Weekend Digest: The Washington Post Edition

For our weekend business and political readers:

THE WAPO’S GRAHAM FAMILY
They were “an icon of both Washington and journalism” and since 1933 the Graham family had owned the Washington Post until this past week when the family announced a shocking sale of Washington’s leading newspaper.

It began with a bankruptcy sale in 1933, when a Republican businessman and presidential confidant reinvented himself as a newspaper publisher in the nation’s capital. It ended with an announcement that his descendants had sold the newspaper to an Internet wizard who lives in the Washington on the other side of the country.

“We have loved the paper, what it stood for, and those who produced it,” said a letter from Donald Graham, the Washington Post Co. chairman and chief executive. “But the point of our ownership has always been that it was supposed to be good for the Post.”

The Post was sold to one of the world’s richest men, Jeffrey P. Bezos, Amazon.com founder and chief executive, for $250 million in cash ending the Graham family’s ownership after four generations.

The Washington Post takes a look back at the paper and its history with the Graham family at this link.

FIVE APPS TO AMP-UP YOUR SMALL BUSINESS
The New York Daily News has posted five apps for small business owners that can help overcome a “sluggish economy.”

But in some ways, these are the best of times for entrepreneurs thanks to a host of apps and tools that help you do everything from improve productivity to amp up your social media marketing, for a nominal cost, if at all.

Figuring out which are the best isn’t easy. There are tons of apps out there vying for the attention of small business owners and many aren’t worth your time.

Click on this link for five apps that the Daily News says will be worth your time.

CAN BIG DATA MATCH CREATIVE ADVERTISING?
Harvard Business Review doesn’t think so and in an in-depth post the Review compares how advertising has moved from the “Creative Revolution” to Big Data.

The proposed merger of ad industry giants Omnicom and Publicis, forming the world’s largest advertising firm, promises to change the face of Madison Avenue forever.

So long, Don Draper. Hello, Hal 9000.

But an algorithm can never truly master the art of persuasion. Traditionally, the heart of any successful advertising agency has always been its creative department.

Go inside the Review article at this link to learn why it thinks Big Data is “never objective,” prone to “skewing,” and lacks imagination.

WILL OBAMACARE WORK?
Set to go into effect this October for millions of uninsured Americans, The New York Times takes a look at “some of the hurdles still ahead” for Obamacare where the uninsured will be able to choose from several plans offered through health exchanges in each state.

Cheap “bronze” plans will shoulder some 60 percent of patients’ medical expenses. Pricey “platinum” plans will cover at least 90 percent. But insurers will not be allowed to exclude people with pre-existing conditions, or charge more for the sick, or put a lifetime cap on medical costs. Their policies will have to cover a minimum standard of medical care. And the government will subsidize those who cannot afford to buy the policies.

President Obama and his advisers hope the overhaul will do two things. The first is to extend coverage to tens of millions of Americans who today lack health insurance. The second is to hold the line on rising health care costs.

“Over time, success will depend on what happens to the cost curve. If we don’t bend the cost curve, everything will fail. The government won’t be able to afford it. Nobody will be able to afford it.”

Can the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act meet its goals and what other challenges are facing it for the plan to be successful? Click this link for full analysis.

ENROLL AMERICA CAMPAIGN
It’s not a political campaign although its genesis certainly was political. Enroll America’s “Get Covered America” campaign is all about spreading the word for those without healthcare coverage to enroll starting October 1 at marketplaces or exchanges as part of Obamacare.

Enroll America is led by veterans of the Obama White House and Obama’s presidential campaigns and is using campaign-style techniques to locate the uninsured. Funders include Families USA, a consumer advocacy organization that pushed for the health law. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has tried to raise money for Enroll America, though those efforts have sparked criticism from Republicans in Congress.

Most people are unaware of the marketplaces, surveys show. They will offer coverage to individuals and small employers and offer government subsidies to anyone making less than 400 percent of the federal poverty level, or $94,000 for a family of four.

The Obama administration hopes to get 7 million people enrolled in the first year of open enrollment which ends in March.

But is the effort working in the right places?  Click on this link from NPR to learn more about Enroll America and its Obamacare campaign for the uninsured.

DEPARTURES COULD DOOM DEBT-LIMIT TALKS
Republican aide, Rohit Kumar, “who has played a key role in warding off disaster, is leaving Capitol Hill.”

As Congress braces for a possible government shutdown next month and the fresh danger of default before Thanksgiving, the departure of Kumar, the chief negotiator for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), is a huge loss. And he’s just the latest in a surprising exodus of senior GOP staffers that has worried people in both parties and darkened the outlook for the confrontation this fall.

Largely invisible to the public, these are the nuts-and-bolts guys the bosses trust to negotiate critical details with Democrats, draft deals into law and explain them to the GOP rank and file. Losing them now — weeks before the next fight — weakens Republicans and leaves Democrats without familiar negotiating partners.

Why are these negotiators leaving, and why are some calling it a bad sign? The Washington Post has full details at this link.

BOEHNER USING FUND RAISING TO KEEP PARTY TOGETHER
Bloomberg reports that U.S. House Speaker John Boehner is raising money “to solidify a splintering Republican majority and head off a potential government shutdown.”

Boehner, 63, has donated $5.54 million this year to the National Republican Congressional Committee, the arm of the party in charge of winning House races. He’s even raising money for at least one incumbent who hasn’t backed him – starting the five-week break from Washington with a fundraiser for Pennsylvania Representative Scott Perry, a freshman who voted against Republican leadership five times in seven months.

According to the Bloomberg post, “41 House Republicans, about 18 percent of the caucus, have repeatedly voted against their leadership since 2010.”

“Boehner has a core of his own party so far to the right that they’re not interested in going along with leadership and the reality is he has limited ability to punish his own members,” said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a Washington-based group that advocates for tighter restrictions on campaign finance laws. “Helping raise money is one way a leader can earn chips.”

Why would 18 percent of defections from his party be disastrous to Boehner’s agenda and why does “old school” political hardball methods to keep fellow members in line no longer work with the extreme right? Click on this link for the full story.

HILLARY MINISERIES A ‘NIGHTMARE’ FOR NEWS OPERATION
Since it was first announced, there have been howls of protest, mostly from the Republican party, about NBC’s proposed miniseries on Hillary Clinton. Now division over the planned miniseries has arisen among the network’s news operation with NBC News Chief White House Correspondent Chuck Todd leading the dissent.

NBC News Chief White House Correspondent Chuck Todd is calling a planned Hillary Clinton miniseries on NBC a “nightmare” for the network’s news operation, which is sometimes “at war” with its entertainment division.

Discussing the separation between NBC News and NBC Entertainment, which is behind the miniseries, on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Thursday, Todd lamented that even well-informed people don’t understand the wall that exists between the two entities.

What is the wall and what was the network’s reaction to Todd’s comments and tweets about the controversial series? POLITICO has the story at this link.

THE ECONOMICS OF A 3-D PRINTER
The future is now and “when it comes to 3-D printing, there’s a seemingly bottomless well of promise for the future.” But 3-D printers and supplies are seriously expensive and possibly out-of-reach for a lot of consumers. But a new study says the economic long-term benefits would outweigh the impracticality of it all.

The latest word comes from a study by Michigan Technological University, which purports that buying and using a desktop 3-D printer is an economically savvy move, just like saving coupons or carpooling. The researchers selected 20 objects that a typical household would buy and replace throughout a year like spoon rests, shower heads, cellphone cases – and compared that cost with the expense of printing them from open-source designs. The printer was a RepRap model – one of the cheapest options on the market – and the designs were sourced from MakerBot’s Thingiverse.

What were the results? Fast Company has the reveal at this link.

SURF GEAR TO PREVENT SHARK ATTACKS
A company in Australia has come up with a new line of surf gear it says could help prevent shark attacks. It’s called Shark Attack Mitigation Systems.

Shark Attack Mitigation Systems (SAMS) protects swimmers by breaking up the visual cues that sharks use when they slip into predator mode. SAMS was started in 2011 by two Australian entrepreneurs, Hamish Jolly and Craig Anderson, who partnered with professors from the University of Western Australia to develop the designs for wetsuits and surfboards.

Their research was based on relatively new insight into how sharks see.

How do sharks see and what designs did the company come up with to hopefully confuse the predators? Fast Company takes a bite out of the whole story along with pictures of the wetsuits at this link.