What's new: 2014-10-12

суббота

Watching 'Dear White People' At Harvard

"It just felt like you were watching your life up on screen, it really did," said Kimiko Matsuda-Lawrence, a junior at Harvard majoring in History, Literature and African American Studies. "I really related to a lot of the characters, especially Sam White. I was like, 'Oh my gosh, that's me, this mixed girl who is super militant with her own identity issues."

Simien says he was also Lionel his freshman year at Chapman University, a private college in Southern California. But he graduated as the militant Sam. In a Q and A with the students after the screening, he said he wanted to write characters and situations that were relatable to him. But in an earlier version of the script he took out the blackface party telling himself it was over the top. "I'm doing way too much, I need to pull back a bit," he told the audience. "But, a few months later that happened and I was like, 'Oh, okay. Got it, universe.'"

The universe brought Simien a string of real blackface parties at colleges across the country. Tiffany Loftin was an undergrad at UC Santa Cruz in 2010 and remembers them well. Loftin says it was affirming to see art imitate life at the screening, but she worries Simien might just be preaching to the choir.

"I would love to see a balanced body of white and black people in the theater," said Loftin. "If you have all white people, its problematic because they don't get it; if you have all black people, it's funny and we already get it." And she said, while provocative, the title Dear White People just might scare off folks who need to see it most.

In his question and answer session, Simien responded to that sentiment, saying that the title was provocative on purpose - to create buzz. And he told the Harvard audience they also need to do their part to get people to see it.

"If you are passionate about this and you want to see more complicated, interesting characters of color on the screen, if you want to see yourself represented and reflected in the culture, then you've got to drag your friends to see this movie," he said. "We don't get more of these unless we support it."

The Man Who Coined 'Genocide' Spent His Life Trying To Stop It

The world has grown far too familiar with genocide; as mass killings have claimed countless lives, the word has become ingrained into our vocabularies.

But the term didn't exist until 1943, when Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined it — pairing the Greek "genos," meaning race or family, with the Latin "-cidere," for killing. Lemkin, who witnessed the massacres of the early 20th century, spent his life campaigning to make the world acknowledge and prosecute the crime.

A new documentary, Watchers of the Sky, tells his story. Once he'd established the word, Lemkin worked persistently in the then-newly-formed United Nations, hounding delegates to discuss his new word and acknowledge the issue.

“ At a young age he said to himself, 'Why is the killing of an individual a greater crime than the killing of millions?'

- Director Edet Belzberg

"This was a man who didn't speak English very well, he didn't represent a country, he didn't represent an institution, he barely had a home, he barely had food — and yet he was there every day lobbying to the delegates and the ambassadors to make this a crime," says Edet Belzberg, director of the film.

Lemkin was born in Poland in 1900, and was instilled with a sense of justice at a very young age. As a teenager, he paid close attention to the massacre of the Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire in 1915.

He came across the story of Soghomon Tehlirian, who saw his whole family killed, but survived. Tehlirian later killed one of the masterminds of the massacre, Talaat Pasha, who was living freely. Tehlirian was arrested and went on trial.

"Lemkin read about this and at a young age he said to himself, 'Why is the killing of an individual a greater crime than the killing of millions?' " Belzberg explains. "And that really set him on his path, and he decided at that age that he was going to be the person who would develop and create the law to stop this from happening again."

i i

Edet Belzberg's other films include the documentaries Children Underground and The Recruiter. Music Box Films hide caption

itoggle caption Music Box Films

Edet Belzberg's other films include the documentaries Children Underground and The Recruiter.

Music Box Films

At first, Belzberg says, people saw him as a pest. They hoped he would give up his preoccupation with mass killings. Then Lemkin — who was of Jewish descent — lost 49 members of his family to the Holocaust, and his determination grew even stronger.

Lemkin continued to fight genocide for his entire life. He died of a heart attack at the age of 59, while on his way to yet another U.N. meeting. Fewer than a dozen people attended his funeral.

Watchers of the Sky weaves Lemkin's story — with quotes from his notes and journals — with stories of modern conflicts in Rwanda and Darfur, Sudan. The documentary includes interviews with people who continue the crusade against genocide, like Samantha Power, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and Luis Moreno Ocampo, the first Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.

Belzberg worked from 800 hours of footage and 5,000 stills to tell a story that spans a century. "That was the biggest challenge," Belzberg says: "to interweave in a coherent and lyrical way that people can be taken from one story to the next and not be fatigued, but be enriched by it."

Interview Highlights

On Lemkin's belief in the importance of finding a word for the crime

“ He believed that if he could find the right word ... that would ignite people to come together to stop these crimes.

- Director Edet Belzberg

He believed that if he could find the right word, if he could find the word that would unite people, that would ignite people to come together to stop these crimes. He was very good at languages —he spoke about seven languages — and he thought that there wasn't a word that described the horror of this crime. And so he set off on a path to do that.

On Lemkin's personal experience with genocide as a Polish Jew

Forty-nine members of his family were killed in the Holocaust. He tried, of course, to persuade his family to leave with him in 1939 — he knew what was coming and he tried to persuade his family to go with him to America. And they said they would be fine. And although he was thinking about these crimes before, after that, he was thinking, my God, there has to be something that ... would outrage people in the same way that he was outraged by this.

On Lemkin's work during and after the Nuremberg trials

“ That's what really enraged Lemkin: He felt that a leader shouldn't have to cross a border in order to held accountable for their crimes.

- Director Edet Belzberg

After having coined this word, he went to Nuremberg ... to try and get them to use this word. Genocide was not a crime at that time ... they couldn't prosecute for genocide. ... That left Lemkin completely heartbroken. ...

He understood that there was a flaw in what was happening, that had Hitler not invaded Poland and had he killed all the Jews in Germany, at that time, he wouldn't have been committing a crime that could have been prosecuted by Nuremberg.

That's what really enraged Lemkin: He felt that a leader shouldn't have to cross a border in order to held accountable for their crimes. He felt that crimes against humanity and war crimes weren't enough and so he continued his cause, and he then took it to the United Nations and he continued lobbying the leaders there to make this an international crime. And he continued until his death.

genocide

Holocaust

United Nations

documentary

Saudi Cleric's Death Sentence Focuses Shia Anger On Ruling Family

Protests broke out in Saudi Arabia this week over the death sentence of a leading Shiite cleric. Human rights activists call his sentencing political and warn that by killing him, the country may deepen sectarian discord and spur more violence.

Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr was a leading voice during protests in 2011 and 2012 by the minority Shiite Muslim community.

The Shiites were demanding reforms to anti-Shiite practices that shut them out of top government employment and prevent them from building places of worship. Saudi Arabia's ruling family and the majority of the country are Sunni Muslims.

Nimr was a bold voice for Saudi Shias.

"From the moment you're born, you're surrounded by fear," he said in a 2011 sermon. "The people took to the streets demanding freedom, dignity and reform. We don't mind getting arrested with those who've been detained and we don't even mind shedding our blood for their sake."

Less than a year later, Nimr was arrested, and shot and wounded in the process. Police claim he used violence against them; his supporters and family say that's not true.

He was sentenced to death Wednesday on charges that include being disloyal to the ruling family, using violence and seeking foreign meddling.

Human Rights Watch researcher Adam Coogle says the sentencing was political and could bring more unrest.

Middle East

In Saudi Arabia, Shiite Muslims Challenge Ban On Protests

"This can end up festering over a long period of time and ultimately leads to instability," Coogle says.

Coogle says the court that sentenced Nimr, a specialized criminal court, was originally formed to try terrorism cases but is now being used to silence critics. Nimr's nephew, an activist, was also sentenced to death in the same court. Human Rights Watch is calling for the court to be abolished.

Coogle says western allies like the U.S. need to address Saudi Arabia's human rights record.

"If we're going to support human rights in Syria, for example, it's also important to have conversations with our own ally," he says.

In Saudi, small protests have begun.

In the eastern province of Qatif, home to a large part of Saudi's Shiite community, protesters called for the downfall of the ruling family. If Nimr is killed, activists warn, the unrest will grow.

In Forcing Out Senior Executive, New CEO Mohn Puts Stamp On NPR

The ouster earlier this month of NPR's chief content officer, Kinsey Wilson, did little to stir outcry or concern among public radio listeners.

Yet because of Wilson's prominent role in seeking innovative ways for the network to flourish as the audience's habits shift, the announcement generated much attention and consternation inside the circles of digital journalism.

Wilson's departure may markedly, if not necessarily radically, shape the evolution of the public radio network for years to come. There appears to have been no Rosebud moment, no specific clash, that led NPR's new CEO, Jarl Mohn, to force him out. But the move, occurring as part of a larger shakeup of the network's top ranks, represents the most visible symbol yet of the influence that Mohn intends to exert at the company he joined in July.

This article is based on Mohn's public statements, an interview with Mohn and interviews with 10 people who have talked with both Wilson and Mohn about their aspirations for the network. They include current and former senior NPR executives as well as associates of both men.

"I don't like incremental growth," Mohn told staffers in a recent meeting. "I want to take advantage of what I see as transformative opportunities. ... My job is to make sure you have the tools and the resources and the money for you to do the best work of your careers."

Mohn, a highly successful former radio and television executive, is championing a vision of an even more robust NPR, built on the belief that he can work with local member stations to increase audiences of its mainstay radio programs. Morning Edition and All Things Considered garner estimated weekly audiences of about 12.3 million and 11.8 million listeners, respectively.

Related NPR Stories

NPR Chief Announces Departure Of Key Digital Strategist

4 min 55 sec

Add to Playlist

Download

The Two-Way

Executive Who Spearheaded NPR's Digital Strategy To Leave Network

NPR Picks Jarl Mohn As Its Next CEO

3 min 55 sec

Add to Playlist

Download

The Two-Way

NPR Names Jarl Mohn As Its New CEO And President

The newsmagazines are the pillars of the network's coverage, attracting the largest audiences, and they cement the network's appeal to many philanthropic funders, corporate underwriters and major donors. They also serve as the backdrop against which member stations raise money from listeners, a key component of their current revenue streams. In recent years, some public radio executives, including Wilson, concluded that the listenerships of the two shows had reached plateaus that would at best hold constant, especially as the average audience per quarter hour for the shows has dipped by hundreds of thousands of listeners in recent years.

"I don't believe flat is the new up," Mohn told staffers. "Some people do."

Wilson did. Although he declined to be interviewed for this story, Wilson has previously argued that NPR should devote enough financial resources to sustain audiences of its traditional radio programming but invest new resources in cultivating greater audiences digitally.

Mohn is driven by data and is comfortable speaking in the demographic argot of the television and radio programmer he once was. He has sketched out his ambition for NPR to boost revenues greatly in the next three to five years, in large part by asking more — a lot more — of wealthy donors. He also said he wants to target Madison Avenue and double NPR's revenues from corporate underwriters. He said half of advertising buyers do not know their clients can pay for underwriting spots on NPR.

In the interview, Mohn argued that NPR has made a rhetorical mistake in stressing what it creates on the air and online as "content"; he prefers an emphasis on news. "That is at the core of what we do," Mohn told me, though he promised no retreat from NPR's entertainment shows and musical offerings.

Associates and colleagues of both men said no specific conflict led to Wilson's departure. Yet Mohn has repeatedly expressed a sense of urgency in taking steps to promote Morning Edition more vigorously in concert with member stations to yield a 10 percent rise in audience levels. He saw that initiative as a test case for the network that he intends to replicate with All Things Considered.

A former colleague said Wilson was taking steps to convene executives to address Mohn's goals. But Wilson's counterparts from other legacy news organizations have acknowledged the tension created by trying concurrently to fight off decline in their traditional audiences while trying to draw in more people digitally.

The arrival of a new CEO in the corporate world is often accompanied by changes in the executive levels. And Mohn cast Wilson's departure as the byproduct of a larger restructuring of NPR's top management, carried out after several months of study. He elevated NPR strategy executive Loren Mayor to become the network's chief operating officer and shifted NPR's nonnews programs under its chief marketing officer, Emma Carrasco. Mohn also stripped out the layer between the CEO and the top news executive, a position currently filled on an acting basis by All Things Considered Executive Producer Chris Turpin. Mohn has signaled he expects the person who assumes that role permanently to act not just as the network's chief broadcast news executive but also as a dynamic digital leader.

That description in many ways fits Wilson, originally hired from the top ranks of USA Today to oversee digital media at NPR. He quickly assumed a leading role in mapping out a future for the network and its place in the larger public radio system, serving as a top lieutenant under a series of CEOs in short succession, including Dennis Haarsager, Vivian Schiller, Joyce Slocum, Gary Knell, Paul Haaga and until recently Mohn.

Wilson is credited with a major expansion of NPR's digital audience over time. During his six-year tenure at NPR, Wilson encouraged the development of NPR Music as a major force and led the creation of "NPR One," a Pandora-like public radio service that stitched together stories from disparate shows responsive to users' tastes. He struck distribution deals with Apple and car manufacturers. In addition, Wilson encouraged the creation of digital verticals to supplement radio coverage with a focus on specific topics, such as race and identity, education and global public health. Wilson built close ties with philanthropic supporters such as the Gates and Knight foundations to support those efforts.

Some colleagues at NPR and associates outside the network with whom he spoke described Wilson as a credible contender for the CEO position after Knell left to become the CEO of National Geographic. But several of Wilson's initiatives created friction with member station officials, some of whom feared NPR was seeking to supplant their direct relationships with listeners and donors as audiences move online. (Unlike broadcast television networks, NPR owns no stations in the U.S.) The initial iTunes deal with Apple raised hackles with many station executives as it represented the first time listeners could access NPR content without going through the stations, either on the air or online, and without accompanying station content. Some officials confided in one another that they feared these initiatives presaged NPR's desire, under Wilson's leadership, to go directly to listeners.

Charles Kravetz, the general manager of the influential Boston station WBUR, was one of the few station officials to step forward to say he feared public radio would suffer without Wilson.

"I believe that Kinsey Wilson is among a very small collection of truly brilliant digital futurists in the media world," Kravetz said in an interview. "I'm very disappointed that he's gone."

"Kinsey used all of his personal forces of nature, of intellect, of persuasive powers and tried — and to a very large degree succeeded — in moving public radio and NPR into the digital age in a very convincing, powerful way," Kravetz said. "When you do that, you're very disruptive."

Kravetz said he admired Mohn and said he was otherwise impressed with the new CEO's strategic thinking on NPR. But the Boston executive said he thought the reorganization left a key absence for the network that has yet to be filled.

In response to a question from an NPR staff member at the recent meeting, Mohn said Wilson would not be replaced by any one person. All NPR's executives need to act more decisively and more swiftly in propelling the network forward, he said.

Yet at that meeting, Mohn took pains to say there would be no grand shift in strategy. (Mohn's press aides said his remarks at the meeting were to be on the record, so I listened in.)

"Digital is our present," Mohn said. "It is also our future. We must be where our audiences are. I'm deeply committed to digital."

"Those of you interpreting these recent changes as a refutation of digital strategies — you couldn't be more wrong."

The next day, Mohn sent out an email to all staffers saying he made a mistake at that meeting by failing to acknowledge Wilson's accomplishments at NPR; Mohn called Wilson "a universally praised visionary" who deserved a standing ovation from his peers.

Some NPR staffers have also raised concerns over the placement of nonnews shows such as Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me! the TED Radio Hour and Ask Me Another inside the portfolio of Carrasco, the chief marketing officer. In the interview, Mohn said that shift simply reflected ease of organizational structure, not part of any grand design for the shows to serve promotional ends. Carrasco is believed to be preparing to announce more specifics of how that will work in coming days.

Mohn's associates describe him as confident in his own ability to set an agenda in broad strokes and reluctant to delegate so much authority to a single executive below him. He got his start as a DJ under the name Lee Masters, became a programming executive in radio and then helped lead MTV and VH1 to establish themselves as cable television powerhouses. He later became CEO of the E! network.

In ensuing years, Mohn branched out into digital media, serving at various points on the corporate boards of XM Radio (now part of Sirius XM), Scripps Network Interactive, and the Web analytics company comScore. Mohn also served as chief executive of Liberty Digital, the investment wing of Liberty Media Corp., before spending a dozen years investing a significant portion of his own considerable private fortune in 45 digital media companies. He was also chairman of the board for Southern California Public Radio, which has also expanded its news coverage and digital footprint significantly for its terrestrial station, KPCC.

Mohn spelled all this out for staffers at the meeting following Wilson's departure, taking pains, as he explained it, to ensure they understood his own credibility and his belief in the need to prosper in the digital age.

Southern California Public Radio CEO Bill Davis, a former NPR executive and corporate director who is one of Mohn's chief allies within public broadcasting, sought to allay concerns about Mohn last week.

"Everything I know about Jarl suggests to me that he's going to focus on ensuring that there's a consistent user experience on all of NPR's platforms (broadcast, digital, mobile, social, live event), and that he's going to do everything in his power to ensure that the 'digital vs. radio' silos at NPR are dismantled," Davis wrote in a Facebook posting after Wilson's departure.

"I think that's what Kinsey was trying to accomplish as well," Davis wrote. "Reasonable folks can disagree as to whether Kinsey was successful in that effort, but I don't see this as any kind of change in NPR's strategic focus or direction."

Wilson's record in that digital space, especially at NPR, has been hailed as remarkable by many close observers of media innovation. Ken Doctor of Harvard University's Nieman Lab, for example, named Wilson one of 13 the most influential executives in the country, in a list that also included the billionaire media moguls Michael Bloomberg and Rupert Murdoch.

Now, it is Mohn's turn to own NPR's future.

Airbnb, New York State Spar Over Legality Of Rentals

Airbnb has a problem. The website for short-term room rentals is growing quickly. But in many cities, these rentals are illegal. Now, New York's attorney general has documented the extent of the illegal activity, by delving into the company's business records.

Almost three-quarters of New York City bookings appear to break the law, he says.

Thousands of these bookings happen every day in buildings all over New York, like the studio that Irene rents out on Manhattan's Upper East Side. (Irene asked that her full name not be used.)

"This is a full apartment in a very nice upscale building with a full kitchen and bath, good security," she said.

And Irene charges around $150 a night — about half the price of a hotel room.

"There's nothing not nice about staying there," she said.

Hurricane Gonzalo Hits Bermuda; Ana To Skirt Past Hawaii

Hurricane Ana is creeping up on Hawaii, just as Gonzalo is leaving Bermuda behind thousands of miles away in the Atlantic.

Gonzalo, a Category 3 storm when it smashed into the British island territory with winds of 110 mph, knocked out power to half of the island's 70,000 residents. The storm has now been downgraded to Category 2 as it continues a northeasterly track through the Atlantic Ocean.

The BBC reported just a short time ago:

"Emergency services are waiting for daybreak to assess the full damage wreaked by the second powerful storm to strike the island in less than a week.

"Strong winds and heavy surf continued after the eye of the hurricane moved north into the Atlantic, and tidal surges are still possible."

Bermuda's The Royal Gazette says: "After a lull during the eye between about 9.30-10.30pm last night, strong winds again battered Bermuda as the Island faced the second half of Hurricane Gonzalo."

Meanwhile, in the Western Pacific, Hurricane Ana "was carving a path south of Hawaii early Saturday, producing high waves, strong winds and heavy rains that prompted a flood advisory," The Associated Press says.

The National Weather Service says that the center of Ana is about 170 miles southwest of the Big Island and about 225 miles from Honolulu.

It says there's little chance of hurricane conditions on the islands.

A third system, Tropical Storm Trudy, is making landfall on Mexico's southern Pacific coast, about 75 miles southeast of Acapulco.

Bermuda

Mexico

Hawaii

Hurricanes

Predictions Of 'Peak Oil' Production Prove Slippery

The dustiest portion of my home library includes the 1980s books — about how Japan's economy would dominate the world.

And then there are the 1990s books — about how the Y2K computer glitch would end the modern era.

Go up one more shelf for the late 2000s books — about oil "peaking." The authors claimed global oil production was reaching a peak and would soon decline, causing economic chaos.

The titles include Peak Oil and the Second Great Depression, Peak Oil Survival and When Oil Peaked.

When those books were written, worldwide oil drillers were producing about 85 million barrels a day. Now they are pumping about 93 million barrels.

NPR/U.S. Energy Information Adminstration

Despite growing violence in the Middle East, oil supplies just keep rising.

At the same time, the growth rate for demand has been shrinking. This week, the International Energy Agency cut its forecast for oil-demand growth for this year and next. Turns out, oil demand growth — not production — is what appears to have peaked.

Now prices are plunging, down around 25 percent since June.

What did the forecasters get so wrong? In large measure, their mistake was in failing to appreciate the impact of a relatively new technology, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

Because of fracking, oil is being extracted from shale formations in Texas and North Dakota. Production has shot up so quickly in those areas that the United States is now the world's largest source of oil and natural gas liquids, overtaking Saudi Arabia and Russia.

This new competition has shocked OPEC. Members say they want to maintain their current market share, so they are keeping up production and even boosting it.

Bottom line: The peak of production is nowhere on the horizon.

So are the authors of "peaking" books now slapping themselves in the head and admitting they had it all wrong?

Some are, at least a bit.

Energy analyst Chris Nelder wrote a book in 2008 titled Profit from the Peak. The cover's inside flap said: "There is no doubt that oil production will peak, if it hasn't already, and that all other fossil fuels will peak soon after."

In a phone discussion about his prediction, Nelder said "my expectation has not materialized."

The surge in oil production in Texas and North Dakota "has really surprised everyone," he said. "If you had told me five years ago we'd be producing more oil today, I would have said, 'No way.' I did not believe at all that this would happen."

But while he acknowledges that oil has not peaked yet, he says it might soon because "oil is trapped on a narrow ledge" where it must stand on stable prices. Holding the price of a barrel steady around $110 for years allows energy companies to invest in fracking operations.

Over the past three years, those are exactly the conditions drillers have enjoyed. Oil was sitting pretty on a stable plateau of roughly $110 a barrel. But now, as global growth slows, the price is plunging, down to around $83 per barrel.

Related NPR Stories

Parallels

As Oil Prices Fall, Who Wins And Who Loses?

Energy

With U.S. Oil Supply Climbing, Some Call For End To Export Ban

Falling Oil Prices Could Affect Manufacturing, Automobile Industries

Crude Oil Prices Drop As Saudis Refuse To Cut Production

"China is cooling off quite a bit. Much of Europe is slipping back towards recession," Nelder said. If oil prices stay low for long, frackers may need to stand down. "There is a lower level [in price] where they just can't make money," he said.

And with OPEC pumping so much oil now to hold down prices, maybe they are using up their supplies more quickly. "Depletion never sleeps," he said.

So perhaps Nelder has been wrong so far, but could be right before too long.

That's what Kenneth Worth thinks. He's the author of Peak Oil and the Second Great Depression, a 2010 book. He says the fracking boom has been so frenzied in this decade that drillers may have extracted the cheapest oil already. With fracking, oil supplies "deplete very rapidly. You have to keep drilling really fast," he said.

With prices now so low, the money to keep up the frenzy may not be there.

So maybe the "peaking" predictions weren't wrong, just premature. Then again, at some point, any forecast can turn out to be right, he says. "If you take enough of a timeline, eventually we're all dead," Worth noted.

peak oil

oil

fracking

Egality N'est Pas La RГ©alitГ©: French Women Wage Online War On Sexism

"It's just incredible that in the 21st century, politics people could say that without any reaction in the political class," says De Haas. "Nobody say nothing!"

De Haas hopes that with Macholand, French women will now be able to speak out and have their opinion heard.

"It's a website to mobilize people against sexism," she says. "The sexism in the media, the sexism in advertising or the sexism in politics."

The site invites users to join the so-called action against Collomb.

"You can send a tweet to this guy to tell him what he say about the minister of national education is totally sexist, and he should shut up the next time he has an idea like this," says De Haas.

There seems to be no shortage of sexism in France. Feminists say the country's Latin roots and streak of machismo allow powerful men get away with bad behavior toward women.

Think of former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The Frenchman was arrested in New York City in May 2011 after allegedly assaulting a hotel maid. Though the case was dropped for lack of evidence, it brought to light that Strauss-Kahn had been engaged in sketchy behavior toward women in France for years, but no one had dared expose him.

Macholand.fr/YouTube

A promotional video for Macholand.fr highlights how pervasive sexism is in French society.

Walk down any Paris street and no one seems to flinch at the number of naked women staring out from advertisements and magazine covers at news kiosks. And despite the fact that egalite is part of the French motto, French women earn 25 percent less than their male counterparts, and make up only a quarter of the country's parliament and 3 percent of chief executives.

De Haas, who runs her own company, decided to launch Macholand to let women (or men) join in collective Twitter, Facebook or email campaigns against sexism.

The site has been up a few days, and already more than 6,000 people have participated.

Another target on the site is a dating website that compares women to cars — in fact, I saw one of the company's giant ads posted right beside my son's elementary school. "French women also have beautiful chassis," it read, above a sultry-looking mademoiselle with most of her bare derriere exposed.

Visitors to Macholand.fr also are invited to start their own actions against sexism. You can upload a picture of the offensive person, place or thing and ask others to join you in doing something about it.

At a popular gym in Paris' 15th arrondissement, women of all ages are working out. Retiree Francoise Delamarre heard about the site on the news and thinks it's a great idea.

"It's like a forum to fight sexism instead of remaining frustrated and alone," she says.

Emilie Bresson, 34, agrees that French women lag behind women in some other European countries.

"No, I think we don't have the same rights as, for example, Scandinavian women," says Bresson. "I think they are more progressist on this point."

But Bresson thinks the best way to fight sexism is at the workplace, not on a website. She thinks French women have a long way to go before they'll be able to have families and build careers with the same ease as men.

Back at her office, De Haas remembers what first gave her the idea for Macholand. After contacting a company about a degrading advertisement, they wrote her back saying they were sorry she found it sexist.

"I said, oh my God, they think it's my opinion! They think that, okay, sexist or not sexist, is just an opinion." she says. "It's not an opinion, it's a fact. It's very dangerous."

De Haas says many women became outraged after she tweeted the company's response to her. That's when she realized it was pointless to act alone.

"If 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 people react in the same time to say the same thing, a company can no longer call it an opinion," says De Haas. "They have to recognize they have a problem."

France

sexism

Supreme Court Lets Texas Enforce Voter ID Law For Nov. Election

The Supreme Court has refused to block a Texas voter identification law for the November election – the first time in decades that the justices have allowed such a law to stand after a lower federal court had deemed it restrictive and unconstitutional.

The ruling came just after 5 a.m. on Saturday. Three justices dissented.

The Associated Press writes:

"The law was struck down by a federal judge last week, but a federal appeals court had put that ruling on hold. The judge found that roughly 600,000 voters, many of them black or Latino, could be turned away at the polls because they lack acceptable identification. Early voting in Texas begins Monday."

Lyle Denniston of Scotus Blog calls the decision "a stinging defeat for the Obama administration and a number of civil rights groups."

Denniston says: "The Justice Department has indicated that the case is likely to return to the Supreme Court after the appeals court rules. Neither the Fifth Circuit Court's action so far nor the Supreme Court's Saturday order dealt with the issue of the law's constitutionality. The ultimate validity of the law, described by Saturday's dissenters as 'the strictest regime in the country,' probably depends upon Supreme Court review."

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented.

"The greatest threat to public confidence in elections in this case is the prospect of enforcing a purposefully discriminatory law, one that likely imposes an unconstitutional poll tax and risks denying the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters," Ginsburg wrote in the dissent.

The AP says of the Texas law that it "sets out seven forms of approved ID - a list that includes concealed handgun licenses but not college student IDs, which are accepted in other states with similar measures."

Earlier this month, the high court put on hold a similar law in Wisconsin.

The U.S. District Court that ruled the law unconstitutional and compared it to a poll tax in finding that purposely discriminated against minority voters.

voter ID laws

Texas

The Brutalities Of War Bring Surprising Angles To 'Fury'

Fury, David Ayer's brutal, reflective, wholly absorbing World War II movie, is about tank-to-tank combat and the way war degrades everyone it touches, but for about a minute it looks like a Western. A rider on a white horse crosses a misty field in no great hurry, gradually filling the frame. Ayer's patient camera tracks him into a metal thicket of burning American Shermans and their superior German counterparts, Tigers.

Then Brad Pitt tackles the rider, whose Nazi uniform has come into focus, and drives his knife through the officer's eye and into his brain. (He spares the horse.) It's April 1945, the last, exhausted gasp of "Good War" in Europe; in a few weeks Hitler will kill himself in a bunker and the Thousand-Year Reich will surrender in Year 13. But Fury reminds us like no film since Saving Private Ryan 16 years ago that there was nothing good about it, and it does so with considerably less flag-waving. And as with Saving Private Ryan, a few clumsy steps in the late going — specifically, a final act fueled by the sort of fantasy machismo that the film has until that point avoided — do nothing to blunt the impact of Fury's superb first 90 minutes.

Though it was shot mostly in Oxfordshire and Hertfordshire, England, this is the odd military picture wherein (save for Jason Isaacs doing his best Moe Szyslak impression), the American soldiers are actually played by Americans. We follow the crew of Fury, a Sherman tank that's been in the war since Africa, 1942. Everyone in its five-man crew has a "war name": the born-again Shia LaBeouf is "Bible," the alcoholic Michael Pea is "Gordo," and so on.

As the commander, Sgt. Don "Wardaddy" Collier, Pitt has the same not-quite-standard-issue haircut he sported as the Nazi-huntin' Army lieutenant in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds five years ago. Though he gets to snack on lines like "this is a 'merican tank; we talk 'merican" and scold his men to "knock off the horseplay," there's none of that Tarantino impishness in his performance here. Wardaddy is an exhausted, righteous killer doing penance for untold sins.

Pitt wears the role as John Wayne would've, occasionally generous but often aloof. When he needs to mourn, he's careful to do it out of the sight of his men. Taking in the rich performances of the strong supporting cast — Pea as the half-drunk tank driver, Logan Lerman as the green clerk-typist Norman Ellison, Jon Bernthal as Grady, a brute who probably never had a toothbrush until the Army issued him one — it becomes casually apparent what a generous star Pitt has grown into, leaving air in the room for others else to breathe. Even LaBeouf is convincing.

In Ayer's steady hands, war-film clichs play more like the obligatory notes in a classical tragedy. One example: Norman (that clerk-typist) has been ordered to the front to replace the slain gunner of Fury, Wardaddy's M4. (Some of the tanks in the unit are named Matador, Lucy Sue, Old Phyllis and Murder Inc.) Sensitive and educated, he thinks Gordo must be insane when the driver tells him to spray a pile of probably already-dead Germans with machine-gun fire. Because he hesitated, Wardaddy wrestles him to the ground and forces him to execute a captured German soldier who is holding up photos of his family and pleading for his life. Rough stuff.

Ayer, a master of sweaty atmosphere, makes us imagine what the inside of this Sherman must smell like; five unwashed guys locked in a can together for three years, their boredom sporadically punctuated by rage or terror. He's best known for his grim policiers Training Day and End of Watch. Most recently, he made Sabotage, a gnarly, disreputable thriller about crooked DEA agents.

Fury is a big step up in sophistication. Where it elevates itself from being merely a believably grimy, well-acted war drama is in its long and surprising middle act. Liberating a town where the S.S. has been hanging German civilians who refuse their Fuhrer's order that "every man, woman and child" fight the Allied invaders, the Americans sort out the S.S. soldiers to be executed and almost as quickly decide they're entitled to the town's women, plying them with chocolate and nylons and cigarettes. It matters little if the ladies aren't explicitly saying no, since they're likely terrified, maybe starving and surrounded by strange men with guns.

Ayer considers the sexual politics of life during wartime in a long sequence wherein Wardaddy and Norman invite themselves into the home of a German woman and her pretty young relative, played by Anamaria Marinca and Alicia von Rittberg. Wardaddy offers them a gift — a half-dozen fresh eggs (where did he find them?) — and takes advantage of the rare opportunity to bathe. The younger of the pair is charmed when Norman sits down at their piano and begins to play, but any pleasure she takes in the music is only in the context of the fact that a bit earlier, the older one was hiding her under the bed to protect her.

It becomes clear that we're witnessing sexual assault taking place effectively if not literally at gunpoint: The women have only the options of these two, who can sit at a table and be civil for a few precious hours, or their rougher, more profane brothers, who eventually shove their way in. When Wardaddy lays down orders ruling out the kinds of mistreatment from which he chooses to protect these women, Grady vents his rage, taking the girl's plate from her and licking her food. Rather than rebuke his subordinate for his repellent conduct, Wardaddy simply trades plates with the girl, taking the contaminated dish for himself. He has made these men into savages. Now he, and we, and the women in the house, must live with it.

In Alaska Race For Governor, Democrats Try An Unusual Tactic: Dropping Out

This November, for the first time since Alaska became a state, the ballot won't include a Democratic candidate for governor. The Democrats had a candidate, Byron Mallott, but around Labor Day, he dropped out — in order to sign up as a running mate for a non-partisan candidate named Bill Walker.

His decision to drop out was part of a negotiated deal between the Democrat and Walker, neither of whom had enough support on his own to beat the incumbent Republican, Sean Parnell.

At an event announcing the new Walker-Mallott "unity ticket," Mallott said that he had "forged a friendship," with Walker over the summer, on the campaign trail. And they realized they had a lot in common.

Still, the merger was potentially disturbing to the Democratic base, given that Walker was a registered Republican and a social conservative. In an ad partly paid for by the AFL-CIO, Mallott seems to be reassuring Democrats that he's sticking to his principles, even as he makes common cause with Walker.

i i

Independent gubernatorial candidate Bill Walker greets Anchorage middle school students before a candidates forum in April. Walker used to be a registered Republican, but now he says he wants to move past party labels. Dan Joling/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Dan Joling/AP

Dan Joling/AP

"I know deep down who I am, as does Bill, in terms of our core philosophies and core values and I'm absolutely comfortable in our ability to work together," Mallott says in the ad.

As part of the deal with the Democrats, Walker changed his voter registration from "Republican" to "undeclared." At a recent candidate debate, he emphasized his desire to get past party labels.

"My — OUR administration will be not bipartisan, it will be NO-partisan," Walker said. "We're going to do what's best for Alaska, not necessarily what's best for one party or another party."

Alaska has a history of candidates who run outside party affiliation, often successfully. But political pros in Alaska are skeptical that the Walker-Mallott ticket heralds a new age of post-partisan politics.

"That's marketing and spin," says Marc Hellenthal, a pollster based in Anchorage. He says the Democrats' decision to sit this one out is a tactic designed to break the Republican dominance of Alaska state government.

"This is trying to win the governorship, and get rid of Parnell," he says.

It seems to be working. Since the creation of the unity ticket, Walker has surged — in at least one poll, he's ahead of Gov. Parnell. Walker is pooling the votes of Alaskans who are suspicious of the governor for his ties to the oil industry, and who don't like the way he's handled a sexual assault scandal in the Alaska National Guard.

Parnell is fighting back by casting doubt on the viability of the "unity ticket."

"There's no direction, but there's internal conflict," Parnell said at the same debate. He pointed out Walker's unwillingness to back a candidate in the race for U.S. Senate, even though the Democratic candidate, Sen. Mark Begich, has endorsed Walker.

"That right there highlights the problem with a non-partisan, bipartisan ticket," Parnell said.

His campaign has also been reminding Democratic voters that Walker is personally a social conservative, though he says those issues wouldn't be a priority for his administration. "Bill Walker Can't Hide From Social Issues," is the headline on a recent Parnell press release. It calls attention to recent federal rulings striking down Alaska's ban on gay marriage. Parnell has been fighting in court to save that ban, and the release says Walker would have to make similar choices.

"This is an example of how social issues find their way to a governor's desktop, whether he or she wants them there or not," the release says.

The Walker-Mallott ticket would rather campaign on budget issues. State spending has become a hot topic, because the state relies so heavily on oil money — and Alaska's oil production is in a long-term decline. Under Parnell, the state has run deficits, and has had to dip into reserve funds. Walker campaign aide Ron Clarke says his candidate is trying to restore a sense of realism about the state's long-term fiscal health.

"We've now raised more than an entire generation of people that pay no state-wide taxes and get free money every October, yet the state services keep coming," Clarke says. "The roads get plowed, the streets get paved, all this stuff happens, I don't know, maybe people think it's done by elves in the night."

Walker has said he wants to close those deficits, either by cutting spending or finding new revenues, or both.

All of which puts Alaska Democrats in the awkward position of backing a socially conservative budget hawk for governor. And yet, they appear ready to do just that.

"How can you possibly be troubled by him? He's a great guy," says Dave Kuibiak. He's a resident of Kodiak Island, and describes himself as far left on the political spectrum. But he's eager to vote for Bill Walker.

"We gotta have a change. And Walker's... Alaskan!" he says.

Faced with the Republican party's utter dominance of state government, Alaska Democrats seem to have decided that the enemy of their enemy... is their candidate.

2014 governors races

Alaska

Book News: John Grisham Backs Down From Comments On Child Pornography

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

John Grisham has backpedaled from his recent comments regarding child pornography, which were made in an interview published Thursday. The best-selling writer apologized in a statement posted on his Facebook and on his personal website, saying he "in no way intended to show sympathy for those convicted of sex crimes, especially the sexual molestation of children."

The apology came less than a day after the interview's publication in the British newspaper The Telegraph. In the course of that conversation, Grisham touched on the topic of U.S. prison populations.

"We have prisons now filled with guys my age — 60-year-old white men, in prison, who've never harmed anybody, would never touch a child. But they got online one night and started surfing around, probably had too much to drink or whatever, and pushed the wrong buttons, went too far and got into child porn."

Grisham added: "I have no sympathy for real pedophiles. God, please lock those people up. But so many of these guys don't deserve harsh prison sentences, and that's what they're getting."

The comments sparked a near-immediate firestorm online — which was followed, almost as quickly, with Grisham's apology: "Anyone who harms a child for profit or pleasure, or who in any way participates in child pornography — online or otherwise — should be punished to the fullest extent of the law."

Potter Threepeat: When the world of Harry Potter returns to the big screen, it turns out that it'll be staying there for quite some time. Warner Bros. has confirmed that the Potter(ish) flick Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them won't be just one film, but three — the first of which, at least, will be scripted by J.K. Rowling herself. The first installment is slated to hit theaters Nov. 18, 2016.

Will The Real Elena Ferrante Please Stand Up? Italian writer Domenico Starnone would very much like you to note that, at least in this metaphor, he's still sitting. Despite similarities in their writing and some biographical details, The Guardian reports that Starnone's fed up with the questions about whether he's behind Elena Ferrante, the pseudonym adopted by a mysterious, and internationally popular, Italian novelist. "Explain to me one thing," Starnone said. "Given that it is so rare, in this mud puddle that is Italy, to have international reach, why would we not make the most of it? What would induce us to remain in the shadow?"

Two Peeks At Twin Peaks: One corner of the Internet just about combusted recently with news that the cult TV show Twin Peaks would be revived on Showtime in 2016, some 25 years after its most recent episode aired. Now, Peaks fans, prepare for more: Mark Frost, who created the show with David Lynch, is also writing a book that follows the show's characters in the decades since last we saw them. The Secret Lives of Twin Peaks will be published shortly before the show returns to the air.

Leaning Ly-ward: In a blog for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Lucy Feriss notes the last bastion of adverbs: the courtroom. And along the way, she offers adverb apologists — myself among them — this word of solace for the unfairly condemned part of speech. "Like everything else in our language (yeah, I'm talkin' to you, Passive Voice; and you, those cuss words I can't write here), adverbs have great work to do and should be handled responsibly."

john grisham

twin peaks

Book News

Harry Potter

books

Syria's 'Moderate Rebels' Say They Are Willing, But Need Weapons

The American-led coalition opposing the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is starting to move toward vetting and training ground forces to do battle in both countries.

But it's a slow process, and it comes after years of frustrations for veterans of the Free Syrian Army, or the FSA, who have gathered in southeastern Turkey, a place with a long history of epic battles and religious fights.

At a park in the shadow of the Urfa fortress, Ahmed Askar, a 29-year-old commander recounts his battle experience in Syria. Above him are cliffs that contain the ruins of the palace where legend has it that the pagan king Nimrod ordered the burning of the prophet Abraham. God, the story goes, had other plans, turning the fire into water and creating a lake, where families today come to feed swarming schools of carp.

Askar says his fighters successfully pushed the Islamic State out of the eastern Syrian city of Deir Ezzor, but were later overrun by the enemy's superior firepower.

Askar brings a street-level commander's perspective to the battle against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. He says if the coalition gathers the FSA units that earned hard-won battle scars fighting ISIS with only light weapons, in a matter of months they could open new fronts at three strategic border crossings with Turkey — Ras al-Ain, Tal Abyad, and al-Bab.

"If we start with a few thousand men on these three fronts, with real weapons, you would soon see success," he says. "Because there are also a lot of fighters inside ISIS-controlled territory, they're waiting for a reason to get into the fight against ISIS."

Different Agendas

But as always with the Syrian opposition, it's complicated. Judging by the images flashing around the world from the border town of Kobani, it would seem that the toughest fighters combating ISIS at the moment are the Syrian Kurds with the YPG, linked to Turkey's Kurdish militants the PKK.

But Askar says in his opinion the unpopular decision by the Turkish government to oppose arming the Kurds is absolutely right, not just for Turkey, but for Syria as well.

"That's right, because the (Kurds) want their own state, they don't think about Syria as one state," he says. "If we win against ISIS, the Kurds will be no help in fighting the regime."

i i

A Free Syrian Army fighter runs after attacking a tank with a rocket-propelled grenade during fighting in Aleppo, Syria, in September 2012. The rebels say they are willing to take on the Islamic State, but need more weapons. Manu Brabo/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Manu Brabo/AP

Manu Brabo/AP

And the Arab-Kurdish divisions pale beside the conflicting agendas of some of the main regional players in the anti-ISIS coalition. President Obama's envoy to the coalition, retired general John Allen, told reporters in Washington this week that the in-fighting that has plagued every phase of the effort to find and support a moderate Syrian opposition.

"They need to begin to build and begin to work together to create a coherent political superstructure," said Allen, adding that a unified political structure combined with a credible field force "creates the moderate Syrian opposition as the force to be dealt with in the long term, in the political outcome of Syria."

Allen emphasized "long term," and said while Syria is important, Iraq has priority.

Askar says he's not seeing any coming together among the regional powers in the coalition, just familiar names being recycled. He says every power seems to have its favorite Syrians, with the Qataris pushing one politician, the Saudis another, and the Americans yet another. He singles out past Syrian opposition coalition head Ahmad al-Jarba as one example.

"The Saudi guy in Syria is al-Jarba ... a guy without any real experience," according to Askar. "But it seems the Saudis don't care about competence, they just want people loyal to them."

What Askar doesn't say is that the Turks and the Qataris are strong boosters of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, until now a strong and controversial presence in the FSA.

Faced with problematic benefactors all around, Askar and his Deir Ezzor fighters are going with the Turks for now. But they have few illusions that the effort to bring Syria a future dominated by neither radical Islam nor the Assad family dictatorship is if anything harder than ever.

Syria

Iraq

Poetry In Motion: Prima Ballerina Retires After 3-Decade Career

Not every dancer can be a ballerina, and not every ballerina gets to dance with the New York City Ballet. So when one makes it, and then stays with the company for three decades, it's a big deal.

Wendy Whelan is that ballerina. And on Saturday night, at 47 years old, she'll give her final New York City Ballet performance before she retires.

"I'm sure I'll get very emotional after," Whelan says. "I don't expect to get emotional during. It's not my style, I just don't do that. But I'll probably enter a depression, and I just know that I will do that because I always do that after a big ballet experience. ... But this is the end of a ballet career, so that's a bit bigger than just a season of ballet."

NPR sent Erin Baiano to photograph the prima ballerina as Whelan prepared for one of her last performances of "After the Rain," choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon and performed with her longtime partner Craig Hall. The pair received five curtain calls after the performance.

Audience members cried as they watched Whelan dance: Her body can still communicate a sort of universal poetry. To hear her story, click on the link above.

i i

Erin Baiano for NPR

i i

Erin Baiano for NPR

i i

Erin Baiano for NPR

i i

Erin Baiano for NPR

i i

Erin Baiano for NPR

i i

Erin Baiano for NPR

i i

Erin Baiano for NPR

i i

Erin Baiano for NPR

i i

Erin Baiano for NPR

i i

Erin Baiano for NPR

i i

Erin Baiano for NPR

i i

Erin Baiano for NPR

i i

Erin Baiano for NPR

i i

Erin Baiano for NPR

i i

Erin Baiano for NPR

i i

Erin Baiano for NPR

i i

Whelan embraces her husband, David Michalek, in her dressing room after her performance. Erin Baiano for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Erin Baiano for NPR

Whelan embraces her husband, David Michalek, in her dressing room after her performance.

Erin Baiano for NPR

"Dancing in a ballet company really bonds people for life; it's like being in the Army together," says Whelan. Erin Baiano for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Erin Baiano for NPR

Universities To Speakers Who've Visited West Africa: En Garde!

By now, it's well known that there are a limited number of ways you can contract Ebola: from the blood, sweat, saliva or other bodily fluids of someone who already is ill with the disease.

There are many more ways you can't get Ebola: by meeting someone who has recently spent time in West Africa, for example, or sitting through a lecture about Ebola. You can't even get Ebola if someone with Ebola happens to be near you. To become infected, you'd have to be exposed directly to their bodily fluids.

Yet in the past week, organizations have begun to crack down on events featuring West Africans or those who have returned from a trip to West Africa. The panic surrounding Ebola, a disease about which we actually know a fair amount, has led to some decisions that incorporate very little of that knowledge. Here are four:

Fencers Are En Garde When It Comes To Senegal Tournament

Dakar, the capital of Senegal, was scheduled to host a men's sabre fencing World Cup event at the end of October, but the sport's governing body canceled the event on Wednesday. Why? Senegal borders Guinea, one of three West African countries hit hard by Ebola. Senegal saw just one Ebola case in August. Health officials contained the patient and those with whom he had contact, and no further cases were identified.

Goats and Soda

Denying Ebola Turns Out To Be A Very Human Response

According to News Agency Nigeria, the decision to cancel the event has not been met with much opposition. The German Fencing Federation's director of sports, Sven Ressel, told reporters that the decision "absolutely makes sense. Precautionary measures are being taken." Meanwhile, the World Health Organization today declared Senegal Ebola-free since the country has gone 42 days, or double the incubation period, without a new case.

The University of Georgia shuns a top Liberian journalist

The University of Georgia's Grady School of Journalism and Department of Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases invited Wade Williams to campus for an October 23 talk titled "Eyewitness to Ebola: A Liberian Journalist's Perspective." Williams is the chief of the news desk at Front Page Africa and one of Liberia's top journalists. She was also going to be honored for "her journalistic courage" by the Grady School, according to a university press release.

Students and administrators expressed concern since Williams would be coming directly from Liberia to deliver the talk without waiting for the 21-day Ebola incubation period. So her visit has been postponed until the outbreak subsides. Washington Post journalist Todd Frankel will take her place. He returned from Sierra Leone at the beginning of September. The talk has been renamed "Eyewitness to Ebola: A Journalist's Perspective."

Case Western Reserve knows better than former CDC Director

The chief health editor for ABC News, Dr. Richard Besser, was scheduled to speak at Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University on Wednesday, addressing the need for good communication during health crises. He is particularly well-suited to deliver this talk: he served as acting director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak and visited West Africa at the end of September to report on the Ebola outbreak.

Around the Nation

CDC Sets Up Mock Ebola Ward Set Up In Alabama

Africa

U.S. Doctor To Travel To Sierra Leone To Help Ebola Victims

The latter qualification proved problematic for the organizers of the talk. In an op-ed that Besser wrote for the Washington Post, he quoted a letter they sent disinviting him: "Although we understand how small the risk is, we felt that we needed to err on the side of extreme caution because we don't have the ability to ask all potential attendees if they feel comfortable with the situation."

Besser was asked to deliver the talk over Skype but he declined, not wanting to "feed the idea that anyone who has been to West Africa, even if not sick, poses a risk."

Syracuse University disinvites a post-quarantine journalist

Syracuse invited Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Michel du Cille to participate in its fall workshop for journalism students this weekend. Du Cille has a lot of real-world experience to share with these young minds: three weeks ago, he returned from a trip to Liberia, where he covered Ebola for the Washington Post. On Oct. 17, he passed the 21-day Ebola incubation period without showing any symptoms. Two days earlier, he met with Dr. Thomas Frieden, the CDC director, and spent a day photographing him as he testified in front of Congress.

What's good enough for Capitol Hill isn't quite good enough for Syracuse. Citing concerns about student health, the university disinvited du Cille and his wife, photojournalist Nikki Kahn, who had not been to Liberia. The dean of the Newhouse School of Public Communication, Lorraine Branham, expressed misgivings about du Cille being on campus on the 17th, the day his quarantine expired. In an interview with News Photographer magazine, she said, "Twenty-one days is the CDC's standard, but there have been questions raised about whether the incubation period is longer." In fact it's well acknowledged that 21 days is the standard.

"If they're not showing any symptoms and they're out of their incubation period they are not a threat to anyone around them," says Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, director of infection control at the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory at Boston University. And what about those who seem to think a person could be contagious even beyond that time? "By taking that stance," Bhadelia says, "you are actually leading to further public confusion and miseducation."

West Africa

ebola

Tech Week: Egg Freezing, Gamergate And Online Giving

How will technology and gaming need to change to be welcoming for women? We've been exploring the issue for years. This week, the debate rages anew with a development out of Silicon Valley, and a new chapter in the still raging Gamergate controversy.

ICYMI

Egg Freezing: Apple and Facebook's new benefit that provides for egg freezing is supposed to be women-friendly, but the reaction is mixed. There are plenty of folks who think this only encourages women to put off having kids for the sake of work.

How Millennials Are Changing Philanthropy: The generation coming of age is totally game to give, but not in the same way as our parents did, as as I explained for All Things Considered.

The Big Conversation

Gamergate Still Raging: The swirling Gamergate situation and its backlash hit the front page of The New York Times, after feminist videoblogger Anita Sarkeesian canceled an appearance in Utah for fear that a shooting massacre would be carried out. The leading video game trade group has stepped in, saying violence and harassment "have to stop."

HBO Streaming (Without Cable): In a move that could signal the unraveling of cable bundles, HBO said Wednesday it will offer a streaming service to cord-cutters and other nonsubscribers. The following day, CBS said it too would offer a streaming service, for $5.99 a month.

Curiosities

Wired: A Smartwatch That Projects Buttons Onto Your Skin

Smartwatches have a real estate problem. This tries to solve it by expanding the buttons to space on your wrist.

The Guardian: Whisper Tracks Its Anonymous Users

The secret confession app is coming under fire after The Guardian's piece this week.

The Verge: This MasterCard with a built-in fingerprint sensor is coming in 2015

So, you think using your smartphone to pay at the checkout register is cool? MasterCard announced a new kind of card that will use your thumbprint to authenticate payments without swiping.

online giving

anita sarkeesian

egg freezing

Gamergate

tech week

Tech Week That Was

пятница

Predictions Of 'Peak Oil' Production Prove Slippery

The dustiest portion of my home library includes the 1980s books — about how Japan's economy would dominate the world.

And then there are the 1990s books — about how the Y2K computer glitch would end the modern era.

Go up one more shelf for the late 2000s books — about oil "peaking." The authors claimed global oil production was reaching a peak and would soon decline, causing economic chaos.

The titles include Peak Oil and the Second Great Depression, Peak Oil Survival and When Oil Peaked.

When those books were written, worldwide oil drillers were producing about 85 million barrels a day. Now they are pumping about 93 million barrels.

NPR/U.S. Energy Information Adminstration

Despite growing violence in the Middle East, oil supplies just keep rising.

At the same time, demand has been shrinking. This week, the International Energy Agency cut its forecast for oil-demand growth for this year and next.

Turns out, oil demand — not production — is what peaked.

Now prices are plunging, down around 25 percent since June.

What did the forecasters get so wrong? In large measure, their mistake was in failing to appreciate the impact of a relatively new technology, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

This new competition has shocked OPEC. Members say they want to maintain their current market share, so they are keeping up production and even boosting it.

Bottom line: The peak of production is nowhere on the horizon.

So are the authors of "peaking" books now slapping themselves in the head and admitting they had it all wrong?

Some are, at least a bit.

In a phone discussion about his prediction, Nelder said "my expectation has not materialized."

Related NPR Stories

Parallels

As Oil Prices Fall, Who Wins And Who Loses?

Energy

With U.S. Oil Supply Climbing, Some Call For End To Export Ban

Falling Oil Prices Could Affect Manufacturing, Automobile Industries

Crude Oil Prices Drop As Saudis Refuse To Cut Production

And with OPEC pumping so much oil now to hold down prices, maybe they are using up their supplies more quickly. "Depletion never sleeps," he said.

So perhaps Nelder has been wrong so far, but could be right before too long.

With prices now so low, the money to keep up the frenzy may not be there.

peak oil

oil

fracking

Your Car Won't Start. Did You Make The Loan Payment?

For borrowers in default, the repo man is no longer the one to fear — it's Big Brother. Growing numbers of lenders are getting tech savvy, remotely disabling debtors' cars and tracking customer data to ensure timely payment of subprime auto loans. The practice has created problems for consumers and raises privacy concerns.

Lenders use the starter interrupt device, which has been installed in about 2 million vehicles, according to The New York Times, to deactivate car ignitions remotely if borrowers are late on payments. Lenders can also track cars' movements using the GPS on the device, and the device emits beeps when a payment due date is approaching.

"The use of the devices has increased, and it worked its way up the credit chain a bit," says Tom Hudson, a partner at Hudson Cook LLP and founder and editor-in-chief of CARLAW, a monthly review of developments in automobile finance. "Suddenly these things seem to have grabbed the attention of the media, but they have been around for many years."

Hudson says he first heard of the devices in 1997, when they were largely used by "buy here, pay here" dealerships. Now, more subprime lending companies have taken to using them too.

Many borrowers with bad credit are required to have the starter interrupt device installed on their cars before driving off the lot. The device has helped feed into the growing subprime auto loan market, as it allows lenders to extend subprime loans with greater confidence.

Newly originated subprime auto loans, through June, were at an eight-year high $70.7 billion, according to Equifax. The Times reported that Lender Systems, a California company that makes a variety of starter interrupt devices, has seen its revenue more than double this year.

"You can see two sides of it. On one hand, look, if you're the kind of person who really needs a drastic prod to pay your bills, then it's probably as good as anything else. The thing is, it can be one of those things where it could be construed as somewhat undignified," says Bill Visnic, senior editor at Edmunds.com. "We all know how it goes with fine print, but the fact is that you've entered a legal arrangement with the dealer."

Related NPR Stories

All Tech Considered

Your Digital Trail, And How It Can Be Used Against You

All Tech Considered

Police May Know Exactly Where You Were Last Tuesday

Car Device Acts as High-Tech Repo Man

Violence Spurs Calls To Rein In The Repo Man

The devices have put consumers in situations ranging from inconvenient to life-threatening. One woman says her lender remotely shut down her car while she was driving on a three-lane highway in Las Vegas, according to the Times report. Others in the report said that their cars were shut off when they needed to travel for medical attention, or that they had only been a few days behind on payments when lenders disabled their cars.

"The key public policy issue is procedural fairness from the consumer perspective," says Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "This is a consumer fairness issue about whether people are being properly notified."

The practice also raises privacy concerns. The Times reported that a subprime lender used a device to track down and repossess a woman's car when she left her abusive husband to seek residence in a shelter. The woman feared that her husband would find out her location from the tow truck company.

"When [GPS tracking] is being done on the actual owner without their knowledge, we would object to that," Rotenberg says. "People should know the circumstances under which they are being tracked."

Hudson, the CARLAW editor, says he had initially expected to see several lawsuits surrounding the devices, but says he has seen fewer than 10 cases since he first learned of the devices in the late 1990s.

Most states allow starter interrupt devices, so long as consumers are informed of the installation. But restrictions have been placed in some states, Wisconsin being the strictest among them. A statement released by the Department of Financial Institutions in Wisconsin notes that the devices leave consumers responsible for vehicles but without control over the vehicle, possibly leading to parking tickets or blockages of driveways or garages. The statement also takes issue with the fact that vehicles may be disabled prior to the time the creditor is entitled to physically take possession of the vehicle.

Yet Hudson argues that these devices offer an alternative that is less painful for subprime borrowers.

"This is a much more consumer friendly approach to encouraging payment — there is no repossession," says Hudson. Instead of having to go down to the repo yard to pay a repossession fee, consumers can have their car turned back on just by paying what is due, he says.

Other auto repossession technologies have raised data security concerns. In March, The Boston Globe reported that Texas-based company Digital Recognition Network installs automated readers in "spotter cars" around the country that capture images of every license plate they pass. Each picture is sent, along with the time and GPS location at which it was taken, to a database that already contains more than 1.8 billion scans.

Law enforcement has used this technique for decades, but not without its own problems. Boston police suspended their license plate scanning efforts in December 2013 in the wake of news that data on more than 69,000 license plates had been accidentally released.

Subprime borrowers have also been subjected to tracking when purchasing other products with a loan, such as personal computers. In 2012, the Federal Trade Commission charged that several rent-to-own companies had spied on consumers by remotely taking screen shots, tracking computer keystrokes and taking webcam pictures, all without consent. The software, licensed by DesignerWare, also enabled the stores to disable the computer if the renter was late on payment.

Apartments might be another area where technology will begin to play a role when consumers are behind on payments, according to Rotenberg. Electronic lock systems are beginning to be used, and renters could be remotely or automatically locked out of their apartment if they are behind on rent.

"That's where I think it's going to get really interesting," Rotenberg says.

For now, starter interrupt devices remain legal in most states. But as the practice grows, the ways by which it is implemented will very likely continue to have a significant impact on consumers.

"It's not a small decision to say that when someone puts the key in to turn on the car, that it's not going to turn out the way they expected," Rotenberg says.

Robert Szypko is an intern on NPR's business desk.

starter interrupt

How Millennials Are Reshaping Charity And Online Giving

This story is part of the New Boom series on millennials in America.

Millennials are spending — and giving away their cash — a lot differently than previous generations, and that's changing the game for giving, and for the charities that depend on it.

Scott Harrison's group, Charity: Water, is a prime example. Harrison's story starts in New York's hottest nightclubs, promoting the proverbial "models and bottles."

"At 28 years old, I realized my legacy was going to be just that. Here lies a guy who got people wasted," Harrison says.

So he changed his story. Harrison volunteered to spend the next two years in West Africa. What he found when he first got to Liberia was a drinking water crisis. He watched 7-year-olds drink regularly from chocolate-colored swamps — water, he says, that he wouldn't let his dog drink.

Most childhood diseases in the developing countries he visited could be traced to unsafe drinking water, so everything changed for Harrison. He got inspired to start raising money for clean water when he returned to the states, but his friends were wary.

"They all said, 'I don't trust charities. I don't give. I believe these charities are just these black holes. I don't even know how much money would actually go to the people who I'm trying to help,' " Harrison recalls.

So his one cause became two: He started Charity: Water to dig wells to bring clean drinking water to the nearly 800 million people without access to it around the globe. But he also wanted to set an example with the way the organization did its work.

"We're also really trying to reinvent charity, reinvent the way people think about giving, the way that they give," he says.

“ That sense of 'I need to give out of obligation' — I don't know that it's going to be around 20 years from now.

- Amy Webb

Demographic change is a huge reason for rethinking this. With around 80 million millennials coming of age, knowing how they spend their cash on causes is going to be critical for nonprofits. And their spending patterns aren't the same as their parents.

"Our culture is changing pretty dramatically," says Amy Webb, who forecasts digital trends for nonprofit and for-profit companies. "That sense of 'I need to give out of obligation' — I don't know that it's going to be around 20 years from now."

One piece of advice she gives on appealing to younger donors? Don't even ask them to "donate," because younger donors want to feel more invested in a cause. Choose a different word, with a different connotation: investment.

"It may seem something simple. It's just semantics: donation vs. investment. But I think to a millennial, who's grown up in a very different world, one that's more participatory because of the digital tools that we have, to them they want to feel like they're making an investment. Not just that they're investing their capital, but they're investing emotionally," Webb says.

i i

The Manhattan-based headquarters of Charity: Water. Elise Hu/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Elise Hu/NPR

The Manhattan-based headquarters of Charity: Water.

Elise Hu/NPR

And there's the tech part. She says any philanthropy without a smart digital platform — not just for donations but for empowering a community of givers — will be left behind.

Which brings us back to Charity: Water. Designers spend most their time finding ways to save their donors time, trimming as much lag time or obstacles to giving online as possible.

"There are a lot of people who are more willing to be generous with 20, 30 and 50 dollars, but their time is actually worth something. And the thought of pulling out their credit card and fighting through a two- and three- and four-page form is just too much," Harrison says.

On its site, giving is as simple as a couple of clicks. And Charity: Water's big tactical success, the approach for which it's earned notoriety, is getting young people to call on their own real-life social networks for help. It's the same approach that made this summer's Ice Bucket Challenge for ALS so unavoidable.

Join The Conversation

Use the hashtag #newboom to join the conversation on social media.

"We're always taking selfies, we're sharing details about our lives. So why not do a little social narcissism for a good cause," Beth Kanter, author of Measuring the Networked Nonprofit, told NPR in August.

Charity: Water stokes that by building campaigns around birthdays.

"One of the big ideas that the millennials embraced," Harrison says, "is this idea that we sorta stumbled into, when we asked people to give up their birthday for clean water. So I went around asking everyone I knew to give $32 for my 32nd birthday."

Soon, tech CEOs were raising tens of thousands of dollars per campaign by giving up their birthdays for water. This spring, NFL safety Kam Chancellor joined in. And the generation that comes after millennials — the children today — are getting into it, too.

"We had 7-year-olds in Austin, Texas, go door to door asking for $7 donations. We had 16-year-olds in Indiana asking for $16 donations," Harrison says.

The group's focus on social networks and simple design means 4 million more people, in 22 countries, now have access to clean drinking water.

But you don't have to take our word for it. Charity: Water's latest tech improvement is putting remote sensors on wells — so donors can see just how much water flows from what they helped build.

"We think this is just going to be game changing," Harrison says.

charity water

scott harrison

giving

Millennials

charity

The Holidays Bring A New Season For Credit Card Breaches

The holiday season is approaching, a time for sales and Santa and, now, credit card data breaches.

Though cyberthieves have stolen millions of card numbers this year, shoppers are heading into the heavy-spending season with no new credit safeguards in place.

When you hear about a data breach, Bryan Sartin is one of the guys who go in to investigate.

"I've seen my own personal information in those lots of stolen data many, many, many, many, many times," Sartin says.

Sartin heads a team of forensic computer techs for Verizon — good-guy hackers, basically. For a while he and his deskmate had a running joke.

"How frequently, in our cases, we would find his credit cards?" he explains. "And I remember, back to back, it was like two out of three cases. And there was a third [case], and it's not here, and he's kind of laughing — and then all of a sudden we found his wife's."

How The System Is Vulnerable

Sartin says data breaches happen all the time. In fact, though, only about a third of them are ever made public. In Midtown Manhattan, that fact surprises many shoppers, like Alexandra Goodell.

Related NPR Stories

All Tech Considered

Apple Takes A Swipe At The Credit Card

The Two-Way

Kmart Says Its Store Registers Were Hacked, Exposing Credit Cards

JPMorgan Says It Will Replace 2 Million Credit Cards, Due To Breach

"It's upsetting; it gets me angry," she says. "I work really hard and I don't want to go out of my way to cancel my card and to nail down what happened."

One reason U.S. credit card numbers are stolen so often has to do with the way we process them after the swipe, says Sartin.

"That transaction, in a text format of some kind, is sent to a server there at the store that all of the cash registers speak to," he says.

Your credit card number then flies through the Internet to the merchant's main national computer, then to the processor, then to the bank, and then back again.

"It returns in .06 seconds with a yes or no," he says.

You walk out of the store while the transaction continues to ricochet across the country — using technology from the 1970s, says Jason Oxman, CEO of the Electronic Transaction Association.

"What we need to do in the U.S. is completely replace an architecture that has been deployed over the course of the last 40 years," Oxman says. "That's how long mag stripe cards have been on the market."

The Next Step: Tokenization

He says the magnetic stripe worked fine until the '90s. Then came personal computers, which could counterfeit hundreds of credit cards. Because the U.S. had a strong telecom network, retailers went to an online system to verify credit cards' authenticity. Countries where the Internet wasn't so great adopted so-called chip cards or smart cards.

"So that's one reason that we haven't used the chip cards," Oxman says. "We haven't needed to because our online system of authorization has been a replacement for that offline chip."

But by this time next year, you are likely to be using the new chip cards. What slowed them down is the chicken-or-the-egg conundrum: Banks didn't want to issue chip cards if retailers didn't have the readers, and retailers weren't going to buy readers if banks weren't issuing the cards.

"There are more than 10,000 financial institutions that issue credit cards and debit cards in the U.S.," Oxman says. "There are 8 million merchants that accept credit and debit cards in the U.S. "

But the new chip cards are expected to cut out only about 60 percent of the fraud, which frustrates merchants. Mallory Duncan, general counsel at the National Retail Federation, fears the credit card hacks will continue because at the core, the system's backbone is still the same — 16-digit account numbers flying across the Internet.

"Unfortunately all we're going to get in the near future is the not-quite-so-smart card," Duncan says. "The problem is that the product itself is fundamentally flawed. You cannot secure a house of straw."

Duncan says retailers are hoping to move toward a system called tokenization, which replaces a card number with a one-time-only, randomly generated number. Google Wallet and Apple Pay use tokenization.

"All of those potentially are much more secure for consumers than would be partially secure chip cards," he says.

Tokenization is in use now, but not yet for credit cards. Because it requires significant system upgrades for both retailers and the banks, it's that same chicken-and-egg problem: Who spends the money first?

Shifting Stance, Some GOP Candidates Back State Minimum Wage Hikes

Here's another entry in the strange bedfellows political show, 2014 edition: As Election Day gets closer, some Republicans in battleground races seem to be moving to the center on a number of issues. Their latest sea change is the minimum wage.

Alongside pay equity, infrastructure investment and college affordability, raising the minimum wage is at the center of the Democrats' election year economic agenda. President Obama has given numerous speeches on the minimum wage, excoriating Republicans in Congress for blocking a federal minimum wage hike. "Either you're in favor of raising wages for hardworking Americans, or you're not," he said in April.

He makes it sound so simple — but this is politics.

As free-market conservatives, Republicans are philosophically opposed to raising the minimum wage. But a handful of Republican candidates in tight races have come out in favor of raising the minimum wage on the state level.

Bruce Rauner, running for governor of Illinois, has said in the past that he believed the minimum wage could be lowered, or even eliminated. But now, Rauner says, if Illinois passed tort reform and tax reform, he would support raising the state wage. He's also come out in favor of raising the federal minimum wage.

Why the change? Illinois is one of five states this year that has a minimum wage hike on the state ballot. These propositions are hugely popular and usually pass with 60 or even 70 percent of the vote.

In Arkansas and Alaska, where there are also minimum wage referendums on the ballot, Republican Senate candidates Tom Cotton and Dan Sullivan say they'll vote for them. In Sullivan's case, he was previously opposed to the ballot proposition, but then, his spokesman said, "he had a chance to read the initiative."

Democrats are crying foul. They were hoping to use the referendums to get more of their supporters to the polls. If there's no difference between the Republican and Democratic candidates on this issue, that might be harder.

Ted Strickland, the populist former governor of Ohio, says these Republicans have had a foxhole conversion. "Most people understand that when someone embraces a policy they have previously rejected, and they do it just a short time before an election," says Strickland, "they are acting out of political expediency rather than out of convictions and courage."

Republican strategist Sarah Fagen says that in this case what Republicans consider to be good policy — letting the free market work — is not good politics. Republicans would rather avoid the debate over the minimum wage altogether and focus on other issues, she says, so they've made a kind of tactical retreat.

Remaining opposed to a federal wage hike but supporting a state hike allows them, says Fagen, to be true to "their economic philosophy but still be reasonable to voters who are demanding that the minimum wage be increased."

Republicans are choosing their battles more carefully this year. They're moving to the center on issues like contraception or the minimum wage, and that's caused some fancy political footwork on both sides. In some states, Republican legislators voted to raise the state wage in order to avoid having the issue on the ballot. But in Alaska, Democrats in the Legislature blocked a bill so that the issue would be on the ballot this fall.

And that raises the obvious question: Can these ballot propositions actually help Democratic candidates?

Progressive activist Brad Woodhouse says yes, up to a point. Using the minimum wage ballot referendums as bait, Democrats can target drop-off voters who might only come out and vote because they think it's in their economic interest.

"You hope that if they come out to increase the minimum wage," says Woodhouse, "that they'll vote for the Democrat."

Ballot initiatives can boost turnout — by about 1 percent. That, theoretically, could help Democrats win an otherwise close race.

But academics who study ballot referendums say no minimum wage initiative has ever determined the outcome of a state race. John Matsusaka, director of the Initiative and Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California, points out that there are many examples of Republican candidates winning statewide even as minimum wage ballot referendums also passed 2 to 1.

"The Democrats might get a bump from this," says Matsusaka. "But the people who look closely at these data have a hard time finding that it makes a big difference."

So the bottom line is that these initiatives are very good for people who want to raise the minimum wage, but they're less useful as a political tool for Democrats looking for help in a Republican-leaning political landscape.

Email Just Can't Compete With Heartfelt 'Letters Of Note'

Alabama Attorney General's 1976 Letter Told KKK Off In 3 Short Words

5 min 16 sec

Add to Playlist

Download

Telling Off The KKK In Three Words

Few people knew about Bill Baxley's letter to the KKK's Edward Fields — until the Klan published it. Chronicle Books hide caption

itoggle caption Chronicle Books

Bill Baxley, who served as Alabama's attorney general between 1971 and 1979, is well-known for reopening the investigation of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, a hate crime that killed four African-American girls in Birmingham in 1963.

Baxley's efforts, which ultimately led to a conviction, attracted the ire of white supremacists — including Edward Fields, the "grand dragon" of The New Order of Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

In response to a threatening letter from Fields, Baxley famously sent a curt response containing some colorful language. He'd rather not read the line aloud today, he says, but adds, "well, that's the way I felt, then and now."

Finding Solace In Words From Scotland

Frank Ciulla lost his father, S. Frank Ciulla, in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. His body was found several miles from the crash on a farm owned by Margaret and Hugh Connell, which the Ciulla family visited in 1992.

"It was a strange mix of feeling such love and warmth from the Connells and finding out the details of how my father was found," Frank Ciulla remembers. "It was an odd, odd time, as much of our time since then has been."

Several months after their visit, the Ciullas received a letter from the Connells expressing their affection for the family. Much of it reads like a poem: "It's the 'not knowing' that can bring so much pain and bewilderment. We all have imaginations that can run riot in us, and I'm sure that your dear souls must have had untold agonies wondering and worrying."

Though the letter is still difficult for Frank to read, it's the "rawness of emotion" from the Connells, he says, that stays with him today.

i i

Frank Ciulla's father died in the Lockerbie bombing in 1988. Cuilla visited visited Minsca, the farm where his father's body was found, four years later. Courtesy of Frank Ciulla and family hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Frank Ciulla and family

Frank Ciulla's father died in the Lockerbie bombing in 1988. Cuilla visited visited Minsca, the farm where his father's body was found, four years later.

Courtesy of Frank Ciulla and family

writing

communication

Language

In Forcing Out Senior Executive, New CEO Mohn Puts Stamp On NPR

The ouster earlier this month of NPR's chief content officer, Kinsey Wilson, did little to stir outcry or concern among public radio listeners.

"I don't like incremental growth," Mohn told staffers in a recent meeting. "I want to take advantage of what I see as transformative opportunities ... . My job is to make sure you have the tools and the resources and the money for you to do the best work of your careers."

Related NPR Stories

NPR Chief Announces Departure Of Key Digital Strategist

4 min 55 sec

Add to Playlist

Download

The Two-Way

Executive Who Spearheaded NPR's Digital Strategy To Leave Network

NPR Picks Jarl Mohn As Its Next CEO

3 min 55 sec

Add to Playlist

Download

The Two-Way

NPR Names Jarl Mohn As Its New CEO And President

The newsmagazines are the pillars of the network's coverage, attracting the largest audiences, the network's appeal to philanthropic funders, corporate underwriters and major donors. They also serve as the backdrop against which member stations raise money from listeners, a key component of their current revenue streams. In recent years, some public radio executives, including Wilson, concluded the listenerships of the two shows had reached plateaus that would at best hold constant, especially as the average audience per quarter hour for the shows has dipped by hundreds of thousands of listeners in recent years.

"I don't believe flat is the new up," Mohn told staffers. "Some people do."

The arrival of a new CEO in the corporate world is often accompanied by changes in the executive levels. And Mohn cast Wilson's departure as the byproduct of a larger restructuring of NPR's top management, carried out after several months of study. He elevated NPR strategy executive Loren Mayor to become the network's chief operating officer and shifted NPR's non-news programs under its chief marketing officer, Emma Carrasco. Mohn also stripped out the layer between the CEO and the top news executive, a position currently filled on an acting basis by All Things Considered executive producer Chris Turpin. Mohn has signaled he expects the person who assumes that role permanently to act not just as the network's chief broadcast news executive but also as a dynamic digital leader.

Wilson is credited with a major expansion of NPR's digital audience over time. During a tenure of more than six years at NPR, Wilson encouraged the development of NPR Music as a major force and led the creation of "NPR One," a Pandora-like public radio service that stitched together stories from disparate shows responsive to users' tastes. He struck distribution deals with Apple and car manufacturers. In addition, Wilson encouraged the creation of digital verticals to supplement radio coverage with a focus on specific topics, such as race and identity, education and global public health. Wilson built close ties with philanthropic supporters such as the Gates and Knight foundations to support those efforts.

Some colleagues at NPR and associates outside the network with whom he spoke described Wilson as a credible contender for the CEO position after Knell left to become the CEO of National Geographic. But several of Wilson's initiatives created friction with member station officials, some of whom feared NPR was seeking to supplant their direct relationships with listeners and donors as audiences move online. (Unlike broadcast television networks, NPR owns no stations.) The initial iTunes deal with Apple raised hackles with many station executives as it represented the first time listeners could access NPR content without going through the stations, either on the air or online, and without accompanying station content. Some officials confided in one another that they feared these initiatives presaged NPR's desire, under Wilson's leadership, to go directly to listeners.

Charles Kravetz, the general manager of the influential Boston station WBUR, was one of the few station officials to step forward to say he feared public radio would suffer without Wilson.

"I believe that Kinsey Wilson is among a very small collection of truly brilliant digital futurists in the media world," Kravetz said in an interview. "I'm very disappointed that he's gone."

Yet at that meeting, Mohn took pains to say there would be no grand shift in strategy. (Mohn's press aides said his remarks at the meeting were to be on the record, so I listened in.)

"Digital is our present," Mohn said. "It is also our future. We must be where our audiences are. I'm deeply committed to digital."

"Those of you interpreting these recent changes as a refutation of digital strategies — you couldn't be more wrong."

Some NPR staffers have also raised concerns over the placement of non-news shows such as Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me, the TED Radio Hour and Ask Me Another inside the portfolio of Carrasco, the chief marketing officer. In the interview, Mohn said that shift simply reflected ease of organizational structure, not part of any grand design for the shows to serve promotional ends. Carrasco is believed to be preparing to announce more specifics of how that will work in coming days.

Mohn's associates describe him as confident in his own ability to set an agenda in broad strokes and reluctant to delegate so much authority to a single executive below him. He got his start as a DJ under the name Lee Masters, but became a programming executive in radio and then helped lead MTV and VH1 to establish themselves as cable television powerhouses. He later became CEO of the E! network.

Now, it is Mohn's turn to own NPR's future.

What's new

Watching 'Dear White People' At Harvard

The Man Who Coined 'Genocide' Spent His Life Trying To Stop It

Saudi Cleric's Death Sentence Focuses Shia Anger On Ruling Family

In Forcing Out Senior Executive, New CEO Mohn Puts Stamp On NPR

Airbnb, New York State Spar Over Legality Of Rentals

Hurricane Gonzalo Hits Bermuda; Ana To Skirt Past Hawaii

Predictions Of 'Peak Oil' Production Prove Slippery

Egality N'est Pas La RГ©alitГ©: French Women Wage Online War On Sexism

Supreme Court Lets Texas Enforce Voter ID Law For Nov. Election

The Brutalities Of War Bring Surprising Angles To 'Fury'

In Alaska Race For Governor, Democrats Try An Unusual Tactic: Dropping Out

Book News: John Grisham Backs Down From Comments On Child Pornography

Syria's 'Moderate Rebels' Say They Are Willing, But Need Weapons

Poetry In Motion: Prima Ballerina Retires After 3-Decade Career

Universities To Speakers Who've Visited West Africa: En Garde!

Tech Week: Egg Freezing, Gamergate And Online Giving

Predictions Of 'Peak Oil' Production Prove Slippery

Your Car Won't Start. Did You Make The Loan Payment?

How Millennials Are Reshaping Charity And Online Giving

The Holidays Bring A New Season For Credit Card Breaches

Shifting Stance, Some GOP Candidates Back State Minimum Wage Hikes

Email Just Can't Compete With Heartfelt 'Letters Of Note'

In Forcing Out Senior Executive, New CEO Mohn Puts Stamp On NPR

Ïîïóëÿðíûå ñîîáùåíèÿ

Blog Archive