Posts Tagged ‘The New York Times’

First Woman to head the NYTimes

June 2, 2011 | by | filed under: , , , ,

Decades after Katharine Graham led The Washington Post amid the old boy’s club of the newspaper world, Jill Abramson becomes the first woman to helm the Grey Lady in its 160-year history.

http://tinyurl.com/5vptg6u


Cars and the NYTimes

September 27, 2010 | by | filed under: , , ,

Ok, so maybe cars and Tom Friedman and Henry Ford 2nd.

Sunday’s Times featured an excellent column by Friedman. I know I’m constantly referencing him, but the guy’s won three Pulitzers. Anyway, his latest has to do with electric cars, as in banking on them. And who does he quote? Shai Agassi of Better Place and Kevin Czinger of Coda Automotive. Both companies I’m proud to say were represented on the panel of the Washington Auto Show’s Green Car Summit on electrification in the auto industry. Here’s a shot of the panelists in the beautiful Caucus Room of the Cannon House Office Building last year.

The man speaking is Scott Becker, Sr. Vice President, Administration & Finance of Nissan North America Inc. To the right of Becker is Kevin Czinger, CEO of Coda Automotive. All the way to the right is Jason Wolf, VP of Better Place.

Here’s the column: http://tinyurl.com/283ju4v

Meanwhile, the Times also had an interesting section devoted to celebrating the 40th anniversary of the op/ed page. For the occasion, the paper highlighted some remarkable comments over the years, including this very prescient quote by Henry Ford 2nd more than 30 years ago. Enjoy:

Op-Ed Contributor

Nov. 28, 1973: Life With Cars

By HENRY FORD 2
Published: September 25, 2010

The trouble with cars, to adapt the old saying, is that you can’t live with them or without them. We in Detroit are told that we produce an extravagant luxury that can no longer be tolerated. We are admonished, on the other hand, not to push up the price of one of life’s necessities.
 

Even before the Arab oil embargo, policymakers and editorial writers were concluding that one part of the solution to the energy crisis, the environmental crisis and the urban crisis is to build mass transit with highway funds and to persuade drivers to walk, ride bicycles or take a train. 

New car sales in the United States, on the other hand, have increased by more than a million a year during the past two model years. Nearly one-third of all American families now own at least two cars, and 95 percent of all urban traveling is done by car. 

Cars and mass transit are both here to stay, but neither one is the best possible answer to the important travel needs of today’s cities. For all its flexibility, the car is not the most efficient way to get to or move around in very busy places. For all its efficiency in carrying large numbers of people along busy corridors, mass transit is not flexible enough. 

What we need are new kinds of vehicles and systems designed to carry people quickly, conveniently and efficiently where neither cars nor conventional transit can do the job as well. As these new systems are developed and built, cars will become more useful than ever because they will be used where they work best. 

HENRY FORD 2nd was the chairman of Ford Motor Company from 1945 to 1980. He died in 1987. 

The preceding was excerpted and adapted from a previously published Op-Ed article, for inclusion in a 40th-anniversary issue.