Tell It To Al

Today, Newsweek anounced its last print edition will be Dec. 31.
(Click here to read more about its shift to digital.)

This is highly optimistic considering the Maya predict the world will end on Dec. 21.

But then Newsweek has been prone to fits of unbridled optimism, as evidenced by this cover it published in April 2010, declaring a roaring rebound for the U.S. economy.

No, it wasn’t and April Fools edition.

Remember the Newsweek cover of April 2010, boasting “The Remarkable Tale Of Our Economic Turnaround”? Probably not.

Amid high unemployment, raging foreclosures, people protesting in the streets against Wall Street, and a European debt crisis, Newsweeks declared the economy was back.

Happy news sells in an environment like this. But not enough to keep a print edition alive.

A bridge falling into the Mississippi river five years ago should have been a call to action.

It wasn’t.

Bridge expert Barry LePatner has just launched a Google map marking 7,980 bridges that could fall like the I-35W Mississippi Bridge at any time. Check it out at www.SaveOurBridges.com. Search to see if there are any unsafe bridges in your area.

Americans seem to take for granted the infrastructure they inherited from past generations. These things take billions of dollars to maintain, yet they have gone neglected in a political climate that is often more about doling out favors to big corporations than doing what needs to be done.

Mr. LaPatner says fixing America’s most dangerous bridges would create 1.2 million jobs. And not fixing them is going to lead to more tragedies, like the collapse that claimed 13 lives and injured 145 five years ago.

Click here to read my column in The Sunday Wall Street Journal.

Time magazine’s generic choice of “the protester” as “2011 Person of the Year” is a sign that nobody in America really accomplished anything in 2011.

The piece wasn’t even all that flattering to Occupy Wall Street protesters, focusing most of its attention on protesters around the world who risk their very lives to speak their minds.

Click here to read my column on MarketWatch. And click here to read Time’s person of the year.

Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel “Atlas Shrugged” has got be one of the worst books I’ve ever tried to read.

That she did most of her writing under the effects of amphetamine explains much of the reason why.

And that so many people consider her work a philosophical road map for free markets shows how shallow some of us have been in thinking about capitalism.

Click here to read more in my column  in The Sunday Wall Street Journal.

A special thanks to readers for writing one of my columns while I went on vacation to Italy for a couple weeks.

I appreciate all their great insights on the bailouts and where the economy is really headed.

One of my favorite lines came from Julaine Barribeau of Wausau, Wisc.: “Government of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations has reached the levels of corruption that now are untouchable.”

Click here to read more of what my readers said.

Meantime, I had a great time rummaging through the ruins of Ancient Rome.

They’re reminders that economies and civilizations are often destroyed by the people who run them.

They’re also monuments to the hope that even after the worst has happened, there’s always a remnant from which to build anew.

Fox News’ Glenn Beck’s getting a little flack for comparing Detroit to Hiroshima. Click here to read more.

Clearly, Beck was being hyperbolic. Imagine that. But I can’t count how many times I’ve heard the Motor City compared to New Orleans without the hurricane – and no one seemed to challenge that.

The truth is, it is simply amazing to go to Detroit and behold all the vacant buildings rotting in the wind. Click here to see some photos I shot in Detroit last year. (FYI: News Corp. owns both Dow Jones where I work, and Fox News.)

Beck, predictably, blames Democrats, unions and liberals. But what about the reckless corporations that sought every public advantage, and paid their executive teams obscenely, as they raced toward bankruptcy and wrecked the place? They did all this in the name of free markets and capitalism – not that they really cared for either of these concepts beyond the lip-service as they self-dealt.

My hope is that true capitalism – as embodied in the entrepreneurial spirit to actually make life better – is coming back to Detroit. Cheap real estate and high unemployment should be a lure for anyone wanting to make something in America. Kinda like manufacturing in Third World countries.

What’s wrong with Wikileaks? Nothing.

The Associated Press reports that a company Visa asked to investigate WikiLeaks’ finances found no proof the group’s fund-raising arm is breaking the law in its home base of Iceland. But Visa Europe Ltd will continue blocking donations to the site for now.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has rattled the world, releasing top-secret documents and exposing folly and corruption wherever he finds it. Publishing secret diplomatic cables seems to have put him over the top. He’s been battling shadowy allegations of rape on top of a banking industry that refuses to do business with him.

Click here to read the AP story. I hate international banking conspiracy theories, but it sure seems like the world is full of powerful people who will do anything to shut this guy up.

It’s a mistake. Get rid of Julian Assange and the next guy committed to this same mission won’t be so transparent. He’ll be invisible. He’ll light all kinds of fires and no one will be able to figure out his true identity.

Kinda like the Green Hornet or Batman.

There will always be a misunderstood hero trying to set the truth free.

Reminds me of my favorite newspaper masthead motto, which belongs to the Aspen Times: “If you don’t want it printed, don’t let it happen.”

In case anyone is still wondering about the management shakeup at MediaNews, it’s been taken over by a hedge fund since it’s bankruptcy restructuring and there’s a new management putting it’s own people in charge.

Dean Singleton is out as MediaNews’ CEO, but the good news is that he will remain with the company as executive chairman as well as publisher of The Denver Post and The Salt Lake City Tribune. His longtime sidekick, and former CEO-heir-apparent, Jody Lodovick is gone. And three directors of the MediaNews board have been replaced.

It’s pretty much the way it goes with these deals. Singleton, who had always run MediaNews, now works for Alden Global Capital. Alden is part owner of another newspaper company wrung through the bankruptcy process, Freedom Communications.

The Wall Street Journal reports the two companies may be merged, and Singleton hints at opportunities for consolidation.

(FYI: I have been employed by both Freedom and MediaNews, and I can only wish these companies the best in these difficult times. Singleton, especially. He’s the one who gave me the opportunity to launch my column and blog, as well as his top editor, Greg Moore. They usually published whatever I wrote, even if they had to do it with a grimace. And now that I’m at Dow Jones, they still run it.)

Singleton may be down, but he’s not out. He still owns part of the company.

Michael Roberts of Denver’s alternative weekly Westword has reported the best interview of Singleton, so far. Click here to read Robert’s interview with Singleton.

And click here to read more in The Denver Business Journal.

(PHOTO: Al Lewis and Dean Singleton at the Society of American Business Editors and Writers conference in Denver, April 2009.)

What’s not to love about Facebook? I talk about Goldman Sach’s $500 million investment in the social networking site with Eric Kahnert of Denver’s NBC affiliate, 9News.

Why is that whenever spiritual leaders talk about sin, they are really just talking about their own misdeeds?

New Jersey pastor Cedric Miller was again preaching that Facebook leads to infidelity on Sunday, telling people to cancel their accounts, according to the Asbury Park Press.

Now, he’s offering to leave his church over a past affair of his own. OK, it was 10 years ago. He apologized. And it is the Jersey Shore.

But the preacher’s affair was reportedly a three-way thing with his wife and a male church worker. Click here to read more from the Asbury Park Press.

Facebook is indeed a handy tool for having an affair, but so is the car, the telephone and the Visa card. And the Rev. here proves you don’t need Facebook to have a rather unusual affair.

What do you think? Are you more likely to have an affair because of Facebook and other social media sites?