HERTZ News

-- From Times staff reporter Christine Clarridge:

An irate 49-year-old woman was arrested for investigation of assault last week after she punched a man in the groin and threatened to cut off the genitals of a police officer and bartender when the latter refused to give her a "to-go" cup.

According to a Seattle police report, the woman was drinking in a bar on Second Avenue on March 2 when she purchased a beer and tried to pour it into a plastic cup to take with her. The woman claimed she was from Miami, where she ordered "to-go drinks all the time,"

The bartender told her that wasn't allowed in Seattle. He returned the money for the beer and asked the woman to leave several times, the report says.

The woman refused until she was finally escorted outside by an employee of the bar.

Once outside, the woman allegedly punched the man in the groin and said, "I'm going to wait until you are off work and I will cut off your (genitals) and kill you."

When another man walked out of the bar to hand the woman her purse, she grabbed his genitals and said, "You are lucky you are not dead." She then slapped his face, according to the police report.

When police arrived the woman threatened them as well, the report alleges. She was promptly arrested.

According to the arresting officer's report, while the woman was being driven to the police precinct she called him a "Nazi Hitler lover" and promised she would "cut off my (penis), put it in a stew and feed it to me, before she killed me."

As part of the Federal Trade Commission’s ongoing hearings into the future of journalism, Google’s chief economist Hal Varian gave a presentation on newspapers and their financial problems that is well worth taking some time to read (or view). The slide deck is embedded below, and Martin Langeveld has a great overview at the Nieman Journalism Lab that also includes a transcript of Varian’s presentation. The Google economist (who also wrote a blog post) does a pretty thorough job of explaining the untenable position that newspapers currently find themselves in, and how it isn’t the Internet’s fault (in other words, it isn’t Google’s fault).

The biggest problem, Varian says, is that the news part of what newspapers do — the hard reporting and crime and investigative stuff that everyone thinks of when they say the word “journalism” — has traditionally been subsidized by all the rest of what newspapers do, such as the automotive section, the travel section, the lifestyle features and so on (which almost no one thinks of when they say the word “journalism”). Those other parts of the paper, unfortunately, are being targeted by subject-specific web sites and services, leaving the news part of the operation unprotected.

Traditionally, the ad revenue from these special sections has been used to cross-subsidize the core news production. Nowadays internet users go directly to websites like Edmunds, Orbitz, Epicurious, and Amazon to look for products and services in specialized areas. Not surprisingly, advertisers follow those eyeballs, which makes the traditional cross-subsidization model that newspapers have used far more difficult.

Although it’s admittedly a bit presumptuous to expect Varian to come up with solutions to this problem, he’s a little light on the solutions front, mentioning Google’s “FastFlip” experiment as one possible answer, as well as Living Stories and a couple of other Google projects. But one part of his presentation really hit home with me, and that was when he talked about the amount of time people spend with the news online. On average, he said, they spend about 70 seconds a day. Varian says part of the reason for that is people reading online at work, where they have less time to spend with the news.

That could well be part of the problem, but I think Varian puts his finger on something important towards the end of his presentation, when he says that newspapers “need more engagement.” One of the reasons why the news in general fails to hold people’s attention for very long, and why newspapers have fairly pathetic “time spent” statistics compared to lots of of other web sites, is that it does little or nothing to engage the reader. The delivery of most news stories is a bare-bones “here are the facts” approach, with little or no interactivity or room for external input. Why would anyone stick around?

030910 Hal Varian FTC Preso

Even when there are tools that are designed for interactivity, such as reader comments on news stories, they are typically ignored by the majority of newspaper writers (with the exception of some bloggers) and therefore become a kind of interactivity ghetto, a haven only for the disturbed and/or the disgruntled attention-seeker. All this despite the fact that research shows readers spend more time with news stories that have comments, and also return to those pages more often.

As Varian notes in his presentation, newspapers also spend comparatively little time looking at what brings people to their pages, what they are searching for and reading and recommending and commenting upon, all of which provides incredibly detailed and useful audience information. It’s like a retailer not paying attention to what his or her customers are buying, or how much they pay, or what they say about a product – but instead, just putting on the shelves whatever he or she wants to sell.

Can newspapers change these aspects of the culture and take advantage of the web? If they can’t, then not even Google will be able to help them.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user MarcelGermain

We anticipate a massive turn-out for the Target's collaboration with Liberty London (hitting stores Sunday), and die-hards can get first dibs on the goods at a pop-up today. Details after the jump.

Whenever I meet someone who finds out that I work on the directions team for Google Maps, the first question I'm asked is often "So when's Google Maps going to add biking directions?" We're big biking fans too, so we've been itching to give you a concrete answer. I don't want to keep the good news a secret any longer, so the answer is: right now!

Today we've added biking directions and extensive bike trail data to Google Maps for the U.S. My team has been keeping close tabs on all the public support for biking directions that’s been steadily coming in, but we knew that when we added the feature, we wanted to do it right: we wanted to include as much bike trail data as possible, provide efficient routes, allow riders to customize their trip, make use of bike lanes, calculate rider-friendly routes that avoid big hills and customize the look of the map for cycling to encourage folks to hop on their bikes. So that's exactly what we've done.

Let's say you want to bike to work, or maybe you want to drive less and spend more time outdoors. Biking directions can help you find a convenient and efficient route that makes use of dedicated bike trails or lanes and avoids hills whenever possible. To find biking directions, select "Bicycling" from the drop-down menu when you do a directions search:


So, how does it work? Well, I'm based in Seattle, along with the rest of the biking directions team. The city is notoriously hilly, but also has some great trails and a strong cycling community. Let's say I'm trying to get from Golden Gardens to a friend's house in Montlake:


This route avoids hills (phew!) and puts me on the Burke-Gilman trail for most of the journey. When I need to get off the trail to cross town, biking directions makes sure to keep me on bike-friendly roads and avoid some of the city's busiest intersections. The time estimate for the route is based on a complex set of variables accounting for the type of road, terrain and turns over the course of my ride. If I decide that I want to stop at Woodland Park Zoo along the way, I can click on the blue path and drag it to my desired route — just like with driving directions — and we'll still customize the journey for cycling suitability. Over on the Lat Long Blog, you can read more about all the unique tweaks and calculations factored into our routing algorithm.

We've also added information about bike trails, lanes and recommended roads directly onto the map. This can help you get a better sense of your route, or let you find trails nearby for a recreational ride. When you're zoomed into a city, click on the "More" button at the top of the map to turn on the "Bicycling” layer. You'll see three types of lines appear on the map:

• Dark green indicates a dedicated bike-only trail;
• Light green indicates a dedicated bike lane along a road;
• Dashed green indicates roads that are designated as preferred for bicycling, but without dedicated lanes

Thanks primarily to our partnership with the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, we now have more than 12,000 miles of trails included in biking directions and outlined directly on the map. We also have data on bike lanes and recommended streets for 150 cities across the country. We'll continue to add new trail information and encourage riders to send feedback (biking directions is in beta, after all) and route information for inclusion via the “Report a Problem” tool. When Map Maker is available in the U.S., all riders will be able to directly contribute their local knowledge about trails, bike lanes and suggested routes.

We know that many of you have been anxiously awaiting this feature, so head over to http://maps.google.com/biking to try it for yourself and then hop on your bike!

Posted by Shannon Guymon, Product Manager

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