Forecasting the Mashup of 2011 — The Media Equation

Abstract: For years, those of us who toiled in the backwater of media reporting — covering people who cover other people — were left to trace the slow-motion decline of mainstream media and the inconsequential pratfalls of nascent digital efforts. Click through a few years and suddenly the media landscape looks profoundly altered and punished, like a place where a serious earthquake was followed by a tsunami. News about the news business, once a rare commodity, now comes out of a fire hose, with many days bringing yet another shift in old paradigms. Two-year-old Web sites are worth more than 50-year-old magazines, storied newspapers are now owned by their lenders, cable news has been upended by partisan shouters, social media now preoccupies attention that used to be owned by mainstream producers, and that television screen in the family den is just one of the numerous screens people are staring at. So let’s stipulate that the sky is falling and will continue to do so. Rather than look back at the creative destruction that has taken place, I thought it would be worthwhile to click on the future. Here, in no particular order — because the way forward is paved with chaos — are some of the developments you and I will be talking about in the coming year. THE END OF VERTICALS What if there were no such thing as television, print, Web and radio? What if they were all just one big blob of media? Well, if you are staring at an iPad or some other tablet, that future seems to have already shown up. On a Web-enabled, back-lit device, the difference between the BBC , The Washington Post , The Huffington Post and ABC News are tough to discern. Each has video, audio, text, social media and pictures. All can be navigated effortlessly by the swipe of a finger. I helped my 87-year-old father set up the iPad that Santa brought, and as he looked over my shoulder he said, “Everything sort of looks the same.” My point exactly. And even beyond the four corners of the iPad, things are beginning to look mighty mashed up. Gawker , the influential media blog, is being redesigned and looks a lot like television. The Web and application world will grow to look like TV because consumers and advertisers find things to love in the format. As the Web increasingly shows up in the living room (more on that in a second), Web sites will want to be ready for prime time. Ad staffs of various media enterprises are always reminded that they “compete with everyone,” but as traditional media verticals disappear it may become more than rhetoric. HYBRIDS FOR THE NEWS HIGHWAY As the ad models that traditionally paid for news disappear, various hybrids of news gathering and publishing are emerging. ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative site, is sharing content with many print publications that have lost reporting muscle. Comcast , in part to get past some of the regulatory overhang shadowing its acquisition of NBC Universal , is creating partnerships between local news nonprofits and a number of the NBC stations that are part of the deal. In order to increase its national footprint, The New York Times has partnerships with a variety of organizations in Chicago , San Francisco and New York. NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting are building Project Argo , a Knight Foundation effort to work with and help build local news sites. The list goes on, but the days when news organizations only competed and never co-operated are over. TELEVISED SOCIAL MEDIA Right now, people tune in to “ Jersey Shore ” on television and then use another device and screen at their fingertips to crack wise on Facebook and Twitter about what they are watching. But what if their big TV screen were also embedded with commentary from trusted friends and people they follow? If the main screen included both a program and annotation, it would become a third product, one that has a tent-pole ability to gather large audiences and real-time elements of social media. And to take it a step further, right now people “check in” at various physical locations on services like Foursquare. What if check-ins began to occur around not just physical objects, but cultural ones like “Mad Men” as well? Look for a developing fight over who owns and programs the crawl at the bottom of the television screen. THE NONLINEAR GRID Right now, families all over the land are figuring out how to hook up their Web-enabled televisions (good luck with that, by the way), and as the biggest screen in the house becomes tied to the Internet, the whole concept of a broadcast-and-cable universe is up for grabs. If you thought the 500-channel universe changed things, wait until you get a load of the infinite-channel one. So called “linear television,” programming from both broadcast and cable on a channel-certain location, is in for significant disruption, and the habit of tuning in at a specific time for a favorite program will seem pretty last century. Because 2011 is a nonelection and non-Olympic year, it will be up to mainstream broadcasters to come up with live or must-see appointment television to try and build a ledge under their business model. In that context, professional sports franchises like football will only become more important, but there are a whole lot of other hours to program. Fox will be pushing back with event television like Simon Cowell ’s “X Factor,” but other networks may find that the usual fall schedule of sitcoms and police procedurals may get lost as consumers can increasingly dial up anything they want exactly when they want it. PRINT LOOKS FOR A PAYDAY Early in the year, The New York Times will begin a metered model on the Web. Most visitors to NYTimes.com will not notice a difference, but frequent visitors will be asked to subscribe. That effort and others to draw more revenue out of consumers at a time when print advertising revenue is tough to come by — online advertising revenue surpassed newspaper revenue for the first time last year — will be watched closely by the rest of the industry. The News Corporation took a different approach in Britain , putting up a solid wall around The Sunday Times and The Times of London last year and the results were brutal — an 86 percent decline in traffic to the site. In the instance of The New York Times, executives are hoping that the site’s most loyal users will be willing to pay for convenience, ease and access — a number of tiers of service are reportedly being contemplated — while the company continues to reap the benefits and visibility of large numbers of drive-by, nonpaying users. At the same time, the iPad and other tablets, which move print out of the nomenclature of “subscriptions” and into “applications,” could be something of a do-over. That option, however, comes with a threat: many people have found newspaper Web sites, tethered as they are to a mouse and computer screen, to be a poor substitute for the printed product. But a tablet offers a scannable, leaned-back format for newspapers, one that can be passed back and forth at the breakfast table just like its dead tree ancestors. Look for paid print subscriptions to drop as tablet sales grow. (The News Corporation’s tablet-only newspaper, The Daily, will be introduced soon, and could point to one way forward.) TRENDS TOO NUMEROUS TO ELUCIDATE Will Google , with big forays into television and books, continue to pretend it is not a media company? Will the book business do the math and realize that in three years — which is when any book conceived right now would be published — there will probably be more than 100 million e-readers capable of rendering books in new ways? As the number, size and portability of screens multiply, will dominant media companies continue to retain hegemony? Will the DVD go the way of the CD and VHS as streaming and downloading of video content grows? Will movie exhibition spaces further customize beyond Imax , offering new kinds of communal viewing that keep people showing up at the box office? And finally, will Angry Birds eventually eat away so much mindshare — people currently spend 200 million minutes a day playing the game — that no one has any time for plain old media?

Newspaper
iPad
TV
Online advertising
News media,journalism
Computers and the Internet
Tablet computer
Mass media
Advertising Marketing


Morris and Smoltz Recall Game 7 of 1991 World Series

Abstract: SECAUCUS, N.J. — It was the most magical night a pitcher has ever had, an extra-inning shutout to win the World Series, and Jack Morris wishes he could share it with you. If every person could experience one moment like that, he says, and reach a goal in extraordinary circumstances, think of the positive energy it could bring to the world. Morris is 55 now, a part-time radio broadcaster for the Minnesota Twins with a silver goatee and the same steely eyes that stared defiantly at his manager before the 10th inning of Game 7 in 1991, refusing to yield to a reliever. But now, as he sits on a couch with his wife, Jennifer, after watching a replay at MLB Network studios, those eyes well up. Morris had noticed the fans all night as he dueled with John Smoltz of the Atlanta Braves . He had taken it all in, empathizing with those people who were so much like him, a fellow Minnesotan who had rooted hard for the Vikings teams of the 1970s that never quite went all the way. “I’m part of this, and we’re not losing,” Morris says, repeating what he thought to himself. “I just didn’t want to let them down.” Nearly two decades later, one fan’s reaction resonates most, and that is what gets to him. Morris was going through a divorce at the time, and he channeled his personal pain into fire on the field. When he had finished his 1-0 masterpiece, his son Erik, then in grade school, was so happy that he greeted his father in tears. “It was my first year away from home,” Morris says. “And he told me years later, when he was in college, that he watched that game probably 150 times the next two years, that he would go home and watch that game over and over, because he just wanted to share that moment with Dad. And that breaks your heart, you know?” Morris and Smoltz reunited in late March to watch Game 7 with Bob Costas and Tom Verducci for a special being shown Sunday on MLB Network. The network ranked it second on its list of the 20 greatest games of the last 50 years. Morris had seen it three or four times before, but Jennifer — his wife of 10 years — had never watched it. Smoltz saw the broadcast at home one day in 2009, but after a few minutes, the power went out. “I thought, ‘Well, maybe it’s not meant to be,’ ” Smoltz said, laughing. The game that really haunts Smoltz, he said, was his 1-0 loss to the Yankees in Game 5 of the 1996 World Series, when the Braves lost their grip on a possible dynasty. Five years earlier, though, the Braves had just established themselves as the National League’s premier team, and Smoltz had thrown a complete game to clinch the division title and the pennant. It was the start of a career of October dominance. Smoltz pitched in 25 postseason series, with a 15-4 record and a 2.67 earned run average. It was a pretty strong imitation of his hero, Morris, whose postseason record after Game 7 stood at 7-1 with a 2.60 E.R.A. “For me, it’s not that I didn’t concentrate as much in the other games, I just wanted it that much more,” Smoltz said. “I wanted to be in that position. And it’s not an ego thing, per se — I don’t care if it’s Jeff Gordon, I’m driving. I mean, I know he’s a better driver, but I just trust myself and I’m not afraid to fail.” Morris, listening to Smoltz’s answer in an interview after the taping, nodded in agreement. Though Morris struggled the next October for Toronto — he was 37, and the workload of the previous two seasons was finally wearing him down — he is revered for his success at handling pressure. “Almost identical feeling to John,” he said. “It’s going to sound wrong, but I knew everybody was watching, and how much fun is that? I mean, I pitched games in Cleveland when there were 250 people in the stands — and 200 of them were related to somebody on the field and the rest were only there for the beer. So I remember those games, and to be on stage when the whole world is watching, if you don’t relish that, you’re in the wrong business.” Morris had experienced glory before, completing two victories in the 1984 World Series for his original team, the Detroit Tigers. Smoltz was 17 then, a high school senior in Michigan who idolized Morris. Facing him in the seventh game of the World Series felt oddly natural, Smoltz said, because he had practiced it for so long. “I literally would stand in front of a brick wall at my house — not a very big house — in Lansing, Mich., and I pitched game after game after game,” Smoltz said. “No one could catch me. I took a rubber ball and I imagined it. So when I was getting ready to go out there and do it, I was right where I wanted to be.” Smoltz did not lose the seventh game; he was lifted for a reliever, Mike Stanton, with two outs in the eighth inning. Disgusted, Smoltz flipped the ball to his manager, Bobby Cox, on the mound. A different reliever, Alejandro Pena, lost it in the 10th. Morris retired in 1994. He did not see Smoltz again until 2002, when the Braves visited Minnesota for an interleague series. Morris was eager to congratulate Smoltz on his career, but before he could say hello, Smoltz spotted him in a Metrodome hallway. He skipped any pleasantries and barked, “I’m still mad about that game!” The sixth game of the 1975 World Series, between Boston and Cincinnati, was judged the best of the last 50 years. It is special for its sudden twists and turns, ending with Carlton Fisk’s waving his home run fair and dancing down the first-base line at Fenway Park. Subtlety defines the Morris/Smoltz game. There were no errors, four double plays, just two unintentional walks. With no runs until the very end, the game was a purist’s delight, each of its 275 pitches carrying the possibility of a lead change in a winner-take-all showdown. The play people remember most came in the eighth inning, when Terry Pendleton doubled with Lonnie Smith on first base and no outs. Fans dwell on Smith’s failure to score. Morris remembers something else. “I don’t want to play editor,” he says in the studio, before the top of the eighth, “but I want you to play the pitch to Pendleton before the double.” Indeed, replays confirm that Pendleton should have struck out on a 1-2 pitch that was ruled a foul tip. Given new life, he lashed a deep drive to left-center, and the Twins’ middle infielders, Chuck Knoblauch and Greg Gagne, tried to trick Smith with a phantom double play. Smith did not fall for it — if he had, he would have slid into second — but he did lose track of the ball in the frenzied din of the dome. “When you don’t know where the ball is, do the safest thing,” Smoltz said. “Go station to station if you have to.” Morris had a reprieve, and he took advantage, retiring Ron Gant on a grounder to first. After an intentional walk, Sid Bream bounced to first for a 3-2-3 double play. The Braves never put another man on base, and the Twins won two innings later when pinch-hitter Gene Larkin singled to deep left field to bring home Dan Gladden. At his home in Grant, Minn., Morris has a photograph of the moment of victory. His teammates have converged around Gladden, leaping in the air together — all except Morris, whose feet stay planted on the ground, giving the illusion that he is lifting them all by himself. Off-screen at the studio, Jennifer Morris watches the celebration for the first time. She sees Morris hoist the Most Valuable Player trophy, the crowning honor of a proud career. But she does not know where the trophy is now. Morris is a grandfather now, and he and Jennifer have a 6-year-old son, Miles. Morris hears about Game 7 almost every day, and if it ever bothers him, being continually pulled into the past, he reminds himself that he would feel worse if people forgot. Even so, he said, he does not need the attention, just as he does not need a trophy to remember a performance for the ages. “He’s got it all up here,” Jennifer Morris says, tapping the side of her head. “He holds it in his heart.”

World Series
Minnesota Twins
Atlanta Braves
Morris Jack
Smoltz John
Baseball


Rejection of Draft Changes Gives Top Losers in N.B.A. a Victory

Abstract: By any objective measure, the Philadelphia 76ers were an awful team last season — and their immediate future does not look so bright, either. At least part of their poor play, though, has been by design, as General Manager Sam Hinkie tries to reshape the team by accumulating picks in the draft. It is no secret that the 76ers are tanking. That word has become an important one in the N.B.A., with momentum building among league executives for an overhaul of the way the draft lottery is conducted. But any changes will have to wait: The league’s board of governors on Wednesday concluded three days of meetings by voting down a measure aimed at changing the process. In the current lottery system, the worst team in the league has a 25 percent chance of securing the top pick in the draft and a guarantee that it will pick no lower than fourth. Image Commissioner Adam Silver with Andrew Wiggins, the No. 1 pick in this year’s draft. In the current lottery system, the worst team in the league has a 25 percent chance of securing the top pick in the draft. Credit Mike Stobe/Getty Images The revised lottery would have worsened those odds, with a goal of not overly rewarding teams for losing. Commissioner Adam Silver said he had no qualms with the way the current system worked. It helped bad teams rebuild, he said, without allowing the worst of the worst to collect all the top picks. The Cleveland Cavaliers, for example, won the most recent draft lottery despite having only the league’s ninth-worst record and a 1.7 percent chance of landing the top pick. At the same time, Silver acknowledged that he was concerned with the public perception of tanking. There could also be pressure on some teams, he said, to “somehow underperform because it’s, in some people’s view, the most efficient and quickest way to get better.” He added, “I think we all recognize that we need to find the right balance.” The measure won 17 of 30 votes, but a three-quarters majority — 23 votes — was needed for it to pass. Silver said the issue would be sent back to the league’s competition committee for additional study.

Adam Silver
Basketball
NBA
Sports Drafts and Recruits


Chinese Golfer Makes a Name for Herself on L.P.G.A. Tour

Abstract: HAVRE de GRACE, Md. — Shanshan Feng stared at a birdie putt on the 15th hole Thursday that seemed to grow longer as she stood over it. Playing in front of a large gallery at the L.P.G.A. Championship , Feng felt all alone. Her playing partner Michelle Wie , whom most of the fans came to see, had sunk a birdie putt herself, triggering a flight of spectators to the next hole. The other golfer in the threesome, Christina Kim, sensed Feng’s unease and interceded. “There’s one left,” Kim said, raising her arms like a crossing guard. “Stop moving, please.” Feng, the only golfer from China on the L.P.G.A. Tour, made the putt and continued her climb up the leader board. By day’s end she was in third place, with a five-under-par 67, three shots better than Wie. Nicole Castrale held the first-round lead with a 65, one stroke ahead of the rookie Anna Nordqvist. If not with her clubs, how else was Feng going to court attention? She does not have Wie’s willowy frame or withering drives. Feng is 5 feet 7 inches and moves more like a duck than a swan. And she is not as colorful as Kim in her speech or attire (but then, no one is). Being paired with Kim, who carded a two-over 74, is like going to the comedy club and having a golf game break out. An American of Korean descent, Kim is as likely to produce a one-liner as a one-putt. “She makes you relaxed,” Feng said, “because she’s very funny.” Kim, who agreed to wear a microphone during the round for the Golf Channel, was dressed in lime-green designer pants and a matching beret, and she drew her clubs from a metallic golf bag decorated with images of popsicles and ice cream cones. In her red T-shirt and black gauchos, Feng blended into the background. Then she made birdies at the par-4 fifth, par-3 seventh and par-5 eighth holes — two of the putts were less than five feet — and found herself on the leader board at three under. She dropped a shot on No. 13 when she two-putted from 15 feet, but rebounded with birdies on the next three holes. Feng’s shot of the day came at No. 16, where she chipped in from thick rough off the green. Feng will turn 20 in August, two months before Wie does. Feng was born in Guangzhou in 1989, five years after the first golf course was built in China, and was introduced to the game when she was 10. Feng said she was able to play only one round of golf a week, on Saturdays. During weekdays she attended school from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. before traveling to a practice range and spending a few hours hitting golf balls off a mat. When she was living in China, she said, the only time she read greens was during her Saturday rounds. She offered this piece of information by way of explaining why her ball striking is so beautiful and her putting so inconsistent. She came to the United States at 17, her passage paved by a Korean agent who discovered her during a tournament in China and funneled her to a coaching acquaintance, Gary Gilchrist , who once worked with Wie. Once she settled down in South Carolina, Feng’s golf and English improved rapidly. In 2007 she became the first golfer from mainland China to earn her L.P.G.A. Tour card when she made it through qualifying school. Last year Feng’s tournament attire included a shirt adorned with a map of mainland China. It was her idea of a fashion statement “because I’m the only one here.” “So I know if I do well, people will say the Chinese blah, blah, blah,” she said. “They don’t say Shanshan blah, blah, blah.” Feng writes a Chinese blog that she said is widely read. She receives a lot of feedback from her countrymen. “So I feel a little bit of pressure because I know they’re watching,” she said. Kim passed Feng while leaving the scorer’s trailer and paused. “Great play today,” she said. She wasn’t joking. Feng smiled. She thought of all the fans who came to watch Wie and instead saw her put on a show. “After this round I think more people know me,” she said. “Maybe they won’t leave before I’m finished putting next time.”

Golf
Wie Michelle
Feng Shanshan
Kim Christina


After Much Giving, a Caregiver Needs Help - Neediest Cases

Abstract: Disease seems to be stalking Norma Hedgepeth’s family. “I’m an emotional roller coaster,” she said one evening, wiping away tears as her husband and niece — who are both fighting cancer — looked on. The family of three is unusually tightknit, perhaps because they have all endured hardship. Kenneth Gresham, 52, Ms. Hedgepeth’s husband for the last decade, was raised in a series of group homes on Long Island after his mother abandoned him at age 5. For the last six years he has been battling lung cancer, which has spread to his brain. Though one brain tumor was surgically removed, another remains nestled in his frontal lobe. His cancer has left him partly deaf. Ms. Hedgepeth, 46, a floral designer at her father’s flower shop in East New York, Brooklyn, lost her older brother to an aneurysm 12 years ago. Shortly after that, her sister-in-law died of heart failure, leaving her niece, Tashelle Woods, an orphan. “They weren’t stable,” Ms. Hedgepeth said of Tashelle’s parents, who had left the task of raising their daughter to Ms. Hedgepeth’s mother long before they died. Tashelle barely remembers them. Raised in St. Albans, Queens, Tashelle, now 16, came to live with her aunt and uncle in their Crown Heights, Brooklyn, apartment three years ago, when her grandmother moved to Mississippi. A few months after she arrived, Tashelle received a diagnosis of cancer. “I noticed a lump right here,” Ms. Hedgepeth said, pointing to the right side of her niece’s neck. The tumor was removed, but cancerous cells remain. At the time of her diagnosis, Tashelle already had lymphedema, a chronic condition that causes the joints to swell with excess fluid. Then Ms. Hedgepeth became a patient, too, developing anemia and nearly hemorrhaging as a result of fibroid tumors in her uterus. “I thought I got over a lot of hills and mountains, and then I find out two months ago that I need surgery,” she said. But she has delayed it until February because, after taking time off to tend to her fragile family, she cannot afford to be out of work. Tashelle and Mr. Gresham receive a combined $1,200 in survivor and disability benefits a month, but Ms. Hedgepeth, who earns $8 an hour, is the sole breadwinner. “Christmas this year was just another day,” she said. “We had a tree. I put a Bible under it, though.” When Mr. Gresham went into a nursing home for six months last year for in-patient chemotherapy, most of his disability benefits went toward his treatment. Ms. Hedgepeth fell behind on the $1,300 monthly rent on their two-bedroom apartment. By June, she was $6,500 in arrears and summoned to housing court for eviction proceedings. To stay in the apartment, she applied for a grant from the city’s Human Resources Administration. The agency gave her $4,500 to help pay her back rent and referred her to Catholic Charities of Brooklyn and Queens, one of the seven agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, for the rest. “I was going on a wing and a prayer,” she said. “I went in there and fell apart.” Catholic Charities gave her $500 from the Neediest Cases Fund to pay her landlord, and she scraped together the remaining $1,500. Money continues to be tight, and Mr. Gresham’s condition is worsening. His legs hurt, he said, and he fears that the cancer has spread to his bones. “I’m pretty much prepared for it,” Ms. Hedgepeth said of her husband’s death. “Nothing is fair.” Tashelle’s health problems have not affected her academic career: an impressive grade-point average and a wealth of extracurricular activities earned her letters of interest from Hofstra University and Long Island University, among others. She wants to be a lawyer specializing in representing children, she said, a career choice inspired by an episode of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” “She’s an ‘S.V.U.’ nut,” Ms. Hedgepeth said. “These two ladies are my life,” Mr. Gresham rasped, his first comment in nearly an hour. “And that one there?” he said, pointing to his wife, “that’s my honey bun.”

Catholic Charities
New York Times Neediest Cases Fund
Philanthropy


Derek Jeter and Bud Selig, in Matching Tenures, Made M.L.B. Better

Abstract: MINNEAPOLIS — They came to their current positions 22 years ago, one as a member of the Yankees’ organization, the other as the baseball commissioner. Derek Jeter was drafted in June 1992, three months before Bud Selig rose to the top of the sport’s hierarchy. Now they are retiring, with just the final lines remaining for their weighty legacies. Selig’s will be more complicated, of course. It is Jeter, not Selig, who was celebrated this week at his final All-Star Game. The commissioner has been inconspicuous, sitting beside his friend Hank Aaron in a suite for Monday’s Home Run Derby and letting his top lieutenant, Rob Manfred, handle the on-field duties. Selig is perhaps best remembered here for the contraction threat in 2001, when Montreal and Minnesota seemed to be on the verge of elimination. The Expos eventually moved to Washington, while the Twins, after much wrangling, finally left the Metrodome for dazzling Target Field. This ballpark is a fitting a symbol of Selig’s tenure. Securing it was a thorny issue that took complicated maneuvering, with mistakes and hurt feelings along the way. But the end result is something better and more sustainable than what had gone before. Image Selig, left, presenting Jeter with the Most Valuable Player award after the Yankees defeated the Mets, four games to one, for the World Series title on Oct. 26, 2000. Credit Ezra Shaw/Getty Images “It was really painful; it was really difficult,” Selig said Tuesday. He was talking about his efforts to promote competitive balance, but really, it has all been a fight. Expanding the playoffs and interleague play were easy, compared to the fight for revenue sharing, the early battles with the union and the public humiliation of the steroid era. Reforming the game’s economy, Selig said, stands out most to him as the cornerstone of his legacy. Getting there, alas, took the cancellation of the 1994 World Series. He is also proud of baseball’s drug testing program, widely heralded as the toughest in professional sports. Again, though, it took the tainted feats of a generation before baseball got there. Ignore all the bad stuff in between, and the before-and-after images of the Selig era are striking. “I think the industry’s doing a lot better now, monetarily,” Jeter said. “I think attendance is higher than it’s ever been, salaries are higher than they’ve ever been, teams are making more money than they ever have, TV deals are bigger, there’s more exposure, there’s more parity when it comes to teams, there’s expanded playoffs. So the game has grown quite a bit since I first came into it, but I think it’s grown in a good way, and I think it will only continue to grow.” Attendance is not at an all-time high, but it is up roughly 5,000 fans per game from 1995, when Jeter made his major league debut and the sport was reeling from its longest work stoppage. Only one current player, in fact, had played in the majors before the August 1994 strike: Alex Rodriguez, who was driven from the game this season by Selig’s steroid cops. Rodriguez always wanted to be the symbol of Major League Baseball, but his greed and insecurity ruined that. It is Selig’s good fortune that despite all the goons who reigned in his tenure, in the end, it is Jeter who stands tallest. Highlights and Milestones: Derek Jeter The longtime Yankees shortstop is in his 20th and final season. His many milestones and career highlights are compiled here with related video, and articles and photos from the Times archive. “If you were sitting two decades ago and you said, ‘Boy, this is a guy that I want to be the face of baseball and be what this generation will remember,’ you couldn’t have written a script like this,” said Selig, who then compared Jeter to Aaron. “How lucky can this sport be to have the icon of this generation turn out to be Derek Jeter? It’s absolutely remarkable. “I told him this in front of his parents about five or seven years ago, and he had a great response. He said, ‘Boy, I sure fooled you, didn’t I?’ But if he fooled me, he fooled everybody else in the world. That’s how I feel about Derek Jeter. Makes it easy to be the commissioner of baseball.” Jeter has grown used to such praise, the same kind showered on Mariano Rivera at his final All-Star Game at Citi Field last summer. Jeter is part of the All-Star team, but also somewhat separate. He did not attend the derby Monday night, choosing family time over gawking at homers from sluggers he barely knows. Kyle Seager, a young All-Star who plays in Seattle, said that he had hoped to spend a little time with Jeter but that he was tough to find, with all the commotion around him. Brian Butterfield, a Boston coach who instructed Jeter in the minors, said he had been nervous even hitting grounders to his old protégé. Image Derek Jeter grinning after a throw to first base during Tuesday’s All-Star Game. Pittsburgh’s Andrew McCutchen was on second. Credit Elsa/Getty Images “I didn’t want to hit him one with backspin so it eats him up,” Butterfield said. “I was like, ‘C’mon, c’mon, center this baby, get a little topspin.’ ” Jeter said it was hard to dwell on his final moments, because the Yankees have another game to play on Friday. He allowed himself a bit of introspection when asked why people are so drawn to him. “I try to be respectful to everybody I deal with, especially the players I play with, the players I play against, the fans, the media,” Jeter said. “I know I don’t give you guys what you want a lot of times, but I still try to be respectful. But I don’t sit around and think, ‘Why does someone respect me in return?’ I’ve never thought about it.” Selig acknowledged that he thinks a lot about his legacy these days. He turns 80 on July 30. Recent innovations, like instant replay, are imperfect but improving. A few items will be left unresolved, like better ballparks for the Oakland Athletics and Tampa Bay Rays. “I’ve been fortunate in my career to solve most everything else that I tried to do, and I’m proud of that,” Selig said. “But there are some things in life that just take more time.” He leaves baseball in better shape than it was when he took over. Most of that came with great difficulty. Having Jeter as the sport’s frontman was the easy part.

Derek Jeter
Bud Selig
Yankees
Baseball
All-star game
MLB


Opening-Round 66 Leaves Tiger Woods Buoyed

Abstract: WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.Va. — The only other time Tiger Woods appeared in the Greenbrier Classic, he was coming off his third victory of the 2012 season and had not posted a score higher than 75 all year. He carded a 71 and a 69 on the par-70 Old White TPC course and did not make the cut. Woods returned this week with a head of steam too weak to move a ball off the tee, and opened with a 66 on Thursday. Go figure. It was his best first-round score in 22 months, and, at four-under, it equaled his lowest score relative to par this year. “I know people think I’m crazy for saying that, but I just felt like I wasn’t that far away,” said Woods, who dismissed the notion that he had proved anything to anybody with the good start. All that mattered to him was that he was four strokes behind the pacesetter, Scott Langley. “Forget you guys and everybody else out there,” Woods said, laughing. “It’s about winning golf tournaments and putting myself up there consistently.” Woods, whose most recent victory on the PGA Tour was in August 2013, hit six of seven fairways on his first nine, and strung together three birdies to end his round. The birdie binge followed a double bogey on the par-4 sixth, the particulars of which have become par for Woods’s season. After he drove into the left rough, Woods caromed his second shot off a tree branch and into a bunker. He bladed his next shot, missed the green with a flop shot, chipped to 5 feet and made the putt to fall to one under. On the next hole, as he walked to the patch of rough where his drive had landed, Woods said he told his caddie, Joe LaCava, that he was hitting the ball too well to be only one under on a course made pincushion soft by rain. “I was telling Joey that I felt like I was playing so well, I’m not going to lose this round,” Woods said. As if to prove his point, Woods cut his approach around a tree to inside 4 feet and made the putt. “That was a good one,” he said, adding, “Overall, I can’t really say I hit any great shots, but I hit a lot of good ones.” Woods, 39, found 10 fairways and 14 greens and took 25 putts. He was one of the few people who saw this kind of score on the horizon in May, when he was struggling to an 85 in the third round of the Memorial Tournament, or two weeks ago, when he opened with an 80 at the United States Open on his way to missing the cut in a major he has won three times. “My feels were telling me that I wasn’t that far off,” Woods said. “I was proving it to myself time and time again away from a tournament site and on the range, but my feel in my hands and my body weren’t far off. It was just a matter of just getting into a little bit of the rhythm and the flow of it, and I found that.” That Woods is relying on his feel and trusting the feedback he gets from his hands and his body instead of relying on numbers spit out of a computer tracking his swing is good news to those who remember when his focus was solely on getting around a course in as few strokes as possible. Back in Woods’s native California, Rudy Duran, who was Woods’s first coach, said, “Tiger was a genius at scoring when he was 5 years old, and he still is.” Speaking by telephone, Duran added, “When Tiger was a kid we mostly played golf and did things that helped him play better. Very little was swing-related.” Duran, who coached Woods until he was 10 but has not been in contact with him recently, caught snippets of the U.S. Open telecast, including a few of Woods’s shots in his rounds of 80 and 76. “I don’t believe he’s lost,” Duran said during the Open. “I can see what he’s struggling with. I still totally believe once he gets it sorted out, he’ll start playing great again.” On Thursday, the fans who flocked to the rain-soaked Greenbrier resort to follow Woods saw rays of hope break through the clouds that have hung over Woods on the golf course for the better part of a year. After Woods made his first birdie, on the par-5 12th, one fan yelled, “Looking good today, champ.” After Woods’s third birdie, on the 16th, another fan shouted, “He’s back.” Since May 2014, Woods has toppled from No. 1 in the world to No. 220. His 219-spot plummet in about 400 days has caused widespread analysis of his game and his mental state. Woods said he had paid attention to none of it. “I know what I am doing out here on the golf course,” he said Wednesday. “I know what it feels like. I know where my game is and what progressions I have or haven’t made.” After Thursday’s round, Woods saw more signs he is moving in the right direction. “It was a pretty good day,” he said.

Tiger Woods
Greenbrier Classic
Scott Langley
Golf


A Replica of an 18th-Century Organ Rings Clear and True

Abstract: ROCHESTER — The ceremonial pipe organ of the 18th century was the Formula One racer of its time, a masterpiece of human ingenuity so elegant in its outward appearance that a casual observer could only guess at the complexity that lay within. Each organ was designed to fit its intended space, ranging in size from local churches where townspeople could worship to vast cathedrals fit for royalty. The builders were precision craftsmen celebrated for their skill in hand-making thousands of moving parts and in shaping and tuning metal and wooden pipes to mimic the sounds of each instrument in an orchestra. The effect was breathtaking. “Each instrument speaks to you in a different way,” said Hans Davidsson, a concert organist, sitting before the console of the organ at the cavernous Christ Church, Episcopal, in Rochester. Dr. Davidsson began to play the Bach hymn “Gottes Sohn Ist Kommen” (“The Son of God Has Come”), and an enormous, bell-clear sound exploded from the gleaming pipes that soared above him. The organ, the Craighead-Saunders, is a unique instrument, not only because of its lovely sound, but also because it is a nearly exact copy of a late Baroque organ built by Adam Gottlob Casparini of East Prussia in 1776. The original stands in the Holy Ghost Church in Vilnius, Lithuania. There is no other contemporary organ quite like the one at Christ Church. Modern instruments take advantage of technologies that have given organ-makers generations of new tools and materials, like air compressors, composites and the electric circuit. But before all that, the builders did it another way. Air for the pipes of the Christ Church organ comes from huge leather bellows pumped by an assistant on a wooden treadle behind the keyboard. Stops, keys and foot pedals use an ingenious system of rigid oak and limewood strips, called “trackers,” connected at right angles to hand-forged iron joints. The organ has neither wire nor pulleys. The metal pipes are made of lead and tin, hand-rolled around wooden templates and soldered. Most of the wooden pipes are made of pine. High-register pipes are small and narrow, some the size of a pencil. Low-register pipes approach the diameter of storm drains. The congregation sees perhaps 100 pipes from its vantage point in the pews. The rest — the Christ Church organ has more than 2,200 in all — are tucked out of sight behind the console. The project to build a replica of the Vilnius organ began in 2000 at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, but Eastman had long wanted a new instrument for Christ Church. David Higgs, a concert organist and head of the Eastman organ department, had been seeking one for years. In 1998, Mr. Higgs met Dr. Davidsson, the founder of the Goteborg Organ Art Center in Sweden. The center specializes in reconstructing historic organs and in making sure that restored instruments sounded the way the builders intended and that they properly played the music that was written for them. Reconstruction is not easy. The technique for building large Baroque pipe organs had matured by the 17th century, but progress since then has put new tools in builders’ hands. Entirely new schools of organ-building, performance, composition and taste evolved. These days, organs are tuned differently. Many are bigger, more robust and designed to play different kinds of music. Older organs needed to keep up with the times, so they were modified, sometimes so radically that their original tone could no longer be discerned. In the 1960s and ’70s, a movement arose to recover a technology that was fast disappearing. Builders began to make new “old” instruments that could play Baroque music as it had originally sounded, “but they didn’t do it very successfully,” said Craig R. Whitney, the author of “All the Stops,” a history of pipe organs in the United States and an amateur organist. Mr. Whitney was the standards editor for The New York Times when he retired this fall. “They had some of the sounds” Mr. Whitney said, “but they weren’t exact replicas.” The old instruments did not fare well in this environment, either. “Most of the preserved organs in Western Europe have been ‘restored,’ ” said Munetaka Yokota, an organ builder for Goteborg. “But frequently the restoration is not faithful. You make choices: wood, iron or plastic; plywood or solid wood. You change the design and the construction process. It looks old, but it’s not, and the sound is much different.” In 2000, Dr. Davidsson joined the Eastman faculty, and he and Mr. Higgs decided to expand the school’s organ collection. They formed a partnership with Goteborg and enlisted expertise from several noted American organ builders. The team wanted to make a replica of an organ from the high Baroque, preferably one that Bach himself had played. The instrument would be named after the Eastman organ teachers David Craighead, now retired, and Russell Saunders, who died in 1992, and whose family left the school $500,000 to begin the project at Christ Church. In all, the replica would cost $3 million. “But such an organ didn’t exist,” Dr. Davidsson said. The instrument they built would have to fit into the west end of Christ Church. The organ they copied would also have to be in virtually pristine condition so the team could understand how it looked when it was brand-new. None of the Bach-era organs they examined matched the specifications. Then they thought of the Vilnius organ. It had been built 26 years after Bach died, but Casparini had worked as a journeyman on at least one organ that Bach had tested, and could have known him. More important, the Vilnius organ, although it was modified during the 19th century, had never been restored and had seldom been repaired, and it was easy to see exactly how the original was built. In the 20th century, its custodians, led by Rimantas Gucas, a Lithuanian organ-builder, shut it down and mothballed it so the Communist government would not tamper with it. They measured the organ, and when the replica was finally installed, it was perfect for Christ Church — 25 feet across and 24 feet tall, stopping just short of the rose window at the church’s west end. From the altar, sunshine appears to burst from the organ’s central pinnacle. “It was meant to be,” Dr. Davidsson said. The Goteborg Center formed a collaboration with the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture and Mr. Gucas to support Lithuania’s efforts to restore the Vilnius organ and make a replica as part of the project. “I was very skeptical at first,” said the Japanese-born Mr. Yokota, now a resident of Sweden. “But I changed when I inspected the pipes. I couldn’t believe they were in such good condition.” Mr. Yokota emphasized the need to understand the organ’s “proportions” — the relationship between the size and shape of the instrument and its components. This is what gives an organ its unique character. The team began by measuring everything in the Vilnius organ, including the cabinets and the smallest hand-wrought iron fixtures and nails. Team members made drawings of every fixture, every join, every pipe and every surface. The data were printed out and put together in enormous manuals the size of telephone books. Then they were analyzed. The team removed the pipes to study the metal composition and to test the acoustics. The Vilnius organ was not playable, so the team could not hear what it sounded like. In fact, the meticulous preparations were necessary partly because the replica was to provide guidance in restoring the original. It took four years to make the parts in Goteborg. Meanwhile, in Rochester, specialty cabinet-makers were building a new organ balcony for Christ Church, using lumber salvaged from a 19th-century South Carolina factory. Digital scans enabled the team to reproduce the carvings of the Vilnius cabinet, including the statue of King David above the console. German specialists painted the exterior wood surfaces with 18th-century-style gesso. The organ arrived in Rochester in 2007 and took a year to assemble. Behind the soaring facade, the interior is roomy and airy like a three-story, walk-in pine closet. Pipes of all sizes leap toward the rafters, but virtually all the moving parts — stop throttles, key action, air valves and trackers — are made of wood and driven mechanically by the power of human hands and feet. The organ made its debut in October 2008, with four days of lectures, workshops and concerts. Today it is used for Mass, choral accompaniment and as a teaching instrument for Eastman students — the only opportunity they have in the United States to play an organ that is, in all respects, a Bach-era instrument. “There’s a lot to understand,” Dr. Davidsson said, depressing keys and pulling stops for emphasis. “It’s low-tech and simple,” he said, adding that the action of the keys and stops “gives you noise all the time — a kind of clackety-clack.” “A lot of organists don’t like this,” he went on, “but you mess around with it and you corrupt the instrument right away.” But if you play it right, added Stephen Kennedy, the musical director at Christ Church, it will do you proud. “It’s fabulous for hymn-singing, and the lighter sounds have incredible vitality,” Mr. Kennedy said. “It screams with joy.”

Churches
Christ Church
Organs (Musical)
Musical Instruments
Science and Technology


Replica Tyson Tattoo in New Movie Draws Artist’s Lawsuit

Abstract: Hollywood is accustomed to lawsuits over salaries, movie credits, even half-baked concepts that become movies. And now a studio may be going to court over a tattoo — or at least over the original concept of the tattoo. In “The Hangover Part II,” the sequel to the very successful what-happened-last-night comedy, the character played by Ed Helms wakes up with a permanent tattoo bracketing his left eye. The Maori-inspired design is instantly recognizable as the one sported by the boxer Mike Tyson , which is part of the joke. (Mr. Tyson makes an appearance in both films, playing himself.) But S. Victor Whitmill, a tattoo artist formerly of Las Vegas and currently from rural Missouri , doesn’t quite see the humor. Mr. Whitmill designed the tattoo for Mr. Tyson, called it “tribal tattoo,” and claims it as a copyrighted work. He has gone to Federal District Court in St. Louis to ask a judge to stop Warner Brothers Entertainment from using the tattoo in its posters or in the movie, which would amount to stopping the film from being released, as well as to demand monetary damages for what he calls “reckless copyright infringement” by the studio. “Mr. Whitmill has never been asked for permission for, and has never consented to, the use, reproduction or creation of a derivative work based on his original tattoo,” argues the lawsuit , which was filed April 28, and will be taken up next week. The suit isn’t frivolous, however, legal experts say. They contend the case could offer the first rulings on tricky questions about how far the rights of the copyright holder extend in creations that are, after all, on someone else’s body. They are questions likely to crop up more often as it becomes more common for actors or athletes to have tattoos and as tattoo designs become more sophisticated. Warner Brothers responded on Friday in a brief to Judge Catherine D. Perry, stating that any delay in releasing the film would have huge economic costs. It also argued that there was no legal precedent for Mr. Whitmill’s assertion of copyright, saying he had put forward a “radical claim that he is entitled, under the Copyright Act, to control the use of a tattoo that he created on the face of another human being.” Copyright and trademark law can be hard to understand intuitively — for example, the idea that you can “own” a photograph or a letter, but not own the right to reproduce its content. The example of a tattoo, where “ownership” means having it become part of your body, actually does little to clear up the matter. The wrinkle in the “ Hangover ” lawsuit is that Mr. Whitmill has taken pains to leave Mr. Tyson out of it. “This case is not about Mike Tyson, Mike Tyson’s likeness, or Mike Tyson’s right to use or control his identity,” the complaint says. “This case is about Warner Bros. appropriation of Mr. Whitmill’s art and Warner Bros. unauthorized use of that art, separate and apart from Mr. Tyson.” “One of the things that the copyright law gives you as an artist is control over your work — and he lost control here,” said Michael A. Kahn, the lawyer who is representing Mr. Whitmill. The complaint includes a photograph of the tattoo being inked and a statement from Mr. Tyson agreeing that “all artwork, sketches and drawings related to my tattoo and any photographs of my tattoo are property” of Mr. Whitmill’s business. If a tattoo clearly violates copyright — say, exactly reproduces a Keith Haring drawing or an Annie Leibovitz photograph without permission — could a court order it removed? The case gets more serious, according to Christopher A. Harkins, an expert on copyright and patents who has written the definitive law review article on the subject, when someone tries to profit from the copying — by, for instance, selling photographs of the infringing tattoos. “I don’t see a court forcing someone to remove it, or wear a burqa , but they may not allow me to profit from that work that I had tattooed on my body,” he said, adding that it would be very unlikely that this action could delay “The Hangover Part II” from being released. The range of material that individuals and businesses are seeking to get copyright protection for has only been expanding, often at the insistence of movie studios. Mattel has gone to court to assert the copyright of the face of its Barbie doll; fashion companies have been lobbying Congress to pass a law to protect unique, nontrivial new designs. And trademark, which is governed by different laws and is much more contextual, has been used by athletes and coaches to get a measure of control over terms like “three-peat” or “Revis Island.” In 2005, Rasheed Wallace and Nike were sued by a tattoo artist, Matthew Reed, over a commercial that outlined a tattoo as he discussed why he had it created; the case was settled. David Beckham and his favorite tattooist, Louis Molloy, had a public dispute that year over his plan to highlight them in an advertisement. The feud culminated in an interview with Mr. Molloy in The Daily Mirror that ran under the headline “I Own Beck’s Tattoo .. and I’ll Sue.” “It is such a nascent area,” Mr. Harkins said, “and courts are always struggling to keep up with technology. I don’t think Rasheed Wallace ever thought about copyright infringement.” Warner Brothers in its brief also invoked the “fair use” defense for “Hangover Part II,” namely the right to parody what has become a well-known tattoo since it first appeared on Mr. Tyson’s face in February 2003. “That’s the real question: the copyright act balances the copyright owners’ rights and not stifling the creativity of the owners — it would stifle creativity to not be able to make a parody,” Mr. Harkins said. Issues like how central the tattoo is to the plot, how much of the film it is in and whether it is shown in a non-parody context were the kind of factors a judge would consider when determining if “fair use” was in play, he said. With so many factors in play, and the motivator of ever-rising legal fees, Mr. Harkins said, “it will be settled out of court, as most of them are.” Mr. Whitmill declined to be interviewed, but Mr. Reed, the tattooist who sued Rasheed Wallace and Nike, spoke from his shop in Portland , Ore. While he would not comment on his case directly, he explained that one could think of the process as a collaboration between the tattooer and the tattooed, “owned by both people, based on the trust that is used to create it.” “It’s there for everyone to enjoy,” Mr. Reed added, “but if you think you are going to make money from it, you should get the artist’s permission.”

Tattoo
Movies
Lawsuit
Mike Tyson
Copyrights
Warner Bros
S Victor Whitmill


American Doctors Held in Zimbabwe

Abstract: JOHANNESBURG — Five Americans — two doctors, two nurses and an organizer — who carried donated AIDS drugs to Zimbabwe for distribution to the poor were arrested Thursday and remained jailed in Harare on Saturday on a charge of dispensing the medicine without the supervision of a pharmacist or proper licenses, their lawyer said. The Americans, who are being held in smelly, poorly ventilated cells at Harare Central police station, were to have appeared in court on Saturday for a bail hearing, but the police said they had not finished the paperwork, said the lawyer, Jonathan Samukange. The Americans are expected to appear before a magistrate on Monday. A Zimbabwean doctor working with them was also arrested on related charges. The state-run newspaper, The Herald, on Saturday quoted a spokesman for the criminal investigations department, Detective Inspector Augustin Zimbili, confirming the arrests and the charges. The Americans belong to the Allen Temple Baptist Church AIDS Ministry in Oakland, Calif. The church serves a predominantly African-American congregation. Three or four times a year since 2000, members have paid their own way to Zimbabwe to give antiretroviral medicine, vitamins, clothing and food baskets to impoverished people with AIDS. The epidemic is severe throughout Zimbabwe and the country’s broken health system fails to treat most people in need. On this trip, the team had brought a four-month supply of antiretroviral drugs for about 800 people with AIDS, some of them orphaned children, in Harare and Mutoko, a rural district. Arnold Perkins, the retired public health director in Alameda County, Calif., said in a telephone interview from California that he had made the trip six times and saw skeletal AIDS patients restored to health by the medicine. The arrest of the team there “breaks my heart,” he said. “If this work stops, it’s a human tragedy,” he said. “People will die. That’s a fact.” But the police spokesman defended the arrests. “It is our duty to ensure that all clinics and medical institutions are registered for easy monitoring,” The Herald quoted Detective Inspector Zimbili as saying. “There is a risk of dispensation of expired drugs. When premises are not licensed, it is difficult to check if the act is being complied with.” The lawyer for the Americans, Mr. Samukange, denied the charges. He said the doctors who dispensed the medicine, Dr. Andrew Reid, an American resident of Zimbabwe, and Dr. Tembinhosi Ncomanzi, a Zimbabwean, were licensed to practice there. In addition to the two doctors, according to the Oakland ministry, the others in custody include two nurses, David Greenberg and Gregory Miller, and the head of the AIDS ministry, Gloria Cox-Crowell. “They’re all in good spirits,” Mr. Samukange said. Kenric Bailey, a member of the AIDS ministry, said a soured relationship with a Zimbabwe charity was at the root of the arrests. “It’s very unsettling,” said Mr. Bailey, who has paid his way to Zimbabwe eight times. Mr. Samukange said he expected that the American medical team would be released on bail on Monday and subjected at most to a fine.

Zimbabwe
Medicine and Health
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome
Drugs (Pharmaceuticals)


Alberto Contador Wraps Up Giro d’Italia

Abstract: Alberto Contador clinched his second Giro d’Italia title and then turned his attention to becoming the first cyclist since 1998 to win the race and the Tour de France in the same year. Contador, who had all but secured the win after Saturday’s 20th stage, headed into the final day — a mainly processional stage — with an advantage of more than two minutes on Fabio Aru, his closest rival. Contador ended up winning by 1 minute 53 seconds.


Giving City Children Their Sea Legs

Abstract: With the sails flapping briskly above them, the crew of five young sailors looked out over the Hudson River with the nonchalance of seasoned mariners. Emanuel Portes, 10, was in charge. “Is everybody ready to tack?” he asked during the roughly two-hour voyage off Chelsea. The response was affirmative. He counted down — 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 — then jerked the tiller sideways to change the boat’s direction. The 24-foot vessel spun until it completed an unexpected 360-degree turn. He strengthened his grip on the tiller and blushed, saying, “Oops.” Emanuel and his crew had hit the water for the first time a few days earlier as skeptics. Sailing required too much know-how, they thought, and besides, it seemed to be a sport meant for rich people on vacation rather than children from Washington Heights on their summer break. But through a program run by a nonprofit group called Hudson River Community Sailing, the youngsters got a crash course in boating last week, and picked up a few lessons about teamwork on the side. Bill Bahen, founder and director of the group, started the summer sailing program this year in the hope of increasing accessibility to a sport central to his own life. The son of avid sailors, Mr. Bahen grew up on the waters off the Maryland coast, a place where he said “those who had access to sailing were a different demographic.” He modeled his group after successful community sailing programs in other cities. “We want them to know they can do something that is outside of their comfort zone and gain a little more confidence in themselves,” Mr. Bahen said of the young sailors. “It’s a way to enlighten them.” Mr. Bahen secured space at Pier 66 from the Hudson River Park Trust and began with a fleet of three donated sailboats. The group held a fund-raiser last month and is relying on individual donations for most of its financing. Mr. Bahen worked with community organizations to find first-time sailors. This summer, about 250 children will spend a week or so on the Hudson as part of the eight-week program. And beginning this fall, the group will run an after-school program that will use the lessons of sailing to teach math and physics to public school students. On Wednesday, the fierce wind augured a good day on the water, but Emanuel and his crew, all of whom participate in Fresh Youth Initiatives, a community service program in Washington Heights, had not yet mastered their boat. They ranged in age from 10 to 16, and some were barely tall enough to reach the delicate ropes hanging overhead. It was their third outing of the week, and though they were accompanied by an instructor, they still felt unsure about some of the intricacies of navigating the Hudson by sail. Still, things seemed easier this time. They had memorized the sailing terms as they would the alphabet: bow, halyard, starboard, stern. And hoisting the sails and rigging the jib sheets had become second nature. After the voyage, the children reflected on their water skills over peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Sholanlly Ferreira, 16, said she was skeptical when she first thought about going sailing. She said she did not consider herself a “water girl” since she did not know how to swim and had only paddled on water a few times before. But by the end of the first day, she was eager to get on the water again and improve her skill in spotting oncoming boats. “You need your team to work together,” she said. “You can’t do this by yourself, even if you learn everything.” Theovany Portes, 13, compared the teamwork required for sailing to the anatomy of an octopus. “We had one brain and lots of tentacles,” he said, “and everyone was doing their own thing.” Theovany said he was scared when ripples caused by big barges caused the boat to seesaw. Before he looked at a sailboat up close for the first time, he said, he thought they were driven like cars, with wheels and gearshifts. “It’s something new, something I had never heard about,” he said. “I feel a little bit more alive.” Jonathan Toribio, 12, said the program taught him discipline and not to be afraid of deep water. “The river is calm; I love to get away from the city,” he said, and counted the number of jellyfish he had seen that day. “Once it gets to the sea, though, I don’t like it. I’m not too friendly with sharks.”

Hudson River
Hudson River Community Sailing
Sailboats and Sailing
Washington Heights (NYC)


2 Die, Including Gunman, in Shooting at Washington State High School

Abstract: MARYSVILLE, Wash. — The students and teachers at Marysville-Pilchuck High School knew a shooting was possible — they had seen the news from other schools, and they had trained for lockdowns. But when the alarms started ringing at the school about 35 miles north of Seattle just after 10:39 a.m. Friday, many still thought it was a drill. Some instinctively rushed into the halls, before teachers and staff members said this one was real, and they bolted back inside, blocking the doors, lying on the floor, and texting one another for information. Some heard the gunshots, and some saw the bloodshed. A young classmate had opened fire in the cafeteria, killing a girl and striking two boys and two other girls in the head before turning his gun on himself and committing suicide. The students hit by gunfire were seriously injured. Hundreds of students were trapped in classrooms for nearly three hours, as law enforcement officers combed through the sprawling campus, making sure there were no other gunmen, then methodically allowing the uninjured students to leave for a nearby church to reunite with their parents. Family members appearing on local television confirmed the accounts of students who said that the assailant was a 14-year-old freshman, Jaylen Fryberg, who played football and had been elected a homecoming prince. But the local police commander, Robb Lamoureux, would not give the gunman’s name, identify what type of weapon he used or specify a motive. He would say only that the gunman had “died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound”; an official with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said the gun had been legally acquired. Rick Iverson, a former Marysville-Pilchuck English teacher and wrestling coach, said that among the victims was a close friend of Jaylen. He described Jaylen as “an outgoing person that everyone in the school loved.” Dr. Joanne Roberts, chief medical officer at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, where the four injured students were first taken, said that the wounded students suffered “very serious wounds” and were “critically ill.” The boys, ages 14 and 15, were transferred to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle; one had been shot in the jaw, and the other in the head, she said. The girls, she said, had undergone surgery at Providence for gunshot wounds to the head. As uninjured students were being evacuated, police officers swept the building to ensure there was no longer an active threat. Students were directed to the nearby Shoultes Gospel Hall to be reunited with their families. The police said they had asked about 30 students and staff members who witnessed the shooting to remain at the school for questioning. Josh Iukes, a 14-year-old student, said he saw the shooting from inside the cafeteria. “It seemed like a normal day — he was blank, he wasn’t really saying anything, and then he stood up, pulled something out of his pocket, and shot,” he said. He said the targets were classmates sitting with Jaylen, who were all his friends. “I saw the first shot, and then I didn’t really pay attention. I just ran out.” He said students had a hard time fleeing in the frenzy. Image Students were evacuated from Marysville-Pilchuck High School in Washington State and put into school buses after a fatal shooting on Friday. Credit Ian Terry/The Herald, via Associated Press “There’s three exits,” he said. “Every single one was just packed. Everyone was just pushing their way, trying to get out of the cafeteria.” Erick Cervantes, a 16-year-old junior, said he saw a cafeteria worker grab the arm of the gunman as the episode was unfolding, heard another shot and saw the gunman fall to the ground, though he was not sure what had happened. “She just came running in through the door,” he said, describing the intervention by the cafeteria worker. “I’m just shocked. I just want to go home and forget what happened,” he said. Kylie Clark, a 14-year-old ninth grader, said she was in a computer class when the alarm went off. “Then I heard that people were getting hurt, and it got worse,” she said, standing outside the church near the school waiting for her parents to pick her up on Friday afternoon. During the lockdown, she said, she and two dozen other students in her classroom could hear yelling outside, but were told to stay silent, with the lights off. “It was dark and everybody had to be really quiet,” she said. “It was scary.” No motive was apparent, but Josh, who said he had known Jaylen since preschool, noticed a change in his behavior recently. “He was one of our class clowns,” he said. “He was really funny. Then for the last couple days, he wasn’t like that.” Dr. Roberts said, ruefully, that because of school shootings elsewhere around the country, the hospital had been prepared; just two months ago, it had rehearsed for a school shooting. So on Friday morning, hospital officials knew what to do; they sent out the alert for a traumatic event, summoning two dozen physicians and scores of staff members. “We had dreaded this day in this community,” Dr. Roberts said. “As horrible as this situation is, it is a situation we were really prepared for,” she said. The day ended with candles and with Red Cross volunteers walking the aisles of the Grove Church in Marysville with boxes of tissues. The church’s lead pastor, Nik Baumgart, called for a minute of silence during an evening service that was packed with parents, students and elected officials, including Gov. Jay Inslee. But the silence only amplified the sound of sniffling and crying. Many of the hundreds in attendance wore red and white, the school colors. A band onstage strummed quietly as Pastor Baumgart continued. “What do you do after this?” he asked. He referred to Friday’s events and their aftermath as “this season of our city,” and added: “I don’t know, but I think it has something to do with loving one another.”

Washington
Marysville
Marysville-Pilchuck High School
School shooting
Jaylen Ray Fryberg
Murders


Nancy Pelosi Makes Room for Obama

Abstract: WASHINGTON — When the 111th Congress convenes Tuesday, Representative Nancy Pelosi will return to her post as House speaker but in an entirely new role. For the last two years, Ms. Pelosi, 68, of California, has been the driving force behind the Democratic Party ’s ambitions, using her firm grip on the House to set the agenda. Now she finds herself about to become facilitator in chief, working with her Senate counterpart, Harry Reid of Nevada, to advance the ideals of the nation’s new No. 1 Democrat: Barack Obama . Ms. Pelosi said she was more than willing to make room at the top, saying she was overjoyed to be working with a fellow Democrat in the Oval Office after two years of butting heads with President Bush on everything from the war in Iraq to children’s health care to overall spending. “It is for me thrilling to be speaker with a Democrat in the White House. This is what we have worked for for such a long time,” Ms. Pelosi said in an interview. “I feel in a stronger position now. For me, my responsibility as speaker is enormously enhanced by a president whose vision I respect and whose agenda I will help stamp.” Yet even some Pelosi allies predict the coming months could be an adjustment for a speaker who has relished being in command. “She has been queen of her castle for quite a while now and the face of the Democratic Party, and I think she is going to want to continue to be at least the co-face as much as possible,” said one longtime senior Congressional official who did not want to be identified talking about the speaker’s outlook. But those close to Ms. Pelosi say she recognizes that the events of the coming months will be crucial in shaping her own legacy as a political leader, giving her a powerful incentive to work hand in hand with the new administration to address the nation’s mounting economic problems and the unsettled international situation. Putting together a string of accomplishments would cement her position as a pivotal Congressional figure, the first woman to be speaker, joining forces with the first black president at a time of national crisis. “The prestige of someone like Sam Rayburn was really enhanced by the fact that he was able to work with Democratic presidents,” said Ross K. Baker, a Congressional expert at Rutgers University, speaking of the Texan who was House speaker for 17 years. “She is an institutionalist. I think she will defend the prerogatives of the House. But I think she understands that with a Democratic president, the initiative comes from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.” And success can only translate into political benefits for the majority she helped build through years of constant fund-raising and campaigning. “She understands strategically that if we do well, they will do well,” said Rahm Emanuel, the former member of the House Democratic leadership who will be the next White House chief of staff. The Pelosi-Emanuel nexus looms large. The two built a very close relationship as they mapped the Democratic takeover of the House in 2006, and Ms. Pelosi has looked to Mr. Emanuel for counsel over the last four years. But they both have strong personalities and will have to sort through their new roles and responsibilities in the months ahead. As for Mr. Obama, Ms. Pelosi considers herself a fervent admirer even though she remained studiously neutral in his primary battle with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. But while she played referee, Ms. Pelosi also took stances at moments that were viewed as beneficial to Mr. Obama, and she sees their cooperation as crucial. “Few Congresses and few presidents have had the daunting responsibilities that this Congress and president have,” she said. “It is essential that we work together to get as much bipartisan support as possible in our policies as we go forward.” Aides and advisers say Ms. Pelosi is more than willing to follow Mr. Obama’s lead and has already demonstrated a willingness to defer to him even on an issue of high import to her. While Ms. Pelosi has said she would prefer a quick legislative repeal of the Bush administration’s restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, she indicated that she would go along if Mr. Obama chooses to act more quickly through executive order. Yet tensions with the White House — even a White House run by one’s own party — are inevitable as situations arise where the administration and members of Congress have conflicting priorities. Congressional Democrats and President Bill Clinton struggled at times during the two years that Democrats controlled Congress in the Clinton years. Even President Bush and Congressional Republicans clashed despite the willingness of those on Capitol Hill to give way regularly to the administration. It is doubtful that Democrats will go as far as Republicans did. “We are an independent branch of government,” Ms. Pelosi said, pointing out that members of Congress have their own views of how to contend with many issues. “The fact is that we have many ideas that will need the signature of the president.” While she shared leadership responsibilities last session with Mr. Reid, Ms. Pelosi was often the more prominent party voice given Mr. Reid’s affinity for the background and the fact that House rules gave her much more leverage in advancing legislation. Though she and Mr. Reid worked well together, the inability of Senate Democrats to overcome Republican filibusters on House-passed legislation caused some friction between the two chambers. A larger Senate majority should allow Democrats to clear more procedural hurdles this session, easing some of the House frustration. But Ms. Pelosi’s main frustration was clearly with Mr. Bush. Though the two had a cordial personal relationship, their political and policy goals could hardly have been more different, resulting in two years marked by deep differences over the war in Iraq, economic matters and domestic policy. She said she was not sure how she would have responded had Mr. Obama lost. “This administration has failed on so many scores that it was absolutely essential that this take place,” she said about the Obama victory and his impending presidency. “It is in the interest of every American that he succeed, and that includes the speaker of the House.”

Democratic Party
Pelosi Nancy
Obama Barack
House of Representatives
United States Politics and Government


Dave Checketts Is on Way Back to New York

Abstract: For the past decade, Dave Checketts ’s sports interests have taken him out of New York, where he had been the president of Madison Square Garden for seven years and the president of the Knicks for three. Since then, he formed a company, SCP Worldwide, that acquired stakes in the St. Louis Blues and bought the M.L.S. team Real Salt Lake. He has tried to buy the Los Angeles Dodgers (they were sold to Frank McCourt) and the St. Louis Rams (they went to Stan Kroenke), and is now selling the Blues. On Wednesday, Checketts’s corporate path brought him back to New York sports. He was named chairman and chief executive of Legends Hospitality Management, the food service and premium ticketing marketing company formed in 2008 by the Yankees, the Dallas Cowboys and Goldman Sachs. He said he was not certain he wanted to run Legends if it stuck mainly to being a food and beverage concessions company. Two of its clients are, naturally, Yankee and Cowboys Stadiums. “But the Jones and Steinbrenner families all have an expansive view of what Legends can be,” he said, which is to turn Legends into a sports, entertainment and media company. “That appeals to all of the entrepreneurial forces I have.” And, he added: “I’m not an employee. I’m a partner.” Checketts said that he and the investors who backed him in his unsuccessful Rams bid — including, for a time, Rush Limbaugh — had formed the Checketts Partners Investment Fund, which has raised $50 million with a goal of reaching $250 million. Part of that money went to acquire a significant minority share of Legends that had been owned by CIC Partners, a private equity firm. Checketts said that Legends’ revenue last year exceeded $200 million. He said that he envisioned developing Legends into a company that would design and manage the construction of stadiums, market their club seats and luxury boxes, and operate their concessions. He was not specific about the media businesses. “But we have interesting ideas, and I have a lot of friends in that business,” he said. “And I have Goldman’s financial muscle and two great partners in the Yankees and the Cowboys.”

Madison Square Garden
Hospitality Management
Checketts Dave
New York Knicks


In E-Mail Age, Postal Service Struggles to Avoid a Default

Abstract: The United States Postal Service has long lived on the financial edge, but it has never been as close to the precipice as it is today: the agency is so low on cash that it will not be able to make a $5.5 billion payment due this month and may have to shut down entirely this winter unless Congress takes emergency action to stabilize its finances. “Our situation is extremely serious,” the postmaster general, Patrick R. Donahoe, said in an interview. “If Congress doesn’t act, we will default.” In recent weeks, Mr. Donahoe has been pushing a series of painful cost-cutting measures to erase the agency’s deficit, which will reach $9.2 billion this fiscal year. They include eliminating Saturday mail delivery, closing up to 3,700 postal locations and laying off 120,000 workers — nearly one-fifth of the agency’s work force — despite a no-layoffs clause in the unions’ contracts. The post office’s problems stem from one hard reality: it is being squeezed on both revenue and costs. As any computer user knows, the Internet revolution has led to people and businesses sending far less conventional mail. At the same time, decades of contractual promises made to unionized workers, including no-layoff clauses, are increasing the post office’s costs. Labor represents 80 percent of the agency’s expenses, compared with 53 percent at United Parcel Service and 32 percent at FedEx , its two biggest private competitors. Postal workers also receive more generous health benefits than most other federal employees. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on the agency’s predicament on Tuesday. So far, feuding Democrats and Republicans in Congress, still smarting from the brawl over the federal debt ceiling , have failed to agree on any solutions. It doesn’t help that many of the options for saving the postal service are politically unpalatable. “The situation is dire,” said Thomas R. Carper , the Delaware Democrat who is chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees the postal service. “If we do nothing, if we don’t react in a smart, appropriate way, the postal service could literally close later this year. That’s not the kind of development we need to inject into a weak, uneven economic recovery.” Missing the $5.5 billion payment due on Sept. 30, intended to finance retirees’ future health care, won’t cause immediate disaster. But sometime early next year, the agency will run out of money to pay its employees and gas up its trucks, officials warn, forcing it to stop delivering the roughly three billion pieces of mail it handles weekly. The causes of the crisis are well known and immensely difficult to overcome. Mail volume has plummeted with the rise of e-mail, electronic bill-paying and a Web that makes everything from fashion catalogs to news instantly available. The system will handle an estimated 167 billion pieces of mail this fiscal year, down 22 percent from five years ago. It’s difficult to imagine that trend reversing, and pessimistic projections suggest that volume could plunge to 118 billion pieces by 2020. The law also prevents the post office from raising postage fees faster than inflation. Meanwhile, the agency has had a tough time cutting its costs to match the revenue drop, with a history of labor contracts offering good health and pension benefits, underused post offices, and laws that restrict its ability to make basic business decisions, like reducing the frequency of deliveries. Congress is considering numerous emergency proposals — most notably, allowing the post office to recover billions of dollars that management says it overpaid to its employees’ pension funds. That fix would help the agency get through the short-term crisis, but would delay the day of reckoning on bigger issues. Postal service officials say one reason for their high costs is that they are legally required to provide universal service, making deliveries to 150 million addresses nationwide each week. They add that a major factor for the post office’s $20 billion in losses over the past four years is a 2006 law requiring the postal service to pay an average of $5.5 billion annually for 10 years to finance retiree health costs for the next 75 years. But the agency’s leaders acknowledge that they must find a way to increase revenue, something that will prove far harder than simply slicing costs. In some countries, post offices double as banks or sell insurance or cellphones. In the United States , the postal service is barred from entering many areas. Still, the agency is considering ideas, like gaining the right to deliver wine and beer, allowing commercial advertisements on postal trucks and in post offices, doing more “last-mile” deliveries for FedEx and U.P.S. and offering special hand-delivery services for correspondence and transactions for which e-mail is not considered secure enough. Mr. Donahoe’s hope is to cut $20 billion of the $75 billion in annual costs by 2015. To do that, he wants to close many post offices and slash the number of sorting facilities to 200 from 500 and trim the agency’s work force by 220,000 people, from its current 653,000. (A decade ago, the agency employed nearly 900,000.) The postal service has the legal authority to close facilities, although community opposition can make the process difficult. To placate critics and cut costs, officials say they would seek to run some postal operations out of stores like Wal-Mart or to share space with other government offices. Cutting the work force is more difficult. The agency’s labor contracts have long guaranteed no layoffs to the vast majority of its workers, and management agreed to a new no layoff-clause in a major union contract last May. But now, faced with what postal officials call “the equivalent of Chapter 11 bankruptcy,” the agency is asking Congress to enact legislation that would overturn the job protections and let it lay off 120,000 workers in addition to trimming 100,000 jobs through attrition. The postal service is also asking Congress for permission to end Saturday delivery. Given the vast range of stakeholders, getting consensus on a rescue plan will be difficult. Senator Susan Collins of Maine , like many lawmakers from rural states, vigorously opposes ending Saturday delivery, which would trim only 2 percent from the agency’s budget. Ms. Collins, the ranking Republican on the committee overseeing the postal service, said the cutback would be tough on people in small towns who receive prescriptions and newspapers by mail. “The postmaster general has focused on several approaches that I believe will be counterproductive,” she said. “They risk producing a death spiral where the postal service reduces service and drives away more customers.” The post office’s powerful unions are angry and alarmed about the planned layoffs. “We’re going to fight this and we’re going to fight it hard,” said Cliff Guffey, president of the American Postal Workers Union, which represents 207,000 mail sorters and post office clerks. “It’s illegal for them to abrogate our contract.” Senators Carper and Collins do back several of the postal service’s main ideas to avoid default, including recovering around $60 billion that some actuaries say the agency has overpaid into two pension funds. Although the Obama administration is working closely with the senators to find a solution, it has signaled discomfort with the pension proposals, questioning whether the postal service really overpaid. Meanwhile, Representative Darrell Issa , the California Republican who is chairman of the House Oversight Committee, says the pension proposals would amount to an unjustifiable bailout that would not solve the agency’s underlying problems. He is pushing a bill that would create an emergency oversight board that could order huge cost-cutting and void the postal service’s contracts — a proposal that not just the unions, but Senators Carper and Collins oppose. Fredric V. Rolando, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, warned of disaster if partisanship keeps Congress from acting. “This is about one of America’s oldest institutions,” he said. “It survived the telegraph, it survived the telephone, and we have to do everything we can to preserve it and adapt.”

Mail
Layoffs
Susan Collins
Postal Service US
US Politics
Thomas R Carper


New Web Site Aims to Be Facebook for Sports Fans

Abstract: David Katz is heading into a Web site battle against Internet sports powerhouses like the ones run by ESPN, Yahoo , Fox Sports, Major League Baseball and AOL. At least he knows the enemy. By the time Mr. Katz left Yahoo at the end of 2006 as the head of sports, entertainment and studios, he had guided its sports site into a rivalry with espn.com that still has them trading the monthly lead in unique visitors in their category. Mr. Katz, 36, believes that his Web site, sportsfanlive.com , which will be formally released this week, will find a substantial following with his versions of customized content, social networking and fantasy games. He believes his competitors have grown overly stodgy and too congested for fans to wade through. “Those other sites are fundamentally all the same,” he said, calling them “imbued with traditional media DNA.” He added that they are “not built for the next generation and for the evolving needs of sports fans.” Having spent six months mapping out his plan in his Hollywood Hills home, he speaks about the challenge with a confidence that borders on audacity. Central to Mr. Katz’s site are features that flow naturally into one another to create a community that he said would quickly turn viral. And rather than connect to existing social networking sites to jump-start his distribution, Mr. Katz says SportsFanLive will become its own Facebook . Users will be able to customize the site (like MyESPN or MyYahoo) according to the teams and players they love and hate and will receive a flood of regularly updated news aggregated from 4,500 sources — not the hundreds he said his competitors provided. “Our secret sauce is aggregation,“ Mr. Katz said. “Google is good for a general search but not at understanding the specific needs of specific people like sports fans.“ Users can easily route articles to like-minded friends on the site through the FanFeed feature. They can also alert buddies to the sports bars they are congregating in to cheer on their teams with the FanFinder application — a ZIP code- and map-based function that is a snappy, visual updating of forums on rivals.com, a Yahoo subsidiary. “Facebook and other social network sites do a good job of connecting you to people all over your life, but it’s not relevant to your sports interests,“ he said. “We’re isolating that subset of sports friends and giving you instant communication with them.“ He chose not to offer traditional fantasy games, wagering either on fantasy fatigue or in luring fans who lack the time to tend to season-long fantasy games. Instead, he created a feature in which SportsFanLive’s users can challenge each other by posting or accepting wagers — sort of an online, user-generated casino sports book — that will let them earn (or lose) BuxBets, the site’s version of funny money. “Fans like to test their wits about anything they think they know best,“ he said, in a format that lets them “compete on any topic they want, against anyone at any time.“ Jeff Price, the president for digital of the Sports Illustrated Group, said, “David understands what sports fans want, but can he sustain traffic and engagement? Sports fans will vote with their mouse.” SI.com chose to build its fantasy platform on Facebook, Mr. Price said, “and it’s been interesting to see people embrace our bringing the games to them.“ Bobby Tulsiani, an analyst for Jupiter Research, said that if Mr. Katz succeeded, he would be mimicking other new Web entrants that have challenged leaders in existing categories. But in researching a recent report on Internet sports users, he said, “We didn’t find evidence that sports fans are angry with the current online sports space or have a pain point that makes them want to switch.“ Still, Mr. Katz is not reticent about predicting his success. The project, he said, was “self-funded” for a time before he approached individual investors, whom he declined to name. Samsung has signed on as an early sponsor. He also said fans would experience an aha moment when they use SportsFanLive, likening it to the early adoption of DVR’s. “It was impossible to describe it before you used it,“ he said. “But once someone has it in their house, they said, ‘I can’t live without this thing.’ ”

ESPN
sportsfanlive.com
Computers and the Internet
Athletics and Sports
Social Networking (Internet)
Facebook.com
Yahoo Inc
Katz David


Another Goldman Executive Is Said to Be Going to Trump Administration

Abstract: Dina H. Powell, who runs many of Goldman Sachs’s philanthropic initiatives, will soon leave the company for a new role as adviser in the Trump White House, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. Ms. Powell, a former State Department official and White House aide during the George W. Bush administration, has been in close dialogue with Ivanka Trump, the daughter of President-elect Donald J. Trump, about the presidential transition in recent weeks, according to one of the people familiar with the matter and to previously published reports. Although Ms. Trump has a been a crucial contact for Ms. Powell, this person added, Ms. Powell’s formal role is likely to be that of adviser to the president himself. Ms. Trump does not immediately plan to take a role in the White House. However, according to a person briefed on the new role, Ms. Powell will work closely with both Ms. Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, who will be a senior adviser to the president. Ms. Powell has worked with Ms. Trump in recent weeks on developing policy proposals related to women’s economic empowerment, the person briefed on the new role said. Messages left at Ms. Powell’s New York office Wednesday morning were not immediately returned, and a Goldman Sachs spokesman could not comment on the details of her anticipated departure. A spokeswoman for the president-elect did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The expected hiring of Ms. Powell, 42, by the incoming administration is the latest indication of the president-elect’s affinity for alumni of Goldman Sachs. Mr. Trump’s nominee for Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, is a former Goldman trader, and his appointee to run the National Economic Council, Gary D. Cohn, was Goldman’s longtime president and chief operating officer. Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, the media baron Stephen K. Bannon, was once an investment banker at the Wall Street firm. Ms. Powell is the daughter of an Egyptian army captain and grew up in Texas after moving to the United States as a child. She is said to be close with Mr. Cohn. She also has a range of relationships on both sides of the political aisle, having worked as a congressional staff member roughly two decades ago, when Mike Pence, the vice president-elect, was a member of the House. She is close to Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state, from her years working in the White House under George W. Bush. Goldman veterans have a long history of performing public service after leaving the company, a trend that has sparked the nickname “Government Sachs.” Henry M. Paulson Jr., who was chairman and chief executive of Goldman for eight years until 2006, served as Treasury secretary from 2006 to 2009, handling the onset of the financial crisis. His onetime co-chief executive, Jon S. Corzine, was a senator and, later, the governor of New Jersey. Robert E. Rubin, who also once served as a co-chairman of Goldman, ran the National Economic Council when it was established by the Clinton administration in 1993; he was named Treasury secretary two years later. Other Goldman alumni, the vast majority of them men, have gone on to play important roles in the Federal Reserve bank system, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the European Central Bank, among other places. Relations between the incoming Trump administration and Goldman, however, have not been entirely smooth. Early in September, the company banned its partners from donating money to the Trump campaign, citing concerns about pay-to-play rules. (Those rules could have prevented Goldman from doing business with the State of Indiana, where Mr. Trump’s running mate, Mr. Pence, was the sitting governor.) Then, shortly before the election, the Trump campaign ran a television ad that featured Goldman’s chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, in a negative light. Ms. Powell spent a decade at Goldman and was named a partner there in 2010. She played crucial roles in Goldman’s corporate philanthropic efforts , including helping to establish 10,000 Women, a program that works with female entrepreneurs around the world.

Ivanka Trump
Dina Powell
Appointments and Executive Changes
Donald Trump
US Politics
Banking and Finance
Goldman Sachs Group