

A map detailing the comparisons between pre and post Bush Administration - jamesjyu
http://www.theatlantic.com/images/issues/200901/bush-map.gif

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hschenker
Strong candidate for worst infographic ever. Can't imagine how a simple text
list wouldn't be better in almost every way, except in terms of providing a
graphic designer several hours of work.

Even the reasoning for the map device itself is tenuous at best, since the
outline of America is barely recognizable and the graphics bear no relation to
their locations on the map, except perhaps for the "inmates in custody"
square, which is in the general vicinity of Texas.

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froo
There were a few figures on there I found interesting.

The average person spends 1704 hours in front of the TV every year? On average
thats 20% of your life in front of a TV... I spend maybe 5 hours per week, so
I'd hate to see what some others do.

I suppose thats a big contributor to the other statistic, states with obesity
rate below 20%... down from 28/50 to 1/50.

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vaksel
man I knew Apple was doing good, but such a huge improvement in just 8 years
is pretty damn good.

online spending is actually less than I expected

Newspaper circulation is actually more than I expected...all this bitching and
moaning about how newspapers are dying, and they only lost 10%

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azanar
>Newspaper circulation is actually more than I expected...all this bitching
and moaning about how newspapers are dying, and they only lost 10%.

That is enough, though. Businesses don't just care about sales, they also care
about net profit. The ratio of the latter to the former is profit margin, and
indicates how what percent revenue needs to fall in order for a company to go
into the red. A small change in sales can result in a large change in profit
margin, depending on the costs involved in running the business. The NYT ran a
3.4% profit margin in 2007, on revenues of $3.1bn. A small change in that
revenue is all it takes to put them in the red. If they have lost 10% of their
circulation, assuming advertisers become disinterested at a similar rate, that
is more than a sufficient amount of pain.

FWIW, this has borne out in Q3 2008. Profit margins at NYT are at -16.72% for
Q3. Revenue was at $687.04, which is a 10% drop from the same quarter a year
ago. Annualized revenue from Q3 is at $2.748bn, or a 14% drop from the prior
year. Not counting the $160m "unusual" expense they took -- whatever that was
from, that still around 10% drop in revenue, and a profit margin of right
around 0%. I can't imagine Q4 will be any more rosy given the trajectory of
their revenue.

I suspect we'll see more cost cutting there in the coming month, which will
likely result in a reduction of reporters and other staff. It would seem to
follow that either a smaller paper, or less expensive (read: more fluffy)
articles will result, which runs the risk of further reducing sales. Not a
happy cycle.

So yeah, it's enough.

Source for figures: <http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NYT>

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vaksel
well yeah I know they are less profitable...but the newspapers make it sound
like noone is buying them anymore.

Making up 10% in profit through other sources is hardly impossible, and they
should have been able to recover by now if they spent a little more time
thinking instead of whining

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azanar
The effect is the same; as soon as the bottom line turns red, the business's
survival becomes acutely time-bound based on burn rate and available cash.

And yeah, there are plenty of things they could be doing to make up that 10%.
But there are still plenty of ways people who insist on the old model can
introduce inertia into the push for change. They understand the old model,
have experience with it, and are averse to a hard bout of learning and
possibly failing a indeterminate number of times before getting the new model
right. Those things are hard, and come with the added risk of tarnishing their
own professional image, and the image of the newspaper. It's easier in the
short term to just whine.

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gaius
So is fewer billionaires better or worse?

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wheels
I'm going to go with worse. That was the stock market tanking, not, you know,
do-gooding.

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tapinko
AMERICA!

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l0stman
So basically the world is worse than 8 years ago, what a surprise. Seriously,
do you know of any period of history were the world goes well?

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pg
There's pretty strong indirect evidence for such periods in the fact that life
is so much better than it was in say 500 AD. If things only got worse, they'd
be pretty terrible by now, starting from that base.

