March 28, 2024

The Boss: Copyright Clearance Center’s Chief, on a 23-Year Career

My sister, brother and I all attended Beverly public schools. At 15, my first job was at Harborlight House, a home for low-income older adults, where I did everything from serving tea to cleaning toilets. Then I worked at a local department store, cutting window shades to size.

When I was a junior in high school, one of my teachers drove me by her alma mater, now Bridgewater State University. That’s where I applied. I graduated in 1989 with a degree in communications. I held a quick succession of jobs, working as a receptionist and as a clerk and then as a Harborlight fund-raiser — and would keep a connection with Harborlight all my life. Then, in December that year, I found a job as a clerk at the Copyright Clearance Center, which was then in an old mill building in Salem, Mass.

I filed and typed letters, and, simply because I had a lot of energy, I sometimes vacuumed the office. The company handled requests from libraries for permission to lend articles or companies seeking to use copyrighted material for research. We had about 30 employees, and a lot of our communication was via fax machine.

I thought that I would keep the job for about a year and move on, but the copyright area began evolving from a back-room specialty to a basis of corporate competition. There were, and still are, a lot of challenges in helping businesses and academic institutions quickly access and license copyright-protected materials and compensate publishers and creators for the use of their content. New developments in technology are changing the way we all use such material.

I moved up in the company as it grew and helped with the relocation to new quarters in Danvers. In 1996, I helped lead a project to organize copyright data so we could respond quickly and efficiently to permission requests.

In 1992, I married Glen Johnstone, an architect. We are raising three children, the last of whom was born in 2004, the same year I was promoted to executive vice president and chief operating officer. I sometimes joke that I have a fourth child: the executive M.B.A. I earned from Northeastern University in Boston in June 2001.

In 2007, the center’s C.E.O., Joseph Alen, retired, and I was named to replace him. My challenge has been to change the company from a licensing agent for print materials to one offering global licensing solutions for all media, including images, blogs and e-books. We now have a staff of more than 300.

Many people are surprised that I have been with the same employer for so long — 23 years — but I have always felt that there are new challenges. I get chances to use my expertise more broadly by serving, for example, on the board of the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organizations, the global licensing group.

And I’ve been able to maintain close ties with my community and family. My parents, who celebrate their 50th anniversary this year, recently moved into a single-floor home behind our house so we can help them as they grow older.

I have continued to work closely with Harborlight, where I was chairwoman from 2004 to 2007. Since 2008, I have served as a director of Harborlight Community Partners, which offers low-income housing regionally. It is extremely rewarding to help people find a safe and affordable place to live.

As told to Elizabeth Olson.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/jobs/copyright-clearance-centers-chief-on-a-23-year-career.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Seinfeld to Continue ‘Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee’

But the whole idea behind the Internet show, Mr. Seinfeld said, was to try to break into a medium other than TV. The decision to produce 24 new episodes, to be announced Monday, puts Mr. Seinfeld and Sony on the same track as sites like Netflix — which has forthcoming series like “Arrested Development” and “House of Cards” — in testing the waters to see if original, network-quality entertainment can emerge on the Internet.

“It’s kind of a new paradigm that we’re trying to create,” Mr. Seinfeld said in a telephone interview, referring to himself and Sony. “I think we both were craving that little sandbox feeling we had when we started out.”

Now they need to chase the same thing that other creators of original Internet content have been after: profits.

“This next go-round we’re going to have to figure out some sort of revenue stream, so it makes more sense,” Mr. Seinfeld said.

The first 10 episodes of “Comedians in Cars” contain no advertising and appear free on the Sony Web site Crackle and at comediansincarsgettingcoffee.com, the show’s own site. The format is a talk show of sorts that features Mr. Seinfeld riding around in vintage cars with friends in the comedy business, making detours to converse over food and coffee. Steve Mosko, the president of Sony Pictures Television, said that almost as soon as Mr. Seinfeld’s new show began appearing, “high-end advertisers were banging on our doors” seeking some level of sponsorship. But, he said, Mr. Seinfeld did not want to turn the first season “into something that gets cluttered.”

Mr. Seinfeld said he was taking ideas that held personal interest and adapting them for the Internet. “I thought of all the things I liked,” he said, which included almost anything about cars, talking with other comics, and coffee in its various forms. He put that together with his observation that all around him “people were watching stuff on phones and pads,” and he concluded, “Well, this is stuff I like, and this could be a match.”

Besides, he said, the show might have special appeal for “comedy geeks,” who “were missing a little piece of the puzzle — the kind of idiotic relationships that we have that are a big part of this life.”

Mr. Seinfeld said he never thought of the concept as something for traditional television; he loved the flexibility of the Internet, particularly no fixed duration for any of the episodes. (Each one runs about 11 to 17 minutes, and guests have included his old “Seinfeld” partner Larry David, Ricky Gervais, Alec Baldwin and Mel Brooks.)

Mr. Seinfeld said he took the idea initially to executives at several Internet-based companies, drawing strong interest. “It was just too hard to explain, and they started asking the usual questions, and I started getting that not-good feeling: Oh, I’m back in the old game,” he said. “And I don’t want to play the old game. I played that game. I want to play a new game.”

He turned to Sony because it distributes the repeats of his sitcom, and he had a good relationship with Mr. Mosko. Mr. Seinfeld owns the “Comedians in Cars” show, and Sony will continue to serve as backer and distributor.

Mr. Mosko said the studio was more than pleased with the first season, which he said attracted more than 10 million unique visitors to Crackle. Developing Internet programming is a crucial part of Sony’s future, he said.

“What’s missing in developing programming for the Internet is patience, trying to get it right,” he said. “We’re both looking at this as a long-term investment.”

As for revenue streams, some form of sponsorship is likely to be attached to the new episodes when they start appearing this spring. But only if advertising can be integrated in the right way, Mr. Mosko said, adding, “We know there’s an opportunity there.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 7, 2013

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article provided an incorrect Web address for the comedy site Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. It is comediansincarsgettingcoffee.com

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/arts/television/seinfeld-to-continue-comedians-in-cars-getting-coffee.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Bucks: Social Security Calculator

The following review is a part of a series of posts that look at new Social Security calculators, which help you figure out when to begin collecting benefits. Below, we take a look at the last one.

We can’t predict precisely how long we’ll live, which is why figuring out the optimal time to take Social Security is so difficult.

Review

Evaluating new financial products and services.

But the creators of a new tool called Social Security Solutions said that they’ve come up with a way to hedge your bets: Their tool generates a claiming strategy based on how long you expect to live, but it also takes into account that you might actually live longer than you anticipate.

“We look to maximize benefits at the exact mortality assumptions and then assess if there are other tweaks that could be made so that if you live longer than you expect, you collect more money,” said William Meyer, founder of Social Security Solutions who also built products for big firms like Charles Schwab.

The algorithm that powers the tool is based on research he conducted with William Reichenstein, professor of investment at Baylor University and head of research for Social Security Solutions. The pair also co-wrote the book “Social Security Strategies: How to Optimize Retirement Benefits.”

Of all the calculators I’ve tested, this one was the easiest to manipulate. It allows you to change your life expectancy (and that of your spouse) and see how the recommended claiming strategy may change. All of this information is presented in colorful, easy-to-read charts.

It also allows you to see how their strategy compares with collecting at another time, say, as soon as your eligible or at another age. On top of that, you can see how much you would collect if you live a decade longer — or less.

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You start by entering the basics: your name, date of birth, gender, marital status and your projected benefit amount at full retirement age, which can be found on a Social Security statement or the Social Security’s retirement estimator.

Then, you’re asked to select the level of service you want: for $19.95, you’ll get a report that includes a recommended claiming strategy. For $49.95, you can play around with the firm’s online tool, which means you can compare their recommendations with your own scenarios, all of which are cleanly illustrated. You can also print out as many reports as you like. For $124.95, you also can call one of their experts, who have been trained by the co-creators and have access to an even more powerful tool that is designed for advisers.

I chose the $50 version, which is more expensive than the other calculators I tested, though this one is certainly the most elaborate. I ran the report for a married couple: Don, 62, and Betty, 58, who expect to collect monthly checks of $2,100 and $1,500, respectively.

Once you’ve paid and reach the main screen, you’ll find the recommended claiming strategy based on a life expectancy, which you can — and should — change based your expectations. (When I tested it, it already included a life expectancy of 85 for Don and 90 for Betty. I increased Don’s life expectancy to 90 as well.)

Based on that information, the tool came up with a recommended strategy: Betty should begin spousal benefits at full retirement age, or 66. (If Don is not yet 70, he should file and suspend benefits before Betty reaches full retirement age.) Don should begin collecting his own benefits at 70, and Betty should switch to her own benefits when she turns 70. If they both live to 90, they’d collect $1.3 million in lifetime income, with a maximum monthly benefit of $5,016 a month.

You can also compare how much you would receive in benefits over your collective lifetimes if you and your spouse live a decade more — or less — and how all of those numbers can change if you take benefits early (at 62), at 65, delayed (at 70) or a date that you enter (this option may be confusing, especially for married couples who aren’t intimately familiar with how spousal benefits works because you will be asked to enter when you want to collect them).

The recommended strategy was summed up in a 14-page report, which also includes case studies that discuss how your outside savings can last longer based on when you file for benefits. This tool doesn’t, however, go as far as performing that analysis, though the firm has a more comprehensive program that does — Retirement Benchmark (which it pitches on the last page of the report).

In fact, the idea for the Social Security calculator sprang from the more comprehensive tool, which takes into account all of your savings and comes up with a plan on how to draw down those assets most efficiently. That plan also includes the optimal time to start Social Security, which the firm claims will make your money last longer.

“We combine the tax impact of Social Security, part- or full-time work, and each withdrawal someone makes from their savings,” Mr. Meyer said. “If you coordinate these decisions and create a tax-efficient retirement income plan, you can make your money last up to seven years longer just by being smart on how you withdraw and select Social Security.”

That tool is a bit more expensive ($500 to $2,500 depending on the value of your investable assets), but it includes the retirement income plan and the Social Security analysis, and it could save you money in the long run. In addition, Mr. Meyer said one of their experts will walk you through the process over the phone, and the firm acts as your fiduciary, which means it is required to put your interests before its own.

An advanced version of the Social Security calculator will be introduced in coming weeks. For instance, it will factor in whether your children may be eligible for benefits. It will also present your total benefits as a net present value. In other words, it will account for the time value of money, or the fact that receiving $100 today is more valuable than receiving the same amount in the future because you could have invested it or spent it today.

Keep in mind that access to the tool (for the $49.95 and $124.95 versions) expires after 90 days, though the company will give you access for a longer period of time if you ask.

What do you think of this new calculator?

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=8c6c546a39f4dba81649ce930851b11d