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USA Edition | Today Is Sunday, May 19, 2013 |
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Welcome To Newsroom Magazine
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Thanks To You We're Growing Faster Than Ever Before
Chances are you've noticed that Newsroom Magazine is a very different publication.
We care about journalism -- and we're well aware many other organizations do it far better than we.
Our editorial standards, rules of custody, and skeptical editing for everything we produce, disseminate or expose to public viewing reflects a seriousness of purpose.
Six years after our founding, Newsroom Magazine continues to evolve the online publishing and preservation model we pioneered.
There is good news to share: Newsroom Magazine is is thriving.
And some less good news: Our limited resources, both journalistically and financially, are limiting our expansion of content.
Online News Preservation
In the six years since its founding, Newsroom Magazine has extended the field of news publishing into previously uncharted areas.
We take a long range view of news -- one that considers both timeliness and historical merit.
What we do, and how we do it, was not possible in the print media era -- for our content is both timely and timeless in the sense that we share the power of immediacy with all online media plus the perseverance of an encyclopedia.
Newsroom Magazine's publishing model goes beyond immediacy -- for unlike the newspaper era -- what we publish is permanently preserved. And tagged, indexed, and constantly updated by automated sitemap sharing with Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yandex, Baidu, Sogou, Ewatch, Alexa, Facebook, and others at home and far away.
All of our content, is meant to be preserved. Thanks to the capture and storage of our content at Google, including all updates and changes, and full collection archiving by the U.S. Internet Archives, everything we say, write, opine -- whether wise, foolish, or inconsequential-- is preserved.
Newsroom Magazine content remains forever online, searchable and accessible 24 hours a day worldwide.
What's Hot Is Rarely What Matters
What we publish today is rarely as timely as the more traditional publications and online newspapers. What we choose to publish, sometimes days or months after a story first breaks, or on a subject neglected by most commercial media, is chosen to reflect one aspect of an ongoing reality for long term preservation.
From a handful of English-only readers when we published our first article -- the 1958 Edward R. Murrow speech before the Radio Television Directors Association in Chicago -- we have grown and wizened about our responsibilities to our readers and our own limitations and shortfalls.
Our most read article so far this year, The Adventures Of Bernie In Wonderland, was published November 23rd, 2009. The article consists of the unexpurgated SEC interview of Harry Markopolos in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi swindle case. It is not very interesting reading and it is very long -- but we published it in the belief that what it revealed was important and unlikely to remain online in its original format.
Newsroom Magazine's Storehouse Grows Every Day
The number of publications who devote themselves to publishing credible, responsible and probative content for posterity has dwindled.
Today Newsroom Magazine publishes a storehouse of credible, probative and relevant content -- well over 5000 articles including commentaries, essays, definitions, photographs, stories, reviews, discussions, tutorials, and logical explanations.
Our readership is nearly three times was it was only last year. Few might come to our content for entertainment -- for our purpose is otherwise.
If You Publish, They Will Come
We are read on Capitol Hill, along K Street, and in the halls of government inside the beltway and around the world.
We are read daily on college campuses at home and abroad. We're visited from military ships at sea. We serve law-firms, major corporations, Wall Street the UK Parliament, state governments and cities with credible useful information.
Some of the world's most prestigious news organizations use Newsroom Magazine for fact-checking.
Government Information Unfiltered, Sometimes Imperfect
The amount of official news proffered each day by government, whether at home or abroad, is accelerating. Some of it newsworthy, most of it not.
Our job is to thoughtfully choose what's worthy of the attention of our readers.
About 1% of government issued news we receive each day qualifies as newsworthy. Only the most relevant, or reflective of government at its best, or at its worst, or evidence of overreach, or ineptitude makes it newsworthy.
We leave the issue of deciding which if any of these qualifications applies to what we publish up to the reader.
Formatted For People On The Go, Or On The Hunt
All of our government news content includes above the headline call out meant to convey the principal facts, action or information for those with little time to read a long document.
Our job is to carefully and skeptically choose relevant governmental content for our readers -- and to include the unexpurgated original source material, whose chain of custody we control.
Online Editorial Standards, Ethics And Purpose
Our commitment to time-honored journalistic standards and a clear statement about the ethics to which we agree to be held today and tomorrow, Newsroom Magazine began publication when the Internet was young -- 2006.
Our prime mission then, as now, is to publish non political ideas, definitions, essays and editorials.
To speak to the state of this honorable calling.
And to inform the public about those things, events and ideas that matter most to us all.
Today, tomorrow, forever.
Editorial Standards & Policies
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Protecting consumers from deceptive or abusive debt collectors is one of the most important things the FTC does.
David Vladeck, Director, Bureau of Consumer Protection
Washington
FTC Highlights Expanded Work On Debt Collection Issues Over The Past Year
The FTC Enforces the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and Promotes Related Education, Research, and Policy Development Initiatives
March 20, 2012
The Federal Trade Commission stepped up enforcement of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act in the last year by cracking down on collectors who allegedly used abusive tactics to intimidate consumers, misled consumers while seeking payment on time-barred debts, used faulty data to identify debtors and the amount they owe, used deceptive tactics to collect on payday loans, and otherwise committed egregious violations of the Act and other federal laws, according to a letter the FTC sent to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
“Protecting consumers from deceptive or abusive debt collectors is one of the most important things the FTC does,” said David Vladeck, Director of the agency’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.
Under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the CFPB is required to submit annual reports to Congress on the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, a task previously assigned to the FTC. The first CFPB report is due on March 20, 2012, and to assist the CFPB in preparing its report, the FTC’s letter summarizes its own recent work on debt collection issues.
Over the past year, the FTC has brought or resolved seven debt collection cases affecting hundreds of thousands of consumers. This is the highest number that it has brought or resolved in any single year. In two cases that included civil penalties, the FTC obtained $2.8 million and $2.5 million, respectively, for West Asset Management, Inc., and Asset Acceptance, LLC, the two largest civil penalty amounts the agency has ever obtained for alleged violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
The FTC also filed actions against payday lenders American Credit Crunchers, LLC for allegedly making misrepresentations to collect on payday loan debts that they in fact weren’t authorized to collect on, or that consumers did not owe; and LoanPoint, LLC and Payday Financial, LLC for allegedly misrepresenting that they could lawfully garnish supposed debtors’ wages without obtaining a valid court order. The FTC charged two other debt collectors with especially egregious practices: Defendants in Forensic Case Management Service, Inc., doing business as Rumson, Bolling & Associates, allegedly threatened physical harm to consumers, desecration of their deceased family members, and killing of their pets to persuade consumers to pay. They also allegedly retained more fees from their clients than they had agreed to take. Defendants in Rincon Debt Management Services, LLC targeted English- and Spanish-speaking consumers, impersonating process servers and other officials, and falsely threatening to sue and arrest those whom they claimed owed money, the FTC alleged.
In outlining the FTC’s other debt collection enforcement efforts, the Commission noted its new policy statement addressing whom debt collectors can contact if an alleged debtor has died and what collectors can do in collecting on debts in these circumstances. The FTC also filed two “friend of the court” briefs in federal court. The first amicus brief opposing a proposed class action settlement with debt buyer Midland Funding LLC argued that the settlement would require consumers to surrender important protections provided by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act in exchange for a minimal payment. The FTC also joined the Solicitor General’s office in filing an amicus brief in Fein, Such, Kahn, & Shepard PC advocating that the U.S. Supreme Court decline to hear an appeal from an appellate court decision addressing whether the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act applies to collector communications with consumers’ attorneys.
The letter also references the FTC’s consumer education work, as well as its 2011 Debt Collection 2.0 workshop on protecting consumers amid technological change in the industry, a pending study of the debt buying industry, and follow-up work from the agency’s 2010 report on debt collection litigation and arbitration, Repairing A Broken System: Protecting Consumers in Debt Collection Litigation and Arbitration.