BY KAREN HELLER OF THE INQUIRER As president and chief executive officer of [WHYY, Bill] Marrazzo makes a very for-profit salary, $430,786 and an additional $56,250 in benefits during fiscal year 2006. For those of you playing at home, the president of the United States makes $400,000. There’s a solution to such obscene salaries and perks, highly profitable payments for heads of nonprofits: Stop giving. WHYY is a wonderful radio station, thanks largely to Terry Gross and the Fresh Air staff, and Marty Moss-Coane and Radio Times, plus national news from NPR. The television station is another matter entirely, stuffed […]

The rapid growth of online advertising is expected to see the sector overtake U.S. newspaper advertising in terms of size by 2011. The forecast comes against a backdrop of declining advertising sales reported by newspaper groups this year in spite of continued strength in the U.S. economy. The findings are from a widely-watched annual research report on the media sector by Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS). In the 2007 study, published on Tuesday, VSS forecasts that online advertising will grow by more than 21 per cent per year to reach $62bn in 2011, making it bigger than newspaper advertising, which is […]

INSTANT KARMA: Michael Vick Chew Toy “Is your hunger for Michael Vick merchandise gnawing at you now that the NFL and Nike have pulled all things related to the Falcons’ quarterback from the shelves? In the wake of Vick’s federal indictment on dog-fighting charges, www.vickdogchewtoy.com is offering the ultimate opportunity for Fluffy to get his revenge. According to the Web site, the Vick Dog Chew Toy — at $10.99 plus $2 shipping — will be available for delivery starting Tuesday — but get yours while you can. The toy likely infringes on rights to use Vick’s name and image, as […]

“Intel found itself in hot water Tuesday when several leading blogs highlighted a Core 2 Duo print ad [PICTURED, ABOVE] the chipmaker admitted was ‘insensitive and insulting.’ The ad, featuring a standing Caucasian man in casual business attire surrounded by six crouching African-American sprinters in a tableau many commenters found racially offensive, was pulled by Intel before publication in North America in all but one entry, a Dell catalog, said an Intel spokesperson. In a statement released Tuesday, Intel admitted that the ad was a mistake.” CRN: Intel — It’s A Khaki Thing, You Wouldn’t Understand

Very shagadelic, baby.

HARRISBURG – Pennsylvania’s transportation secretary suddenly promised today to release bridge safety scores on all of the state’s 25,000 bridges — some of which his agency had refused to make public for months. Transportation Secretary Allen Biehler said there had been debate within his department over whether releasing such scores would create undue public alarm. PennDot had denied two requests by the Beaver County Times to review rankings of bridges deemed structurally deficient. But today, Biehler said that in reconsidering the matter, “we will err on the side of providing the information.” He did not set a date for the […]

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ACCU WEATHER: Intense heat and excessive humidity have pushed into the Northeast today while storms make their way into the Great Lakes from the Plains states.The uncomfortably hot humid conditions will spread across the majority of the East, with the only exception being northern New England. Temperatures across much of the Northeast will climb into the upper 90s or above 100, while the humidity will push RealFeel temperatures even higher. The heat could pose a health danger, especially for the elderly and chronically ill. The Severe Weather Center lists excessive heat warnings that have been issued through Wednesday for the mid-Atlantic […]

Before the Minneapolis bridge collapse, Penndot had a long list of bridges that it had been keeping tabs on. And crews on Monday were rechecking the I-95 bridge over Castor Avenue. Penndot’s assistant district executive for design, Chuck Davies — also a former area bridge engineer — says they check bridges like this every two years: “We have bridges that do have certain vulnerabilities from that era.” While the bridge over Castor Avenue was not listed as “structurally deficient,” it is programmed for replacement. But that won’t start until around 2011.”It’s not exactly like the one in Minneapolis but it […]

“Congressional Democrats redefine spinelessness with the new FISA law.” SLATE: BY PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE In an editorial last year, the New York Times likened the Bush administration’s efforts to retroactively make its warrantless wiretapping program legal, to a person caught speeding who persuades the legislature to raise the speed limit. The new surveillance bill President Bush signed into law Sunday takes this analogy to its logical extreme: Where government surveillance is concerned, the new law eliminated speed limits altogether. The infrastructure this nation established following Watergate to govern domestic spying has died many little deaths in the years since 9/11. […]

Dahjuan Natson, 19, son of Lisa Natson, better known as [Power 99 FM DJ] Golden Girl, faces trial Thursday in the Criminal Justice Center on simple assault charges for allegedly hitting Torlisha White, also 19, who is pregnant with her second child by Natson. [White’s parents accuse] Golden Girl of hiding Dahjuan and of not cooperating with police, who searched for him after he failed to show for an earlier hearing. White also filed a police report June 30 alleging that she was again assaulted by Dahjuan, and suffered, according to her mother, a split lip and scratched cornea. White […]

HUNTINGTON, Utah — Rescue crews were drilling into solid coal and hammering through concrete walls Monday to get to six miners in a Utah mine that collapsed and trapped the men 1,500 feet below ground. As the search efforts stretched into the night, workers were unable to make significant progress and the initial effort was declared a failure. “They can be in a chamber in there that’s a thousand feet long or they could be dead,” said Robert Murray, chairman of Cleveland-based Murray Energy Corp. “There’s no way of knowing right now.” [via USA TODAY]