Entrepreneur’s Advice Featured in 2011 Woman’s Advantage Calendar

PARSIPPANY, NJ – Lynette Viviani, president and founder of Viviani Public Relations, was selected from over 5,000 submissions to be featured in The 2011 Woman’s Advantage Shared Wisdom Calendar. The calendar provides advice for women business owners from influential women leaders across the US and Canada.

Mary Cantando, Growth Expert of The Woman’s Advantage, today announced that Viviani’s advice has been included in the calendar which provides daily words of wisdom on key business issues including organization, promotion, sales and human resources.

“Lynette’s quote was selected because it was powerful yet easy to understand. Her idea is relevant to almost every woman in business today,” said Cantando. “Women business owners and those who dream of starting a business will learn so much from the advice provided by Lynette and the other successful women quoted in the calendar.”

Viviani started her company in 1988 at a time when women looking to balance work and a family had few choices in the corporate world. With an entrepreneurial spirit, Viviani built Viviani PR from the ground up providing sound marketing and public relations advice for a wide variety of corporate and small business clients including telecom giant Verizon Wireless, which Viviani PR served for 22 years.

“Mary has created an amazing collection of thoughts from a cross-section of women entrepreneurs,” Viviani said. “As we work to serve our clients, we sometimes forget to focus on developing and marketing our own businesses to ensure that the foundation we have built is sustainable and an inspiration to the next generation of women business owners.”

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About Viviani Public Relations

Founded in 1988, Viviani Public Relations is where strategy and experience meet the new rules of marketing and PR. Based in Parsippany, N.J., Viviani PR is staffed by seasoned professionals and creative young minds focused on integrated marketing communications and digital PR. Services include strategic communications, media relations, crisis communications, social media networking and content marketing for clients of all sizes. For more information please visit http://www.vivianipr.com/ or call at 973-968-7929.

About The Woman’s Advantage

The Woman’s Advantage is a line of information products, including books, workbooks, audio CDs, and calendars designed exclusively for successful women business owners. For more information, call 919-841-0401 or visit http://www.WomansAdvantage.biz

8 Game Changing Trends and What They Mean to You

by Marilee Crocker

January 13, 2011

What are the consumer trends that will shape your business in 2011 and beyond? When Travel Market Report asked the experts, we learned that seismic shifts are in play right now.

“Culture moves slowly. Every once in a while, there’s a huge quake. It’s happening now,” said trend consultant Daniel Levine.

Trends are not fads, noted Levine, executive director of the Avant-Guide Institute in New York. Trends are big picture forces that alter the way people think and feel, In 2011, those forces will be dramatic, and their impact profound. Take a look.

#1: Boomers! Boomers! Boomers! This year, baby boomers will celebrate their 65th birthdays at the rate of 10,000 people a day. These boomers have time, money and energy to spare; they are “a force with tsunamic proportions,” said consultant Ken Dychtwald. They also have a deep thirst for experiences, and that holds true across income levels.

“By the time you reach your 50th or 60th birthday, you understand that happiness is likely to come from having a great dinner with friends, a fabulous vacation, or discovering a new aspect of yourself,” said Dychtwald, founder and CEO of Age Wave in Emeryville, CA.

Implications: Boomers will value the expertise of travel consultants who can help them craft the fantastic experiences they want – trips that nourish, rejuvenate and enlighten, learning and volunteer vacations, customized adventures. There’s “too much at stake” for these travelers to book through the Internet, Dychtwald said. “It’s not: what is the cost of the airplane? It’s: what is the cost of that week in terms of its importance in my life?”

# 2: The search for meaning. The recession and its aftermath are renewing a consumer focus on meaningfulness, “making people look inward at things that are really important to them,” Levine said. What matters now are: families and friends; education and self-improvement; health and spirituality; creativity; community involvement; and the environment.

Implications: “Travelers are willing to spend a lot of money on travel experiences, but they need different reasons to spend it,” Levine said. “For agents, the real strength is in marketing what they have in a different way – offering it to their customers as valuable, meaningful experiences. You have to press different buttons.”

#3: Green! Green! Green! Environmental awareness is influencing consumer choices in a big way.

“Concern about sustainability and the planet is top of mind for everybody,” said James Canton, CEO of the Institute for Global Futures, a San Francisco firm that advises global Fortune 100 companies. At Avant-Guide, research shows that environmental concern is “the biggest social trend for the rest of our careers,” Levine said.

Implications: “Seek out companies doing green things that are cool. Use that as a selling tool. People are willing to pay more for things that are really important to them, and green issues are one of those main things,” Levine said.

The Institute for Global Futures is telling its key clients that “for every strategy, new product or service, you must pay attention to the fact that over 98% of consumers in every market worldwide view themselves as environmentalists,” Canton said.

#4: The influential consumer. Marketing has lost its power; consumers are the “new influentials,” according to Canton. “Brands selling direct to the consumer are now being substituted by consumers recommending to consumers. In some ways they’re hijacking brand marketing for all products.”

Implications: Travelers may be getting recommendations from other consumers via the Internet, “but the final arbiter is that intimate relationship with a knowledgeable agent,” Canton said. Travel sellers should be able to capitalize on their role as trusted advisor. “Travel agents can provide a reality check. Consumers want integrity of information,” Canton added.

#5: A defensive mindset. Consumers are hedging their bets against events or circumstances that might blow their budgets, said Alexandra Smith, global trends analyst for Mintel International Group in Chicago. “It’s this defensive mindset around spending.”

Among the indicators Smith cited are: divorce insurance, which covers the cost of divorce logistics; increased sales of frozen foods, because they won’t go bad; and wedding day insurance that reimburses couples if it rains on their special day.

Implications: Recommend all-inclusive travel options that make it easier to budget and suggest to customers that they buy trip insurance, “Look at creative forms of travel insurance that go beyond lost luggage – insurance that insures that you’re getting the best trip you can. There’s an opportunity for travel services providers to weave that into packages they sell,” Smith said.

#6: Strong women – with friends. Expect to see growing numbers of single women over 50 traveling with their friends, said Dychtwald of Age Wave. Compared to earlier generations, boomer women are “more highly educated, more empowered, more independent, more powerful in almost every single way.” Many have also inherited money from their husbands or parents, and they have a passion for learning.

Implications: Women Boomers are a market that’s ripe for the picking, said Kathy Dragon, founder of the search engine traveldragon.com and a consultant in new media. Travel sellers need only issue an artful invitation. “Women Boomers are taking up any invitation from friends to go anywhere where they can learn. They’re saying, ‘I’m going to South Africa. Do you want to come?’”

#7: Internet ubiquity. “The Internet will be everyplace. It’s converging with TV, with computing, with cell phones. It’s the convergence of all this information technology into one kind of appliance. Every consumer purchasing decision is going to be mediated by this convergence,” Canton said. “The move to mobile computing, mobile communications, mobile transactions is going to transform consumers – always-connected devices that give me choices.”

Implications: “Brands need to learn how to navigate this new territory,” Canton advised. “If you are ignorant of your digital persona in the world as a brand, if you’re not managing Twitter and Facebook [etc.], that’s a huge liability.”

Businesses need to keep three things in mind, Canton said: 1) it’s about influencing the influencers; 2) perception is reality; and 3) monitoring and understanding your reputation is more important than any ad a business can take out.

#8: Stories are trickling up. The way that news and cultural influences spread has undergone a profound change, said Lisa Johnson, CEO of the Reach Group in Portland, Ore., and an expert on women consumers.

“Things that are impacting culture and what we’re talking about are trickling up.” Johnson cited the power of social media to take one person’s angry TV interview and turn it into a video (“Bed Intruder Song”) that became YouTube’s most-watched video in 2010. “Things don’t come on slowly anymore. They come on like a flood, and they don’t have to be mainstream.”

Implications: Stories communicate and they spread quickly, so use the power of story in marketing and social media, Johnson said. “If you want to create influence, you tell a story. Story is the new flavor for marketing, the enduring flavor.”

Now the plane, purchased about eight years ago by Dr. Louis Hanson of Durham, is featured in a new documentary about Dario Manfredi and Angelo Raiti, the late pair who created the parachute system. Manfredi’s son, Dario Jr., hopes to use the film to ignite interest in an updated parachute system by his company, Aviation Safety Resources of Long Island, N.Y.

Every time he sees news of a fatal crash, Manfredi wishes more people had listened to his dad, he said.

“I get very frustrated that the system is not out,” he said. “I think, ‘Maybe that person might have made it home.’”

Manfredi’s short documentary includes footage from the 1967 test, sanctioned by the Federal Aviation Administration. In it, grainy film shows the fuselage swaying in the air beneath a parachute. There are images of the pilot, who parachuted from the plane as he engaged the system. And there is footage from the TV crews who covered the experiment.

Newscasts on TV across the country and in Europe showed the event.

Then the partners fell on hard times. They sold their plane, which spent the next two decades in storage. By 1984, the elder Manfredi had purchased another plane and was preparing more experiments when he suddenly died.

The safety system had been a tough sell, said the younger Manfredi. Pilots had a tough time buying into a system that would take away their control when control seemed most needed, he said.

The plane and the experiment was little more than a footnote by the time Hanson spotted the Stinson in 2001 at Twitchell’s Airport and Seaplane Base in Turner. There was a “for sale” sign in the window.

“I didn’t really know much, except that I thought it was a beautiful airplane,” said Hanson, who had yet to earn his license. In the late 1990s, the plane had undergone a complete overhaul, removing all signs of the 1967 test.

Hanson loved the old-school simplicity of the plane. And when the owner suggested they take a ride, eventually handing over the controls, the doctor was a goner.

“It was all over,” he said, smiling. He named her Isabelle.

“This is just a lovely bird to fly,” he said. “If there is one thing, one possession that I love, it’s this.”

He had owned it only a short time when an instructor suggested he check the plane’s history.

Hanson searched the Internet for the tail numbers, N39443, and was shocked at what he discovered.

“I was amazed that it had this little secret about it,” he said. He also discovered that the plane had been photographed for a pilots’ magazine. The story touted the new Stinson.

“It’s serial number is No. 13,” Hanson said. “It was the 13th plane off the production line.”

Hanson called Manfredi, who was surprised that the plane was still flying.

It seemed as though his dad’s work was unfinished.

Manfredi and his sister, Savia Giarraffa, are working to complete their father’s work.

They have assembled a team of test pilots, parachute and ballistics experts, and avionics engineers to bring their father’s invention to market. Their company has two patents pending with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, one for the TriChute Safe Landing System and another for a complementary sensor-based Smart Recovery System.

If everything works, the new system could be installed in small private planes for $20,000 to $30,000. Systems could support even small jets, Manfredi said.

The cost of not pursuing the system would be far greater, he said.

“Even if it saves 50 percent of people, those are people who get to go home to their families,” he said.

dhartill@sunjournal.com

 SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

We Don’t Mind the Gap: The Fashionable Flash a New Smile

By RACHEL DODES

Struggling with a sense of alienation following the death of his father in 2008, fashion designer David Delfin asked an orthodontist to insert a bracket to open a space between his two front teeth.

“It was a metaphor for the separation I was feeling,” said Mr. Delfin, who called his spring 2009 collection “Diastema,” the medical term for a space between two teeth, usually in front.

It turns out Mr. Delfin was ahead of the fashion curve. At model casting calls for New York’s fashion week, which begins today, one of the most coveted attributes is an affront to modern orthodontics: gapped teeth.

The look is a bold departure from recent standards of idealized beauty that have rewarded curvaceous and perfect-smile models, such as Doutzen Kroes and Miranda Kerr, with high-profile ad campaigns.

Instead of perfection, designers now want what casting directors call “characters.”

“I think people want to see something different, something off,” says casting director Natalie Joos, who is selecting models for the runway shows of Lacoste and Cynthia Steffe this season.

Other distinguishing characteristics in demand this season include tattoos, piercings, scars and even albino coloring.

Some say the popularity of physical flaws reflects the skepticism of today’s youth toward the air-brushed perfection of the digital age.

“It’s a love for the imperfect, and the authentic,” says Stefano Tonchi, editor-in-chief of W magazine. “These are values that are more and more important for younger generations. Originality, authenticity…in a world that is more and more digitally enhanced.”

In editorial spreads in Vogue and W, as well as ads for high-end brands like Chanel and Marc Jacobs, gaptoothed gals are having a moment.

In a new ad for Hudson jeans, Mick Jagger’s pillow-lipped, gaptoothed model daughter Georgia appears open-mouthed and topless, locked in an embrace with a tattooed man.

Miu Miu’s fall ad campaign features a young model named Lindsey Wixson wearing a fur vest and flashing long, neatly spaced teeth.

Even Lauren Hutton, a supermodel in the ’70s and ’80s known for her signature gap, is getting more work these days: She was featured on the cover of the September issue of Condé Nast U.K.’s Love magazine.

The diastema is also gaining traction in Hollywood, as high-profile actors like Anna Paquin, of the vampire series “True Blood,” and Elisabeth Moss, of “Mad Men,” grace the red carpet with their pearly whites—and dark gaps.

In a recent issue of Us Weekly, Ms. Paquin said she considers it rude when people ask her why she hasn’t “fixed” her smile.

The gap has long been celebrated in many African cultures as a sign of beauty. But in Europe and North America, gapped teeth weren’t always considered chic.

According to the medieval laws of physiognomy—in which facial features were thought to dictate personality traits—a gap was a visual signal that a woman was “lustful and licentious,” says Colin Jones, a professor at Queen Mary University of London who is writing a book about the history of dentistry.

In the 14th century, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in his Canterbury Tales of the gaptoothed wife of Bath, who says, “as help me God, I was a lusty one/ And fair, and rich, and young, and well begone”—old English for “well-endowed.”

In more recent times, amply spaced front teeth have graced the mouths of a wide range of celebrities, from David Letterman to Madonna. But they have never been a widespread trend cultivated by the fashion and entertainment industries.

Sotheby’s is currently exhibiting a series of photographs of gaptoothed model Ms. Wixson. The series, called “I Remain, You Desire,” follows Ms. Wixson, 16 years old, as she attended casting calls and prepared for runway shows last year.

“Lindsey is one of these girls saying, ‘This is my face. This is who I am,’” says Gabrielle Revere, the photographer who followed her on her rounds. “People are responding to it, because it is unconventional.”

Jessica Hart, a 24-year-old Australian model, used to oblige when clients asked her to wear a prosthetic insert to cover up her wide gap. But as she gets more work because of her teeth, not in spite of them, she refuses to cover it up. “If [clients] don’t like my gap, I don’t want to work for them,” she says.

Dr. Sheldon Peck, a historian and adjunct professor of orthodontics at the University of North Carolina, says diastemata are still something mainstream consumers see as a cosmetic mishap to be fixed, not a distinction to be celebrated.

But in the fashion industry, where getting attention is a primary goal of catwalk shows and advertisements, changing the aesthetic of the women who model clothes is one strategy to draw stares.

In the late ’80s and early ’90s, glamorous supermodels like Linda Evangelista and Naomi Campbell ruled the runways, only to be supplanted by the short and skinny waifs epitomized by Kate Moss. A succession of mini-trends followed. Voluptuous Brazilians gave way to androgynous Belgians, followed by tall, young and all-too-skinny Russians.

As the skinny trend persisted, fashion designers and modeling agencies came under fire for allegedly promoting an emaciated aesthetic. The reaction was a healthier curvaceous look, embodied by Lara Stone, who incidentally also has a gap.

Now 26, Ms. Stone is the face of Calvin Klein and was proclaimed “girl of the year” by Vogue U.K in 2009. She is now widely credited for popularizing the gaptoothed look. In this year’s September issue, she appears in a 12-page editorial spread, her gapped front teeth visible in every single image.

For Ashley Smith, a 19-year-old model who will be strutting the runways at New York’s fashion week for the first time this season, her gap is her calling card. “It’s something that sets me apart from everybody else,” she says.

Ms. Smith was recently selected to model for Prada’s resort collection, a coup for a young model, and she appears in ad campaigns for Levi Strauss and Italian brand Sisley. “If I am on set and smiling, but not showing my teeth, they are always shouting, ‘Show us the teeth!’” Ms. Smith says.

Business owners go back to school for new skills  

By JOYCE M. ROSENBERG (AP) – August 11, 2010

NEW YORK — With the start of the new school year, many small business owners are about to become students.

Some are brand-new entrepreneurs who want to learn the basics, such as how to use accounting software. Others are veterans who want to learn new skills so they can expand their business.

Owners who want to learn have a wide variety of options. Traditional options like colleges and universities offer courses, but so do trade organizations and chambers of commerce. Some government agencies also have courses.

Lynette Viviani, who owns a public relations firm, will be going to school this fall to learn more about social media and how to use it for marketing. Viviani has taken classes at the City University of New York’s Business Development Institute. She has also taken courses offered by trade groups.

“You have to go out there and learn new things,” says Viviani, whose company, Viviani Associates PR is located in Parsippany, N.J. She’s been taking classes since the early days of running her own business, which she started 22 years ago. At first she was taking courses in subjects like speechwriting. Now, she says, “continuing education is a must, especially in light of today’s evolving world of social media and content marketing.”

An owner concerned about the expense will quickly find that money isn’t an issue. Although some courses at major universities can cost $1,000 or more, there are plenty of courses or seminars that cost $20, $50 or at most, a few hundred dollars.

Location is also not a problem, because so many courses are offered online. And taking classes doesn’t have to be a big time-burner. Classes range from 90-minute seminars to college or university courses that last a semester.

COLLEGES, UNIVERSITIES AND FOR-PROFIT SCHOOLS

Schools ranging from community colleges to major universities usually have courses that appeal to business owners. There are also for-profit schools and companies that offer courses in specific business subjects such as accounting.

Most schools list their course offerings online. Some of the big-name business schools tend to cater to MBA candidates, but they may also accept students for individual classes. And some offer certificates in specific areas of business such as accounting, marketing and management.

For owners feeling ambitious enough to pursue an MBA, many schools offer part-time programs.

Jennifer Campisi, who owns a Senior Helpers caregiving franchise in Lafayette, La., took classes given by a consulting firm to learn accounting and other financial basics.

As a nurse she didn’t have a head for numbers. “I had to really get an understanding of the whole financial side of running a business,” she said.

She chose a consulting firm for her studies because it offered refresher courses and support after the class ended.

CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE AND TRADE GROUPS

Joining a chamber of commerce or trade group can give owners an opportunity to take courses and seminars at little or no cost.

Chambers in the largest metropolitan areas tend to offer a variety of courses; the Denver Chamber of Commerce, for example, has several scheduled each week. Topics include business taxes, using the accounting software Quickbooks, sales and marketing, and how to take advantage of the latest trends in technology.

Smaller chambers are likely to have fewer offerings, but they are still aimed at helping business owners learn. The Springfield, Ill., chamber has seminars once a month. This year’s topics have included employee handbooks, customer service and using Facebook as a business tool.

Many trade groups also have seminars and courses, including the American Management Association, the American Marketing Association and the Public Relations Society of America.

SMALL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT CENTERS

SBDCs are sponsored by the Small Business Administration and are located throughout the country, often at colleges and universities. They offer advice and counseling to owners, and many also have workshops and seminars on business basics. They also have online courses.

The Connecticut SBDC, for example, has workshops on starting a business, writing a business plan and company finances. The workshops are held in different cities around the state.

The Kansas SBDC has online courses that take between 30 minutes and two hours to complete, on topics including starting a business, managing finances and marketing.

You can locate SBDCs by visiting the SBA website. The address is http://www.sba.gov/aboutsba/sbaprograms/sbdc/sbdclocator/SBDC(underscore)LOCATOR.html

Published: Tuesday, January 11, 2011, 4:46 PM     Updated: Tuesday, January 11, 2011, 5:33 PM

By The Associated Press

Gannett Co. will lay off nearly half its editorial staff at three New Jersey community newspapers by next month and will restructure the remaining positions, according to several staffers.

The affected newspapers are the Courier News of Bridgewater, Daily Record of Parsippany and Home News Tribune of East Brunswick, where a combined 99 staff members will have to apply for 53 remaining positions. Those not kept will be cut loose by Feb. 4.

The company offered to pay staff the difference between their salary and unemployment insurance, a week for every year of service up to 26 weeks, but no less than four, according to a staff member.

The staff members spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the layoffs. They said reporters at the community papers will be assigned to teams to focus on particular topics and more content may be used from the Asbury Park Press.

A memo by Thomas M. Donovan, president and publisher of New Jersey Press Media Solutions — a consortium of Gannett’s four northern New Jersey newspapers — was made available to staff Monday explaining the process.

In an e-mailed statement to the Associated Press on Tuesday, Donovan said the changes would help the company “better focus” its resources on local and breaking news coverage.

“We are very committed to serving our customers here and by leveraging the regional reporting capabilities of our New Jersey operations, we will create greater efficiencies to provide the best possible journalism, zeroing in on the topics our readers care most about on the platforms they prefer,” Donovan wrote.

Gannett has been looking to rebound from a prolonged slump that has triggered a succession of layoffs in recent years.

Since December 2008, Gannett eliminated more than 300 full-time and about 20 part-time positions at its six New Jersey newspapers. It consolidated copy editing and page production operations for four New Jersey newspapers to The Asbury Park Press offices in Neptune in April 2009.

McLean, Va.-based Gannett is the country’s biggest newspaper publisher, with more than 80 community newspapers nationwide.

Last week Gannett told workers they will have to take a week off without pay to avoid more layoffs as revenue continues to fall in the first quarter.

Gannett’s third-quarter net income climbed to $101.4 million, or 42 cents per share, in the three months ended Sept. 26. That’s up from $73.8 million, or 31 cents per share, a year earlier.

Wall Street Journal    SEPTEMBER 9, 2010

As Ratings Slump, CNN Shifts Focus to New Faces

By SHIRA OVIDE And SAM SCHECHNER

 CNN, rebooting in a bid to revive its slumping ratings, officially tapped a former British tabloid editor to take over its flagship prime-time show.

Piers Morgan, who in recent years has reinvented himself as a TV interviewer and judge on reality shows like “America’s Got Talent,” will inherit the cable-news network’s nightly interview program from Larry King in January. The changing of the guard in one of the most visible jobs in television news comes as rapidly changing viewing habits and escalating financial pressures are raising questions about the future of the business.

The audience for the type of national evening news broadcasts once anchored by industry icons like Walter Cronkite is aging and shrinking, and a growing number of Americans prefer to get their news from the Web or via Twitter, rather than TV.

Broadcast-news operations have responded by slashing their work forces. And David Westin, the longtime head of Walt Disney Co.’s ABC News, announced his departure just this week, leaving a new hand to chart the news operation’s course.

Meanwhile, cable-news outlets, such as Fox News and MSNBC, have packed their evening lineups with opinionated hosts who chew over the news. Fox News is a unit of News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal.

“When CNN started, you could put any person—attractive, not attractive, interesting, not interesting—on the air because he was telling you something new,” said Richard C. Wald, a former top news executive at ABC and General Electric Co.’s NBC. “Now the game has changed, and they have to change with the game.”

In an effort to address the challenges facing cable and broadcast news, CNN has had on-and-off talks about combining with the news operations of CBS Corp. or ABC. Those discussions aren’t active right now, however, according to people familiar with the matter.

CNN, a unit of Time Warner Inc., has been struggling to turn around its ratings. This year, 38% fewer people watched CNN during the key hours of 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern time than they did a year earlier, according to Nielsen Co. data through Aug. 15. Rival cable-news channels Fox News, MSNBC and HLN, CNN’s sister network, also are posting lower prime-time ratings, but their declines have been less dramatic.

CNN has responded to the falloff in its audience by replacing the hosts of three of its four hours of evening shows, adding uncharacteristic dashes of celebrity such as Mr. Morgan and former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer.

The network’s signature product, however, remains straight journalism, its executives say.

Jonathan Klein, president of CNN/U.S., said CNN could draw a bigger and broader audience by spotlighting little-known subjects, and by more aggressively covering big events like the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico or the Haiti earthquake. Mr. Klein disputed some critics’ concerns that CNN can’t compete with opinion-oriented shows on other cable-news channels.

“In a nation of 300 million, you can’t draw that conclusion because two million people tune into one particular type of programming,” he said. “I think you ought to ask, ‘Where are the other 298 million?’ ”

Though his ratings have recently sagged, Mr. King’s nightly show remains one of the most-watched on the network. This year through June, the program generated $30.8 million in advertising sales, up about 8% from a year earlier but less than its $53.4 million in ad sales in 2008, according to Kantar Media, a WPP PLC unit that tracks ad spending. Mr. King averaged about 661,000 viewers from the beginning of the year through Aug. 15, according to Nielsen, down from an average of about 1.1 million viewers in 2007.

With the 45-year-old Mr. Morgan, CNN is getting a fresh face but sticking with the familiar question-and-answer format Mr. King, 76, has used for 25 years. In his native Britain, Mr. Morgan’s popular interview programs, including “Piers Morgan’s Life Stories,” have helped vault him to celebrity status.

That has opened a second career for Mr. Morgan, who edited Britain’s Daily Mirror for a decade until he was fired in 2004 for unwittingly running what the newspaper later acknowledged were fake photographs of alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners by British military forces.

As an editor, he was known for his sometimes invasive news-gathering tactics, telling The Wall Street Journal in 1999 that he had “no problem” using entrapment to get stories “if it is overtly in the public interest.”

Mr. Morgan said Wednesday that he had been battle-hardened by the fiercely competitive British newspaper market, and he expected to be a success in his new post. “I’ve only ever been No. 1 on American TV and everything I’ve done. Why should it change now?” he said in an interview.

CNN’s hiring of Mr. Morgan, along with its choice of Mr. Spitzer to co-host a political show with columnist Kathleen Parker that starts in October, has led some critics to question whether the network is opting for buzz over credible news and analysis.

However, Mr. Klein said CNN is “complementing” its regular news reporting with “fearless journalists like Piers Morgan and Kathleen Parker and aggressive, assertive no-prisoners questioners like Eliot Spitzer.”

Some of CNN’s previous programming overhauls haven’t been successful. Veteran political journalist John King has averaged about 442,000 viewers since he took over a 7 p.m. Eastern time show in March, according to Nielsen data through Aug. 15. In the same period last year, predecessor Lou Dobbs drew 726,000 viewers on average.

Amid the hand-wringing about CNN, Time Warner has begun giving the public a peek at the network’s finances. CNN, HLN, CNN.com and the company’s other world-wide news operations generated roughly $500 million last year in adjusted operating income, with a compound annual growth rate of 23% from 2003 to 2009. Overall, Time Warner’s cable-TV networks, including CNN and entertainment networks TNT, TBS and HBO, generated $4 billion in 2009 adjusted operating income, about two-thirds of the company’s total.

CNN executives have said repeatedly that the network’s financial health is best served by providing what they say is the only real journalism in cable news. “We’re the only credible, non-partisan voice left,” CNN Worldwide President Jim Walton said at an advertiser presentation this spring.

Newsday hiring to boost coverage

by Claude Solnik
Published: August 11, 2010
After laying off dozens of employees during the past several years to cut costs, Newsday is planning on hiring 37 employees in a move to boost local print and online coverage.

The Melville-based publication, in an internal memo issued today and obtained by LIBN, stated it plans to hire 34 journalists as part of the print and online expansion. It also plans to hire three staffers to work with its editorial board.

The company expects to add 2,600 more pages of news and opinion annually and to ramp up its local online content.

The memo, issued by Editor in Chief and Executive Vice President in charge of Digital Media Debby Krenek, marks a major turnaround for the publication, which had been cutting back for years.

Cablevision has cut 85 jobs or about 4 percent of Newsday’s staff since acquiring the publication from Tribune Co. in 2008.

But Krenek said in the two-page memo the firm is making a “significant investment in people and pages to provide more and stronger coverage for Long Islanders.”

Newsday plans to hire town reporters as it doubles the number of Long Island news pages in the publication.

It also plans to bring on board community journalists who Krenek said will “hit Long Island’s streets in search of local features and personalities” as the publicationlaunches “hundreds of hyper-local pages” later this month.

http://libn.com/blog/2010/08/11/newsday-hiring-to-boost-coverage/

DJ Gallagher, CEO Student Transportation, Inc.

Local bus operator Leuschen Brothers Ltd. has been sold to Student Transportation Inc., according to a release issued by the company Thursday.

Leuschen Bros., which has more than 250 vehicles, is part of the Sudbury Student Services Consortium, provides bus transportation for students in the Greater Sudbury Area. The company also provides transportation services to physically disabled residents of Greater Sudbury, operating as part of the city’s Handi-Transit system.

Student Transportation is a publicly traded company, with its Canadian head office based in Barrie.

The purchase price for Leuschen Bros. was not revealed.

Student Transportation says it now has about 6% of the school transportation market in Ontario.

“The Leuschen family and its management team have earned an outstanding reputation in the pupil transportation industry and we are extremely pleased they chose to partner with us. We are excited to work with them as we get ready for the new school year,” said Denis J. Gallagher, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of STC and its parent company.