Mitch's Blog

March 29, 2020

Portrait of a weekly newspaper in the small town of Julian, California, circulation in the hundreds, founded in 1985, owned and run since 2004 by Michael Hart, now 67 years old, and his wife Michele Harvey, 69.

Small Julian newspaper is all about community, by J. Harry Jones at the San Diego Union-Tribune:

Just once, Michael Hart and his bride of 17 years, Michele Harvey, took a few days off to stay at an inn at Joshua Tree.

“It was sort of our honeymoon years after we got married,” Hart, 67, said.

“Just once we took off three days in a row,” Harvey said. “Those three days and two nights were really all we could stand to be away.”

Since the summer of 2004, Hart and Harvey, 69, have been putting out the weekly Julian News. The newspaper was established in 1985 and had a handful of owners before they purchased the business for $200,000.

“He puts in 70 to 90 hours a week,” Harvey said of her husband. “Make that 65 to 70,” said Hart.

The writers are colorful characters. One “was obsessed about the size of his byline.”

“He wanted his byline to be bigger than the headline of his stories,” Harvey said. He would bring into the office many examples of bylines from newspapers around the country.

And then there was a contributor who didn’t know how to replace the ribbon on her typewriter so instead she would put carbon paper between two white sheets of paper and then write her column even though she couldn’t see what it was she was composing. She’d then give the carbon copy of the column to the paper to let them try to figure out what it said.

March 29, 2020

Social distancing vs. economic recovery is a false choice. According ta recent study, cities that enacted social distancing hard and fast during the 1918 pandemic were quicker to recover economically. “… the earlier, more forcefully and longer cities responded, the better their economic recovery.”

Scott Duke Kominers at Bloomberg:

That’s not to say that the flu pandemic didn’t cause an economic strain: the authors found that the areas hit hardest saw real declines in manufacturing employment and output, as well as a persistent reduction in bank assets — probably because of losses on loans amid bankruptcies. They also found a decline in auto registrations, which they say suggests a decline in demand for consumer durables.

That said, the cities that implemented aggressive social distancing and shutdowns to contain the virus came out looking better. Implementing these policies eight days earlier, or maintaining them for 46 days longer were associated with 4% and 6% higher post-pandemic manufacturing employment, respectively. The gains for output were similar. Likewise, faster and longer-lasting distancing measures were associated with higher post-pandemic banking activity.

March 29, 2020

Cory Doctorow: The US coronavirus epidemic is Part 2 of the 2008 financial meltdown, in the wake of which we elected dufus strongmen, gutted emergency preparedness budgets and passed the money to billionaries.