A November 2009 Forrester Research report suggests that 80 percent of Americans won’t pay for online newspaper or magazine subscriptions. Your thoughts?
Among the things I’ve seen in the last year, that was the single dumbest analysis I’ve read. First of all it uses the term ‘pay wall,’ which I think is a 2007 term. We don’t use it. It implies you just put a wall up and you lose all your ad revenue. The numbers in that were completely wrong. It’s as if this guy’s living on another planet.

So this idea that only about 20 percent of Americans will pay for some form of online subscriptions seems wrong to you?
That’s the best news I’ve ever heard, because our model says The New York Times and every other publication you can think of will do fabulously if only 10 percent pay. Only 20 percent will pay, that’s like saying, ‘I have an idea to sell BMWs, but unfortunately only 20 percent of Americans will buy one.’ It’s absurd.

Does that mean that in a couple of years you see everyone paying for some online news content?
Yes, steadily more of it.

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No matter how it plays out, Ben Bernanke’s bruising confirmation battle has damaged the U.S. Federal Reserve’s clout and perceived independence.

Mr. Bernanke is more than the Fed’s chief decision maker. Fed officials see him as their brand, a smart, honest and stoic voice best able to defend decisions of the past two years to a skeptical Congress and public. Even if the Senate backs Mr. Bernanke this week, he won’t speak with the same authority, and the Fed will have a harder time casting itself as above partisan politics.

Fortunately for the Fed, the hard call about when to raise interest rates doesn’t need to be made now. Fortunately for Mr. Bernanke, his support inside the Obama administration, and even more so inside the Fed, is solid. But the longer the battle drags on, the more it could interfere with the Fed’s ability to communicate convincingly. And no matter what, the Fed will have less sway as Congress debates whether to rein in its powers.

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Archbishop of Benin Diocese, Anglican Communion and Edo State Chairman of the Christians Association of Nigeria (CAN), Bishop Peter Imasuen, was yesterday abducted by unknown gunmen.
Imasuen was abducted in front of his official residence, Bishop Court, at Iyaro area in Benin City, at about 12:30p.m. while returning from church service.

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The Episcopal Diocese of Haiti is caring for close to 23,000 Haitians in at least 21 encampments around the earthquake-devastated country.

The information came Jan. 23 in a letter from Bishop Jean Zaché Duracin to Episcopal Relief & Development President Robert Radtke and posted here. In the letter, Duracin said that the diocese and the organization are working “hand-in-hand,” telling Radtke he has “complete confidence in you and your agency.”

“Please tell our partners, the people of the Episcopal Church, the people of the United States and indeed the people of the world that we in Haiti are immensely grateful for their prayers, their support and their generosity,” Duracin wrote. “This is a desperate time in Haiti; we have lost so much. But we still have the most important asset, the people of God, and we are working continuously to take care of them.”

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Jack Iker, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, was tired of fighting his church. As a conservative and traditionalist, he had long disagreed with its practice of ordaining women priests. He was deeply dismayed by its more recent consecration of a gay bishop, its policy of blessing same-sex unions, and its movement away from the Biblical teaching that salvation comes only through Jesus Christ. These changes, he felt, were all proof that his denomination had lost its way. And so, on November 15, 2008, after fifteen years as a bishop, Iker left the Episcopal Church.

But he did not leave alone. He took most of the Diocese of Fort Worth with him: 48 churches, 15,000 parishioners, and more than 58 clergy. The loyalist minority who did not follow him made up only 8 churches. And in a startling assertion of temporal power against a centuries-old establishment, Iker announced that he and his flock would be keeping their assets””hundreds of millions of dollars of real estate, buildings, and investments””the legacy of a century and a half of worship. He was leaving, in other words, but he wasn’t going anywhere.

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In the aftermath of the Senate election in Massachusetts, the focus of attention is inevitably on what it means for Barack Obama. The impact on the Democratic president of the loss of the late Ted Kennedy’s seat to the Republicans will, no doubt, be significant (see article). Yet the result could be remembered as a message more profound than the disparate mutterings of a grumpy electorate that has lost faith in its leader””as a growl of hostility to the rising power of the state.

America’s most vibrant political force at the moment is the anti-tax tea-party movement. Even in leftish Massachusetts people are worried that Mr Obama’s spending splurge, notably his still-unpassed health-care bill, will send the deficit soaring. In Britain, where elections are usually spending competitions, the contest this year will be fought about where to cut. Even in regions as historically statist as Scandinavia and southern Europe debates are beginning to emerge about the size and effectiveness of government.

There are good reasons, as well as bad ones, why the state is growing; but the trend must be reversed. Doing so will prove exceedingly hard””not least because the bigger and more powerful the state gets, the more it tends to grow. But electorates, as in Massachusetts, eventually revolt; and such expressions of voters’ fury are likely to shape politics in the years to come.

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Pope Benedict XVI has a new commandment for priests struggling to get their message across: Go forth and blog.

The pope, whose own presence on the Web has heavily grown in recent years, urged priests on Saturday to use all multimedia tools at their disposal to preach the Gospel and engage in dialogue with people of other religions and cultures.

And just using e-mail or surfing the Web is often not enough: Priests should use cutting-edge technologies to express themselves and lead their communities, Benedict said in a message released by the Vatican.

“The spread of multimedia communications and its rich ‘menu of options’ might make us think it sufficient simply to be present on the Web,” but priests are “challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources,” he said.

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China has denied any state involvement in alleged cyber attacks on Google and accused the US of double standards.

A Chinese industry ministry spokesman told the state-run Xinhua news agency that claims that Beijing was behind recent cyber attacks were “groundless”.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton this week asked China to investigate claims by Google that it had been targeted by China-based hackers.

The US search giant has threatened to withdraw from China.

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Wow.

Congratulations to them.

I went to the March for Life rally Friday on the Mall expecting to write about its irrelevance. Isn’t it quaint, I thought, that these abortion protesters show up each year on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, even though the decision still stands after 37 years. What’s more, with a Democrat in the White House likely to appoint justices who support abortion rights, surely the Supreme Court isn’t going to overturn Roe in the foreseeable future.

How wrong I was. The antiabortion movement feels it’s gaining strength, even if it’s not yet ready to predict ultimate triumph, and Roe supporters (including me) are justifiably nervous.

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Washington spent months nursing the financial system back to health after the 2008 economic crisis, stabilizing then reviving battered markets and ultimately restoring trillions of dollars in investor losses. Wall Street’s political fortunes have not fared as well.

Now, an aggressive stance against the bankers, financiers and even government officials popularly blamed for causing the crisis is gaining political momentum, and there are signs it is eroding the very financial stability the government championed.

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Though some 80 percent of Haiti’s 9 million people are professed Catholics and 16 percent are Protestants, roughly half of the total population practices Vodou, according to the CIA’s World Factbook.

Like many other indigenous religions, it has its high form and folk form, priests and rituals, according to June McDaniel, religion professor at the College of Charleston. It derives from several African cultures, including the Yoruba, and equates its gods and goddesses with Catholic saints.

For example, Legba, the messenger of the gods and a force of destiny, is thought to live at the crossroads of the spirit and material worlds. He is a doorkeeper and, thus, associated with St. Peter.

According to the beliefs, Vodou gods, or loas, live on an underwater island with the souls of the dead, McDaniel said. They are able to communicate with the living who are eager to make contact. To do so, people pray and perform various rituals.

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As a navel-gazer, I was depressed by Saddleback. It seemed the butt end of Christianity: stripped of history and icon­ography, wholly immersed in its secular surroundings, constructed according to a business model and promoted by motivational speakers ”“ bland, cheerful, dull.

We drove away, past immaculate housing estates and strip malls iterating chain restaurants and shops, replicated in every suburb from coast to coast. I wondered why anyone would want to live in that charmless place, much less to get more of the same at church.

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When I spoke with Rep. Richard Neal, the veteran Democratic congressman from Springfield, Mass., on the afternoon of the special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, he told me, “It’s an alarm-clock moment for us.”

That is no exaggeration. Scott Brown, the little-known candidate who pulled out a victory over state Attorney General Martha Coakley, is the first Republican to win a Massachusetts Senate race since 1972 and will be the only Republican in what has been an all-Democratic congressional delegation from the Bay State.

Ron Kaufman, the longtime Republican National Committee member from Massachusetts, said that “it was a perfect storm” that made it possible.

“We had a really good candidate,” Kaufman said. “A military veteran, a family guy, a fiscal conservative, moderate on social issues, a pro-choice Catholic. But it was bigger than that. The Democrats didn’t understand that people here are very upset with the way things are going in Washington, just as they are elsewhere. They see big sums being spent, big deficits piling up, and they want to send a message.”

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Parishioners at one of Melbourne’s most famous churches were yesterday urged to pray for forgiveness for dishonouring other cultures and failing to listen to the concerns of members of the Indian community, who were described by an Anglican bishop as “oppressed in this land”.

Bishop of the northern and western regions, Philip Huggins, led prayers at St Paul’s Cathedral, in which he asked for forgiveness for “our prejudice and indifference” to people from different countries.

“Forgive us for our arrogance in closing our eyes to other people’s cultures,” he said. “Forgive us for not honouring the culture of others, and thus taking away their self-respect . . . forgive us for not listening to the griefs of all who are oppressed in this land, especially for Indians who are feeling vulnerable.”

The service — titled prayers for peace and the welfare of all Indians in Australia — is bound to add to the continuing debate about whether there is a problem with violence against Indians and racism in the community.

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Traditional worshippers complain “happy clappers” are taking over Tasmania’s Anglican Church.

“Happy clappers” are people who sometimes froth at the mouth and speak in strange tongues.

Traditionalists blame Tasmania’s Anglican Bishop John Harrower, who they say has championed an evangelical style of worship and made traditional churchgoers feel “second-class” and “oppressed”.

But Bishop Harrower said the church had to offer contemporary services to stay relevant.

“We have been adding contemporary services to our mix to reach a contemporary world and older people struggle with that,” he said.

“We are a democratic organisation and of course a minority who don’t support the change may not be happy.”

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Conscience is the last court of appeal. “If I am utterly convinced, how else could I act? Morally speaking it would be wrong to do anything else. My judgement may be faulty but my moral sense cannot be queried.” As a society we don’t just accept conscience, we expect it. We reject its opposite, the Nuremberg defence of “I only did what I was ordered to do”.

But we do place limits on conscience. Some Muslim student doctors are now telling their medical ethics lecturers that the right of conscience should extend to them, as Muslim men, refusing to examine the bodies of women. They have been given short shrift, but it is problematic, in logic, to say why conscience may be exercised over abortion but not over gender. (Or in the case of Catholic adoption agencies, over sexuality). In the end the answer is empirical rather than logical: that is what this society has decided.

That raises the question of what a society wants in a leader. “My duty was to put the country first,” said Mr Blair at Trimdon. We like that when his view of the national interest concurs with ours. But what about when it does not? When George Bush declared that he was not signing Kyoto because climate change curbs were not in America’s best interest, most outsiders bridled, yet Bush was doing what he saw as a leader’s job. Rowan Williams does the same when he suppresses his personal views on homosexuality in favour of a strategy to try to keep the Anglican Communion together; he sees that his role supersedes, at present, his personal views.

But Tony Blair offers a different view. “My duty was to put the country first,” he said at Trimdon, and “in time you realise that putting the country first doesn’t mean doing the right thing according to the prevailing consensus or the latest snapshot of opinion. It means doing what you genuinely believe to be right. That your duty as prime minister is to act according to your conviction.”

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Al Qaeda’s leader claimed responsibility for the Christmas Day attempt to blow up an American civilian jet in an audiotape broadcast today on Arab television.

In the clip, Osama bin Laden said his group was behind the failed attempt, allegedly carried out by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, to blow up a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight.

Speaking directly to President Obama, he vowed to continue launching terrorist attacks against the United States as long as Washington supported what he described as Israel’s unjust treatment of Palestinians.

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A handful of top universities around the nation have recorded banner years in freshman applications, including a 42 percent increase at the University of Chicago, a 19 percent rise at Princeton and a 17 percent increase at the University of Pennsylvania. The number of applications to Chicago has doubled since 2006, and the number to Harvard topped 30,000 for the first time.

“It’s a migration of high school seniors to strong institutions, strong brands,” said John Latting, dean of undergraduate admissions at Hopkins. “Either they are prepared to pay, or they are confident that the aid is out there for them.”

Some admissions experts say the increase simply means each senior is applying to more schools. Each new group of seniors applies to a larger number of schools, “with the hope of hitting the merit-money jackpot,” said Sally Rubenstone, senior adviser at the Web site College Confidential. “Acceptance rates plummet, which, in turn, terrifies the next crop of seniors, who then apply to an even longer list of schools.”

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U.S. President Barack Obama called lawmakers on Saturday to check that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke had enough support for a second term and two key senators said the nomination was on track.

In a sign of how worried the White House is about a sudden recent surge in opposition to Bernanke’s renomination, Obama contacted the Democratic Senate leadership to make sure it had enough votes.

“(The) president made … calls to a few senators this afternoon including leadership to make sure everything on track and he has been assured that Bernanke is on track for confirmation,” a senior administration official said.

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Scott Brown has a lot to answer for. His stunning Senate victory for the Republicans in Massachusetts sent the White House into a spin. President Obama promptly decided on the populist gesture of targeting Wall Street with vague proposals to outlaw banks’ risky activities and limit their size. Though seemingly hastily wheeled out, the ideas were first floated a few months ago by Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, a man widely regarded as the best US central banker of the modern era. As a result they have some credibility, though they are far from being a panacea.

Many believe the banks have brought this on their own heads. The return of big bonuses so soon after a crisis of their own making, for which ordinary people will be paying for years, showed crass insensitivity and greed. America’s banks rushed to pay off their obligations to taxpayers under the Tarp (troubled asset relief programme) precisely so that they could get back on the bonus gravy train. The behaviour of the banks, however, is no excuse for flawed policy. Nobody yet knows the detail of Mr Obama’s plans, probably not even the president. But from what we know so far, they suffer from two serious shortcomings.

The first is that they would not have stopped the current crisis….

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[Scott] Benhase replaces the outgoing Rt. Rev. Henry I. Louttit, who is retiring after serving 15 years as bishop of the diocese.

The Diocese of Georgia is one of 116 dioceses that comprise the 2 million-member Episcopal Church.

The denomination traces its Georgia roots to the founding of the colony and the congregation of Christ Church in 1733.

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The economic crisis is also a crisis of ethics and values and must lead to a “rethink” of the moral framework around finance, according to a report to be released in Davos.

Most of more than 130,000 Facebook users in ten countries polled by Georgetown University in the US, believe that companies should be as responsible to employees and clients as to their shareholders. Klaus Schwab, the founder of the forum, said that religion and faith communities were vital to an essential debate on reform of the “architecture” of international finance.

The forum has responded to the crisis by expanding its dialogue with faith communities beyond its focus on Islam and the West to look at education, health, climate change and business ethics. In a series of essays by religious leaders for the report, Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, said: “Politics left up to managers and economics left up to brokers add up to a recipe for social and environmental chaos.”

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From here:

Dear Colleagues:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I trust this finds each of you well as we begin our shared journey into the new year, and in these days following the Epiphany. This is being written after much prayer and reflection, and is sent as an expression of my personal concern. Please know this is not an attempt to speak on behalf of my companion Communion Partner Bishops, nor any of those who signed the Anaheim Statement at General Convention 2009. I speak for myself.

This week we began receiving a flurry of “consent forms,” and I have found this to rest heavy on my heart, due to the fact that this present process is impacted by the integrity of the Anaheim Statement. As many will recall, this statement was made to express with “the same honesty and clarity” of the House, our position with respect to the life of the Church and the wider Anglican Communion. In the statement, we shared in making a commitment of reaffirmation with respect to our place within the Communion and the preservation of these relationships; to the doctrine, discipline and worship of Christ as this Church has received them; our commitment to the three moratoria requested of us by the Instruments of Communion; the process that has lead to the recent release of the Anglican Communion Covenant with our hope of working towards its implementation; and to “continue in the apostles teaching and fellowship.”

A reading of the Anaheim Statement will provide a fuller understanding of the breadth and depth of that which we presented before the House of Bishops on July 16, 2009, and then made witness to by virtue of our signatures. [A copy of the Anaheim Statement including the names is attached in two different formats.]

Why am I raising this before you this day? Sadly, there has been action taken of late with respect to some episcopal elections, that in turn are an affront to what has been expressed through the Anaheim Statement. I trust each of you will review the statement as you prayerfully make your decision on the consents before you. This having been said, please know that I cannot and will not consent to the elections before us that are in contradiction to that which we have affirmed, and in the words of Jude, I appeal “to you to contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.” [Jude 3]

Faithfully in the Light of Christ,

–(The Rt. Rev.) Bruce MacPherson is Bishop of Western Louisiana

Another bishop of the Episcopal Church has agreed to pastoral blessings for same-sex couples, citing General Convention’s votes as a foundation for such blessings.

The Rt. Rev. Edwin F. “Ted” Gulick, Bishop of Kentucky, wrote that his statement reflects the “present pastoral practice that has been the policy of our diocese for at least seven years.”

The bishop alluded to resolutions B012 and C056 without citing them specifically.

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Scores of evangelical Christians gathered this week for their regular Wednesday night prayer service at the River of Life Christian Church’s sprawling complex in Santa Clara, closing their eyes and opening their palms skyward as they rocked back and forth to soaring hymns.

The 10-acre lot just off the Bayshore Freeway where they prayed is the home base of one of the largest Chinese Christian churches in North America. River of Life has more than 2,400 local members and 10,000 more worldwide — up from 70 in 1995, said its pastor, Tong Liu. Waves of immigrants from Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China have filled its pews, while transforming cities like Santa Clara and Cupertino.

The increase in conservative evangelical churches in Chinese immigrant communities has had reverberations well beyond the liberal confines of Silicon Valley and the Bay Area. And no political issue has transfixed this group’s attention like same-sex marriage. It is no coincidence that Cupertino, where census estimates show that one person in four is Chinese (up from one person in 30 three decades ago), was also the site of one of the biggest Bay Area rallies supporting Proposition 8, the ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage in 2008.

But this month the little-noticed but burgeoning world of evangelical Chinese Christianity in the Bay Area has become the backdrop for crucial arguments in the federal trial in San Francisco challenging the constitutionality of the ban on gay marriage.

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In Muskingum County in 2009, 629 couples tied the knot — far fewer than in the 1990s. In 1990, 759 couples received marriage licenses.

The county’s numbers follow a national trend. In the 1990s, the rate of marriages was nine per 1,000 residents. In recent years, it has been around seven, according to data from the Ohio Department of Health.

Muskingum County’s population was 85,087 in 2008, an increase of 3,019 since 1990.

Perry and Morgan counties have seen similar trends. In 2009, 204 couples got married in Perry County, compared to 249 in 1990.

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Never a figure of national renown, Mr. [Peter] Brant has for years loomed large in that slender niche of American culture where vast wealth meets good taste and winter tans. In Savile Row suits and with plenty of alpha-male style, he spent the last decade quietly expanding his newsprint manufacturing empire, borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars and gobbling up mills until his company, White Birch, was the second-largest player in North America.

By 2008, he seemed, like our economy, to be a spectacularly efficient money-making machine ”” a billionaire with a vast art collection and his very own polo team. His personal life appeared just as charmed. In 1995, the former Victoria’s Secret model Stephanie Seymour became his second wife, and the couple and their four children shuttled to homes in Greenwich, Conn., Sagaponack, N.Y., and Palm Beach, Fla. It all looked pretty glamorous.

It looks different today.

There is no telling which is now costing Mr. Brant more ”” his business or his marriage. But that is only because his business is privately held, whereas his marriage is exploding in a way that could hardly be more public. “Seymour-Brant Divorce Mayhem,” read a headline in June in The New York Post.

So what we have here is a portrait of love and leverage gone wrong, a reversal of fortune that ”” like so many stories of our economic cratering ”” would have been hard to imagine a little more than a year ago.

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