Team climate change with a likely increase in future violence and news editors at major print/broadcast media go bananas, finds Grumpy Editor.
Grabbing chunks of newspaper space and radio/TV airtime Friday and into the weekend were mentions that shifts in climate --- even relatively minor departures from normal temperatures --- could significantly increase human conflicts around the world by 2050, according to a study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and Princeton University.
Solomon Hsiang, the study’s lead author, is described as a postdoctoral fellow in science, technology and environmental policy at Princeton during the research project and now is an assistant professor of public policy at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy.
Most print/broadcast news outlets did not identify Hsiang other than “lead author,” although Associated Press labeled him as an economist.
What media overlooked was that Hsiang, also as lead author in a study publicized two years ago, covered much of the same ground with “often war is associated with global climate change.” See him in an Aug. 29, 2011 podcast here.
If future extreme heat is likely to trigger violence, then violent crime should be rampant now in places such as Palm Springs, Phoenix and Las Vegas, where temperatures last month soared to (what is considered normal for the period) 112-118 degrees --- and 100-plus readings continue this week.
And Death Valley, where the thermometer reached a world record --- a scorching 134 degrees --- a century ago (July 10, 1913, to be exact), should be the shootout capital of the world. However, readings at the California tourist site “cooled down” in recent days from 128 degrees on July 3 and 129 degrees on June 30. The temperature reached only 112 degrees there on Friday. No recent crime sprees were reported.
Most July job growth comes via part-time work
While most media trumpeted the July government employment report released Friday as adding 162,000 positions (and not mentioning the number was below economist expectations of 184,000), Kevin G. Hall, at McClatchy’s Washington bureau, went a step further to point out:
A closer look at the Labor Department figures “suggests that part-time work accounted for almost all the job growth that’s been reported over the past six months.”
He also worked in quotes from Keith Hall, a senior researcher at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center and former head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics: “Over the last six months, of the net job creation, 97 percent of that is part-time work. That is really remarkable.”
The researcher added, “That is a really high number for a six-month period. I’m not sure that has ever happened over six months before.”
Plain Dealer dumps 50 newsroom staffers
In what one news person said was a “graceless” layoff method, Cleveland Plain Dealer editorial staffers were told to stand by their telephones on Wednesday, between 8 and 10 a.m., to learn if they got the ax. Fifty did.
Others got the green light to go back to the office.
Those getting pink slips were then asked to collect severance materials the following day --- at the paper’s production center about 10 miles away from the editorial room.
Ohio’s largest newspaper, owned b y Advance Publications, in April announced a scale-back in home deliveries to three days a week.
Meanwhile, getting pink slips in other cities were 29 workers at Gannett Co.’s Arizona Republic, Phoenix, and Chattanooga Times Free Press editorial writer Drew Johnson who wrote a headline: 'Take your jobs plan and shove it, Mr. President: Your policies have harmed Chattanooga enough.” It appeared over an editorial on Tuesday, the day President Barack Obama visited the city.
In case you missed these:
With cries for more U.S. jobs, the Pentagon plans to buy additional Russian-made helicopters for Afghanistan. The Pentagon has spent $1.1 billion on the Mi-17 choppers since 2010 and will pay $350 million for 15 more of the aircraft, reported the Wall Street Journal…Speaking of where U.S. taxpayers’ money goes, Bloomberg News reported President Barack Obama proposes giving about $323 million in aid next year --- to Columbia, to combat drug trafficking and violence in that South American nation.
Amelia Rose Earhart, weather and traffic co-anchor at TV station KUSA, Denver, an NBC affiliate owned by Gannett Co., is finalizing plans to re-create her namesake and distant relative Amelia Earhart’s legendary flight which ended on July 2, 1937, when her airplane vanished on approach to Howland Island in the western Pacific. With co-pilot Patrick Carter, a Fayetteville, Ark., businessman, KUSA’s Earhart, 30, plans the flight for next summer…Less on-base magazine purchasing for Army and Air Force personnel as Army and Air Force exchanges worldwide dropped 891 periodicals ranging from Playboy to Saturday Evening Post --- yes, even SpongeBob Comics…ESPN will hire bloggers to cover NFL teams this season.
Lack of investigative reporters? While a wide outbreak of cyclospora, a lengthy intestinal illness, sickened more than 400 salad eaters in the U.S., media failed to dig in and seek the source of the tainted pre-packaged veggies, as health officials stayed unusually mum on the source and label involved.
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