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Economic Crisis

  1. November 30, 2012 06:50 AM

    Audit Notes: pyramid people, Disney and ABC, no USA Today paywall

    Roddy Boyd digs into a diet-shake pyramid scheme

    By Ryan Chittum

    The investigative journalist Roddy Boyd has some excellent reporting on a multilevel marketing company (read: pyramid scheme) called ViSalus:

    ViSalus is a multilevel marketing company that promises ordinary folks a shot at financial success based solely on their skill at building a sales group that essentially draws on personal social circles: A distributor must recruit customers (usually starting with friends,...

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  2. November 30, 2012 12:41 AM

    Hot air Rises Above on CNBC

    An anchor pins a minor dip in stocks on the TV appearance of a minor politician

    By Ryan Chittum

    Rise Above, if you're among the 99.95 percent of the country who don't watch CNBC on a given day, is the network's campaign against the government for not putting "politics" aside to come to a budget agreement that's to the stock market's liking.

    It's also an unlikely crusade, as I noted last week, from a news organization with some of...

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  3. November 28, 2012 06:50 AM

    Audit Notes: FT’s Fairhead is out; BofA CEO stonewalls; Rent a Quote

    But Pearson says the paper is not for sale.

    By Ryan Chittum

    FT Group CEO Rona Fairhead got denied the top job at Pearson and so is stepping down as chairman and CEO of its unit the FT Group, with a $1.8 million exit package. The Guardian's Nils Pratley asks a good question: "Why is Pearson paying Rona Fairhead to go?"

    The New York Times reports that the new Pearson CEO visited...

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  4. November 23, 2012 06:50 AM

    Audit Notes: not Fortune tellers; Foursquare, two million; Big Ten

    The magazine's picks for future Apple and Microsoft CEOs go awry immediately

    By Ryan Chittum

    Fortune peered into its crystal ball for the October 29 issue and came up with four "best bets" on who's in line to replace four tech CEOs, presumably years down the road (although it's a wonder how Steve Ballmer continues to hang on at Microsoft).

    The mag's top picks: iPhone chief Scott Forstall at Apple and Windows honcho Steven Sinofsky...

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  5. November 21, 2012 06:50 AM

    Audit Notes: the free model, Coulson and Brooks, another DOJ stunt

    A musician writes a compelling business argument against Pandora

    By Ryan Chittum

    The free model isn't just a failure for newspapers. It doesn't work in music either, as this terrific Pitchfork piece by former Galaxie 500 co-founder Damon Krukowski shows.

    Krukowski discloses some of his band's royalty payments from Pandora and Spotify. For one song, played 7,800 times on Pandora in the first three months of the year, the band got 21...

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  6. November 20, 2012 02:57 PM

    Rise Above, CNBC’s move into advocacy

    Corporate America's house organ starts an anti-political political campaign

    By Ryan Chittum

    Any time you see Wall Street CEOs and CNBC campaigning for what they call the common good, it's worth raising an eyebrow or two.

    So it is with CNBC's "Rise Above" crusade, which has blanketed its airwaves and adorned its lapels since the day after the election with pleas for a solution to the so-called "fiscal cliff."

    You'll note that...

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  7. November 20, 2012 06:50 AM

    Audit Notes: marginal taxes, a redesign for core readers, Murdoch

    An NYT's anecdote's confusion goes uncorrected

    By Ryan Chittum

    The New York Times flubs some reporting on how investors and well off people are bracing for higher tax rates:

    Kristina Collins, a chiropractor in McLean, Va., said she and her husband planned to closely monitor the business income from their joint practice to avoid crossing the income threshold for higher taxes outlined by President Obama on earnings above $200,000...

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  8. November 19, 2012 06:50 AM

    Audit Notes: hustled, Brauchli fallout, NYT’s Walmart impact

    ProPublica connects the dots on a former Countrywide executive named in a DOJ lawsuit

    By Ryan Chittum

    ProPublica's Paul Kiel reports (with an assist from TheStreet) that the JPMorgan Chase executive in charge of its program to pay foreclosure-scandal victims was implicated by the feds last month in their fraud case against Countrywide.

    The executive, Rebecca Mairone, worked at Countrywide and Bank of America from 2006 until earlier this year, when she left for JPMorgan Chase, according...

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  9. November 16, 2012 03:08 AM

    Audit Notes: Papacare, Post problem, trade reporting

    Forbes finds Papa John's Obamacare math doesn't add up

    By Ryan Chittum

    Papa John's CEO John Schnatter has been carping for some time that Obamacare will add 10 to 14 cents to the price of a pizza.

    That sounds like an argument for the health care law rather than against it (a dime extra on a $10 or $15 pizza to insure your pizza delivery guy?) but Papa John, from his 40,000...

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  10. November 15, 2012 06:50 AM

    Marcus Brauchli’s impossible task

    The Post's ultimate problem is the business side, not the newsroom

    By Ryan Chittum

    I can't think of any editor whose last few years ran headlong into the financial collapse of the newspaper industry more than Marcus Brauchli's.

    Brauchli got the top job at The Wall Street Journal hours after learning that Rupert Murdoch had made the Bancroft family an offer they couldn't refuse. That hapless bunch presided over the unlikely fall of the...

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  11. November 13, 2012 08:06 PM

    Audit Notes: WaPo on the Bain thing, deadbeat Forbes, hamster wheel

    The Post's revealing slip-up on the definition of swift-boating

    By Ryan Chittum

    The Washington Post apparently doesn't understand just how toxic Wall Street and its even more rapacious cousin, private equity—not popular in good times—really is now. The paper actually thought it might have been an error for Obama to attack Romney over his Bain Capital days:

    It also looked, at first, like a mistake.

    Democrats such as former president Bill Clinton,...

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  12. November 13, 2012 06:50 AM

    Audit Notes: Whinin’ Dimon, Elizabeth Warren, WSJ on Petraeus

    JPMorgan CEO takes to CNBC for consolation

    By Ryan Chittum

    I got a chuckle from Mark Gongloff's Huffington Post piece on Jamie Dimon taking his anti-administration whining to the friendly confines of CNBC:

    Dimon on Friday afternoon did his whining on CNBC, which has become a sort of Dr. Phil for aggrieved CEOs in the wake of the national catastrophe that is Obama's reelection, according to CNBC. Dimon played some...

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  13. November 12, 2012 06:50 AM

    Context-free market reporting on a post-election dive

    First-term bull market goes unmentioned after a November 7 stock dip

    By Ryan Chittum

    The stock market dive the day after President Obama was re-elected, dropping 320 points, or 2.4 percent.

    The Drudge Report, the testing ground/early-warning system for right-wing memes, put the Dow as its top post-election story, telling Obama to "own it":

    Fair enough, but as I wrote on Twitter the other day, if Obama has to own that one-day 2.4...

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  14. November 9, 2012 06:50 AM

    Audit Notes: low-info billionaires, Trump the taker, Elizabeth Warren

    Money apparently can't buy a firm grip on reality

    By Ryan Chittum

    One of the things this election proved conclusively is that even billionaires can be low-information voters.

    Here's Bloomberg BusinessWeek on billionaire David Siegel, the guy who's building the a 90,000 square foot house and who all but told his workers to vote for Romney if they wanted to keep their jobs (emphasis mine):

    I think it’s going to be a...

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