‘Very few have balls’: How American news lost its nerve

There’s too much to read and watch, too many places to read and watch it. It’s enough to distract you from the biggest news in journalism right now: In 2024, it’s harder than ever to get a tough story out in the United States of America.

A landscape of gleefully revelatory magazine exposés, aggressive newspaper investigations, feral online confrontations, and painstaking television investigations has been eroded by a confluence of factors — from rising risks of litigation and costs of insurance, which strapped media companies can hardly afford, to social media, which has given public figures growing leverage over the journalists who now increasingly carry their water.

The result is a thousand stories you’ll never read, and a shrinking number of publications with the resources and guts to confront power.

One recent example illustrates the difficulty of getting even a modestly negative revelation about a popular public figure into print. Last year, freelance reporter John McDermott discovered that Jay Shetty, a massively popular lifestyle podcaster who recently interviewed President Joe Biden, had fudged biographical details about his life. But months after he began his reporting for Esquire, he wondered: Would any outlet publish it?

Esquire lost interest as the piece took on a critical tone. He then approached The Hollywood Reporter — as did Shetty’s publicists, who delivered a litany of complaints about the journalist, arguing that he had a conflict of interest. More than a year after its conception, McDermott’s story was eventually published by The Guardian, prompting British education officials to demand Shetty remove false references to them from his website.

“Very few owners have balls any more,” the former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor Tina Brown told Semafor, “a very sorry fact for journalism.”

There are at least five major factors putting journalists on their heels.

Pension funds are Canada’s ‘crown jewels.’ Should they invest more at home? – National

Signals that Ottawa wants more domestic investment from Canadian public pension funds are being amplified by some members of the business community who argue there’s more these large pools of capital can do to boost Canada’s economy.

But the pension plans themselves are pushing back against suggestions that anyone in government should dictate how they invest Canadians’ retirement savings.

An open letter sent to Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland on March 6 urged the Liberals to amend rules governing pension funds to encourage more Canadian investment. It has been signed by nearly 100 current and former executives from Canada’s business community.

“Canada has great companies, true global champions. These competitive businesses deserve our support, and we must create many more. Increasing investments in Canada should be a national priority,” reads the letter, sponsored by Montreal-based investment management firm Letko, Brosseau & Associates Inc.

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The vast majority of the CEOs supporting the push are from the mining and energy sector, which also disproportionately makes up listings on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The list also includes the top executives from telecom giants Rogers Communications Inc. and Telus Communications Inc., grocers including Empire Co. Ltd. and Metro Inc., as well as National Bank of Canada – the sole representative from Canada’s Big Six banks.

Letko Brosseau laments the decline in pension fund holdings that are allocated to publicly traded Canadian firms. Roughly four per cent of Canadian funds’ equity investments were allocated domestically at the end of 2022, down from nearly 28 per cent in 2000, according to Pension Investment Association of Canada data.

This is despite pension funds holding roughly 37 per cent of institutional savings in Canada, according to the letter, putting it on par with Canada’s big banks.

“I think it’s a

Lululemon shares sink on disappointing outlook, slowdown in U.S. business

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A Lululemon store in Pittsburgh, Pa., on Jan. 12, 2022.Gene J. Puskar/The Associated Press

Shares in Lululemon Athletica Inc. LULU-Q were down about 15 per cent in afternoon trading Friday as investors reacted to lower revenue projections and a U.S. slowdown.

The Vancouver-based athletic apparel retailer’s fourth quarter, which ended Jan. 28, brought US$669.5 million in earnings, up from US$119.8 million a year earlier.

However, the company estimates its fiscal 2024 revenue will range between US$10.70 billion and US$10.80 billion. Analysts on average had expected US$10.90 billion, financial markets data firm Refinitiv said.

The projections came as Lululemon chief executive Calvin McDonald lamented a sluggish U.S. market.

“As you’ve heard from others in our industry, there has been a shift in the U.S. consumer behaviour of late, and we’re navigating what has been a slower start to the year in this market,” he told analysts Thursday.

The retailer has also noticed an increase in younger shoppers, which necessitate smaller sizes and covet a wider selection of colours that weren’t always on hand.

“Sizes zero to four is something we’re chasing into. Colour, where we had colour, it performed well, but honestly, we just did not have enough,” McDonald said.

John Kernan, an analyst with TD Cowen, suspected rivals were making the sector “as challenging as ever” for Lululemon, too.

“U.S. consumer softness could partially be attributed to increased competition from upstarts Alo and Vuori,” he told investors in a note.

Alo is a Los Angeles-based purveyor of yoga apparel and other athleticwear that has pushed more aggressively into the Canadian market recently. Vuori, from San Diego, Calif., also makes clothing suited to recreation and has been rumoured to be interested in going public this year.

But McDonald argued Lululemon has been strong even in

Hertz CEO out following electric car ‘horror show’


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Trouble and turmoil continue at rental car company Hertz.

The company, which announced in January it was selling 20,000 of the electric vehicles in its fleet, or about a third of the EVs it owned, is now replacing the CEO who helped build up that fleet, giving it the company’s fifth boss in just four years.

The company announced that Stephen Scherr, who came to the company two years ago after nearly 30 years at Goldman Sachs, is stepping down at the end of this month. He’ll be replaced by Gil West, former chief operating officer of Delta Air Lines and General Motors’ Cruise unit.

In the most recent quarter, Hertz took a $245 million hit to its earnings due to a drop in value of the EVs it was selling.

While the number of EVs bought by American customers surged 40% last year to top 1 million for the first time, there was less demand than some of the traditional automakers had expected as they moved to offer EVs. Tesla, the leader in US EV sales, started a price war for EVs just over a year ago, driving down the value of both new and used EVs, such as those in Hertz’ fleet. And the drop in prices hit Hertz bottom line since it reduced the money it could expect to get from reselling the vehicles.

But the problem for Hertz wasn’t necessarily that the cars were electric, and customers simply do not want to drive electric cars. The problem was how Hertz handled the fleet in general, according to industry analysts.

“The execution and marketing of EV’s [by Hertz] was a horror show across the board,” said Daniel Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities who follows the EV market. “It’s a black eye they

Business investment per worker fell 20% in 15 years amid weaker competition: StatCan

OTTAWA — Canadian business investment per worker plummeted by 20 per cent over a 15-year stretch, according to new Statistics Canada research that suggests weaker competition is partly to blame.

The report finds for every worker, businesses invested $628.80 less in their companies in 2021 than they did in 2006.

The decline was more significant in large and medium-sized companies and foreign-controlled businesses, though it’s unclear why that was the case.

The report attributes nearly one-third of the drop to declining entry rates, or the number of new companies starting up by industry.

“Economists always believe that competition promotes investment. When you look at our data, there’s a decline in the share of new firms,” said Wulong Gu, the study’s author.

Canada is struggling to increase labour productivity amid low business investment, an issue that has been raised frequently by business groups and economists in recent years.

Capital investment, which refers to spending on everything from real estate to machinery, helps businesses grow and make their employees more productive.

That’s why economists argue capital investment is critical to growing the economy and improving living standards.

The report says the slowdown in investment coincided with a shift toward intangible assets such as brand equity and patents, which national statistical agencies don’t record as investments.

However, that shift doesn’t explain why business investment in Canada lags that in other countries, said Wu, because intangible assets are not recorded as investments elsewhere, either.

The study also found no relationship between profitability and business investment, which Wu said was “surprising.”

Canada’s competition watchdog released a report in the fall that found competition weakened over the previous two decades as profits and markups rose.

The Liberal government recently introduced several changes to the Competition Act after pledging to modernize the country’s competition law.

The Competition

Liberal Party press releases make a splash on Google News

Google News results for the search “Labor position nuclear”.

Google News results for the search “Labor position nuclear”.Credit: Calum Jaspan

On its support page, Google says it uses “automated systems” to compile its news index, saying it “algorithmically discovers news content through search technologies”.

Google plays a key role in the news ecosystem in Australia and globally. Google Search and News link people to publishers’ websites more than 24 billion times each month, the company says.

Its algorithm can be a deciding factor in a website’s traffic and its ability to drive revenue through advertising and subscriptions.

In 2021, the federal government implemented the news media bargaining code as a tool to bridge the power imbalance between digital platforms and news publishers.

Google says it is one of the world’s biggest financial supporters of journalism. In Australia, it directly contributes more than $135 million to news organisations through deals agreed as part of the bargaining code per year.

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At the start of March, Meta said it would not sign new deals with publishers when they expire later this year in a blow to the industry. The government can designate Meta under the code, however is yet to do so.

Conversely, Google says it is in the process of renegotiating the three-year commercial deals it signed in 2021.

According to web analytics company Similarweb, social media platforms such as Facebook and X (previously Twitter) have been tapering off news links since 2020. Referrals to news websites almost halved across the three years to October.

Harvard University’s Nieman Lab for Journalism reported in February that Google has tested removing its News tab from search results.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is an online practice that allows publishers to target keywords that are relevant to a story in order to attain a higher ranking in Google’s search engine result pages.

New

Boeing’s defense arm weighs sale of small surveillance business

boeing logo dark skies

Storm clouds gather behind the logo of Boeing at the 2023 Paris Air Show. (Aaron Mehta/Breaking Defense)

WASHINGTON — Boeing is considering selling off a small defense subsidiary that makes surveillance equipment for the US military and intelligence community, Breaking Defense has learned.

Boeing has engaged financial advisers to seek out potential buyers for its Digital Receiver Technology Inc. business, as well as to gauge interest in unspecified defense programs under Boeing’s aftermarket business division, Bloomberg first reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the discussions.

A source with knowledge of the discussions told Breaking Defense that conversations about the DRT sale have been going on for about a year — long before the U.S. planemaker became embroiled in a reputational crisis after a door plug ripped off a Boeing 737 MAX airliner in mid-air in January.

Boeing declined to comment on Tuesday. During a Bank of America conference earlier today, Chief Financial Officer Brian West said he wouldn’t speculate on whether the company would sell off portions of its defense business, but said the reported divestments were “pretty small to us, both economically and strategically.”

“We love our strategic position across our defense portfolio,” he said.

Boeing acquired Germantown, Md.-based DRT in 2008, when the aerospace giant was seeking to expand its presence in the intelligence sector. DRT, which sold for an undisclosed amount, specializes in the production of wireless receivers and transceivers.

Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace expert with AeroDynamic Advisories, said a sale of DRT is unlikely to have any material financial impact for Boeing, which has been struggling under the weight of $39 billion in debt and could face further financial headwinds as it considers re-acquiring Spirit AeroSystems, a Boeing spin off which makes large fuselage components for Boeing and Airbus commercial jets.

Selling DRT could

US Investments in Philippines Seen Easing Reliance on China

During a trade mission visit to Manila this week, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo announced plans to invest more than $1 billion in the Philippines’ tech sector and help double the number of semiconductor factories in the country.

Observers say the pledge and visit highlight the Southeast Asian nation’s growing importance to Washington and will also help reduce the Philippine economy’s reliance on China.

“U.S. companies have realized that our chip supply chain is way too concentrated in just a few countries in the world,” Raimondo said in remarks at a business forum on Tuesday.

“Forget about geopolitics. Just at that level of concentration, you know the old adage, ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.’ Why do we allow ourselves to be buying so many of our chips from one or two countries? That’s why we need to diversify,” Raimondo said.

American business executives from 22 businesses, including Alphabet’s Google, Visa and Microsoft, joined Raimondo on the trip.

Possible expansion of chip industry

JC Punongbayan, resident economist and columnist of the online news website Rappler.com, said that while the Philippines is one of the key centers in the global electronics industry chain, it does not yet have the ability to manufacture smartphone or computer chips. The Philippines currently has 13 semiconductor factories that focus on assembly, packaging and testing.

“This commitment by the U.S. government to boost the local semiconductor industry is a welcome development because right now, even if semiconductors have figured prominently in trade statistics, these are not high value-added. So basically, we import a lot of components and then export them after assembly and packaging,” Punongbayan told VOA’s Mandarin Service.

“Hopefully, these investments by the U.S. government and private sector partners will enable the Philippines to export higher value-added goods in the

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Adani Group to invest over ₹1.2 lakh crore across portfolio companies in FY25; 70% for renewable business

Adani Group is all set to exponentially boost its planned investments in the next fiscal year ending March 2025. As per the news agency PTI, Adani Group is expected to invest over 1.2 lakh ($14 billion) crore across its portfolio business with a special focus on green/renewable energy.

The investments are made in portfolio companies ranging from energy, airports, commodities, cement, and media.

The planned investments are 40% higher than the invested amount in the current fiscal year. The report claimed that by March 31 this year, Adani Group is estimated to have incurred a capex of around USD 10 billion. The company has doubled down on its $100 billion investment guidance for the next 7-10 years.

Adani Group is planning to allocate as much as 70% of this 1.2 lakh crore in the green energy business which includes renewable power, green hydrogen, and green evacuation. Out of the remaining 30%, the company will look to spend a big chunk to expand its airports and ports businesses.

The report claimed that Adani Group is expecting a big jump in profits after the execution of planned investments.

Major investments in the airport portfolio

The new set of planned investments comes after the Adani Group pledged to invest more than 60,000 crore in its airport business over the next 5-10 years.

Karan Adani, MD of Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd said that the company is planning to pump half of the investments into the terminal and runway capacity over the next five years while the other half will be allocated for the city-side development of the airports over a period of 10 years.

“In coming times, we foresee non-metros bypassing hubs and providing flyers direct connectivity across the world. Their connectivity within the country will also improve,”