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Lost: 1.9 million jobs
David Goldman, CNNMoney
The 2008 tally soars after payrolls shrink by 533,000 in November, the biggest one-month decline in nearly 34 years. Unemployment soars to 6.7%.
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The economy shed 533,000 jobs in November, according to a government report Friday – bringing the year’s total job losses to 1.9 million.
November had the largest monthly job loss total since December 1974.
“This is a dismal jobs report,” said Keith Hall, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, at a congressional hearing. “There’s very little in this report that’s positive. This is maybe one of the worst jobs reports the Bureau of Labor Statistics (founded in 1884) has ever produced.”
(5 December 2008)
Can Obama keep energy promises?
Greg Johnson, Penn Current (University of Pennsylvania)
President-elect Barack Obama has vowed to make energy and environmental issues a priority during his presidency. Through his comprehensive New Energy for America plan, he pledges to invest in alternative and renewable energy, end America’s addiction to foreign oil, address the global climate crisis and create millions of new jobs through green initiatives.
But can Obama really keep his promises?
Noam Lior isn’t so sure. Lior, a professor in Penn’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics and editor of ENERGY: The International Journal, remembers America’s last major energy crisis in the 1970s. He notes there was talk then, as there is now, of improving auto efficiency and reducing dependence on foreign oil. But when gasoline prices dropped, Lior says, “people said the hell with it, and they went to SUVs and larger cars and more driving.”
(4 December 2008)
CNN Cuts Entire Science, Tech Team
Curtis Brainard, Columbia Journalism Review
CNN, the Cable News Network, announced yesterday that it will cut its entire science, technology, and environment news staff, including Miles O’Brien, its chief technology and environment correspondent, as well as six executive producers. Mediabistro’s TVNewser broke the story.
“We want to integrate environmental, science and technology reporting into the general editorial structure rather than have a stand alone unit,” said CNN spokesperson Barbara Levin. “Now that the bulk of our environmental coverage is being offered through the Planet in Peril franchise, which is produced by the Anderson Cooper 360 program, there is no need for a separate unit.”
A source at the network, who asked not to be named, said the move is a strategic and structural business decision to cut staff, unrelated to the current economic downturn.
Financially, “CNN is doing very, very well,” the source said, and none of the health and medical news staff has been cut. Yet the big question, of course, is whether or not the reorganization will decrease the overall amount of CNN’s science, technology, and environment coverage. CNN says no, but it’s hard to imagine that it won’t—Anderson Cooper or not, fewer people is fewer people.
What’s more, the decision to eliminate the positions seems particularly misguided at a time when world events would seem to warrant expanding science and environmental staff.
(4 December 2008)
The cuts at CNN are just the tip of the iceberg. News staffs are being cut at publications across the country – a trend which is not receiving much coverage in the media (I wonder why not?). Blogs and websites can’t take the place of the professional journalism of the corporate media.
Comment by Kate Sheppard at Gristmill: The enviro beat gets even lonelier.
