NEWSWEEK ENDING PRINTED MAGAZINE

I read the newspaper on my ipad.  I read books on my Nook.  So I’m part of the reason this is happening.  So why does this news make me a tad sad?  We are definitely seeing the end of an American era… printed material.

(From the Drudge Report):

We are announcing this morning an important development at Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Newsweek will transition to an all-digital format in early 2013. As part of this transition, the last print edition in the United States will be our Dec. 31 issue.Meanwhile, Newsweek will expand its rapidly growing tablet and online presence, as well as its successful global partnerships and events business.  Newsweek Global, as the all-digital publication will be named, will be a single, worldwide edition targeted for a highly mobile, opinion-leading audience who want to learn about world events in a sophisticated context. Newsweek Global will be supported by paid subscription and will be available through e-readers for both tablet and the Web, with select content available on The Daily Beast.

newsweek

End of an Era

DUMPSTER DIVING

At work today, I got caught dumpster diving.  Yes, I was diving through the nice, clean, unstained, blue paper recycling bin, looking for old scripts so I could log my story.  See, once I go out and shoot a story, I have to write down every single thing every single person I interviewed said.  That’s “logging.”  Hint to you… if I interview you, the less you say the happier I am!  So after being caught dumpster diving from my chief photographer, Jeff… Jeff emailed me this article from the New York Post.  Wow!!!  I’ve got nothing on Kate Hashimoto. 

dumpster diving

Caught dumpster diving at work

She loves ‘Ew!’ York

Trash diver reveals tricks of living almost free

  • By KATE STOREY
  • Last Updated: 4:14 AM, October 16, 2012
  • Posted: 2:37 AM, October 16, 2012

Kate Hashimoto was picking up a few groceries at the Upper West Side Food Emporium when she ran into a friend.

“Hey Kate, you like wraps? Here’s a chicken wrap,’’ her pal said. “But be careful, it’s kind of wet.”

They weren’t in the grocery aisle. They were in front of the store, digging through three overflowing trash bins.

Hashimoto Dumpster-dives for all her food, doesn’t use toilet paper or do laundry, and hasn’t bought toiletries in 10 years.

She doesn’t have to live this way — she’s an employed CPA.

“I’ve always been frugal, but it was when I was laid off in the dot-com crash that I became extreme,” Hashimoto explained.

GOODIES: Kate Hashimoto shows off her finds yesterday.

Astrid Stawiarz
GOODIES: Kate Hashimoto shows off her finds yesterday.

“No job is guaranteed, so I live as if I could be fired at any time.”

Manhattan, she said, is a gold mine for Dumpster divers.

“Consumers in wealthy areas expect their products to be perfect, so upscale stores throw out a lot of items that are still good.

“New York can be the most expensive place to live, but it can also be the least expensive if you know how to work the system.”

Hashimoto let The Post spend a day with her learning how to live way below your means.

She lives in Harlem, where she bought a studio in 2010 and paid it off in nine months, but treks down to the Upper West Side three times a week for good, free food.

Her other money-saving methods include using soap to wash herself after using the toilet, taking surveys online to earn gift cards, participating in medical trials (she got free birth control for 5 years and took part in a herpes vaccine trial for cash), testing products for free samples, cutting her own hair, washing her clothes while she showers, and running to work to avoid using a MetroCard.

“I was extremely angry about the latest round of subway fare hikes,” she said.

Hashimoto does have her limits. Her furniture is a collection of found freebies — but she won’t take an old mattress for fear of bedbugs, and sleeps instead on used yoga mats.

And she won’t stay in a relationship for free meals.

“I’ve been in a relationship where I stayed because I was getting freebies and gifts, but I got out of it,” she says. “It’s better to be single and Dumpster-diving than to be with someone you can’t stand.”

Hashimoto shares her secrets on tonight’s 10 p.m. premiere of TLC’s “Extreme Cheapskates.”

What Kate Spends Per Month:

On food: $15

On clothing: $0

On toiletries: $0.17 a month on toothpaste

On her $200,000

condo: $237

She puts into savings: $4,000

Into 401(k): $1,000

Goal: $250,000 in savings by next year or so

 

MAN FREE FALLS FROM SPACE

Pilot Felix Baumgartner celebrates after a record-breaking dive.

Pilot Felix Baumgartner exults after landing on his feet in Roswell, New Mexico, Sunday.

Photograph courtesy Balazs Gardi, Red Bull Content Pool

Nicholas Mott

National Geographic News

Updated 5:02 p.m. ET, October 14, 2012

“I’m coming home,” Felix Baumgartner radioed Sunday just before stepping off his 24-mile-high (39-kilometer-high) balloon capsule and into the history books.

He wasted no time getting there: In the process of logging the highest ever jump, Baumgartner reached unprecedented speeds of 833.9 miles (1,342 kilometers) an hour while free-falling in a pressurized suit, according to preliminary data.

Video: Watch Highlights of the Skydive That Broke the Sound Barrier

Though he appeared no worse for the wear during a post-jump press conference, Baumgartner had, officials announced, broken the sound barrierduring the free fall, reaching Mach 1.24. Asked what it was like to go supersonic, he said, “It’s hard to describe, because I didn’t feel it. You know, when you’re in that pressure suit, you don’t feel anything. It’s like being in a cast.”

After several postponements, the so-called Red Bull Stratos Mission to the Edge of Space had begun shortly after 2 p.m. ET, when he opened his capsule high above  Roswell (map)New Mexico.

“Be sure to duck your head real low as you go out the door,” warned retired U.S. Air Force pilot Joseph Kittinger, who set the previous height record in 1960—19.5 miles (31.3 kilometers)—and was the only Red Bull Stratos team member with a direct radio link to Baumgartner. (See classic pictures of Kittinger’s skydive.)

Soon after, Baumgartner dived from beneath history’s largest helium balloon—55 stories tall and as wide as a football field.

After a 4-minute, 22-second free fall—not the longest duration on record, as he’d hoped (that record-breaking speed may have had something to do with it)—the Austrian sky diver opened his parachute at about 5,000 feet (1,524 meters).

“Couldn’t have done it any better myself,” Kittinger said over the radio, and to the millions who watched the live Internet feed of Baumgartner’s skydive.

Baumgartner safely touched down at 2:17 p.m. ET after roughly ten minutes total in the air—the picture perfect desert landing punctuated by an apparently elated Baumgartner falling to his knees before being whisked away by a recovery helicopter.

SMALL TOWN CULTURED

Ok, anytime a small town in Nevada gets national exposure, I have to spread the word.  Thanks to SFGate for finally bringing the truth to the world about our tiny Virginia City!

While nearly impossible to confirm, it could be that tiny Virginia City in Nevada has the highest ratio of museums in the world. The one-time Comstock Lode boomtown — with around 900 residents and only 10 square blocks of “downtown” — boasts at least nine “museums.” Granted these aren’t the California Academy of Sciences or the Museum of Natural History in New York, but since there are no standards for what you can call a museum, who are we to judge?

Ironically, there is no specific “museum” for one of Virginia City’s biggest claims to fame — that the Red Dog Saloon was ground zero for much of psychedelic music movement of the 1960s. (The house band at the Red Dog, Big Brother and the Holding Company, added a relatively unknown singer to the band named Janis Joplin while in Virginia City; and the first house band was the Amazing Charlatans.)

 

BEING IN A POLITICAL AD SUCKS!

Have you heard?  Big Bird is now in the national POLITICAL spotlight!  And I know how he feels.  First, check out the report by Peter Nicholas from the Wall Street Journal and then keep reading for my personal experience.

By Peter Nicholas

The ad starring Big Bird, above.

Big Bird, it seems, isn’t thrilled about his cameo in the presidential race.

The folks at Sesame Street are asking the Obama campaign to pull down a TV ad released Tuesday that mocks Mitt Romney for vowing to yank the subsidy to PBS.

At the presidential debate in Denver last week, Mr. Romney said he would end the subsidy in view of the nation’s fiscal troubles.

“I love Big Bird,” the Republican challenger said “… But I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for.”

Up went an ad by team Obama called “Big Bird’’ that suggests Mr. Romney is targeting children’s programming rather than legitimate threats to people’s economic interests.

The ad shows images of Bernie Madoff and others implicated in various financial and corporate scandals. A narrator then intones: “And the evil genius who towered over them?”

A silhouette of Big Bird flashes on screen.

“Mitt Romney knows it’s not Wall Street you have to worry about, it’s Sesame Street,” the narrator said.

The ad is airing on national cable and broadcast TV, in time slots devoted to comedy shows, the Obama campaign said.

Sesame Street isn’t amused. Sesame Workshop, a nonprofit educational organization that produces and owns the show, issued a statement Tuesday saying “we do not endorse candidates or participate in political campaigns. We have approved no campaign ads, and as is our general practice, have requested that the ad be taken down.”

I know exactly how Sesame Street feels.  During the last U.S. Senate campaign, Nevada Senator Harry Reid used a quick video clip of me doing a newscast in one of his TV ads.  It didn’t matter what I said, simply the fact my face showed up on a Harry Reid campaign ad was enough to incite Republican viewers.  I personally, and my station, received hundreds of emails blasting me for “endorsing” Senator Reid.  I never gave permission for my image to be used.  I wasn’t even notified about the ad until after it started airing and my inbox blew up with angry viewers.  I’ve spend 19 years building a reputation in my community as being fair and objective.  One ad threatened that.  Big Bird, I know how you feel buddy.  But so you know, when I called the Reid campaign headquarters and asked them to stop running the ad… they denied my request.  Good luck to you!

WOULD YOU READ IT???

Monica Lewinsky BookI can’t say I’m particularly surprised by this tid bit I found in the Huffington Post… but seriously… would you read a memoir written by Monica Lewinsky?  Apparently she’s shopping around for a book deal!

Here’s part of the article from the Huffington Post:

Monica Lewinsky is reportedly writing a tell-all memoir which may contain explicit details about her romantic relationship with former President Bill Clinton.

According to reports, Lewinsky, now 39, is allegedly shopping a “new top-secret book.”

“We’re told Lewinsky has been making the rounds with major publishers, who were all asked to sign nondisclosure agreements to take the meetings,” the New York Post wrote earlier this month.

Lewinsky has yet to comment on the planned book deal, but the tabloids have already begun speculating about the money involved (possibly millions) and the details that will be divulged (potentially salacious), according to Radar Online.

A blogger for the Washington Post says that while a Lewinsky memoir does not come as a surprise, the book may provide a new perspective on Lewinsky and her journey (from the vilified “other woman” to TV personality and graduate student in London) since the Clinton scandal.

Personally, I was more than a little irritated when Barbara Walters did her interview with Lewinsky and then helped her get a job as a “TV Personality.”  There are those of us who took the right path to become broadcast journalists.  I didn’t realize my degress in journalism would be trumped by a BJ in the oval office.