Chapter 13 Bankruptcy
When someone files for bankruptcy under Chapter 13 Bankruptcy Code, their aim is to have the opportunity to repay some or all the debts in their name, in better terms, i.e. lower or no interest. Unlike Chapter 7 Bankruptcy which involves liquidation of assets, this process involves restructuring debts which allows the debtor to use whatever income they may have in the future to pay off the creditors. Filing Chapter 13 Bankruptcy is thus applicable for a debtor who has a regular income, and thus can afford to request for such adjustments or reductions.
There has been much doom and gloom written about the bankruptcy means test under the new laws and how much more difficult it’s going to be to file Chapter 7. It’s true that there are more hoops to jump through under the new laws and it’s true that the bankruptcy means test will result in some people having to file chapter 13 instead of Chapter 7. However, for the vast majority of filers Chapter 7 is still available with very little extra effort!
Coupon code
The concept of online commerce is constantly endowed with fresh ideas to lure the interest of millions of online shoppers. The cities like Las Vegas, which is admired for shopping stores and hotels, are always in process of refining the shopping facilities offered by them. Some coupons that available are shoebuy coupon code, T-shirt coupon code, hotel coupon code.
The best buy promotion codes distributed online are amongst tried and trusted strategies to enhance the virtue of online shopping. These tools perform a two-way task by bringing discounted shopping and hotel deals to online surfers and at the same time, promoting business stores and hotels amongst their targeted audiences.
Concept before Internet Existence
The concept of offering discount vouchers and coupon code is not a new one. Before the emergence of Internet, the offline stores also used to offer these coupons. The trend was also followed by big hotels and restaurants to attract the prospective customers. Needless to say, the idea of promotion coupons caught popularity and Internet based stores further enhanced their acceptance manifolds.
Misconception Surrounding Promotion Codes
The promotion codes or voucher codes are sometimes considered as illegal ways of promoting one’s business products and services. However, these codes are just another promotion tools for retailers and online store owners. There is no intention of fraudulence or any other illicit activity while offering these codes online. To make sure you make right use of these promo codes, it is advised to read the terms and conditions of their applicability.
TV Serial Songs
You might have been downloading Hindi songs from Bollywood movie and other pop albums but you would struggle to find the background scores and Title songs of TV Serial which have the most of the audience in India. The Hindi TV Serials are exact portrayal of emotions if Indian Audience as the people of India are very emotional and love the Drama in the Serials. The music of the TV Serials can now be downloaded on internet. Yes! You heard that right. The latest title songs, background scores from latest TV Serial on Indian Televisions can now be downloaded free ion their website in high quality MP3 format. The MP3 songs of TV Serials like Miley Jab Hum Tum, Dill Mill Gayye which have the highest youth audience in India have also been added to their big list of albums which can now be downloaded free online. So, Visit Bollymp3 and start downloading Hindi TV Serial songs for free.
Journalism by Press Release
With thousands of journalists losing their jobs, how are the media filling all those column inches?
Press releases.
As media companies buy up more media outlets and slash newsroom budgets and staff, reporters have less time to do their jobs, often resorting to writing entire stories based on a press release alone, and sometimes printing stories that mirror an organization or agency’s exact press statement.
It seems actual reporting is becoming something of an anomaly, and especially in science coverage, according to ongoing analysis by MIT’s Knight Science Journalism Tracker. Charles Petit, a veteran science reporter who runs the Tracker, has found an alarming number of newspapers running stories based only on press releases.
“What is distressing to me is that the number of science reporters and the variety of reporting is going down. What does come out is more and more the direct product of PR shops,” Charles Petit told the Columbia Journalism Review.
Press releases should used as a tip, or a starting point, to begin investigating a story. Crafting questions, finding holes in data, reaching beyond the press contact – that’s where the true journalism lies. As Petit told CJR, science news “spoon-fed” to reporters via press releases “become a powerful subversive tool eroding the chance that reporters will craft their own stories.”
What’s worse, many newspapers aren’t fessing up to their press release plagiarization, leaving readers unaware that the story they’re reading came straight from the pen of a PR flack.
While Petit is monitoring science journalism, the practice of presenting fake news as as the real thing has infiltrated local television news across the country.
A 2006 investigation by Free Press and the Center for Media and Democracy revealed that stations are slipping corporate-sponsored “video news releases” — promotional segments designed to look like objective news reports — into their regular news programming. This deception is illegal under FCC rules.
A series of CMD investigations have caught 113 local stations airing the so-called VNRs without proper disclosure. Free Press and CMD have filed complaints with the FCC, urging the agency to take action against all stations that have violated sponsorship identification rules. So far, the FCC has fined only one cable channel for airing fake news.
And just why have television stations resorted to airing VNRs? Runaway media consolidation has squeezed TV newsrooms, too, which are trying to fill more hours with fewer reporters.
If we want to stop junk journalism, we need to start at the top with the owners of our media.
Bloodletting in the Newsrooms
The news keeps getting worse for newspaper journalists and the communities that depend on their daily papers for local coverage. Across the country, newspapers are trying to maintain their high profit margins by slashing newsroom jobs and news coverage.
Last month, the Star-Ledger, the largest newspaper in New Jersey, became the latest paper to scale back its newsroom operation. The paper announced plans to lay off 40 percent of its staff. The Los Angeles Times laid off another 75 journalists. Since 2001, the Los Angeles Times has gutted its newsroom, cutting staff from 1,200 to 660. Gannett, a company that owns 85 daily newspapers, said it would lay off 10 percent – or 3,000 – of its newspaper employees. Meanwhile, Time Warner Inc., the world’s largest magazine publisher, plans to lay off 600, or 6 percent, of its magazine employees.
Dean Singleton, the CEO of Media News Group, one of the largest newspaper owners in the country, recently told a publishing group that he may consolidate copy-editing desks at his 54 newspapers to one location to cut expenses. He is even entertaining the possibility of moving all copy-editing operations overseas, something at least two other publications have already begun doing.
While my heart goes out to all the journalists who have lost their jobs and to the communities being affected by reduced news coverage, it is hard to feel sorry for the newspaper industry, where greed and profit have led to the situation we see today.
Astonishing Cuts
Over the past year, newsrooms have been bleeding journalism jobs. UNITY: Journalists of Color reported recently that an astonishing 2,415 newsroom jobs have been lost since September 15. The Project for Excellence in Journalism estimates that newspapers have cut about 10 percent of newsroom jobs — 5,500 positions — this decade.
The latest announcements come as newspaper circulation and ad revenue continue to slide. A recent Audit Bureau of Circulations report found that circulation for daily newspapers dropped close to 5 percent over a six-month period that ended in September 2008. Newspapers in larger cities have been the hardest hit. Circulation at the Los Angeles Times fell by 5 percent; the Chicago Tribune, 7.7 percent; the Boston Globe, 10.1 percent; The Philadelphia Inquirer, 11 percent; the Philadelphia Daily News, 13.2 percent; and the Atlanta Journal Constitution, 13.6 percent.
Meanwhile, the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) expects total ad revenue for the industry to drop by 11.5 percent this year.
Greed and Profit
The Internet has transformed the media industry and how the public consumes news. More people are reading their local newspapers online than ever before. Online ad revenue grew for 17 straight quarters until its recent decline. Nevertheless, the NAA expects online ad revenue to continue its growth next year.
Despite the changing industry, newspapers remain extremely profitable. The Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) reported that the average pre-tax profit margin for newspapers was 18.5 percent in 2007. Some newspaper profits remained above 20 percent. “The industry remains profitable, but it has come time to take the ‘obscenely’ out of that commonplace observation,” PEJ said in its annual State of the News Media report.
But the majority of newspapers are publicly traded companies for which any decline in profits is unacceptable. As a result, newspapers are trying to please Wall Street by axing jobs and scaling back coverage.
With fewer reporters on the beat — and less quality local coverage — it’s no wonder people aren’t subscribing to the paper. While these cuts may please stock analysts, they harm the public. There are fewer journalists covering the business of government at city halls and state capitals across the country. Media companies are closing their Washington and foreign bureaus, while the number of lobbyists pushing the legislation agendas of their corporate clients at the local, state and national levels has increased under the diminishing watchdog eye of the Fourth Estate.
Failure to Adapt
What is rarely discussed is that media consolidation and a lack of leadership within the newspaper industry have resulted in the newspaper industry contributing to its revenue decline.
Too many executives were slow to embrace the Internet as part of their newspapers’ business models. It was just last year that PEJ reported that mainstream media had began to show a serious commitment to growing online ad revenue.
Media consolidation has also resulted in a handful of newspaper chains that are owned by publicly traded companies. Major chains like Times Mirror and Knight Ridder were swallowed up in recent years by other chains. Companies like Tribune and Media News are reducing their staff to pay off their debt for going on a merger spree.
To help ease their debt burden, the industry has turned to the FCC to bail them out by deregulating the industry to allow newspapers to purchase a TV or radio station in the same market, a station that has most likely maintained “obscenely” high profit margins. Last year, the FCC voted to lift the newspaper-broadcast cross- ownership regulation that helped to protect media diversity, competition and localism for more than 30 years. The proposed new rules include gaping loopholes that would allow for consolidation in potentially every media market in this country. The new rules are currently being challenged in court.
If upheld, journalists should expect more layoffs, and the public should see a declining commitment to news as newspapers take on greater debt to please their Wall Street investors.
