Good evening, 919 Gang. One of our folks has scored big –
again.
T.R. REINMAN
writes:
Hats off to Dave Hasemyer. The walkaway in the Wall Street
Journal account of the White House Correspondents Dinner: The White House
Correspondents’ Dinner raises money for scholarships and awards journalism
prizes. This year, the association recognized the work of Matt Viser of the
Boston Globe, Norah O’Donnell of CBS News, Carol Lee of The Wall Street Journal, Terrence McCoy of
the Washington Post and Neela Banerjee, John Cushman Jr., David Hasemyer and
Lisa Song of InsideClimate News.
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DAVID FARMER writes:
The
Ford Motor Co. has reported the most profitable start to a year in its history.
U.S. sales are said to represent a large part of that. What I'd like to know
is, where are those Fords?
When
I lived in Beverly Hills, I reported to this forum about the makes of cars I
saw in my neighborhood. Hint: mostly not American.
And
now I'm sending my sightings of cars in Hollywood. Hint: mostly not American.
My neighbors are well-off young families with two earners. They can buy any
brand of car they want. And they clearly don't want American-made.
When
I walk from Hollywood Boulevard south to Sunset Boulevard, I pass maybe 40
houses, counting both sides of the street. And parked in driveways and at the
curb are at least 75 cars. (Most families here, as elsewhere, have two.)
I
might spot half a dozen American makes during that walk. And many of those are
specialized: Jeeps, electric-powered Chevrolets, or muscle cars such as the
Dodge Charger or Chevy Camaro. But largely foreign makes.
Sometimes
on my stretch of Hollywood Boulevard I'll see exotic speedsters like the
Ferrari or Lamborghini zooming from one red light to another. Maybe the drivers
just like the throaty roar of their engines.
Down
in my garage, one resident keeps a Bentley. We've lived here almost a year and
a half, and I've never seen it moved. I'm thinking about offering to take it
for a drive, just to keep the oil from getting gummy.
Why this talk of automobiles? I'd like to hear from fellow
members about the auto array where they live. I assume there must be places in
the USA where foreign brands are the minority.
When I was a boy, the Big Three churned out more cars than
anyone on earth. How did they go so wrong? To me, one answer was their refusal
to build cars without tons of sheet metal and fins. But maybe Americans were
partly to blame--did we dislike more modest models? Another factor: Japanese
and German makers introduced smaller cars that were fuel-efficient and offered
a better ratio of cost to quality.
American
makers never seemed to recover from the arrival of Datsuns (later Nissans),
Hondas and Toyotas. Then came a wave of Audis, Volkswagens and Mercedes. It's
hard to see all that reversing. Or maybe it just looks that way to me in
status-conscious Hollywood.
REBER: When I was young,
after a hard day of hunting and gathering, the family would huddle around the
fire in our cave and talk about how shabby Japanese products were. Invariably,
someone would say something like “My watch has stopped working.” Someone else
would say, “It must have been made in Japan.” This would result in guffaws and
knee slaps that could go on for an hour. You may not think that’s funny, but
remember, this was before knock-knock jokes were invented. We didn’t have much
humor.
Japanese
quality has improved a lot since then.
I
remember President Reagan taking a tour of an auto plant in Japan and saying
something like, “Boy we have to get the fellas from Detroit over here to see
how it’s done.” Well, you can imagine the yelling and cussing that produced in
Michigan. Never mind that he was exactly correct.
To
answer David’s question, we own two Ford products. My nearest neighbor has
three Ford trucks and a warehouse full of Mustangs. Japanese sedans have been
losing ground as Americans opt for trucks. The latest USA Today list I found
has the Ford, Chevy and Dodge pickup trucks as the most-sold new vehicles in
the U.S. The Ford Fusion is No.7 on the list. The rest of the top 10 are
Japanese.
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MICHAEL GRANT
writes:
A few posts ago, Hal Fuson provided a graphic comparing
newspaper ad revenue from print and digital, over time. The graphic showed
steep decline in print ad revenue after 2006, but over that time, the
print/digital percentages remained steady. In billions of dollars, the 2006
figures were 46.6 (print) vs. 2.7 (digital). In 2014, the split was 16.4
(print) vs. 3.5 (digital). Jack, maybe you could print that graphic again. Hal
says the same trends continue for 2015 and ’16. If I were a local (San Diego,
Chicago, L.A., Hartford, Orlando, Baltimore) newspaper publisher in 2016,
ripping my hair out looking for a digital-era newspaper business model, I would
conclude that the best local newspaper product for ad revenue (the “lifeblood,”
as Hal says) would be print, 120 pages split 60/40 between local advertising
and news, thrown at the sill of the customers’ front door every morning.
Gannett isn’t drooling over these publications for their digital ad values;
print is where the real money still is.
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CARL LARSEN writes:
It's
the end of a long era Sunday as the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey
Circus sends its prodigious pachyderms packing for the warm climes of a Florida
retirement refuge, sort of like Sun City with peanuts. In a masterful PR stroke
worthy of The Greatest Show on Earth (trademark) that embattled Sea World could
learn from, the last performance, from The Dunkin' Donuts Center in Providence,
R.I., will be broadcast live on Facebook and on Ringling.com. (free). It's
scheduled for 7:45 p.m., Eastern time. Changing times, and animal-rights
activists alleging cruelty, have forced this move.
 |
| Photo: Heinz Kluetmeier, PR Newswire |
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REBER: Gather at the Maypole and we’ll
wish Happy Birthday (May 1) to Thomas Neumann.
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PAMELA DUGAN
forwards:
Boy, things are really getting tough in newspaper-land.
MICHAEL GRANT writes:
Apropos of nothing except a moment of cheer for most of us
on a Sunday morning:
1984 NLCS Gm4: Garvey hits a walk-off homer
P.O. Box 2239
Ramona, CA 92065
U.S.A.
