Other recommendations from Wired: organics are bad, genetic engineering is good, etc. There are a couple of intriguing points, like driving a used car is better than buying a new hybrid (because of all the carbon emitted producing a new car) and air-conditioning desert homes uses less carbon than heating ones in cooler climes, but they’re undermined by the overall package.

Those of us on the lookout for this kind of thing can see this eye-roller coming a mile away (and not just because of the garish orange and green cover) with the cover headline “Attention Environmentalists: Keep your SUV. Forget organics. Go nuclear. Screw the spotted owl.”

But what about the general reader just picking up a mag for a long flight? We suspect pieces like Wired’s just have the effect of sowing confusing and a throw-up-your-hands inertia in readers, and that’s a big disservice not just to its circulation but to everyone.

Perez-Pena’s strong WSJ coverage

A Credit to Richard Perez-Pena of the Times for continued good coverage of the turmoil at The Wall Street Journal. Perez-Pena has been ahead of the competition on the story with a number of scoops, including one last week about upcoming changes at the Journal and its stepsister, the Dow Jones Newswires, while at the same time maintaining a critical view of Murdoch and his intentions.

Going forward, Mr. Thomson will make cosmetic changes to The Journal soon, and will expand the newswires staff, particularly the number of reporters overseas, according to a person briefed on his plans, who insisted on anonymity because the News Corporation had not approved the release of the information.

While the Journal itself has slipped at times (though reporters Shira Ovide and Steve Stecklow did a good job of covering the Thomson news last week), Perez-Pena consistently has been on his game, as he was in holding Murdoch to account for breaking past promises (in nice, neutral New York Times-style language, of course) here in the same story, about the anticlimactic announcement of Richard Thomson as its top editor:

In an interview more than a year ago, two days after Mr. Murdoch’s bid for Dow Jones became public, he said he did not plan to transplant any of the editors of his other papers to The Journal and that he admired those who were already running the paper. But he added that he would call on Mr. Thomson, the top editor of The Times of London since 2002, for advice in running The Journal. The Times of London is also owned by the News Corporation.


Long form as we like it

A Credit to Fast Company for publishing Richard Behar’s twenty-two-page special report on China’s resource-grab in sub-Saharan Africa this month.

It’s a tale of economics, politics, and environmental degradation on the continent of Africa, full of incredible details (already more Chinese live in Nigeria than Britons did at the height of its empire) and rich writing (it’s hard to top a lede in which the writer’s own intestinal parasite from the Congo is a metaphor for what China is doing to the sub-Sahara).

While America is preoccupied with the war in Iraq (cost: half a trillion dollars and counting), and while think-tank economists continue to spit out papers debating whether vital resources are running out at all, China’s leadership isn’t taking any chances. In just a few years, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has become the most aggressive investor-nation in Africa. This commercial invasion is without question the most important development in the sub-Sahara since the end of the Cold War—an epic, almost primal propulsion that is redrawing the global economic map. One former U.S. assistant secretary of state has called it a “tsunami.” Some are even calling the region “ChinAfrica.”

The piece is comprised of six parts, four of which are focused on individual nations: Mozambique, Zambia, Congo, and Equatorial Guinea.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the Chinese seem to be everywhere: clearing trees in Mozambique, drilling for oil in Sudan, digging in copper mines in Zambia, opening textile factories in Kenya, prospecting for uranium in Zimbabwe, buying cobalt in the Congo, laying expressways in Angola. They have launched a satellite from Nigeria and built phone networks in rural Ghana and a dozen other countries. Hospitals, water pipelines, dams, railways, airports, hotels, soccer stadiums, parliament buildings—nearly all of them linked, in some way, to China’s gaining access to raw materials. A $5 billion, 50-year government fund to encourage Chinese companies to invest in Africa. A $9 billion loan package for Congo. A $5.6 billion stake (20%) in Standard Bank, the biggest on the continent. And in April, $40 billion—plus in export-credit guarantees to help fund investment in Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer.

As the editor’s note says, this is the kind of long-form journalism that creates a connection between a writer and readers. Good for Fast Company.

Portfolio vs. candor

A Debit to Portfolio for an insipid editor’s letter (a redundancy, we realize) that deems it uncivilized for former bosses to criticize their successors.

The Commentary uses Jack Welch’s pummeling Jeff Immelt, his successor as GE CEO, as a jumping off point for its misguided advocacy of “civil discourse.” Why would a business-journalism magazine hold up a prominent elder statesman of capitalism as crass for speaking the truth? All Welch said was that Immelt had a “credibility issue,” he didn’t say he had a loathsome disease. Portfolio approves of the “basic chivalry” of Welch’s untruthful—as even the magazine acknowledges—next-day retraction of his comments.

“So look for predecessor-successor noblesse oblige to fade away and for the start of an era in which a graceful departure at any rung of the corporate ladder becomes a quaint relic, an option rarely embraced. All this makes for terrific copy, but also for the most unwholesome theater.

These may be Manhattan dinner-party rules, but business is rough and tumble. Business journalism should be to a certain extent, as well.