Tag: economics
Timed to Cirque du Soleil bringing its new show, Zarkana, to New York this summer, the New York Times offers up a lengthy profile of its creative force, who is described as a “very nice bulldozer.” With the caveat “analyzing his character is challenging since he has few close friends, and even his longtime associates say they hardly know him,”…
I got my first job when I was 16, and before that, I’d been babysitting since middle school. Working for other people is something I’ve had decades of practice doing. Working for myself is new. So I was glad to stumble onto Lorena’s Epiphany, a blog by a Lebanese freelancer with good pointers on how to be successfully self employed.…
According to the National Committee on Pay Equity, Equal Pay Day was April 12 — which means women had to work three and a half months into 2011 to earn what men earned in 2010, because we earn about 77 percent of what men do. We talked a lot about the gender pay gap in one of my favorite business…
I have always been a girl with a plan. I lived life like a chess game, thinking through how my current move will ripple through three moves ahead: Getting good grades in high school would help me get into college Doing internships during college would help me land a job after graduation Taking a job at a small newspaper would…
It’s easy to see why Four-Hour Workweek is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek bestseller – working four hours a week and having a comfortable lifestyle is just short of winning the lottery in terms of fantasy freedom. After I heard author Tim Ferriss speak at MediaBistro Circus, where he shared many of the ways he’d marketed…
John and I have been married more than 10 years and I remain sort of wishy-washy on the maiden name vs. married name debate. I never legally changed my name — my driver’s license and passport still say Colleen Newvine — so technically I decided. I go by Colleen Newvine at work. But on my blog and when…
John and I walked home late Thanksgiving night, trying to walk off a few of the thousands of calories we’d ingested with friends, and our path took us past a big shopping center down the street where crowds were lining up for Black Friday sales. I’ve never felt compelled to get up in the middle of the night…
My dear friend Lara Zielin is an incredible role model for creatives — she works all day, then comes home and cranks out her own personal writing AND maintains two blogs. Lara has sold two young adult novels and is working on a third. She’s learned a lot about writing and the publishing industry and is sharing that wisdom on…
If you wander past an Apple store these days, you’re likely to see huge crowds eager to play with the latest tech novelty, the iPad. But in the media business, it seems there’s a different question than just “how does it work?” It’s wondering — or maybe hoping — if the new Apple device can transform the media business. An…
Much fuss was made over the January release of a Pew Research Center study showing women’s incomes had grown much faster than men’s from 1970 to 2007. Women increasingly have more education and make more money than their husbands, the headlines shouted. Can V-Day survive shifting roles? For some women who earn more than their husbands, more money means more…
“The Power of Half” is a new book about a family that made a dramatic commitment to doing good in the world — not by quitting their jobs and going to live in an impoverished village someplace, but by redirecting some of their considerable blessings. In a first-person article in Parade magazine headlined Why We Gave Away Our Home, Kevin…
I’ve pretty much worked in the same field since high school — I got a job pasting up newspaper pages using X-Acto knives and hot wax when I was 17 and I’ve earned my paycheck from something related to writing or media ever since. This week I met a friend of a friend who is studying criminal justice after getting…
I feel strongly about supporting local businesses — they contribute to the character of my community so my job is to financially contribute to their success. Their job is to make that possible. If you make it hard for me to spend money in your shop, depending on how much I like you and your establishment, I might try try…
My second job after college was at the weekly South Lyon Herald. We covered a small town in southeast Michigan like a big, wooly blanket — as the education reporter, I did a two-page spread on prom, for example. My editor there was Maria Stuart. It feels like ages ago for me, as I’ve moved numerous times, both my home…
Thanks to Twitter, I learned about the Slow Money conference — I hadn’t heard of it until I saw Stowe Boyd’s 140-character updates Thursday. BusinessWeek writes: There’s a conference going on in Santa Fe this week about Slow Money. The idea behind slow money, modeled on the 20-year-old slow food movement, is to create an infrastructure for investing in local…
Some people don’t pursue their dreams for very practical reasons — they have to pay the rent and they worry that being a musician, artist, filmmaker or writer won’t make any money. A story in the New York Times this week introduced me to Kickstarter, based in our back yard here in Brooklyn. Earl Scioneaux III is not a famous music…
MediaPost recently had an article about a Florida guy named Jason Sadler who is making money from a simple but compelling idea: The idea was simple, if sartorially limiting: Sadler, 27, decided that on Jan. 1, 2009, he would wear a company’s logo t-shirt all day, broadcasting video and photos of himself on various social media, including ustream.tv and Twitter…
Hip Slope Mama, a Brooklyn-based blogazine led by a friend of ours, turned me on to the 3/50 project with this recent post from contributor Mark Caserta. Since last September, business along Park Slope’s commercial streets has fallen off significantly and my store, 3r Living, has struggled to stay afloat in these difficult, uncertain times. Of course, many of our customers are feeling…
I’ve already seen numerous takes on the “laid off workers decide to pursue new path” story. I blogged about it a while back, linking to a few versions the Times had done, including focusing on white-collar professionals deciding to become disc jockeys. (Why that career and not massage therapists or sign-language translators? Who knows.) A story in the Washington Post…
Whether there’s a shared sense of the narrative of the recession, or perhaps some collective wishful thinking, certain stories seem to be popping up frequently: The recession is causing Americans to re-examine their consumerist spendaholic ways Layoffs are prompting Americans to pursue new, more fulfilling career paths I think the common thread in both these themes is a hope that…