Sad to say, this project has turned out to be mostly low-level findings about factual errors and spelling and grammar mistakes, combined with lots of head-scratching puzzlement about what in the world those readers really want.
But the sources of distrust go way deeper. Most journalists learn to see the world through a set of standard templates (patterns) into which they plug each day's events. In other words, there is a conventional story line in the newsroom culture that provides a backbone and a ready-made narrative structure for otherwise confusing news.
There exists a social and cultural disconnect between journalists and their readers, which helps explain why the "standard templates" of the newsroom seem alien to many readers. In a recent survey, questionnaires were sent to reporters in five middle-sized cities around the country, plus one large metropolitan area. Then residents in these communities were phoned at random and asked the same questions.
Replies show that compared with other Americans, journalists are more likely to live in upscale neighborhoods, have maids, own Mercedeses, and trade stocks, and they're less likely to go to church, do volunteer work, or put down roots in a community, Reporters tend to be part of a broadly defined social and cultural elite, so their work tends to reflect the conventional values of this elite. The astonishing distrust of the news media isn't rooted in inaccuracy or poor reportorial skills but in the daily clash of world views between reporters and their readers.
This is an explosive situation for any industry, particularly a declining one. Here is a troubled business that keeps hiring employees whose attitudes vastly annoy the customers. Then it sponsors lots of symposiums and a credibility project dedicated to wondering why customers are annoyed and fleeing in large numbers. But it never seems to get around to noticing the cultural and class biases that so many former buyers are complaining about. If it did, it would open up its diversity pro-gram, now focused narrowly on race and gender, and look for reporters who differ broadly by outlook, values, education, and class.
What is the passage mainly about?
A. Needs of the readers all over the world.
B. Causes of the public disappointment about newspapers.
C. Origins of the declining newspaper industry.
D. Aims of a journalism credibility project.
The world is going through the biggest wave of mergers and acquisitions ever witnessed. The process sweeps from hyperactive America to Europe and reaches the emerging countries with unsurpassed might. Many in these countries are looking at this process and worrying:" Won't the wave of business concentration turn into an uncontrollable anti-competitive force?"
There's no question that the big are getting bigger and more powered. Multinational corporations accounted for less than 20% of international trade in 1982. Today the figure is more than 25% and growing rapidly. International affiliates ac count for a fast-growing segment of production in economies that open up and welcome foreign investment. In Argentina, for instance, after the reforms of the early 1990s, multinationals went from 43% to almost 70% of the industrial production of the 200 largest firms. This phenomenon has created serious concerns over the role of smaller economic firms, of national businessmen and over the ultimate stability of the world economy.
I believe that the most important forces behind the massive M&A wave are the same that underlie the globalization process: falling transportation and communication costs, lower trade and investment barriers and enlarged markets that re quire enlarged operations capable of meeting customer's demands. All these are beneficial, not detrimental, to consumers. As productivity grows, the world's wealth increases.
Examples of benefits or costs of the current concentration wave are scanty. Yet it is hard to imagine that the merger of a few oil firms today could re-create the same threats to competition that were feared nearly a century ago in the U.S., when the Standard Oil trust was broken up. The mergers of telecom companies, such as WorldCom, hardly seem to bring higher prices for consumers or a reduction in the pace of technical progress. On the contrary, the price of communications is coming down fast. In cars, too, concentration is increasing—witness Daimler and Chrysler, Renault and Nissan—but it does not appear that consumers are being hurt.
Yet the fact remains that the merger movement must be watched. A few weeks ago, Alan Greenspan warned against the megamergers in the banking industry. Who is going to supervise, regulate and operate as lender of last resort with the gigantic banks that are being created? Won't multinationals shift production from one place to another when a nation gets too strict about infringements to fair competition? And should one country, take upon itself the role of "defending competition" on issues that affect many other nations, as in the U.S. vs. Microsoft case?
What is the typical trend of businesses today?
A. To take in more foreign funds,
B. To invest more abroad.
C. To combine and become bigger.
D. To trade with more countries.
Curiously, some two-and-a-half years and two novels later, my experiment in what the Americans term "down shifting" has turned my tired excuse into an absolute reality. I have been transformed from a passionate advocate of the philosophy of "having it all", preached by Linda Kelsey for the past seven years in the page of She magazine, into a woman who is happy to settle for a bit of everything.
I have discovered, as perhaps Kelsey will after her much-publicized resignation from the editorship of She after a build-up of stress, that abandoning the doctrine of "juggling your life", and making the alternative move into "downshifting" brings with it far greater rewards than financial success and social status. Nothing could persuade me to return to the kind of life Kelsey used to advocate and I once enjoyed: 12-hour working days, pressured deadlines, the fearful strain of office politics and the limitations of being a parent on "quality time".
In America, the move away from juggling to a simpler, less materialistic lifestyle. is a well-established trend. Down shifting—also known in America as "voluntary simplicity"—has, ironically, even bred a new area of what might be termed anti-consumerism. There are a number of best-selling downshifting serf-help books for people who want to simplify their lives; there are newsletters, such as The Tightwad Gazette, that give hundreds of thousands of Americans useful tips on anything from recycling their cling-film to making their own soap; there are even support groups for those who want to achieve the mid-'90s equivalent of dropping out.
While in America the trend started as a reaction to the economic decline—after the mass redundancies caused by downsizing in the late '80s—and is still linked to the politics of thrift, in Britain, at least among the middle-class down shifter of my acquaintance, we have different reasons for seeking to simplify our lives.
For the women of my generation who were urged to keep juggling through the '80s, downshifting in the mid-90s is not so much a search for the mythical good life—growing your own organic vegetables, and risking turning into one—as a personal recognition of your limitations.
Which of the following is true according to Paragraph 1?
A. Full-time employment is a new international trend.
B. The writer was compelled by circumstances to leave her job.
C. A lateral move means stepping out of full-time employment.
D. The writer was only too eager to spend more time with her family.
The future of this company is ______: many of its talented employees are flowing into more
A. at odds
B. in trouble
C. in vain
D. at stake