The Wall Street Journal Weekly Quiz
Covering front-page articles from May 2 – 6, 2005
Professor Guide with Summaries
Developed by: Scott R. Homan Ph.D., Purdue University
Issue #17 Spring 2005
Questions 1 – 12 from The First Section, Section A
Newspaper Circulation Continues Decline, Forcing Tough Decisions
By JULIA ANGWIN and JOSEPH T. HALLINAN
May2,2005;PageA1
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111499919608621875,00.html
The newspaper industry, already suffering from circulation problems, could be looking at its worst numbers in more than a decade. Circulation numbers to be released today by the Audit Bureau of Circulations probably will show industry wide declines of 1% to 3%, according to people familiar with the situation -- possibly the highest for daily newspapers since the industry shed 2.6% of subscribers in 1990-91. The biggest publishers may show the largest declines: Gannett Co., which owns about 100 newspapers, says it will be down "a couple of points" from last year's levels. Circulation at Tribune Co.'s Los Angeles Times is likely to be off in excess of 6% of its most recently reported figures. Belo Corp.'s Dallas Morning News expects to report daily circulation down 9% and Sunday circulation down 13% from the year-earlier period. All projected figures are for the six months ended in March. The Wall Street Journal, published by Dow Jones & Co., expects to report today that total circulation for the six-month period declined 0.8% to 2.07 million. Long stuck in a slow decline, U.S. newspapers face the prospect of an accelerated drop in circulation. The slide is fueling an urgent industry discussion about whether the trend can be halted in a digital age and is forcing newspaper executives to rethink their traditional strategies.
1. Current circulation numbers to be released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations probably will show industry-wide newspaper circulation ______.
a. declined Correct
b. increased
c. stayed the same
d. doubled
2. The Wall Street Journal, published by Dow Jones & Co., expects to report today that it’s total circulation ______
a. increased 8%
b. declined 8%
c. increased 0.8%
d. declined 0.8% Correct
For Big Vendor of Personal Data, A Theft Lays Bare the Downside
By EVAN PEREZ and RICK BROOKS
May3,2005;PageA1
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111507095616722555,00.html
ChoicePoint Inc. has 19 billion data files, full of personal information about nearly every American adult. In minutes, it can produce a report listing someone's former addresses, old roommates, family members and neighbors. The company's computers can tell its clients if an insurance applicant has ever filed a claim and whether a job candidate has ever been sued or faced a tax lien. But last October, after its databases were accessed by a man bent on identity theft, there was one thing ChoicePoint struggled to do: Figure out just what records had been stolen. "They said it was a huge task and they didn't have the staff to do it," says Lt. Robert Costa, head of the Los Angeles County sheriff's department identity-theft squad. "Apparently their technology wasn't built so you were able to find the electronic footsteps these guys left." Months passed before ChoicePoint was able to estimate the number of people whose personal data had been compromised, which it pegged at 145,000. It couldn't say whether any of the data had been used to steal from the victims or get fraudulent loans. The sheriff's department, meanwhile, came to more alarming conclusions. It estimated that data had been downloaded on millions of people, and used to run up millions of dollars in fraudulent credit-card charges. The vulnerability of the company's data and its difficulty in tracking the breach point to a paradox. ChoicePoint and similar data sellers pitch their troves of private information as a hope for restoring personal security to a society fraught with anxiety over terrorism and crime. The chief executive of ChoicePoint, Derek Smith, espouses a thesis that society is better off if everyone can check the background of anyone else. Yet the very existence of these vast information stockpiles -- vulnerable to both error and poaching -- has spawned a new area of worry and risk. For a time last year, one could even buy ChoicePoint background-check kits at Sam's Club for $39.99, though ChoicePoint says it required buyers to prove valid business purposes for using them. It pulled the product after a few months, saying it had been just a test.
3. ChoicePoint Inc. sells ______.
a. computers
b. personal information about nearly every American adult Correct
c. toys to Sam’s Club
d. computer hacking kits
4. The chief executive of ChoicePoint, Derek Smith, espouses a thesis that society is better off if ______.
a. computers are easy to use
b. toys are inexpensive
c. everyone knows how to hack computer systems
d. everyone can check the background of anyone else Correct
By Accident or Design, Selling T-Shirts Is Big Business on Web
By PUI-WING TAM
May4,2005;PageA1
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111515644807923708,00.html
Dan Mowry thought he knew just how to turn his family entertainment newsletter into a successful online business. Two years ago, he designed an attractive site and loaded it up with features to entice readers and advertisers: electronic crossword puzzles, a history quiz and cartoons. Almost as an afterthought, he designed a T-shirt with his company's logo, a circus ringmaster holding a megaphone. Today the online and print newsletters have flopped. But the shirts are pulling in up to $3,000 per month, as Mr. Mowry joins the growing ranks of entrepreneurs profiting from an improbable but lucrative Web business model: selling T-shirts. All over the Web, bloggers, artists and entrepreneurs are unexpectedly finding that T-shirts are more reliable moneymakers than the original ideas that brought them to the Internet. CollegeHumor.com, a site offering jokes and pictures from college campuses nationwide, sells T-shirts that say "My other shirt has its collar up," "What Would Ashton Do," and dozens of others. Its parent company, Connected Ventures LLC, says it takes in roughly $200,000 in monthly revenue from the shirts, about half of its total income. "A year from now things could be very different, but for now, T-shirts are a great way to monetize the Internet," says Josh Abramson, one of the site's founders. It turns out the T-shirt is a perfect fit for online commerce. It captures the Web's renegade allure and allows surfers to show off their virtual journeys. Easy to make and deliver, T-shirts often cost $15 or less online.
5. All over the Web, bloggers, artists and entrepreneurs are unexpectedly finding that ______are more reliable moneymakers than the original ideas that brought them to the Internet.
a. water color pictures
b. oil paintings
c. T-shirts Correct
d. newsletters
6. CollegeHumor.com, a site offering jokes and pictures from college campuses says it takes in roughly ______in monthly revenue from shirts.
a. $2000
b. $20,000
c. $200,000 Correct
d. $2,000,000
As Boomers Retire, a Debate: Will Stock Prices Get Crushed?
By E.S. BROWNING
May5,2005;PageA1
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111525281216325319,00.html
For tens of millions of baby boomers and younger workers, the basic long-range financial plan is simple: accumulate stocks and bonds while working, then slowly sell them off to keep up a comfortable lifestyle in retirement. Not so fast, says Jeremy Siegel, the Wharton School finance professor well-known until now for recommending stocks as a long-term investment. In speeches and a new book, he is warning that a flood of boomer retirees with trillions of dollars of assets to sell over the next 20 to 40 years threatens to crush stock and bond prices. He says it will take a massive investment in U.S. stocks by people in India, China and other developing countries to prevent a market meltdown.
Robin Brooks, an economist at the International Monetary Fund, scoffs at the warning. He thinks the wealthy individuals who own a large percentage of U.S. stock won't need to sell, and companies may boost dividends so retiree investors can hang on to their shares.
As politicians debate Social Security, economists are debating the future of another plank of Americans' retirement plans: the stock market. The ratio of working-age people to retirees will decline over the next 30 years to an estimated 2.6 to 1 from 4.9 to 1 today. Simple supply-and-demand economics suggests that as retirees dump their holdings into a thin market, stock prices could plummet.
7. Jeremy Siegel, the Wharton School finance professor is warning that a flood of boomer retirees with trillions of dollars of assets to sell over the next 20 to 40 years threatens to ______stock and bond prices.
a. increase
b. decrease Correct
c. double
d. triple
8. The ratio of working-age people to retirees will ______over the next 30 years.
a. increase
b. double
c. stay the same
d. decline Correct
To Preserve Forests, Supporters Suggest Cutting Some Trees
By JAMES P. STERBA
May5,2005;PageA1
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111525422066025351,00.html
WESTON, Mass. -- To understand the latest threat to one of the largest naturally reforested regions on the planet -- the Northeastern U.S. -- it helps to drop in on "volunteer day" in the town forest of this wealthy community outside of Boston.
A local tree surgeon gives chain-saw lessons. Brian Donahue, a college professor, offers log-splitting tips. Volunteers stack split wood to dry. The logs are from a handsome black oak, perhaps 70 years old, dismembered with a chain saw two days earlier while a class of Weston High School seniors watched. Each year, the town topples about 200 trees in its 1,700-acre forest and sells them, mostly for firewood, but occasionally for lumber.
No, this isn't the threat. Just the opposite. Weston's token logging effort was designed to teach children and their parents that it's OK, even wise, to cut down local trees and use them. That's a tough message to sell in exurbia, the semirural areas where affluent Americans are moving in growing numbers. Most of these newcomers abhor tree-cutting, foresters say. But Mr. Donahue, a 49-year-old environmental historian at Brandeis University, has been selling this message for 25 years in Weston: The best way to save forest and farm land from developers is to get local residents to value it by using it in a hands-on way. They become part of a "working landscape" like farmers of old, he says.
Besides, lumber has to come from some place. Producing more of it locally, he says, is more environmentally responsible, than, say, pillaging wilderness. And, tree-cutting done right doesn't have to cause environmental damage or ruin views and property values, he says. Cutting some trees can boost a forest's overall health, promoting regeneration, improving wildlife habitat and increasing species diversity.
9. College professor Brian Donahue’s logging efforts are designed to teach children and their parents that it's ______to cut down local trees and use them.
a. wise Correct
b. shameful
c. a waste of resources
d. environmentally harmful
10. Semi-rural areas where affluent Americans are moving in growing numbers is called ______.
a. rural-urbia
b. suburbia
c. exurbia Correct
d. new-urbia
Environmentalists Hope a New Movie Will Help Lemurs
By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS
May6,2005;PageA1
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111533904631326408,00.html
ANDASIBE, Madagascar -- The lemurs were right next to the road just a short walk from the lodge, munching on bamboo and frolicking with their babies. "Is that cute or what?" exclaimed Russ Mittermeier, president of Conservation International and one of the world's foremost experts on the rare primates. It was a tourist-brochure moment.
Well, yes, except for the black, whip-like leech that had just dropped onto Mr. Mittermeier from the moist leaves above. "Just roll it up and step on it," he said.
But it was a reminder of how much work lies before him as he seeks to turn the remote African country into a premier ecotourism destination. At the end of this month, DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. will release a new movie called "Madagascar," and Conservation International, an aggressive, well-connected American environmental group, wants to make sure the country doesn't let the free Hollywood publicity slip through its opposable thumb and forefinger. Executives at CI, as it is known, are pulling strings as fast as they can in California and Madagascar, an island a little larger than California, to make sure the movie generates the sort of tourism that helps save the country's spectacular, and increasingly endangered, forests and animals. Within a few months, they think, thousands of moviegoers will decide they'd like to see the real Madagascar, and the country had better get ready.
CI environmentalists believe carefully planned ecotourism will bring jobs and money to the villages near the forests, giving the locals an incentive not to cut down the trees or eat the wildlife. But Madagascar can't compete with Kenya or South Africa for lion-watching safaris. The country has none, except for the animated lion in "Madagascar" who escapes with a zebra, hippo and giraffe from New York's Central Park Zoo and, through a series of misadventures, ends up washing ashore in Madagascar and meeting lemurs.
So CI, which is based in Washington, and Malagasy organizations are trying to brand the real Madagascar as a paradise of mammals, reptiles, amphibians and birds found nowhere else in the world. Most famously, Madagascar is the only place that has true lemurs -- 69 species and subspecies of them -- 24 of which are endangered. For millions of years, the animals in Madagascar evolved without a human presence. Many have had a hard time surviving since people began arriving here 1,500 or 2,000 years ago, mostly from Indonesia and the African mainland. Nine-foot-tall elephant birds went extinct, as did a type of lemur the size of a gorilla. Now, 90% of the forests are gone, mostly cut down for lumber or farming. In the field, Mr. Mittermeier carries a pocket tape recorder with lemur calls, which he plays when he wants to stir up the Indri lemurs or rare Diademed Sifaka lemurs. The Indri call sounds like the song of the humpback whale, speeded up to 45 rpm. "They're not terribly bright," Mr. Mittermeier concedes. But "they're very pretty. They're wonderful animals. They're not like monkeys or apes." CI isn't like other environmental groups. It does no direct-mail fund raising and has just 4,000 donors, many very wealthy, who provide it with an annual budget of $120 million. The group, created in 1987, funds everything from scientific research to protected areas in developing countries. Its board is a lineup of luminaries from business, science and Hollywood, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Chairman Rob Walton, Queen Noor of Jordan and actor Harrison Ford. The group regularly escorts its major donors to rain forests and deserts so they'll know how their money is being spent. CI's chief executive, Peter Seligmann, first realized what DreamWorks was up to last November, while he was showing Mr. Walton around Madagascar. At a lodge one day, he was approached by Sylvia Stanat, a retired North Carolina virologist who mentioned that her son was working on a new film called "Madagascar."