From one big-box store to another. As you might remember, Circuit City collapsed pretty spectacularly earlier this year – perhaps the biggest non-financial entity to fall apart due to the credit crisis. But they did have their hands in the financial cookie jar a little bit with store credit cards. Rather than let the cards just die, Best Buy will accept them starting in May. Not good, not bad, just ambivalent. source
Who needs presses when you’re on the forefront of technology? The Guardian, one of the best papers in the U.K. – hell, the world – is going to try a great experiment, starting today. They’re going Twitter-only. Among the new technologies they’re launching include “Gutter,” a collaboration with Twitter that will filter out all notable liberal opinion. We wish them the best. Also, in other news, our rent would be due today if we lived in London. source
It’s the kind of daunting task that calls for a great national project. Nationalizing the first automaker to go would give us a lab for that project, and save American manufacturing to boot.
Non Vivant Blogger John Zwick • Suggesting the idea of a nationally-reworked car company; Zwick suggests that the it would allow the country to move towards cleaner, greener cars and into a more modern approach to an industry famous for bloat. We’re sure some might claim it’s socialism or *gasp* communism, but that’s why this article is clearly marked as opinion, so you jerks can’t claim we’re the ones saying it. As it is, Zwick is making a reasoned argument. • source
The papers – The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News – will stop delivering to homes most days of the week and will become a product that focuses mainly on box sales and online content. source
They’re two of many papers to make a change like this lately, but this one at least seems to be an effort to keep the products alive – the entire editorial staff for both papers is staying put for now. source
We think we can have a successful U.S. auto industry. But it’s got to be one that’s realistically designed to weather this storm and to emerge — at the other end — much more lean, mean and competitive than it currently is.
President Barack Obama • On Face the Nation yesterday morning; the president and his administration feel that the automakers (particularly Chrysler, who seems to have given up hope for anything but a merger) are not doing enough to aggressively restructure their companies in the face of impending doom. • source