Catching Up With Dolan Media Blogs
Jan 7th, 2008 by John Stodder
Let’s check in on some of the stories being told on the Dolan Media network at the turn of the year….
LIBizBlog, affiliated with the Long Island Business News, posts about a lunch-bucket economic indicator: Share prices of convenience food companies. A Deutsche Bank analyst says “weather issues and consumer pressures” will add up to a soft fourth quarter for a number of companies readying reports. For take-home places like Panera Bread and P. F. Chang’s, higher gas prices reduce traffic….
Portland, Oregon is, however, expected to continue its commercial real estate boom, albeit as a slower pace, DJC-Oregon reports. A Grubb & Ellis analyst team says:
Growth in 2008 will come from financial institutions looking to increase their retail presence, massage and day spa chains, fitness centers and retailers catering to the ethnic market …. (L)ifestyle and mixed-use centers will continue to be popular, including downtown projects and districts built around sports facilities.”
“New-age” industries propping up a local economy? Chambers of commerce, take note….
Another area where boom times are counterintuited? New Orleans. From New Orleans City Business’ Kelly Brown:
Peter Ricchiuti, assistant dean of the A.B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane University, said the New Orleans-area economy is countercyclical because of all the energy interests. When high energy prices cause slumps elsewhere in the nation, he said, the money flows into south Louisiana.
“1980, for instance, was a miserable time for the U.S. economy,” Ricchiuti said, “and it was a boom time here because of oil and gas. A lot of times, the national headlines don’t tell the story for us locally.”
He said even the homebuilding industry is doing well here as recovery from the 2005 storms has thrown everything off-kilter.
“The two things that make it a very different picture is the dependence on oil and gas and Katrina,” Ricchiuti said. “We were at a crippling low and we’re coming back. As far as seeing better numbers, I think that’s baked in the cake.”
“Baked in the cake,” eh? A superstitious person might steer clear of a phrase like that…
The National Labor Relations Board, a vitally important part of the federal government if you’re in a labor union or your employees belong to one, is supposed to have five members. Right now, says DC Dicta’s Kimberly Atkins, it gets by with two (2) and is shedding authority. Is it the capitol’s partisan standoff that’s keeping three seats open? I’d have to assume that’s part of it. No Democratic Congress is going to hand a fixed term on the NLRB to someone nominated by a lame duck Republican president in his final year, especially not this one….
Before the Age of Aquarius, they used to say “name your poison” when you ordered a drink. If you answered “Rye,” you were probably drinking a Maryland product, I learned from the Maryland-based On the Record. Rye-loving Daily Record Business Editor Robbie Whelan is disappointed that a new site with the clever name Whiskepedia doesn’t seem to know much about Maryland’s whiskey history (”whistory?”). Here’s hoping Maryland’s overlapping whiskey and blogging communities gets busy….
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