decision goes to Mr. Darling and the prime minister at the time, Gordon Brown, Mr. Carney played a crucial role.

On Monday, Mr. Carney, 48, will no longer be an adviser but the man in charge. He is to step into the Bank of England’s palatial home on Threadneedle Street to take on one of the biggest roles in the future of Britain’s economy and banking sector.

Mr. Carney, who is Canadian, is succeeding Mervyn A. King as the governor of the Bank of England and is hailed as the first non-British governor in the bank’s 319-year history. But as Mr. Carney prepares to take on his new role some question if the task at hand may be beyond him, or any central banker, for that matter.

Sluggish demand for goods from the troubled euro zone, Britain’s largest export market, is keeping many companies from investing in new machinery or hiring staff. And the austerity measures prescribed by the current chancellor, George Osborne — which are likely to continue through 2018, much longer than initially planned — have squeezed disposable income as consumer prices keep rising. At the beginning of the year, Britain barely avoided a triple-dip recession.

“We’re not exporting enough and not consuming enough, and monetary policy alone can’t fix that,” said Robert Wood, an economist at Berenberg Bank. “Mr. Carney has been built up as Superman, but clearly there’s no way he can live up to the hype,” Mr. Wood said. “He can’t single-handedly rescue the economy.”

Mr. Carney declined an interview request.

Young and dynamic — he was a goalie on Harvard University’s varsity hockey team — Mr. Carney brings with him attributes not usually found among the dowdy breed of central bankers. While Mr. King once said his ambition was for monetary policy to be boring, Mr. Carney has been overheard using phrases like “monetary activism” and “escape velocity.”

An ability to make himself seem indispensable lies at the root of Mr. Carney’s extraordinary rise, accomplished in just under 10 years, from a position as a midlevel investment banker at Goldman Sachs to the top of the Bank of England.

It was not until March 2008, when Mr. Carney became the first central banker to aggressively lower interest rates in his country, that his current reputation as the Superman of central bankers began to take form. He then pledged to keep rates low for a year — at 0.25 percent — providing some certainty to borrowers in the chaos of the financial crisis.

For Mr. Osborne, it was that combination of style and substance that made Mr. Carney “simply the best, most experienced and most qualified person in the world” to lead the Bank of England. So eager was Mr. Osborne to hire Mr. Carney, who has a doctorate from the University of Oxford, that he chased him across continents to ask him more than once and to promise by far the highest pay package of any central banker in the world — £480,000, or $730,000, in salary, plus a generous housing allowance.

Under Mr. King, the Bank of England injected money into the economy by buying £375 billion in assets, mainly government bonds. To get banks to lend again, the central bank started to offer cheap credit to banks, but that stimulus move had little result. Mr. King, arguing that more needs to be done to revive growth, has been voting for more asset purchases on the monetary policy committee but has been outvoted every month since February.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/business/global/01iht-carney01.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,
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