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Chains are proclaiming location, location, location as they swap properties for geographic dominance.
Jack Bass
Jack Bass is a former Nieman Fellow who published his own weekly newspaper, covered politics for 10 years and taught journalism for 11 more.
The newspaper chain is trying to figure out if it makes sense to add a certain 40,000-circulation daily to its portfolio. Decision time is fast approaching. So the CEO spreads before him all the pertinent documents to be studied--cash-flow models, market analyses, payroll and circulation breakouts, broker recommendations, highway maps.
Highway maps?
Absolutely--in some ways maybe the most crucial papers in the stack, truth be told. That's because where newspaper companies once were quick to gobble up most any property that came available to them--call it growth for growth's sake--today they have come to embrace the mantra of "location, location, location" with a fervor that would put a real estate agent to shame.
On a scale never before seen or imagined, newspaper chains are concentrating their holdings into tight geographic groups. Stimulated by new opportunities for cutting costs and building revenues, and encouraged by tax laws and changing trends in retail advertising, such established companies as Thomson, Knight Ridder, Cox, Media General, Hollinger, Gannett, Donrey and MediaNews are swapping properties like baseball cards, unloading papers that don't fit their geographic strategies and acquiring ones that do.
Thomson Newspapers has a fancy name for a complex of papers in close proximity--it calls them "strategic marketing
groups." Cox speaks of "regional groups," while MediaNews and other companies simply use the more generic term "clusters."
Whatever you call them, they are transforming the landscape of newspaper ownership in America and fundamentally changing the way the industry does business.
The Project on the State of the American Newspaper has identified 125 major regional concentrations, involving more than 400 papers--or well over a fourth of the nation's dailies. And the numbers keep growing. By the end of this year, predicts Owen Van Essen of the brokerage firm Dirks, Van Essen & Associates, another 30 or more papers will be traded among at least 10 different companies, all aimed at tighter concentration of ownership.
The ultimate cost-cutting prize is having two or more papers share the same printing plant. But even when this isn't possible, nearby papers may share overhead costs such as accounting, they may pool their regional sports coverage or their state and regional political coverage, and (although this is rare) they may even share a centralized copy desk.
"The closer you are, the more you can share," explains Brian Cooper, senior vice president of Cox Newspapers, which will soon open a new plant to print two of its North Carolina papers.
Geographic concentration also allows more enticing deals to large retail advertisers. With one buy order, one ad sheet and one bill, a Sears, a Circuit City or a big regional bank can place ads in any combination of newspapers it wants within the group. For advertising agencies, which increasingly make buy decisions for the major retailers in regional malls, the combined circulation of a newspaper cluster, purchased on a cost-per-thousand basis, makes more sense than buying space in bits and pieces from competing papers with overlapping circulation areas.
But while the economic advantages of geographic concentration become more obvious every day, the implications to readers and to journalism are less clear.
Since Cox acquired it in 1995 and integrated it into a three-paper group, the Greenville Daily Reflector in North Carolina has updated its computer system and is getting Washington coverage of its congressional delegation for the first time. It is scheduled to move into a new printing plant in October.
Since MediaNews bought the 35,000-circulation San Mateo County Times in 1996, to add to its other holdings in the San Francisco area, it has reinvigorated an afternoon paper that was losing money and lacked the resources to adequately cover the local pro sports teams. Now the Times shows a profit, runs nearly twice as many pages as before, and covers local news well enough to hold its ground against the San Francisco Chronicle to the north and the San Jose Mercury News to the south.
On the other hand, after MediaNews bought Long Beach's Press-Telegram from Knight Ridder in 1997, it slashed newsroom salaries, damaging morale and prompting more than half of a seasoned and respected staff to leave. Knight Ridder did something similar with the Monterey County Herald, which it acquired in 1997 in an exchange of California and Colorado papers with Scripps Howard. The new owner cut staff in Monterey, refused to recognize the existing Newspaper Guild contract, crushed morale and alienated many people in the community.
An obvious drawback to geographical concentration is that it reduces the competitiveness and diversity of journalistic voices. In 22 states now, one company controls 20 percent or more of the daily newspapers operating there. For example, Media General owns one-third of all the properties in Virginia. Lee Enterprises owns one-third of Montana's daily papers. And more than half the 44 dailies in Oklahoma now belong to a single company, fast-growing Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., or CNHI.
The Journal Register Co. owns five of Connecticut's 18 daily papers; they cooperate in both newsgathering and business operations. Times Mirror owns three other Connecticut papers, which share some editorial functions. These two chains account for more than half of all the local papers sold in Connecticut each day.
Twelve of New Jersey's 19 daily papers are owned by just three companies--Gannett, Newhouse and Macromedia. They account for two-thirds of the circulation of all New Jersey-based dailies. They also dominate coverage of the state government, furnishing 29 of the 38 newspaper reporters assigned full-time to the capital.
Concentration of newspaper ownership is nothing new, of course. But in recent years it has become pervasive. Of the 543 newspaper trades and acquisitions recorded between 1994 and 1998, all but a few have resulted in tighter concentration of ownership within a state or region. Indeed, the idea of building clusters prompted most of those sales in the first place.
Some major players have taken advantage of the seller's market to pare their holdings to more manageable levels. Thomson has lately reduced its U.S. daily newspaper holdings from more than 150 to just 50. "The problem with the 150-odd newspapers was rather like a biblical farmer scattering his seed on the land," Stuart Garner, Thomson's chief executive officer, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "There was no logic in where the newspapers were located."
Now there is a logic. Forty-five of those 50 remaining papers are in specific clusters--three in southeastern Indiana, eight in central Wisconsin and so on.
"Newspaper companies are going to have to find more and more creative ways to keep their companies growing," says Dean Singleton, CEO of MediaNews and one of the industry's leading practitioners of clustering. "Eliminating duplication is one of those things that help do that. This is not a growth industry."
David Lord, president of Pioneer Newspapers in Seattle, agrees. "Overall, there is an industry recognition that we have to do it. Logically, it makes sense."
Imagine a huge game of Monopoly, with all the players trading properties. Everyone knows that Boardwalk and Park Place are worth more if you own them both, which means a player who owns one will pay a premium to get the other. It's the same with newspapers. Consider a recent deal between Thomson and Ogden, a subsidiary of Nutting Newspapers. Thomson traded away four dailies in Ohio and Pennsylvania with a combined circulation of 90,000 to get a single paper in Wisconsin, the Oshkosh Northwestern, with a circulation of just 25,000. The reason Oshkosh was so important to Thomson was that the company already owned the four other dailies that ring the Lake Winnebago area. Ogden co-owner Robert Nutting hadn't planned to sell the Northwestern, according to a member of the family that originally owned it. "The story we heard," the family member, Thomas H. Schwalm, told the Milwaukee paper, "was that Thomson kept throwing newspapers at Ogden until he couldn't say no."
Or try following this transaction without a scorecard. In 1996, three companies--Thomson, Cox and Hollinger--executed an elaborate three-way swap involving 15 daily papers in seven states. Thomson picked up Cox's six newspapers in Arizona: the Yuma Daily Sun on the California border and five suburban dailies along Phoenix's long eastern flank--the Chandler Arizonan-Tribune, Gilbert Tribune, Mesa Tribune, Scottsdale Progress Tribune and Tempe Daily News-Tribune. Subsequently Thomson merged all five of the Phoenix-area papers into the Mesa-based Tribune, with zoned editions for each community. (A year later Thomson would augment its Phoenix cluster by acquiring, from Ottaway Newspapers, the Daily News-Sun in Sun City.) Cox, meanwhile, got from Thomson two North Carolina papers--Elizabeth City's Daily Advance and the Rocky Mount Telegram--to go with the nearby Greenville Daily Reflector, which it had bought from an independent owner. Simultaneously, Cox got from Hollinger the Marshall News Messenger in East Texas, where it already owned three dailies, one of them less than 20 miles from Marshall. Cox said it also received cash and "other considerations."
Hollinger sent Thomson a weekly and a cluster of three small dailies--the Greensburg Daily News, the News-Times in Hartford City and the Rushville Republican--in the southeastern corner of Indiana. The dailies had a combined circulation of not quite 13,000. In return, Hollinger got three dailies from Thomson--the Enid News and Eagle in Oklahoma, the Register-News in Mount Vernon, Illinois, and the Herald-Palladium in Benton Harbor-St. Joseph, Michigan. (The Enid paper was subsequently resold, to CNHI, bolstering its concentration in Oklahoma.)
As a result of this complex trade, both Thomson and Cox were able to concentrate their holdings. Hollinger did not, but the three stand-alone newspapers it received had a combined circulation of 67,000, while the four papers it gave up had only about 21,000. If nothing else, this comparison suggests how much more highly valued papers may become when they can be sold into a geographical group or cluster.
Such groups need not be limited by state lines. Knight Ridder owns the largest newspapers in each of the Carolinas, the Charlotte Observer (244,000 daily circulation) in North Carolina and The State (120,000 circulation) in Columbia, South Carolina, as well as the fast-growing Sun News of Myrtle Beach (45,000 circulation) on the South Carolina coast. Peter Ridder, publisher of the Observer and the younger brother of Knight Ridder Chairman and CEO Tony Ridder, says the distances between these papers "prohibit clustering in the traditional sense." It's 90 miles south from Charlotte to Columbia, 140 miles east from Columbia to Myrtle Beach, and almost 200 miles northwest from Myrtle Beach to Charlotte.
Still, since coming to the Observer in 1997, Ridder has pushed for greater sharing and "partnership" among the three newspapers. The Observer has joined in the sharing of content--especially sports--that had been going on for some time between Columbia and Myrtle Beach. Because Myrtle Beach is a golfing mecca, the Sun News files golf coverage to all three newspapers. It gets coverage of Clemson and University of South Carolina football from The State and racing news from Charlotte, a NASCAR hub. A Carolinas.com Web site lets users click on any of the three papers.
Since Ridder's arrival, Columbia and Charlotte have been sharing South Carolina governmental and political news. And the Observer's Columbia bureau has been cut from two reporters to one.
Traditionally, the Observer's reputation in South Carolina has been one of aggressive enterprise in covering state government and politics. The State currently runs stories generated by the Observer's one-man shop in Columbia. A veteran journalism watcher there tells me the arrangement has reduced competitiveness. If the Observer is covering a story at the Statehouse, he maintains, The State doesn't assign one of its reporters, who might see a different angle.
So far, the Observer hasn't developed any significant joint advertising arrangements with its South Carolina partners, but it is exploring ways to do that, especially something related to golfing in Myrtle Beach. "If there's a market, we'd do it in a minute," Ridder says.
Since all these papers circulate in the Myrtle Beach area, "We're in a lively three-way competition," says Paula Ellis, publisher of the Sun News. She adds, "We cooperate when everyone agrees it's to the advantage of all."
Says Ridder, "I can see more and more synergies between the three Carolina newspapers. I am certain that will happen."
Synergy notwithstanding, the proliferation of geographic concentration all across America raises hard questions for journalism:
As time goes by, will there be fewer competing journalistic voices in a given state or region? One already sees this happening in places like Connecticut, Virginia and New Jersey.
What happens to clusters when they mature? Since the trend is so new, it's impossible to say with any certainty. In and around Westchester County, just north of New York City, Gannett for years operated one of the nation's tightest and most conspicuous clusters. But last fall it merged those 10 separate nameplates into a single suburban paper, the Journal News. Now readers get late sports results, a bigger newshole and other editorial improvements that efficient consolidation can offer. Yet, with Westchester County's scores of incorporated municipalities and independent school districts, many readers mourn the diminishment of "local, local" news and lament the snipping of another thread to their particular hometowns, the vanishing of a newspaper masthead that was overtly "theirs." Strong, independent weeklies are thriving there.
Out in California, meanwhile, the Contra Costa papers that Knight Ridder bought in 1995 from the family of Dean Lesher still publish as separate entities through the week. But the chain wasted little time before consolidating what were five different Sunday papers into a single muscular edition that circulates nearly 200,000 copies.
Will the fatter profits generated by the new geographic strategies mean more money for journalistic improvements, or will newsrooms languish even while earnings rise, as has often happened in the 1990s? Singleton speaks optimistically on this point, despite his reputation for keeping a tight rein on newsroom budgets. "The revenue implications are more important than cost-cutting," he argues, "because selling advertising jointly not only helps your revenue base, it increases your newshole. If you sell a page of department store advertising that you didn't have before, you get a page of news you didn't have before. One of the beauties of clustering is that it takes papers standing on the brink and makes them very healthy."
Will there be less journalistic competition? It depends. In the Bay Area, Knight Ridder's San Jose Mercury News and its Contra Costa papers go head-to-head against the complex of papers owned by MediaNews, and both those groups compete vigorously against the area's dominant metro, the San Francisco Chronicle.
This new order, though, raises another concern. As a few newspaper companies ring big cities with their coordinated groups of small to medium-size papers, will major metros lose the fight for suburban readers and advertisers? Will this further isolate suburbs from their central cities, and further deprive suburbanites of an understanding of big-city problems? It's easy to imagine this happening in places like Philadelphia and Los Angeles. But for now, the question remains unanswered.
If it ever is answered, chances are it will be in the affluent communities east of San Francisco Bay, where you can find one of the nation's most sophisticated clusters coolly humming along, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
It's almost 8 p.m., and Nancy Conway, executive editor of the five Alameda Group dailies, drops by the "news center" for a final checkup before heading home. In a large second-floor room that approaches the size of a basketball court, dozens of copy editors, grouped in units of three to six, sit at their terminals. They're doing the usual things--polishing copy, writing headlines and captions, laying out pages. But not for one newspaper--for five. Simultaneously.
The news center, in the upscale, aptly named Alameda County town of Pleasanton, is a unique place. Some 70 people work here, many of them processing copy and photos for newspapers in communities 30 miles apart. The staff is young, and most don't live in those communities, don't work there, and seldom visit.
Centralizing the copy desk and composing room functions of five different papers is designed to promote efficiency and save money for their owner, MediaNews. From that standpoint it appears to work extremely well. Still, watching the dispatch with which these people do their jobs, in almost assembly-line fashion, it's easy to conclude something important may be lost in the process.
An editor of one of the outlying newspapers admits as much to me. "It's harder to do a good job," he says, when your paper's editing team "is not sitting next to you. There's a communication that's so intimate, especially when you're on deadline. We try to be creative, but this process forces us to be efficient. It's hard for copy editors in a different location to have a sense of the community and a feel for the newspaper."
There is little time to fret about it, though. That's because the copy streams in steadily, not only from the five scattered newsrooms but also from a regional staff that produces news, business and entertainment stories for all the papers within the cluster--the Oakland Tribune, the Tri-Valley Herald in Pleasanton, the Daily Review in Hayward, the Argus in Fremont and the Times in San Mateo. The operation is so complex that Conway says it took her a year to fully grasp it. She has moved in the last year to decentralize as much of the operation as possible. But due in part to the mechanized atmosphere and the limited opportunity for collegiality, turnover is high. "There's an open position most of the time," she acknowledges.
On the other hand, without the kinds of innovations MediaNews has imposed, a couple of the papers in the Alameda cluster might now be losing money instead of making it. They might even be gone.
With its centralized control and coordination, the news center is part of what makes Alameda County one of the country's most thoroughgoing examples of newspaper clustering.
It is the brainchild of William Dean Singleton, who has popularized several of today's hot newspaper trends. He engaged, for example, in one of the first tax-free trades of daily newspapers--an exchange with Harte-Hanks in the mid-'80s. Such exchanges were common in real estate back then. Now they're common among newspapers as well.
It was also Singleton who popularized the word "clustering" as it applies to newspapers. As a broader business term, clustering refers to the geographic concentration of interconnected companies and institutions within a field. Silicon Valley is a cluster in this sense--a nexus of enterprises, all engaged in high technology, cooperating and competing simultaneously. For Singleton, however, the term means the combining of operations for newspapers in close proximity to one another--usually in the same or adjacent counties.
Singleton developed his version of the idea 16 years ago--not in California but in southern New Jersey, where he and a partner bought the Gloucester County Times in Woodbury and Today's Sunbeam in Salem, an adjacent county seat. "Clustering seemed the right thing to do," Singleton says. "The papers are 28 miles apart. They had many of the same advertisers. It did not make sense to have two operations."
It became obvious to him that both papers could be printed in a single plant, with a single composing room, and that one accounting department would suffice for both. Besides the cost-cutting, their combined circulation made them more attractive to department stores and other regional advertisers, who could get a combined, discounted, "one buy, one bill" rate.
Singleton doesn't claim he invented this kind of clustering, but he says he wasn't aware of any other papers that were doing it when he started.
A boyish-faced man of medium height, Singleton, 47, met with me recently at the unpretentious MediaNews headquarters in Denver, whose Post is its flagship paper. Dressed in slacks and a long-sleeve pullover shirt, he looked like a relaxed suburban real estate broker who enjoys desserts. Singleton's older sister, Pat Robinson, serves as his personal secretary, the fully trusted keeper of the gate. In a single word she sums up what she remembers most about her brother as a child growing up poor in a small Texas town: "Determination."
Singleton explained how, in clustering the two New Jersey papers, he and his business partner and mentor, Richard Scudder, hit upon the formula that would help propel MediaNews into the big time. Today it is the country's seventh-largest newspaper company, based on daily circulation; it is fourth in terms of number of daily papers owned, 51. Among privately held firms, it is outranked only by the Newhouse family's Advance Publications.
In New Jersey, Singleton says, he found out the hard way--from subscriber complaints--that readers can be passionately parochial about editorial content. Though Salem and Gloucester counties are literally side by side, he says, "we learned early that [they] are very different. Readers in one county went through the roof if stories about the other county ran in their paper." He came to believe that highly localized news was the key to attracting and holding an audience advertisers would want to reach.
In 1985, MediaNews purchased three family-owned East Bay papers--the Daily Review, Argus and Tri-Valley Herald--all in fast-growing Alameda County. Over the next decade, the deathbed resurrection of the Oakland Tribune and the purchase of the money-losing San Mateo County Times south of San Francisco added 100,000 more in circulation to the Alameda Newspaper Group, or ANG.
"San Mateo was a family-owned newspaper that could not have remained viable if standing alone," Singleton says. "It was squeezed between San Francisco to the north and San Jose to the south. It had lost major advertising and was deteriorating. It had all the overhead of a single newspaper of 37,000. They couldn't cover the Giants and 49ers on the road. It was losing money when they decided to sell it. We made a lot of overhead go away. We were able to put in a lot of regional and national advertising, opening up the newshole. Suddenly a paper running 24 to 28 pages is now running 40 to 48."
For the year ending March 31, ANG's newspapers were the only ones in the Bay Area to show circulation gains. Preliminary Audit Bureau of Circulations figures show that since 1998, the five ANG papers gained 1.2 percent daily and 2.3 percent Sundays. In contrast, Knight Ridder's Contra Costa group lost 4.6 percent of its circulation in the same period.
The Oakland Tribune publishes three zoned editions daily, each with a section of local news. There's an Oakland cityside edition, one for the upscale East Bay Hills and a third for the city of Alameda, which was already there when MediaNews acquired the paper in 1992. The paper's overall circulation is 70,000.
"After doing some initial flushing out of circulation in certain areas, the Tribune's circulation has remained steady," says ANG President Scott McKibben.
But Singleton wasn't done shaking up the state's newspaper landscape. Early this year, in a boldly innovative stroke, MediaNews cut a deal to take over a majority stake in Donrey's nine California papers. Most of these are in the southern part of the state. But in the Bay Area's hotly contested newspaper wars the merger allowed ANG to leapfrog Knight Ridder's Contra Costa group to acquire the Vallejo Times-Herald, with its 20,000 circulation. This gave Singleton a foothold in the North Bay, at the base of Solano and Napa counties and not far from Sonoma and Marin counties--all unclustered areas with single-owner newspapers. He routinely waves off speculation about his next move, but one can only imagine Singleton's mind revving with strategic possibilities as he contemplates a map of the Bay Area.
McKibben moved to California three years ago to run ANG. Along the way he has raised editorial salaries--with reporters starting at $500 a week minimum (this will go to $525 in August) and averaging a bit over $700--and ended a decade of newsroom rancor by overseeing an agreement for a Newspaper Guild contract that covers newsroom employees at the five core papers.
And as much as it pained him, he won the respect of his editors last year by acceding to a majority vote of the editorial board to endorse Democrats Barbara Boxer and Gray Davis for senator and governor. A self-described Midwestern Republican ideologue, McKibben notes that as group president he had the authority to dictate political endorsements. "I told them vehemently how much I disagreed with them," he recalls, "but they convinced me that their position was built on good, sound logic and on fact and not on emotion, and the only reasons we differed were on philosophical background. So I let the editorial board go with who they wanted for governor and U.S. senator here. I am now in a part of the country that is basically Democratic, although out where I live in the suburbs is 57 percent registered Republican. I opened the paper here on two consecutive days and I was sick to my stomach."
ANG's combined one-buy, one-bill circulation of 237,000 (including Vallejo) attracts national advertisers and major retailers. Roughly 35 percent of all display advertising runs in all the papers, McKibben says.
The readers of all ANG's papers get staff coverage, at home and on the road, of the Oakland Athletics and the San Francisco Giants in the summer and the Oakland Raiders and San Francisco 49ers in the fall--coverage that none of the papers could afford alone. The top reporter's salary, $58,000, goes to a sports columnist.
Nancy Conway, who years ago stumbled into journalism after she was unable to find a teaching job, directs the overall news operation. But each paper has its own editor and reporters to cover local news. Although editorials are written for the group, local editors decide whether to run them or substitute their own on local issues.
Conway, who began working for Singleton in 1978, runs her shop with a heavy emphasis on communication among her subordinates. Her top editors respect her. They confer twice daily, via conference calls at 11 a.m. and 2:30 p.m., to go over news budgets, including Bay Area stories from sports, entertainment and business, and from the 15-person regional news staff that works out of Oakland. The editors also get together every Tuesday morning at 10:30, at rotating locations. They start by discussing editorials and regional issues and remain for lunch, breaking up at 1:30.
In 1997, when welfare reform was a major issue, Conway assigned a five-person team that worked five months on a comprehensive, five-day package of stories and photographs that focused on Alameda County. Across the bay, the San Mateo paper published a different version that was localized for its area. The series won the 1998 Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism from the Casey Journalism Center for Children and Families at the University of Maryland. It also won the 1997 California State University at Sacramento print journalism award for excellence in reporting on California state government and politics.
A Sacramento-based reporter files state news for all ANG's papers. Conway keeps a rapid response team on alert seven days a week for big breaking stories.
The regional news staff covers growth and transportation issues and other stories of common interest to all Bay Area readers. After a major storm, a single story may run page one in all the papers, but each will have localized color photos and perhaps local sidebars. "We'll get the story and tailor it to our readers," says Editor Ernie Hines of the Tri-Valley Herald.
During my visit, a story on a major Bay Area traffic study got heavy front-page play. The four Alameda-oriented papers focused on how the Sunol Grade, a notorious climb of Interstate 680 in the southern portion of the county, was becoming the Bay Area's worst commuter nightmare. The San Mateo paper, however, emphasized increased congestion on the cross-bay San Mateo Bridge.
Page two of each paper is devoted to Bay Area news, which reader surveys show is second in interest to more localized news. Regional, state and national-international stories fill up the A section. Local news, sports, editorials and letters to the editor may differ in the papers that have zoned editions. On a random day's look at all five of the ANG core papers, the two Tri-Valley editions carried a lengthy local editorial endorsing a $150 million school bond issue affecting both circulation areas, but the editorial did not run in the zoned San Ramon Valley Herald that serves a separate school system.
The local section for each newspaper is staff-written, with the editor determining story placement by phone or e-mail with his designated news editor at the news center. The center is in the same building as the Tri-Valley Herald. This works well for Hines, because his news editor can simply walk downstairs to confer on story play or quietly discuss a personnel problem. News editors for the outlying papers--the farthest of which, San Mateo, is 40 miles away--are less fortunate; they make do as best they can by phone.
Because the papers serve suburban commuters who travel clogged highways, McKibben says the goal for home delivery is 5 a.m. for readers with longer commutes, and 5:30 elsewhere.
San Mateo Editor Terry Winckler says one of the great advantages of clustering for small papers "is pooling resources when it makes sense. You metro-ize those things in common--major tragedies and crime news; the earthquake; major grass and wildfires; bigger-picture stories, such as Yosemite, that everybody relates to..[and] that you couldn't get by leaving each newspaper totally autonomous. We've learned to select those news and information areas that all can use to combine our resources."
San Mateo is the only afternoon paper in the group. Winckler's 2 p.m. deadline for the last edition allows him to carry final New York stocks to the heart of his circulation area. But there have been problems, too. Early on, ANG made some of the same mistakes in San Mateo that Singleton's New Jersey papers had in regard to what is, and isn't, "local." ANG's natural East Bay sports bent drew huge complaints from Peninsula readers in San Mateo. "Focus groups showed that San Mateo fans loved the Giants and 49ers, but loathed the A's and Raiders," Singleton recalls. "We were catching hell because we were emphasizing East Bay sports. We learned the hard way in San Mateo that it was a separate county."


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I have a paid Android app that I made by myself this past summer and I've been working on it throughout the year. The app is geared toward a professional niche market (but there are people all around the world who would buy it,) so it's priced highly. It is
- Mostly C++, some Java
- Built heavily on Qt (in the C++ code)
- 15,000+ lines of code
- Well commented in some places but not others
I enjoy working on it, but find I no longer have time to slog through the more "menial" coding work of maintaining it, and instead want to focus on building new components and taking it to the next level, where I think I would really get bigger returns. In order to do that, I'm looking at contracting out some programming work to someone else.
My app makes some money, but not enough to hire anyone steadily - instead I'll have to just give them smaller jobs to do at a time. I might have to hire someone in a lower economic status country as well, because I expect that rates, say, here in the U.S. won't be affordable to me. My knee-jerk reaction is to go to vWorker.com (formerly RentACoder) where I did a lot of work several years ago. Is this going to help me or cause more headache than help?
Here are some more specific questions I have - feel free to answer any that you have thoughts on. Also, please let me know how I can improve this question. Thanks in advance.
- How can I find a person with the right skill set? Is asking for Qt and Android SDK experience going to increase the price a lot?
- How can I protect my copyright? Is this enforceable in less economically developed countries? Or can someone easily get away with stealing my code and selling it themselves?
- Are there any other issues you foresee in hiring this person, and how might I address those?

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Articles in PEB Exchange (formerly PEB Exchange):
See also: www.oecd.org/edu/facilities/highereducation
Building Futures (2009), Growing by Degrees: Universities in the Future of Urban Development, RIBA, www.buildingfutures.org.uk.
Ireland (1999); an overview of the country's current situation regarding tertiary education), by Triona Dooney, Assistant Secretary, Higher Education Authority, Dublin (in .pdf format).
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Daily Slice: Chicken and Bacon at Pizza My Heart, California
A different slice profiled each day.
Daily Slice gives a quick snapshot each weekday of a different slice or pie that the folks at the Serious Eats empire have enjoyed lately.
There are a long list of words I don't like when associated with pizza: Chicken. Bacon. Ranch dressing. California. (Sorry: I'm a proud native, but it's true.) Still, despite checking every one of those boxes, the Chicken & Bacon ($3.25) slice from Northern California mini-chain Pizza My Heart is pretty darn tasty. The chicken is sliced thinly enough so that it doesn't stand out from the pizza, the bacon crumbles add salt and delicious fattiness, and the garlic and "ranch" spices integrate to form a juicy, oozy sauce that flavors everything it touches. The crust isn't my favorite, but it's thin and pliant and crisp-edged enough to do the trick.
Pizza My Heart
Multiple locations
Reviewed: 220 University Avenue, Palo Alto CA 94301 (map)
This post may contain links to Amazon or other partners; your purchases via these links can benefit Serious Eats. Read more about our affiliate linking policy.


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Republicans still slinging mud at health reform in hope its success won't stick
The constant harping on alleged failure of Obamacare works as innuendo
"Nobody can make Obamacare work," declared Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, a couple of weeks ago (when it was already obvious that it was working pretty well). Photograph: Amos Ben Gershom GPO via Getty Images
House Republicans released a deliberately misleading report on the status of health reform last week, crudely rigging the numbers to sustain the illusion of failure in the face of unexpected success. Are you shocked?
You aren't, but you should be. Mainstream politicians didn't always try to advance their agenda through lies, damned lies and – in this case – bogus statistics. And the fact that this has become standard operating procedure for a major party bodes ill for America's future.
About that report: The really big policy news of 2014, at least so far, is the spectacular recovery of the Affordable Care Act from its stumbling start, thanks to an extraordinary late surge that took enrolment beyond early projections.
The age mix of people enrolling has improved; insurance companies are broadly satisfied with the risk pool. Multiple independent surveys confirm that the percentage of Americans without health insurance has already declined substantially, and there's every reason to believe that, over the next two years, the act will meet its overall goals, except in states that refuse to expand Medicaid.
This is a problem for Republicans, who have bet the ranch on the proposition that health reform is an unfixable failure. "Nobody can make Obamacare work," declared Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, a couple of weeks ago (when it was already obvious that it was working pretty well). How can they respond to good news?
Well, they could graciously admit that they were wrong, and offer constructive suggestions about how to make the law work even better. Oh, sorry – I forgot that I wasn't writing jokes for the White House correspondents' dinner.
No, they have in fact continued to do what they've been doing ever since the news on Obamacare started turning positive: sling as much mud as possible at health reform, in the hope that some of it sticks. Premiums were soaring, they declared, when they have actually come in below projections. Millions of people were losing coverage, they insisted, when the great bulk of those whose policies were cancelled simply replaced them with new policies. The Obama administration was cooking the books, they cried (projection, anyone?). And, of course, they keep peddling horror stories about people suffering terribly from Obamacare, not one of which has withstood scrutiny.
Continuing pattern
Now comes the latest claim – that many of the people who signed up for insurance aren't actually paying their premiums. Obviously this claim is part of a continuing pattern. It also, however, involves a change in tactics. Previous attacks on Obamacare were pretty much fact-free; this time the claim was backed by a survey purporting to show that a third of people enrolling hadn't paid their first premium.
But the survey was rigged. (Are you surprised?) It asked insurers how many enrollees had paid their first premium; it ignored the fact that the first premium wasn't even due for the millions of people who signed up for insurance after March 15th.
And the fact that the survey was so transparently rigged is a smoking gun, proving that the attacks on Obamacare aren't just bogus; they're deliberately bogus. The staffers who set up that survey knew enough about the numbers to skew them, which meant that they have to have known that Obamacare is actually doing okay.
So why are Republicans doing this? Sad to say, there's method in their fraudulence. First of all, it fires up the base. After this latest exercise in deception, we can be fairly sure that Republican leaders know perfectly well that Obamacare has failed to fail. But the party faithful don't. Like anyone who writes about these issues, I get vast amounts of mail from people who know, just know, that insurance premiums are skyrocketing, that far more people have lost insurance because of Obummercare than have gained it, that all the horror stories are real, and that anyone who says otherwise is just a liberal shill.
Constant harping
Beyond that, the constant harping on alleged failure works as innuendo even if each individual claim collapses in the face of evidence. A recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that a majority of Americans know that more than eight million people enrolled in health exchanges; but it also found a majority of respondents believing that this was below expectations, and that the law was working badly.
So Republicans are spreading disinformation about health reform because it works, and because they can – there is no sign that they pay any political price when their accusations are proved false.
And that observation should scare you. What happens to the Congressional Budget Office if a party that has learned that lying about numbers works takes full control of Congress? What happens if it regains the White House, too? Nothing good, that's for sure.


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The Grio.com was fortunate to sit down with Fortunata Kasege, 38, who is a family ambassador with the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF). Founded in 1988, EGPAF has reached more than 17 million women with services to prevent transmission of HIV to their babies.
"It currently works at more than 6,800 sites and in 15 countries to implement prevention, care, and treatment services; to further advance innovative research; and to execute global advocacy activities that bring dramatic change to the lives of millions of women, children, and families worldwide," Kasege says.
Here she shares her story about how she has lived with HIV and her own decision to undergo prevention of mother-to child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) treatment while she was pregnant — a treatment that ultimately saved her life and prevent the transmission of HIV to her daughter Florida who was born HIV-negative.
theGrio: When were you first diagnosed with HIV?
Fortunata Kasege: I was diagnosed in 1997, a couple of weeks after coming to the United States from Tanzania. I didn't receive any prenatal care over there and so I had to report to get prenatal care over here and that's when they told me.
Describe your mindset of hearing that diagnosis?
It was such a shock. I was thinking about completely different things. I was 21 years old, I was about to start college and starting a family. It was an unexpected and a very unfortunate thing. I had a real dramatic reaction to it. I was very scared for my life and life of the baby. It was a very scary thing and glad they had a good positive solution to save the baby [from contracting HIV] and keep me alive.
How did you find out about the PMTCT treatment?
I found out a week later from my first visit. I was freaking out and because all I knew back then in Africa that if you get it, you die. I was screaming and panicking thinking I was going to die and they calmed me down saying 'I wasn't going to die. We have treatments for this here and your child will be okay. And they gave me the knowledge and it was initially hard for me to believe that it would happen until my child was born because no one was sharing their stories of success.
Despite your uncertainty, why did you decide to try that treatment?
I think any mother wouldn't think twice about doing something that would protect the life of your child. It was obviously the right one because she's well, she's a healthy teenager now. It works.
What did PMTCT treatment consist of?
I took [the medication] AZT every four hours, and I made sure I took it religiously. I would even wake up at night to take it. I was over five months pregnant, and they gave me a twelve percent chance of transmitting it. In Africa the information I had received at the time was that there was nothing I could do to protect the baby.
Were there any setbacks or side effects?
No. I responded very well. I was in worse shape emotionally than physically. I was really distracted emotionally. They did a really good job of making sure I didn't have any crazy side effects.
How did you feel when you found out that your child was HIV negative?
It was the best news that I had heard after hearing all of the horrible stories associated with HIV. Even though it was three to four months between being diagnosed to her being born, to me it felt like an eternity. It made me really happy and hopeful after being completely broken from hearing the [diagnosis] initially.
Describe how you think it would have been over if you were diagnosed in Tanzania.
It was God's plan for me not to die. The baby would have been born, but statistically speaking back then, half of the babies born with HIV who don't receive treatment die before their second birthday and that would have been the case for my baby. I probably would have died three years later. Back then, medicine was scarce and there was lack of treatment options. So I'm very, very lucky about it and it's why I'm such an advocate for it.
What got you involved with activism?
Nine years after being diagnosed, things had turned around from being scared and sad, I just got tired of being ashamed and hiding. I wanted to make a positive difference in my community. I realized that I could give this information to a mom in my position and that maybe I can bring awareness, and tell them you're going to be okay, your child is going to be okay. There weren't a lot of people like me back then talking about it.
How important is it for you to tell you story to others?
It's important because this is a preventable situation. Since [HIV] is preventable, people need knowledge. But I remember how it felt to be scared. It's one thing to have it and another thing that to live with the unnecessary stigma. When I share [that I'm HIV positive] I feel powerful and that I'm fighting that stigma.
How were you received?
It was very positive. I was overwhelmed by what people were saying based on feedback. I had to get a separate email address just to answer all of their responses and questions. People have found me on Facebook and friended me there. They never saw anyone that was in their position and that made them feel good.
What advice do you have for people who just received news about HIV?
That it's going to be ok. I've had it for 16 years and it's going to be okay. That people can see my family and see that we are normal. And even if you do have it then no one else has to get it.
Tell me about your daughter.
My daughter's name is Florida, she's 16 sophomore in high school. She is very determined, extremely organized and disciplined. She makes me very happy. She gives me a hope that she will have a bright future and I'm very proud of her.
What do you would want to share with people about HIV?
I know it can be a very nerve wracking thing but you gotta [get tested]. As long as you don't know the other person's status you need to protect yourself. Let's end this disease, and we can start by saving these babies lives. Support organizations that do this work so that future generations will be in support of this. Find out your own status.
Dr. Terrance McGill is an aspiring family physician with a passion for writing and increasing health awareness in the community. He recently completed his master's in public health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.


text: Desserts for Two Desserts for Two End your dinner for two on a sweet note with our decadent dessert recipes for chocolate fondue, cheesecake, fruit crisp, puddings and more delicious desserts. These healthy dessert recipes are perfectly portioned to share, so you and your sweetie can healthfully indulge your sweet tooth. See Recipes ADVERTISEMENT Recipes in slideshow ADVERTISEMENT


text: Breast Cancer Surgery Surgery is often needed to treat breast cancer. Options include a mastectomy to remove the entire breast or breast-conserving surgery (lumpectomy) followed by radiation treatments. A few or the majority of the lymph nodes under the arm pits may be removed. Breast reconstruction can be done at the time of surgery or later. Doctors evaluate a number of factors to determine what type of surgery is best for each patient. These include the size and location of the cancer, the extent of the disease, your medical history and your age. For example, if your tumor is large and a significant amount of breast tissue would have to be removed, your surgeon may recommend a mastectomy with reconstructive surgery to restore the appearance of the breast. If the tumor is small, breast-conserving therapy might be the best choice. In discussing treatment options with your surgeon, it is important to consider your self-image and personal feelings about a mastectomy vs. breast-conserving surgery. However, keep in mind that your top priority should be getting the treatment that will give you the best hope of a cure. When a choice is available, all research has shown equal survival with either mastectomy or breast conserving surgery. Lumpectomy This is a surgical procedure to remove a small tumor while preserving the rest of the breast. This procedure is often recommended for women with early-stage breast cancer. The surgeon will also remove a margin of healthy tissue surrounding the tumor to make sure that no cancer cells remain. Patients also go through radiation therapy following a lumpectomy to prevent local recurrence of cancer in the preserved breast. Oncoplasty is a form of reconstructive surgery. It may be an option for improved cosmetic results following lumpectomy. Mastectomy This surgery involves removal of the entire breast (all breast tissue). Radiation therapy may not be needed after a mastectomy. It may be recommended if there is any concern that cancer cells might still be in the breast area, the cancer measures more than 5 centimeters or involves many lymph nodes (greater than 3). Most women who have this surgery have a total mastectomy that involves removal of the breast and a sentinel node evaluation with possible removal of the majority of the lymph nodes in the armpit. A radical mastectomy is a more extensive operation that involves removal of the breast, lymph nodes and the pectoral muscles under the breast. Radical mastectomy is rarely performed today. A mastectomy is often recommended when there is a large tumor or cancer in more than one area throughout the breast. Oncoplasty When a woman's breast tumor is found, she may undergo either a mastectomy or a lumpectomy. With a lumpectomy, a breast cavity is created which may eventually shrink even further, deforming the skin on the outside of the breast. A new method of breast conservation surgery called, oncoplasty, has emerged. Oncoplasty employs techniques to completely take out the breast tumor while preserving the breast's appearance. This innovative procedure is performed by St. Joseph Hospital Breast Program surgeons who remove the cancerous mass and reshape the remaining breast tissue so that it fills the cavity left by the extracted tumor. Without implants and without taking tissue from somewhere else in the body, a natural-looking breast is created often within a single surgical procedure. Sentinel Node Biopsy This procedure eliminates the need to remove a number of lymph nodes under the arm in order to determine whether cancer has spread to the lymph nodes. Instead, surgeons are able to find and remove the "sentinel node," which is the first lymph node into which a tumor drains and the one where cancer cells are most likely to be found. There can be more than one sentinel node. If cancer cells are found, the surgeon will remove additional lymph nodes. If the sentinel node is free of cancer, more extensive lymph node surgery will not be necessary and the recovery process will be easier for the patient. Today even if there is a cancer cell in 2 or fewer sentinel nodes, further surgery or removal of more nodes may not be necessary. A sentinel node biopsy is not appropriate for every patient. Ask your surgeon whether this is a good option given the size of your tumor and other considerations. Reconstructive Surgery Many women choose to have reconstructive surgery to restore the appearance of the breast after a mastectomy. Options include breast implants or the use of tissue from other parts of your body (autologous tissue reconstruction). Some procedures can be done immediately after a mastectomy, or you may choose to do reconstruction later. If you are thinking about having reconstructive surgery immediately, it is important to consult with a plastic surgeon who is an expert in breast reconstruction before you have a mastectomy. For those who do not choose reconstruction, prostheses are available. These breast forms feel natural and are usually covered by insurance if you have a prescription from your surgeon. Reconstruction is a very personal choice and many women today are comfortable with "going flat". Be sure to discuss all options with your surgeon.


text: What do you all think of this brand new song "Ray Bands" from B.o.B? STRANGE CLOUDS the album is in stores on 5/1. Pre-order it now. Don't forget, "So Good" and the brand new "So Hard to Breathe" are also available as well! Lot of new music out there. Welcome.


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This information has been filed in civil division of Marion County District Court.
Leslie D. Buettgenbach vs. Corey Stanford; child support paid by respondent increased June 12 to $926 per month; judgment of $1,386.42 against respondent for back medical expenses.
Countryside Feed LLC vs. Jeffrey C. Jackson, 402 E. Broadway, Burns; dismissed with prejudice June 25 by plaintiff.
Estate of Zachariah J. Antoszyk; letters of co-administration issued June 24 to John Antoszyk of Marion and Kimberly Ditto-Bell of Herington.
Patrick F. Klenda; John Klenda resigned as guardian and conservator June 25; Mark C. Klenda and Sharon K. Hatfield appointed co-guardians and co-conservators.


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Sandusky 'Victim 1' psychologist loses county job
Michael Gillum has been sharply critical of Central Mountain High School's response to victim's report of sexual abuse by Jerry Sandusky.
LOCK HAVEN, PA. — Nearly two years after Aaron Fisher's allegations of abuse against former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky were first made public, the high school leadership at Central Mountain High School remains largely the same. But the status of one central figure at the school where Sandusky served as a volunteer football coach and where the allegations against him surfaced has changed dramatically.
Michael Gillum, the Clinton County psychologist who counseled Fisher and guided him through a nearly four-year ordeal that ended with Sandusky's conviction, was notified earlier this year that his contract with Children and Youth Services would not be renewed.
The first hint that his job was in jeopardy, Gillum said, came last November when his supervisor, Gerald Rosamilia, said the psychologist would have to end his activities related to a book he co-authored with Fisher and his mother, including speaking engagements, or have his contract "terminated."
MORE: Pa. reviewing original Sandusky allegation
Gillum, who in the book and in interviews has been sharply critical of the school's response in the Sandusky case, said he was "shocked" by the news. He said he had sought — and received — approval from Rosamilia before starting the book, which was published last year.
Rosamilia declined to comment. Gillum said he believes the ultimatum, which he refused, was prompted by an inquiry from the local newspaper, The Express, to Rosamilia and other county officials, requesting information about the book project, his compensation and whether the project amounted to a conflict of interest. According to a copy of the county's response, officials said Gillum worked on the book, Silent No More, "on his own time with the necessary and appropriate clearances."
Some weeks after Gillum said he consulted a lawyer about the demand that he sever ties with the book project, the psychologist said Rosamilia came back with a "surprising'' offer of full-time employment with the county that would allow him to maintain his private practice and activities related to the book.
In February, Gillum said he learned just as abruptly that the county was "going in a different direction" and his contract would not be renewed. Gillum, who was honored last year by the Pennsylvania Psychological Association for his work on the Sandusky case, said the matter still hasn't been fully explained to him.
"My analysis is that they were not very happy with my criticism of the school," he said. "Nothing really has changed there."


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The office of city treasurer is one race Burbank residents won't have to worry about, with Debbie Kukta — the former school board member who was appointed to fill the vacated post — facing no opposition for her seat. Interim City Clerk Zizette Mullins, however, will face two challengers in the Feb. 26 primary, Nonna von Sonn and Maria Gloria Salas.
Mullins was also appointed to fill the vacancy, and so is running for the first time.
Zizette Mullins
Age: 50
Occupation: interim Burbank city clerk
Zizette Mullins was appointed as Burbank city clerk in June after a 25-year career working in multiple departments for the city of Glendale.
In Glendale, the 30-year Burbank resident served as the community relations coordinator and held positions in the finance, economic development and the city's utility.
Prior to that, Mullins worked as a banker at Wells Fargo in Burbank.
When former City Clerk Margarita Campos retired early, the vacant post "was a great opportunity to say, 'I'm coming home again,'" Mullins said.
"My love has always been being a public service employee," she added.
Mullins — who immigrated to the United States from Egypt at 13 — touted her experience working with diverse communities.
In the past, she's served on Burbank's Civil Service Board and the Human Relations Council.
In 2006, Mullins — who holds a bachelor's degree in business management — and her family opened the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory in Burbank, which they operated for six years.
Nonna von Sonn
Age: 55
Occupation: Executive assistant in the city's Financial Services Department
Nonna von Sonn moved to Burbank about 15 years ago and has worked for the city the last 10 in assisting the finance department and City Council.
As an executive assistant in the Financial Services Department, von Sonn's duties include time-keeping, departmental record-keeping, scheduling and working with the public.
The single mother raised three children in Burbank. While her children attended Burbank schools, she joined the PTA and headed the Baseball Booster Club.
She currently serves on Burbank's Relay for Life Committee, and in the past, served on the city's Centennial Committee.
She touted her experience modernizing Thomas Jefferson Elementary's library as the school's librarian in 1998 — her first job after moving to Burbank — where she digitized resources and materials and restructured the layout to be more accessible to children.
She subsequently worked as an office manager for a real estate company, and later dabbled in the market after getting licensed.
If elected, von Sonn's goals include maintaining the city clerk's role as the "window to the city," she said.
"When I was in college, I used to think I wanted to be an ambassador to another country," she said. "Now I would like to be ambassador for Burbank of good will and integrity."
Maria Gloria Salas
Age: 58
Occupation: Office administrator at a law firm
Maria Gloria Salas — a 14-year Burbank resident — manages office operations for the Polsinelli Shughart law firm, which specializes in municipal law.
After working for different law firms for more than 30 years, Salas said she's well-versed in election law and the Brown Act, and emphasized her ability to interact with the public.
"I'm a hard worker, I'm organized, detail-oriented," she said.
Her interest in public service kicked in early after she volunteered at polling locations for presidential elections in the 1960s and '70s.
During the holiday season, she collects food and puts together holiday gift baskets for needy families on behalf of the Burbank Coordinating Council. She's also served on the Burbank Human Relations Council.
Salas noted that since she comes from the private sector, she'd be joining the city after the state law that scales back the public cost of employee pensions kicks in.
"I would be coming with really no pension for them to meet," Salas said. "I'm a bargain. Aside from my qualifications, I'm still a bargain."
Debbie Kukta
Age: 54
Occupation: Burbank city treasurer
Debbie Kukta — the sole candidate for city treasurer — was appointed to the interim post in June after former City Treasurer Donna Anderson retired with a year left on her term.
Prior to the appointment, she served on the Burbank Unified School Board and was president of Glendale-based property-management company, KO Properties.
"This job just seems like it was meant for me," Kukta said, adding that the lack of competition has given her a head start on planning her next four years in office. "I feel a little more relieved and comfortable making changes because I know I'll be able to see them through."
Her main goals include using technology — such as implementing a remote deposit system and fraud-prevention software — to streamline city processes.
Kukta has served on the Verdugo Workforce Investment Board — which identifies job and training opportunities for Burbank, Glendale and La Cañada Flintridge residents — since 1999.
Follow Alene Tchekmedyian on Google+ and on Twitter: @atchek.


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First of all, I have bought this SDK (version 6.0) licence and I was trying to access to developers forum, but I dont know where can I obtain "SDK reference id"
I have tried the serial number, the dongle hardware id, the id generated by id_gen on Activation folder, etc. So, which is the required id?
Now, my error is:
Im trying to translate and do some little modifications to SurveillanceSampleCS sample which is located in the SDK folder that I downloaded.
I opened the project with Visual Studio 2017 on my Windows 10 system and then, when I open MainForm file, some errors occur:
- Code: Select all
It doesnt find Neurotec.Samples.Forms.SurveillanceViewGL type.
The variable 'viewGL' is not declared in MainForm.Designer.cs Line:362 Column:1
It doesnt find Neurotec.Samples.Forms.SurveillanceView type.
Variable 'view' is not declared in MainForm.Designer.cs Line:363 Column:1
It doesnt find Neurotec.Samples.Forms.SimpleTreeView type.
Variable 'treeView' is not declared in MainForm.Designer.cs Line:346 Column:1
If I omit this errors and modify the form anyway, changing the window name for example, the program can build but crashes in this line in MainForm.cs:
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string version = GL.GetString(StringName.Version);
throwing System.AccessViolationException.
Even if I rename the windows to his previous name, the same error occurs.
I need some help to run this sample.
For more information, my PC has a video card NVIDIA GTX 1050ti and its drivers, and even CUDA drivers, so it must have openGL. I dont know if openGL is the problem but i suppose it is.


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Blind Item #6
This barely hanging on to A list mostly movie actress had to switch hotel rooms after she and her husband got into a huge fight. The actress and her new husband were both drunk and an entire cabinet of dishes was destroyed during the fight. As in it was toppled to the ground. The actress is currently filming a movie. Her husband left town.


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Newborn Screening for Cystic Fibrosis
Newborn screening is a national, public health service that reaches over 4 million babies a year. Newborns are screened for serious health conditions with which they are born. This is done so that these babies can receive treatment early. Newborn screening is available for more than 60 disorders. The specific tests done vary by state, and are decided by each state's public health department. As of 2010, Cystic Fibrosis (CF) is one of the newborn screening tests in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
The first CF screening test is done a day or two after the baby's birth with other newborn screening tests. A few drops of blood are taken from the baby's heel and placed on a card for testing. If this test comes back positive for CF, further tests are done. These tests may be different from state-to-state.
For all states, a sweat test is the main test to diagnose cystic fibrosis. The sweat test measures the amount of salt in sweat. Babies with CF have too much salt in their sweat. The sweat test should be test done at a specialized CF Care Center. The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CFF) accredits centers nationwide. You can find a center near you on the CFF website: Find a CF Care Center.
If the results of the screening blood test are positive, a sweat test is the next step to determine if a baby has CF. During the test, areas on the newborn's arms and legs will be stimulated so that they sweat. The sweat is collected on a gauze strip and sent to a lab to be tested. The test will be either negative (baby does not have CF), positive (baby has CF and will be evaluated by doctors at the CF Care Center), or rarely, intermediate (more testing is required). Rarely, there is not enough sweat collected and the sweat test must be repeated.
In Ohio, families will also meet with a genetic counselor on the day of the sweat test to help explain the results of the newborn screen test.
For further information on newborn screening and what to expect from the sweat test, you can visit the CFF website.
What is Cystic Fibrosis?
Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disease. It is inherited if both parents carry a cystic fibrosis (CF) gene and pass it down to their child. However, not all parents with the CF gene will have children with cystic fibrosis. If both parents carry the gene, their child has a 1 in 4 chance of having cystic fibrosis.
CF occurs in 1 in 4,000 U.S. births. It is life threatening. The body makes thick, sticky mucus that can clog lung airways and affect the pancreas, preventing the pancreas from doing its job in digestion. The sweat glands are also affected, so they make very salty sweat.
Why do we test newborns for Cystic Fibrosis?
We test for CF because it is life threatening, and the earlier it is detected, the earlier people can take action to prevent complications and health damage. Only 30 years ago, cystic fibrosis was often fatal before age 20. However, things are better today. Thanks to newborn testing, it can be detected very early, leading to fewer complications and improved life quality for those affected by it.
What if my baby tests positive for Cystic Fibrosis?
Throughout the country there is growing support for cystic fibrosis. It is important to contact a specialized CF care center where you will find a team of providers to help your child receive the most up-to-date care. Every day, researchers are learning more about CF and these accredited centers will be sure that you have the best information and care for your child. For more about CF newborn screening, what it means and what you can do visit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
This children's health content is brought to you with support from University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital.
For more information:
Go to the Cystic Fibrosis health topic.


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Newton Earp, the half-brother of Wyatt Earp, was roughly 24 years old when he enlisted in the Union Army. Newton was a Private in Company F, Regiment 4 of the Iowa Cavalry. Newton served the Union Army for the entirety of the Civil War.
To the right I have attached Newton's Civil War Pension Index Card; filed on Feb 21, 1879. In order to see this image you will need to register for a free user name. You will only need to give your email address and then choose a password. Once you have become a free member you will be able to see the image attached to this Story Page.


text: A little birdie told me that you were looking for a stamp set for all occasions. With this set, you can tweet them a good thought or sing their praises. Let your creativity take flight!Photopolymer stamps* Are totally transparent for perfect image placement.* Have just enough give to create a perfectly stamped image every time. * Cling like crazy to our clear blocks so you don't have to worry about slipping.* Save space—you need only one set of blocks for all your photopolymer stamps (blocks sold separately). * Come packaged in cases with images on the spine for easy storage and quick reference.Quantity: 13 photopolymer stampsSuggested clear blocks (sold separately): a, b, d, g, h


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At Pure 4Runner, you will find the largest selection of 4Runner parts and accessories on the web. We are dedicated to providing you with the best customer service around.
We do our best to ship all items the same day the order is placed, custom requests may take longer. We do our best to deliver most items within 5-6 business days, most will show up much sooner. Not all items come from our shop in Texas. If your order contains items from multiple suppliers/warehouses, you will potentially receive tracking numbers and items at different times.
Here at Pure 4Runner, a Pure Auto Parts Inc company, we understand the importance of maintaining our customers privacy online. We understand that in this time of spam e-mail, and credit card fraud our customers want to know and have the right to know how personal information is handled.
The all new Solo s1100 in the Solstice Series of LED off road lamps. Equipped with Vision's brand new 10 watt LED technology, with each 10 watt Solo producing 900 lumens making them the brightest LED off road lamp on the market in only a 2" x 2" square housing. Not only are they the brightest, they are the most efficient with the s1100 drawing only 0.75 amps due to their advanced electronic drivers which are also responsible for their 50,000 hour life span and variable 9 - 50 Volt DC input. The Solstice Solo's main feature is the 4 sided channel design that allows you to interlink it on all four sides with another Solstice Solo pod or other various available mounting hardware for flat, tube or even helmet mount making it the only modular light with the ability to make any shape or length with the available spot, euro and flood beam patterns mixed throughout your custom configuration. No power on your ride, no worries; Vision X will also be releasing a line of rechargeable battery packs for any configuration of your Solstice Solo light pods.
Key features are as follows; rugged die-cast aluminum housing provides optimum durability and heat dissipation. The Solstice Solo series features an IP68 ingress protection rated housing making them impenetrable to dust and submersible under water up to 3 meters. The unbreakable polycarbonate lenses are housed by a 6061 aluminum face plate which doubles as a radiant heat sink to melt away snow and ice in frigid conditions. The Solstice Solo series has been subjected to a 14Grms vibration test to ensure their performance in high impact conditions. Built to last, this Vision X series features a lifetime warranty.
Product 46/315
WARNING: This product may contain chemicals knownto the State of California to cause cancer, birth defectsand other reproductive harm.


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Bose® SoundLink® Wireless Mobile Speaker
Music. Whenever. Wherever. Performance, Connectivity & Portability.
These items may be similar: Table Radio
- SoundLink® Mobile Owner's Guide(2.53MB)
Bose® SoundLink® Wireless Mobile Speaker Details
Better Sound Through Research. Bose's company motto says it all. The company that was found in 1964 by MIT professor Amar G. Bose strives to offer consumers not just the latest technology, but the technology that hasn't been created yet. The motto guides their product engineering and development and requires nothing less than technical perfection.
At the heart of their company is a love for sound as well as for the science behind it. Hearing music through typical phone or computer speakers isn't really hearing music at all. The time, labor and attention to detail that goes into engineering a single track necessitates that it's listened to through a high quality system or high quality headphones. The truly magnificent details of music are lost in poor quality sound systems, but shine in higher-end products.
Bose's products play music the way it the professionals intended to be heard. The Bose listening experience channels the mastery of sound engineering and outdoes lesser products by a wide margin. Whether you're playing music through loud speakers or through headphones, the fullness and richness of the sound quality can't be matched.
SoundLink Wireless Mobile Speaker
The SoundLink Wireless Mobile Speaker offers a listening experience unparalleled by other mobile speakers or wireless sound devices. While most portable speakers have a weak, tinny output, the SoundLink speaker provides a deep, robust sound with astounding highs and lows that fill a room in the same as a full high-quality stationary sound system.
Through groundbreaking research and development, the SoundLink allows full portability without compromising sound quality. With a compact design weighing less than three pounds and a wireless Bluetooth connection of up to 30 feet for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, tablet or laptop, your music is available whenever and wherever you are. The rechargeable lithium-ion battery lasts up to eight hours and goes strong even if you're using apps, text or email on your phone or tablet.
The unique features of the SoundLink include an integrated cover to keep the speaker safe during travel with different color options available. The auxiliary input allows for MP3, CD or DVD hookup. The SoundLink also features a USB port to ensure ongoing Bluetooth connectivity and compatibility.
Bose's SoundLink wireless mobile speaker is ideal for the ultimate listening experience on the go. Settling for anything less means compromising not only quality, but the integrity of the music itself.
Bose® SoundLink® Wireless Mobile Speaker Specifications
|Bose® SoundLink® Specifications
|Battery Life
|8 hours
|MP3 Connection Type
|MP3 Player
|PC Docking Station
|Removable Memory
|Total Expansion Slots
|Voice Recorder
|Water Resistant
|Volume Control Location
|On Unit
|5.1" H (13.0 cm) x 9.6" W (24.4 cm) x 1.9" D (4.8 cm)
|Package Weight
|4 pounds
|2.9 pounds (1.3 kg)
|1 year
Bose® SoundLink® Wireless Mobile Speaker Reviews
- Durable
- Easy Setup
- Durable
- Lightweight
- Easy To Set Up
- Easy Setup
- Stylish
- Durable
- Lightweight
- Easy To Set Up
- Easy Setup
- Stylish
- Easy To Set Up
- Stylish
- None
- Durable
- Stylish
- None
Finally, the engineers at Bose have come up with the next greatest (and logical step) for music entertainment - a wireless and Bluetooth enabled mobile speaker called the SoundLink! And I love it! This baby rocks at producing quality bass sound for such a compact speaker. I've only had this thing a week and I'm still coming up with more ways and places I can use it; my next campout, picnic, or wherever, I can keep my smartphone in my pocket and provide great tunes for the whole group to enjoy. Plus, Bluetooth tech makes it SO easy. It plays effortlessly from my iPad too! I'm going to predict this is one of the hottest gift items of the year. If you're a road warrior, student, or just love music on-the-go, this SoundLink is for you. Was this review helpful to you? Yes/No
Product Q & A
Bose® SoundLink® Wireless Mobile Speaker Contents
- 1 speaker with nylon cover
- 1 folding prong wall charger
- 3.5mm stereo cable
Shipping dimensions: 7.3"H x 14.9"L x 3.5"D
The full manufacturer's warranty from Bose is only valid when the Bose SoundLink Wireless Mobile Speaker is purchased from an Internet Authorized Dealer. We will match any Internet Authorized Dealer's best price on the Bose SoundLink Wireless Mobile Speaker.
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Check out What's new for Extended Events in SQL Server Codenamed "Denali" CTP3 for an overview of all of the new functionality released in CTP3. This post details the new user interface. In my overview post I mentioned that the user interface is built directly into management studio (SSMS) and that there are four parts:
- The session list in Object Explorer.
- A Create Session wizard.
- A Create Session dialog.
- A display grid.
This post focuses on the mechanisms for creating event sessions and displaying event session data.
Creating and modifying event sessions
The New Session Wizard and dialog share many common UI elements, so I'll just cover the dialog. If a notable difference exists for the wizard, I'll call it out at the appropriate place. A picture is worth a thousand words, so here is the pictorial tour of the new user interface.
General page
The General page collects the basic information about the session:
· Name – You can figure this one out.
· Template – We've carried over the idea of templates similar to SQL Profiler. You can export any session you've created to a template (Expand the context menu of your event session and click Export Session…). If you save the template to the default location, it will show up in this dropdown under the User Templates category.
· Schedule – You can choose to make this an Autostart event session, start the session immediately after you complete the dialog and even choose to start up the event stream viewer. (More on that later.)
· Causality Tracking – Turn on the correlation ids in your trace.
Wizard differences: These options are spread across three different wizard steps.
Event page - Library
The Event page has a couple parts. The Event Library allows you to select which events you want to add to your event session. The library supports Excel-like filtering using dropdown lists for Category and Channel. You can also search for specific events by just typing in the search text box. You choose an event by double-clicking or by selecting it and clicking the right arrow to move it to the Selected events list. We support Shift+Click and Ctrl+Click for choosing multiple events at once.
Event page – Configure
In Extended Events, each event can be extended to include additional data or cause a specific action, only fire under defined conditions and to enable optional fields. Clicking on the Configure button takes you to the advanced event configuration options. You configure an event by selecting it in the Selected events list and then setting the configuration options on one of the tabs. When you select multiple events, the configuration options will apply to all selected events.
The Global Fields (Actions) tab allows you select the list of Actions that you want to append to the event(s).
The Filter (Predicate) tab is used to define the conditions under which the event will be collected.
The Event Fields table allows you to enable or disable the collection of optional fields. (Fields without a checkbox are always collected.) You can also see the description and data type of each field on this tab.
Wizard differences: Global Fields and Predicates apply to all selected events. You cannot configure the events individually.
Data Storage page
You determine how the event session data is stored on this page by specifying the target for the session. You can specify more than one target for any session, but you can only use each target once. Each target will present a set of configuration options on the bottom of the page.
Wizard differences: The wizard supports only the event file and ring buffer targets.
Advanced page
Configure the options for the entire event session here. We use the same defaults you would get with the DDL syntax.
Wizard differences: You cannot configure the event session options in the wizard, the defaults are used.
Other stuff
You may have noticed from the screen shots that you can script out your configured event session from the user interface using the button at the top of the page. The button becomes enabled as soon as you have enough of the event session configured such that the DDL would execute without error.
You can change the configuration of an event session by right-clicking the session name in Object Explorer and clicking Properties. The same user interface will be presented showing all your configured settings. Most settings can be changed on a running session, but you'll need to stop the session to change the Advanced options. You cannot change the target configuration (Data Storage page) on an existing target, you'll need to delete the target and re-add it to change that. You will also find that the Script button is not enabled in the Properties dialog, you can still script your event session to DDL, but you'll need to do it from Object Explorer by right-clicking the session name and choosing one of the Script Session as… commands.
Wizard differences: The wizard is not re-entrant. Sessions created in the wizard can be modified using the Property dialog just like any other session.
Viewing event session data
SSMS includes an event session data viewer for all of the supported targets with the exception of the ETW file target. (There are many other tools for working with ETL files.) There are basically two different types of event session data display.
In-memory targets
The in-memory targets include: ring buffer, event counter, histogram and event pairing. The data from these targets is displayed in a simple grid format.
By default you see a "point in time" view of the data when you opened the display. You can either manually refresh the data or have it refresh on a schedule from the context menu. The ring buffer is a bit special in that the display shows you a single row containing the XML output of the ring buffer. You can double-click the row to open an XML document, but there is no event by event grid view for the ring buffer, sorry.
Event stream and event file
You can open a "live view" of a running session by right-clicking on the session name and choosing the Watch Live Data menu item. This will open a page in SSMS that provides you with a scrolling display of the events as they come from the event session. This is similar to the behavior that exists in SQL Profiler with the major difference being that Extended Events does not cause the performance degradation that you might be used to with SQL Profiler. Extended Events will never block the server waiting for the client event stream view; we're so serious about this that the event stream is disconnected if the client becomes too slow that it will block the server workload. (Remember the prime directive – this is one of those tradeoffs.) If you have a very busy server (eg. lots of events) the file target will be a more appropriate target.
The event file target uses the XEL extension by default, and that extension is associated with SSMS so that you can open an event file by double-clicking or simply dragging it onto the SSMS window. You can also open event files in two different ways from the File menu:
File | Open | File – Pick an XEL file and click Open
File | Open | Merge Extended Event files – Use the dialog to collect multiple files to be merged
Both the event steam and event files are displayed in the same user interface:
The picture is a bit small, but you get the idea. Open up an XEL file in SSMS to get the full experience.
The first thing you won't notice, but now you will because I'm telling you, is that there is a custom toolbar for Extended Events; there is also a menu added. You can control all the functionality of the display UI using these. The first thing you will notice is that the default view has only two columns, name and timestamp, all the other columns for an event are shown in the Details pane when you select a specific row in the grid. There is a bunch of functionality in this UI, almost too much to fit into a summary such as this, so I'll hit the high points and let you explore.
· You can add additional columns to the grid by either right-clicking the in the Details pane and choosing Show Column in Table or by clicking the Choose Columns button to open the Choose Columns dialog.
· You can Find event records using the typical SSMS find behavior.
· You can Bookmark records of interest and move between bookmarked records.
· You can apply a filter to the results using a flexible criteria builder. (This is worth a picture; so much better than SQL Profiler!)
· You can use the Grouping and Aggregation commands to do some basic analysis of your data directly in the display UI.
· You can save the configuration of the display table (columns, filter, sorting and group/aggregation) using the View Settings button. (Note: This button name may change before RTM.)
· You can export the list of events to a SQL Server table, CSV or XEL using the Export to menu item. (Note: This is only on the menu, not the command bar.)
· You can Start and Stop the collection of the data and control the scrolling of the data in the window for the event stream.
That about wraps up the pictorial tour of the new Extended Events user interface. Take it out for a spin and let us know what you think. If you find any problems, or have suggestions for future versions, please post them to Microsoft Connect. If you have questions, post them to the SQL Server Database Engine forum.
Happy Eventing!
- Mike


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you still lookin for a hitting partner?
Im in the same situation. About a 3.0-3.25 and haven't played much in the last year. Would love to get back out and start playing a couple times a week ;-)
Let me know if you would like to play some casual tennis!
Hey there! I'm in the same boat.. trying to get back into it. Are you still interested in playing?
I live near Plummer Park on Fountain in West Hollywood. Drop me a line if you're interested.
Hi Elisa,
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© 2019 Created by Mark / The Mayor. Powered by


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A revolutionary carbon core dramatically reduces the weight of the new BMW 7 Series.
The result is a luxury car with sports-like agility.
Park at the touch of a button. Dismiss calls with a wave of
the hand. Never was the phrase 'power at your fingertips' so apt.
The new BMW 7 Series is a glimpse of the future. One day,
its breathtaking innovations will feature in many cars. One day.
Whether it's the Welcome Carpet Lights or the Sky Lounge, the moment
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text:
08/July - 2015.
031 - Las Vegas, Nevada, USA - 2015.
Today we set off from Laughlin, Nevada to Las Vegas, Nevada. On our way there, we stopped off at The Nugget Casino in Searchlight, Nevada, for breakfast. "Excellent Breakfast".
On our way to Las Vegas we also stopped off at Mike O'Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge. We had a walk over the bridge, and while on the bridge we took photos of the Hoover Dam, Arizona/Nevada. A fantastic feat of engineering.
Arrived here at The Palazzo Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada @ 12:00 noon. We got an upgrade from the equally beautiful Venetian Hotel. It was 100 deg when we arrived here on the strip.
We had dinner that evening then later we walked on The Las Vegas Strip taken in the atmosphere, and having a couple of quenches along the way.
The Hoover Dam, Nevada, USA - 2015.
6184TheHooverDamNevadaUSA2015John Macs Travel PhotographyJohn Macs USA Canada Tour 2015The Hoover DamUSA 2015United States Of America


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Kurt Guidry, Blanchard, Tobie M. | 12/21/2007 9:22:20 PM
News Release Distributed 12/21/07
Large acreage shifts, high yields and good prices marked Louisiana agricultural production in 2007. Many acres shifted away from cotton and into corn. Wheat acres also rose. Overall, Louisiana farmers had a strong year, according to an LSU AgCenter economist Dr. Kurt Guidry.
"We had some weather problems here and there. But when yields came in, several of the row crops were at or near record yields," Guidry said.
"We had a phenomenal year in corn. Our five-year average was probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 135 bushels per acre. We did 170 bushels this year," Guidry said. "Soybeans – we are going to set a record with 40 bushels per acre this year."
The economist said cotton, rice, grain sorghum and wheat yields were all up in 2007.
In addition to strong yields, growers saw strong prices – some at historically high levels. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that the average price of corn in 2007 was $3.50 a bushel, Guidry said.
"If you look back over the past 25 years, that would put it in the top 5 percent that we've seen," Guidry said. "The same is true for grain sorghum."
Soybean prices were high in 2007, and futures prices for 2008 look even better.
Cotton and rice prices are up, but still are not at a level that producers would like.
"Cotton is around 50 cents a pound, which is better than last year, but still weak when you consider production costs," Guidry said.
Farmers needed high prices and high yields to make a profit because production costs continued to rise in 2007.
"Fuel was up around 8 percent according to the USDA," Guidry said. "Fertilizer prices for '07 were up about 17 to 18 percent from 2006, and those are obviously our big-ticket items in terms of production costs."
Seed prices also were up for crop producers, and feed prices were up for livestock producers.
In 2008, Guidry expects to see more acreage shifts, but not as dramatic as in 2007. His prediction is that corn acreage will decline.
"When you look at the expense of growing a corn crop in comparison with what you have with a soybean crop, and the profitability looks the same, producers are going to choose the lower cost commodity, and that will be soybeans."
Guidry expects to see a soybean crop at or near 1 million acres.
Louisiana will have plenty of wheat acres, too – more than 300,000. This is more than double what the growers normally plant.
"The only thing that stopped wheat acreage from climbing even higher is some weather problems and seed availability," Guidry said.
Cotton acreage will likely remain low, and rice should pick up additional acres in the southwest region of the state because of price improvements and increased export demand.
High production costs will still affect farmers in 2008, and there is no predicting what the weather will do. But strictly based on numbers, farmers could be in for another good year.
"It's going to cost producers more to grow a crop in 2008, but I think when you look across the board at cotton, rice, grain sorghum, soybeans, at least right now, the prospect for those prices look to be every bit as strong as 2007, and in some cases could be a lot stronger than we saw in 2007," Guidry said.
# # #
Contact: Kurt Guidry at (225) 578-4567, or firstname.lastname@example.com
Writer: Tobie Blanchard at (225) 578-5649, or email@example.com


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Capcom's Resident Evil DRM Is Evil: You Get To Play The Game Once And That's It
from the so,-it's-a-railshooter? dept
DRM use by game manufacturers is old news. Every so often, a software company thinks it's got something "nigh invulnerable" (+30 Geek points to whoever recognizes that reference), only to find its latest piece of copy protection hacked and discarded along the virtual superhighway faster than you can say "stoptreatingyourcustomerslikethieves." Lately though, the game companies seem nearly as distraught by used game sales, which bypass their pocketbooks completely. Consequently, they've shifted their efforts towards making second-hand users feel like the last kid in line for family hand-me-downs by giving them the tattered remnants of the latest game in exchange for their second-hand money.
Capcom, however, has trumped everyone with its latest DRM, scheduled to debut on the Nintendo's 3DS. "Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D," along with being a mouthful-and-a-half to say, will feature this crippling new "feature":
You only get one save file.
It can never be overwritten.
In other words, if you decide you'd like to start your game over and replay the whole zombie shooting match from the get-go, too bad. You only get one shot. How's that for sticking it to the second-hand market? If you, being the good non-pirating customer that you are, go and plunk down your $40 for this game, you would kind of expect to do things that you could do with all the other games you've spent money on. Like have multiple save files. Or a chance to start over.
Instead, Capcom is going to give you a piece of software with all the save features of the original Nintendo and possibly even less. Let's say you happen to have friends/family members who'd like to play the game. (I know: gamer
sz. But some of them still socialize/co-habitate.) Too bad. Those free-loading bastards you used to call friends and family will just have to open up their wallets and buy their own damn copy if they want to experience the game for themselves, rather than "enjoy" it vicariously through your save file.
You're twice as screwed if you decide to save a few bucks and pick this up at Upsell Boutique or GameReserveYourCopy or wherever. You're starting wherever the previously unimpressed gamer left off. And if they finished the game, well... then I guess you get to watch the end credits and try to determine which of the scrolling names deserves the full blast of your rage.
And Capcom's already has its "out" for when the angry gamers come calling. "Why, we printed it right there in the manual! That's hardly hidden and/or underhanded!" The manual? You mean that worthless little booklet that had no importance until I tried to resell RE:TM3D down at the local GameUpsellBoutique? That thing? Who even reads those? More importantly, why is the clerk at the trade-in counter giving me a pro-rated payout based on completion percentage? What the hell?
Oh, Capcom. You've built yourself a very slippery slope with this move. You care so much about the potential loss of income from secondhand sales that you've completely removed yourselves from reality. I have a feeling there's some nasty backlash in your future, and I fully expect to enjoy every second of it.
Filed Under: drm, play once, resident evil, video games
Companies: capcom