news blog from Danyell

The second day of Obama’s slow-rolling journey on a campaign-style bus, billed by the White House as part of his nationwide push to get own his jobs proposals past Congress, remained focused on courting voters in politically pivotal North Carolina and Virginia.”The most important thing I wanted to do was to hear from people like you, because it doesn’t seem like your voices are being heard in Washington right now. Times are tough for a lot of Americans,” he told a crowd of 2,000 in Jamestown, North Carolina.Obama is using the road trip not only to test out a sharper, more populist message as he seeks a second term but also to gauge whether the two traditionally conservative states he won in the 2008 election can stay in his column in 2012.All indications are it could be a daunting task for Obama, whose poll numbers have fallen to the lows of his presidency amid public discontent over the stalled U.S. economy and high unemployment.The bus tour is taking place more than a year before the election, a time when incumbent presidents generally are spending their campaign time raising money.”The stronger that an incumbent is the more time they have to stay off the trail. Obama is under immense pressure to solidify his support,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor at Princeton University.Obama, whose re-election may hinge on his ability to spur hiring, is pressing Republicans back in Washington to pass his $447 billion jobs package in “bite-size pieces” after they shot it down as a whole in Congress last week.The Senate may vote as early as this week on the first part of the package, a $35 billion measure to create or save 400,000 jobs for teachers, police officers and firefighters, funded by a 0.5 percent surtax on millionaires.Obama’s strategy is to force Republicans to accept his proposals or be painted as obstructionists in the way of economic recovery as campaigning for the November 2012 presidential and congressional elections heats up.Republicans, who see Obama’s plan as laden with wasteful spending and job-killing tax hikes on wealthier Americans, say the Democratic president is playing electoral gamesmanship.”As the only person elected to represent every American, the president should speak for all Americans, especially in times of crisis, not divide them for short-term partisan political gain,” said top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell.The impasse has extended the deadlock that brought the United States to the brink of default in August until Democrats and Republicans agreed on the outlines of a deficit-cutting plan as part of a deal to raise the U.S. debt ceiling.CAMPAIGN MODEAs Obama’s black armored bus rolled along, there was little denying the shift into full campaign mode in what political experts see as must-win states for him next year.Sandwiched between speeches in which he made full-throated attacks on Republicans, there were choreographed stops, like Obama buying Halloween candy at a family-owned store, and presidential moments, like when he lifted a 1-year-old from his mother’s arms and pronounced him a “good-looking boy.”But North Carolina’s mixed views on the president’s record were also on display during a lunchtime stop at a diner in Reidsville, where Jerry Talley’s green John Deere cap caught Obama’s eye, who paused to chat and shake hands.After Obama had moved on, the 63-year-old retired high school principal, who now works part-time as a landscaper, said his support for Obama was wavering.”I was for him at first. Right now, I’m not so sure. I’m waiting to see what he does with the economy,” he said.After crossing the border into Virginia a short while later, Obama got a stark reminder of the mixed — and even conflicting — views on his record in another swing state.As his motorcade slowed through the small town of South Boston, Virginia, dozens of supporters on one side of the road cheered, some shouting his 2008 campaign motto “Yes, we can!”On the other side, a smaller but just as vocal group booed and held aloft signs that said “Hope is on the way — No-bama 2013” and “Never again.” One man turned thumbs down as Obama’s entourage drove past.North Carolina and Virginia had been solid Republican strongholds until Obama carried both states in 2008, but polls now show him in danger of losing them.A recent Elon University poll put Obama’s approval rating at 42 percent in North Carolina, where Democrats will convene their presidential convention next summer.A Quinnipiac University poll last week showed Obama’s approval ratings at 45 percent in Virginia and put Republican presidential contenders Mitt Romney and Herman Cain in a statistical dead-heat with him in a theoretical matchup.

Drought, freezing weather and heavy clouds can all hit household budgets as they restrict output from renewable energy plants.”It gives the utility companies an easy excuse now, they don’t have to blame speculators, it’s the weather,” said Mark Stephens-Row in an interview on the sidelines of WSI’s winter weather outlook presentation, while Britain’s energy regulator Ofgem pushed ahead with plans to force suppliers to make energy bills more transparent.As European governments pursue legally binding targets to cut carbon emissions, renewable energy accounts for a bigger slice of energy production.In Europe’s biggest economy, Germany, power producers are already relying on renewable energy more than ever after the government imposed the immediate closure of eight nuclear power plants with a combined capacity of nearly 9 gigawatts (GW) in the aftermath of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster.”The weather is an even bigger driver now because Germany is relying so much more on its renewables than it used to,” Stephens-Row said.Renewable energy accounted for 20.8 percent of all German power production in the first half of 2011. Solar capacity is forecast to grow strongly, adding another 5 gigawatts (GW) to the market next year, according to figures from German transmission grids.Prices in the German power market, also Europe’s largest, act as a benchmark for many other European electricity markets, which means volatile trading patterns are reflected in neighboring markets the Czech Republic, France, Austria, Switzerland and the Benelux countries.Stephens-Row said weather which brings drought, sunshine and high temperatures also comes with low wind — combining factors which restrict hydro storage and boost energy demand with weak wind power output.”It’s a double whammy. You’ve got no wind and no rain so all of a sudden you’re not generating anything from those resources,” he said.In these cases power suppliers see rising wholesale prices (because demand is high but renewable output low), which are eventually reflected in customer bills, but suppliers can use weather phenomena as a reason for hiking retail prices.Higher volatility in the energy markets is also likely to attract higher liquidity and growing competition which, in theory, helps keep prices low for consumers.”Going forward all these countries dashing for renewables is going to produce more volatility,” he said.”Ultimately it does bring more players into the market because there’s more opportunities to make more money.”

Visitors to this space may recall that I wrote this summer about the issues Reuters and other news organizations face in dealing with reader comments on stories. I’ve become increasingly concerned about the quality of discourse in comments on news stories on Reuters.com and on other major news sites.  On some stories,  the “conversation”  has been little more than  partisans slinging invective at each other under  the cloak of anonymity. I believe our time-challenged, professional readers want to see a more rewarding conversation—and my colleagues who lead Reuters.com are introducing a new process for comments that I believe will help bring that about. The new process, which gives special status to readers whose comments have passed muster in the past, won’t address the anonymity issue, but I do think it is an important step toward a more civil and thoughtful conversation. Let me introduce Richard Baum, Reuters Global Editor for Consumer Media, to tell you about the new process: —————————————————————————————— Like many major news publishers, we’ve agonized over how to balance our enthusiasm for reader comments on stories with our belief that few people would benefit from a free-for-all. Most of our readers respect our request for comments that “advance the story,” by submitting relevant anecdotes, links and data or by challenging our reporting when they think we’ve fallen short of our editorial standards. It’s rewarding, sometimes even exhilarating, to see the way our audience builds on our coverage. Where we struggle is with comments that we believe contribute nothing useful to the conversation. I’m not talking about obscenities and spam — we have software that aims to block the publication of those — but something more subjective. Most of our readers are business professionals who value their time highly. We believe they want comments that are as rewarding to read as they are to write. The challenge is how we deliver that experience in a way that doesn’t delay the publication of good comments nor use up resources that might be better deployed on other parts of the site. I’ll explain how we’re tackling that shortly. But first, here are some examples of the type of comments that fall foul of our moderators: – racism and other hate language that isn’t caught by our software filters – obscene words with letters substituted to get around the software filters – semi-literate spelling; we’re not looking for perfection, but people shouldn’t have to struggle to determine the meaning – uncivil behavior towards other commentators; debate is welcome, schoolyard taunts are not – incitement to violence – comments that have nothing to do with the story – comments that have been pasted across multiple stories – comments that are unusually long, unless they’re very well written – excessive use of capital letters Some of the guidelines for our moderators are hard to define precisely. Mocking of public people can be fair sport, for example, but a moderator that has just approved 30 comments calling someone an idiot can rightly decide that there’s little incremental value in publishing the 31st. When we block comments of this nature, it’s because of issues of repetition, taste or legal risk, not political bias. Until recently, our moderation process involved editors going through a basket of all incoming comments, publishing the ones that met our standards and blocking the others. (It’s a binary decision: we don’t have the resources to edit comments.) This was unsatisfactory because it delayed the publication of good comments, especially overnight and at weekends when our staffing is lighter. Our new process grants a kind of VIP status on people who have had comments approved previously. When you register to comment on Reuters.com, our moderation software tags you as a new user. Your comments go through the same moderation process as before, but every time we approve a comment, you score a point. Once you’ve reached a certain number of points, you become a recognized user. Congratulations: your comments will be published instantly from now on. Our editors will still review your comments after they’ve been published and will remove them if they don’t meet our standards. When that happens, you’ll lose points. Lose enough points and you’ll revert to new user status. The highest scoring commentators will be classified as expert users, earning additional privileges that we’ll implement in future. You can see approval statistics for each reader on public profile pages like this, accessed by clicking on the name next to a comment. It’s not a perfect system, but we believe it’s a foundation for facilitating a civil and rewarding discussion that’s open to the widest range of people. Let me know what you think.

Visitors to this space may recall that I wrote this summer about the issues Reuters and other news organizations face in dealing with reader comments on stories. I’ve become increasingly concerned about the quality of discourse in comments on news stories on Reuters.com and on other major news sites.  On some stories,  the “conversation”  has been little more than  partisans slinging invective at each other under  the cloak of anonymity. I believe our time-challenged, professional readers want to see a more rewarding conversation—and my colleagues who lead Reuters.com are introducing a new process for comments that I believe will help bring that about. The new process, which gives special status to readers whose comments have passed muster in the past, won’t address the anonymity issue, but I do think it is an important step toward a more civil and thoughtful conversation. Let me introduce Richard Baum, Reuters Global Editor for Consumer Media, to tell you about the new process: —————————————————————————————— Like many major news publishers, we’ve agonized over how to balance our enthusiasm for reader comments on stories with our belief that few people would benefit from a free-for-all. Most of our readers respect our request for comments that “advance the story,” by submitting relevant anecdotes, links and data or by challenging our reporting when they think we’ve fallen short of our editorial standards. It’s rewarding, sometimes even exhilarating, to see the way our audience builds on our coverage. Where we struggle is with comments that we believe contribute nothing useful to the conversation. I’m not talking about obscenities and spam — we have software that aims to block the publication of those — but something more subjective. Most of our readers are business professionals who value their time highly. We believe they want comments that are as rewarding to read as they are to write. The challenge is how we deliver that experience in a way that doesn’t delay the publication of good comments nor use up resources that might be better deployed on other parts of the site. I’ll explain how we’re tackling that shortly. But first, here are some examples of the type of comments that fall foul of our moderators: – racism and other hate language that isn’t caught by our software filters – obscene words with letters substituted to get around the software filters – semi-literate spelling; we’re not looking for perfection, but people shouldn’t have to struggle to determine the meaning – uncivil behavior towards other commentators; debate is welcome, schoolyard taunts are not – incitement to violence – comments that have nothing to do with the story – comments that have been pasted across multiple stories – comments that are unusually long, unless they’re very well written – excessive use of capital letters Some of the guidelines for our moderators are hard to define precisely. Mocking of public people can be fair sport, for example, but a moderator that has just approved 30 comments calling someone an idiot can rightly decide that there’s little incremental value in publishing the 31st. When we block comments of this nature, it’s because of issues of repetition, taste or legal risk, not political bias. Until recently, our moderation process involved editors going through a basket of all incoming comments, publishing the ones that met our standards and blocking the others. (It’s a binary decision: we don’t have the resources to edit comments.) This was unsatisfactory because it delayed the publication of good comments, especially overnight and at weekends when our staffing is lighter. Our new process grants a kind of VIP status on people who have had comments approved previously. When you register to comment on Reuters.com, our moderation software tags you as a new user. Your comments go through the same moderation process as before, but every time we approve a comment, you score a point. Once you’ve reached a certain number of points, you become a recognized user. Congratulations: your comments will be published instantly from now on. Our editors will still review your comments after they’ve been published and will remove them if they don’t meet our standards. When that happens, you’ll lose points. Lose enough points and you’ll revert to new user status. The highest scoring commentators will be classified as expert users, earning additional privileges that we’ll implement in future. You can see approval statistics for each reader on public profile pages like this, accessed by clicking on the name next to a comment. It’s not a perfect system, but we believe it’s a foundation for facilitating a civil and rewarding discussion that’s open to the widest range of people. Let me know what you think.