THE MEDIA BUSINESS;Publishers and Netscape Plan News Network
Date: 13 February 1996
By John Markoff
John Markoff
The Netscape Communications Corporation and a group of news organizations, including Reuters, ESPN and The Los Angeles Times, plan to announce Tuesday an Internet news network that can be displayed automatically in the screen-saver software of a personal computer. The system, which runs on software created by Pointcast Inc., will permit a personal computer user connected to the Internet to receive a personalized newspaper that would be updated at regular intervals. The system takes the idea of an on-line newspaper a step beyond news sites found on the World Wide Web. Such sites require an Internet user to connect manually to a particular Web page to view news articles.
Full Article
THE MEDIA BUSINESS;News Service for Idle Computer Screens
Date: 14 February 1996
Reuters
Pointcast Inc., a privately held information services provider, introduced a free personalized Internet news and information service today that is displayed as a screen saver on a personal computer. Pointcast said it was working with the Netscape Communications Corporation to allow its service to be viewed directly from Netscape Navigator, the most popular browser for the Internet.
Full Article
CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK;Inverse Relation of Heat and Light
Date: 14 February 1996
By Walter Goodman
Walter Goodman
The predilection of television news for treating politics as war by other means was the main target at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism last month. Speakers at the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Forum, an annual bewailing of journalistic sin, blamed the media for scanting the substance of public issues and playing up their adversarial aspect: Who assaulted whom today? They called on news directors to exchange polarization for deliberation. The charge was easily documented, the solution somewhat wishful. According to a transcript of the meeting, Lani Guinier, drawing on her unhappy experience as a nominee to be Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil Rights Division, lamented that public conversation had become sound bites: "We only see black and white. We don't see gray; we don't focus on nuance." In more academic lingo, Benjamin Barber, who teaches political science at Rutgers University, decried the "largely polarized, dualistic, two-cell model of our social world."
Full Article
POLITICS: ON TELEVISION;Calling Results of Caucuses Before They Even Begin
Date: 13 February 1996
By David Stout
David Stout
In a striking confluence of old-fashioned democracy and computer-age data gathering, Senator Bob Dole was declared the winner of the Iowa caucuses last night, five minutes before they began. The Kansas Republican was called the winner at 6:55 P.M. by Voter News Service, a consortium of the three big television broadcasting networks, CNN and The Associated Press. The prediction was based on polling of about 3,800 Iowans as they entered the caucuses, Voter News Service officials said last night.
Full Article
TV Network Says It Is Barred From Kremlin for Reports on Yeltsin
Date: 14 February 1996
By Michael R. Gordon
Michael Gordon
In an election-year skirmish between President Boris N. Yeltsin and the press, the Government has barred Russia's most prominent independent television network from the Kremlin, the network's editors said today. Journalists from NTV, Russia's only nationwide independent television station, said that the ban on its film crews was prompted by an unflattering broadcast about Mr. Yeltsin and was meant as a warning to them to tone down their criticism.
Full Article
Who's Avoiding Living-Room Politics?
Date: 13 February 1996
To the Editor: You postulate (front page, Feb. 11) that mass media political campaigns are replacing traditional "living room discussions" between the candidates and the people in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.
Full Article
COMPANY NEWS
Date: 13 February 1996
SWISS REINSURANCE CO., Zurich, will buy one million common shares of Enhance Financial Services Group Inc., a New York-based reinsurance company, for $24.4 million.
Full Article
COMPANY NEWS;OCCIDENTAL PETROLEUM ANNOUNCES LAYOFFS
Date: 14 February 1996
Bloomberg Business News
Bloomberg News
The Occidental Petroleum Corporation said yesterday that it would dismiss 450 workers at its Occidental Chemical Corporation subsidiary and eliminate the subsidiary's international division. The layoffs and reorganization are expected to result in annualized savings of about $100 million, Occidental said, and no charge against 1996 earnings is expected. The latest moves are part of Occidental's reorganization of worldwide oil and gas operations, announced in October. Last month, the company dismissed 400 workers at its Midcon Corporation subsidiary, to save about $50 million.
Full Article