Byline: By danny hakim section: Section B; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1 Length

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: SOLAR ENERGY (94%); SALES REBATES (91%); NATURAL GAS & ELECTRIC UTILITIES (90%); SMALL BUSINESS (89%); UTILITIES INDUSTRY (78%); ENERGY DEMAND (78%); PUBLIC UTILITIES COMMISSIONS (78%); OIL & GAS PRICES (78%); ENERGY MARKETS (78%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (75%); JOB CREATION (75%); GOVERNMENT GRANTS & SUBSIDIES (75%); ENERGY & UTILITY LAW (73%); MARKETING STRATEGY (73%); APPROVALS (72%); POLITICAL DEBATES (67%); MARKET SIZE (60%)
COMPANY: BOARD OF PUBLIC UTILITIES OF KANSAS CITY (53%)
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW JERSEY, USA (98%); CALIFORNIA, USA (94%); NEW YORK, USA (92%) UNITED STATES (98%)
LOAD-DATE: June 25, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: A worker installs solar panels on a store's roof in New Jersey, where there is a plan to replace public subsidies for solar energy with energy credits.(PHOTOGRAPH BY ROB BENNETT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)

SunEdison will own the panels being installed on a store roof in New Jersey and sell the power back to the store at a discount.(PHOTOGRAPH BY ROB BENNETT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)(pg. B7) CHART: Solar Leaders: California and New Jersey lead the country in solar projects. New Jersey's rebate program has led to far more installations than in New York, which ranks fifth in the country.(Source: Interstate Renewable Energy Council)Chart details line graph for California and New Jersey.(pg. B7)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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The New York Times
June 25, 2008 Wednesday

Late Edition - Final

Bronx Groups Demand a Voice in a Landmark's Revival
BYLINE: By TERRY PRISTIN
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 1233 words
Residents of the northwest Bronx have long taken a proprietary interest in the Kingsbridge Armory, a huge city-owned Romanesque-style fortress that looms over the elevated subway tracks on Jerome Avenue.

Hundreds of people mobilized against a redevelopment plan in 2000 because it did not include classrooms to alleviate severe overcrowding in the local schools. The plan eventually died.

Then, local groups helped persuade the city to spend $31 million replacing the roof and making other repairs to the red brick structure, which has not been used for more than a decade.

Now community organizers in the area, one of the city's poorest neighborhoods, are seeking a private contract with the Related Companies, the developer chosen by the city in April to transform the Kingsbridge Armory into a shopping mall with 575,000 square feet of retail space, including a department store, a multiscreen movie theater and restaurants.

The Kingsbridge Armory Redevelopment Alliance, a coalition of 19 community, church and labor groups, said it would withhold its support for the $310 million project unless Related guaranteed specified wage and hiring standards for workers and tenants. The groups are also seeking athletic and recreational space, room for cultural programs and social services and opportunities for local entrepreneurs.

''We know how much the stores are going to make off this community,'' said Ronn Jordan, an alliance leader and a vice president of the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, a group formed in 1974. ''We want to make sure they are not exploiting us.''

In recent years, a growing number of private pacts, known as community benefits agreements, or C.B.A.'s, have smoothed the way for developments around the country, including Related's Grand Avenue project in downtown Los Angeles.

But only a few such agreements have been forged in New York. In 2005, the Bloomberg administration publicly applauded a private agreement between housing advocates and Forest City Ratner, the developer of Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, but now it no longer supports the concept.

''When you do a C.B.A., the decision may be made in a vacuum, and that's what we're looking to avoid,'' Seth W. Pinsky, president of the city's Economic Development Corporation, said in an interview last week. ''We're not opposed to benefits for the community, and we're not opposed to community involvement. But we just think it should be part of the larger process.''

He said the city's land-use process ''gives ample opportunity for the community's voice to be heard.'' Proposals are reviewed by the local community board, whose members are appointed by the borough president and the City Council member representing the district. The board's powers are only advisory.

The city's stance is shortsighted, said Julian Gross, a San Francisco lawyer who directs the legal program of the Partnership for Working Families, an advocacy organization. ''They should see a private benefits agreement as a way to give a project a huge boost in terms of public perception and community support,'' said Mr. Gross, who advised the Kingsbridge alliance.

Mr. Pinsky said that members of the Kingsbridge alliance have been included in discussions about the armory from the outset, and their concerns were reflected in the 2006 document asking for proposals from developers.

The document said, for example, that the city would ''look favorably'' on proposals that maximized the number of jobs paying $10 an hour or more, and developers were ''strongly encouraged'' to make space available at reduced rents for community uses.

But Mr. Jordan said the Kingsbridge alliance, known as KARA, needs guarantees. ''For KARA to support this project, we need to have an enforceable agreement between KARA and the developer,'' said Mr. Jordan, who has been involved with the armory since 1995.

Completed in 1917, the armory occupies a full block from Jerome Avenue to Reservoir Avenue and West 195th Street to Kingsbridge Road. The main drill hall measures 300 feet by 600 feet and is spanned by vaulted steel trusses that rise 110 feet above the floor.

The building, which also contains a grand 35,000-square-foot entrance with a vaulted ceiling known as a head-house, is a federal, state and city landmark.

Though the nearby schools are still so crowded that parking lots are used as playgrounds, the armory is unsuitable for a school, city officials say. Two new schools could be built next to the armory if two state-owned auxiliary buildings along 195th Street that are now used by the National Guard were torn down. Mr. Pinsky said the city was trying to find new quarters for the Guard, but classrooms are not part of the Related project.

Related has already negotiated one community benefits agreement in the Bronx, for its Gateway Center at Bronx Terminal Market, a big-box shopping center that is under construction. But that agreement -- like a handful of others that have been made in New York -- has drawn criticism from advocates and scholars for being weaker than those in other states. At Gateway Center, only three local groups were parties to the agreement and few obligations were actually imposed on Related, Mr. Gross said.

Glenn Goldstein, the president of Related Retail, bristled at the criticism. ''I'm not sure there has been another project that has been as responsive to the needs and desires of the community,'' he said. He pledged that Related would be just as responsive to the armory community, whether or not there is a benefits agreement. ''We'll be spending a lot of time with the community board,'' he said. ''That's just part of how we develop projects.''

Gregory Faulkner, the chairman of the Community Board 7, whose area includes the armory, said it was now up to his board to assume a leadership role. ''There are more voices than KARA,'' he said.

Mr. Faulkner said many people in the community want the new mall to include a ''top notch'' food market, something that is not on the alliance's agenda.

Jeffrey Eichler, a coordinator for the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union/UFCW, said one of the alliance's objectives was to avoid harming existing businesses, including the Associated Supermarket on Jerome Avenue, opposite the armory, which is unionized.

Disagreement over a single issue should not rule out a benefits agreement, said Patricia E. Salkin, the director of the Government Law Center of the Albany Law School. ''Some of the things that could be the subject of a C.B.A. may not wind up being in the C.B.A.,'' she said. ''But that doesn't mean you can't have a C.B.A.''

The Kingsbridge alliance will not be the only group in New York resisting the city's opposition to benefits agreements. In East Harlem, Community Board 11 was asked to approve a plan for a mixed-use development on East 125th Street without knowing who the developer would be and, therefore, without having a chance to negotiate for benefits, including wage and hiring guarantees, said Robert Rodriguez, the board chairman. The board recently rejected the plan.

Mr. Pinsky said the developer for that project would soon be selected.

''I think there's definite value to having a C.B.A.,'' Mr. Rodriguez said. ''The city is not going to be the best negotiator for community benefits. The community needs to negotiate its own agreement independently.''

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: CITY GOVERNMENT (89%); REGIONAL & LOCAL GOVERNMENTS (78%); ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (77%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (77%); RETAIL PROPERTY (74%); COMMERCIAL RENTAL PROPERTY (73%); RETAILERS (73%); LEGISLATIVE BODIES (73%); CITIES (73%); INTERVIEWS (70%); RESTAURANTS (68%); RELIGION (67%); CLERGY & RELIGIOUS (67%); RECRUITMENT & HIRING (66%)
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (82%)
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (94%) NEW YORK, USA (94%) UNITED STATES (94%)
LOAD-DATE: June 25, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: The Kingsbridge Armory covers a full block from Jerome Avenue to Reservoir Avenue and West 195th Street to Kingsbridge Road in the Bronx. The main drill hall is 300 feet by 600 feet

the entrance features a vaulted ceiling.(PHOTOGRAPHS BY G. PAUL BURNETT/THE NEW YORK TIMES)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

643 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
June 24, 2008 Tuesday

Late Edition - Final

Gone on Business, but Back by Storytime
BYLINE: By LOIS NAJARIAN O'NEILL; as told to JOAN RAYMOND.

By Lois Najarian O'Neill, as told to Joan Raymond. E-mail: [e-mail]

SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; FREQUENT FLIER; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 500 words
IT'S no secret that publicists travel a lot. In nearly two decades, I've probably circled the globe at least twice, going on tour, on photo and video shoots and doing what publicists do, which is helping clients at a moment's notice. I always loved the whole experience of arriving in a new place.

But things have changed.

I have become the queen of the one-day trip. I never thought I'd be this person who wants to be close to home all the time. But I am, and my friends think I'm nuts.

My crazy one-day-trip obsession was born from both practicality and paranoia. I can't stand losing a whole day on a cross-country flight so I'd rather be sleep-deprived than stuck on a plane. And paranoia is something that almost all entrepreneurs understand. When my daughter was born, I was in a senior position at Epic Records. It's tough to run with the big boys, and I didn't want my boss or my artists to think a new baby would stop me from traveling.

Now with my own company, I have the same challenges. My clients have become my bosses, and I don't want them feeling abandoned.

My goal for the perfect business trip is to leave in the morning, come back in the evening, with no one the wiser, especially my daughter, who counts on me for gymnastics and music classes, home-cooked meals and mom time.

Recently, I've flown twice to Las Vegas to meet with my client Michael Jackson. For my first meeting, I left on a 6:30 a.m. flight from Kennedy International Airport and, because of the time change, arrived in Las Vegas early in the morning.

Though I wasn't staying the night, I booked a hotel room since I had a lot of time between my arrival and my meeting. The hotel room was amazingly inexpensive, and gave me a place where I could do some work, reply to e-mail messages and keep on top of any crisis that might have been happening back in New York. As soon as my meeting ended, I packed up and took a 9 p.m. flight back to the city.

Other recent one-day flights included a trip to Los Angeles in the morning to oversee an entire press junket with Quincy Jones. I also made a day trip to Miami for a Jennifer Lopez record release party, had a one-day excursion to Nassau in the Bahamas for a magazine shoot for Shakira, and met with Oprah Winfrey's show producers in Chicago. The best news about all these trips is that my daughter rarely had time to register that Mommy was gone for a while. And neither did my clients.

I recently did a one-day trip to Paradise Island, Bahamas, for my client Sean Kingston. He was booked on the television show ''Live With Regis and Kelly,'' which was shooting on location there. Sean, who is a teenager, was supposed to be swimming with the dolphins. But when it came time to pick him up to leave for the airport, he was nowhere to be found. With the help of a search party on golf carts, Sean was finally located and then deposited at the airport. Even the best efforts of a teenager couldn't ruin my record of being the queen of the one-day trip.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: TALKS & MEETINGS (89%); AIRPORTS (73%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (68%); ARTISTS & PERFORMERS (66%)
COMPANY: MY OWN CO (68%); EPIC RECORDS (55%); QUINCY JONES ENTERTAINMENT (51%)
PERSON: MICHAEL JACKSON (53%); JENNIFER LOPEZ (51%); OPRAH WINFREY (50%)
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (79%) NEW YORK, USA (79%); CALIFORNIA, USA (68%) UNITED STATES (79%); BAHAMAS (66%)
LOAD-DATE: June 24, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Lois Najarian O'Neill, the president and founder of The Door, a public relations firm based in Brooklyn, with her husband, Chris O'Neill, and their 20-month-old daughter, Mia. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREA MOHIN/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

644 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
June 24, 2008 Tuesday

Late Edition - Final

At Google, Slow Growth In News Site
BYLINE: By MIGUEL HELFT
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1437 words
DATELINE: MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.
The death of Tim Russert of NBC News this month quickly became a top article on the nation's biggest news sites.

The front page of Google News took about an hour to catch up.

Google blamed a technical problem for the delay and said it was not a sign that its news site, whose content is compiled entirely by computer programs, lacks timeliness.

Still, while news organizations continue to worry about what Google is doing to their business, the company is far from achieving the kind of dominant position in news that it has in other areas. Six years after its start, Google News appears to be stuck in neutral and struggling to keep up with rivals.

Several online news experts say Google News has changed little, especially when compared with services like Google Maps and Gmail, which add new features at a rapid pace.

Perhaps as a result, traffic growth is sluggish. With 11.4 million users in May, Google News ranked No. 8 among news sites, far behind Yahoo News, which was No. 1 with 35.8 million visitors, according to Nielsen Online.

Its growth rate of 10 percent over the last two years is far slower than those of most other large news Web sites. In the last two years, second-ranked MSNBC.com grew by 42 percent, adding 10.4 million users. Traffic at CNN.com and nytimes.com grew even faster.

While it is clearly past the experimental stage, Google News still shows no ads, and there are no signs that Google is serious about making money from the site directly.

''I've actually been surprised at how little it has evolved, at least on the surface,'' said Dan Gillmor, director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at the journalism school of Arizona State University. ''I'm guessing that Google isn't so sure what to do with it.''

Google executives defend the news site, saying traffic is not a paramount goal. Google News, they say, helps the company produce better search results and helps users find news sources that they might not know about otherwise.

''For us, news is about search and helping people find information,'' said Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president for search and user experience, who oversees Google News.

Ms. Mayer called Google News one of the company's most innovative products, and said that it helped the bottom line because Google News readers were among the most active users of Google's search and other services. News results also show up on the company's main search pages, along with ads.

''It directly feeds the main business,'' Ms. Mayer said.

From its inception, Google News was built differently from most other large news Web sites. While news aggregators, like Yahoo and AOL, and original news sites, like CNN.com and MSNBC.com, create and license content and rely on editors to select and package articles, Google News is entirely automated.

In the same way that Google's computers crawl through the Web to add pages to its search engine, the company's news service scans Web sites and compiles the articles it collects into an index.

It then groups together articles on a particular subject and uses various signals -- the placement of an article on a news site, the authority of a news publisher on a given topic, whether the article appears elsewhere -- to rank those articles by importance.

Google News, unlike most other news services, which try to keep readers on their sites, packages the results as a set of links, sending readers to the sites where the articles appear.

By and large, news industry executives have come to accept Google News.

''Clearly, some people use Google News as a primary news source, which makes them a competitor,'' said Jim Brady, executive editor of WashingtonPost.com. ''But they are a driver of a significant amount of traffic, which we appreciate.''

Still, the fear persists that news aggregators like Google News have the potential to steal more traffic than they bring. Industry executives fret that aggregators are eroding what little control news sites have over users. Instead of entering a preferred news site through its front page, users are being routed to a single article, perhaps deep inside the site, and when they are done reading it, they move on.

Craig Moffett, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, said that the Internet had made it possible to aggregate news cheaply and, as a result, reduced the ability of news outlets to charge for their content.

''Unfortunately, that's the problem we are up against,'' Mr. Moffett said. ''Google may be doing more to accelerate this trend than anyone, but they are not doing it out of malice.''

Last year, when he took over the Tribune Company, the real estate magnate Samuel Zell accused Google of stealing newspapers' content for its own profit. A spokesman for Tribune, Gary Weitman, declined to make company executives available to talk about Google News last week.

In Europe, the criticism of Google News has generally been more strident. A Belgian court ruled that Google News had violated copyright laws by publishing links to newspaper articles without permission.

Ms. Mayer and others at Google say that despite the simmering fears of those in the news industry, Google News fits into an effort by the company to help, not hurt, journalism. Google's chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, said recently that as a company that depends on the creation of high-quality content, Google feels ''a huge moral imperative'' to help news outlets be successful online.

Google's search and news products have been successful at driving traffic to news sites, but the company is not as good at turning that traffic into money for itself and for news outlets, Mr. Schmidt said.

People close to the company, who asked not to be named because they did not want to jeopardize professional relationships, said that concerns about antagonizing news publishers have guided some decisions at Google News, most notably the decision not to place ads on the site. Like some other Google projects, Google News has at times also struggled internally to get the resources it needed, these people said.

In the last year, Google has added several features to the site and expanded its reach. There are versions of Google News for 43 countries in 20 languages. The company has also been working on improving the site by reducing the number of duplicate articles and by improving its ability to showcase authoritative and original news articles.

Last week, for instance, a cluster of articles on gay marriages in California included those from major national and California outlets, like The Los Angeles Times, The San Jose Mercury News and The New York Times. It also included an opinion piece from a radio news service in West Virginia that was critical of gay marriage.

''I don't think it is a negative that they have this kind of diversity in the news,'' said Danny Sullivan, a search expert and editor of the Web site Search Engine Land. ''With the diversity can come weird stuff.''

Google said that juxtaposing various viewpoints is part of the appeal of Google News. ''If you see opposing points of view battling it out, it makes you wake up and think,'' said Krishna Bharat, the research scientist who created Google News. ''That's what makes people news junkies.''

In recent months, the company has added the ability to personalize Google News, emphasize local news sources and map the locations of news events on Google Earth. It also began allowing people named in news articles to post comments and gave users the ability to search quotes from people in the news.

The commenting feature has had little use, but Ms. Mayer said the comments had been of high quality. She said these kinds of innovations could help change the way people consume news online, and eventually may lead to business models that help the industry.

Despite the recent innovations, Google News still lacks many of the flashier features that have attracted users to more conventional news sites, including interactive graphics and video. At Yahoo News, for instance, users watch about 200 million videos and view 800 million photos every month, said Scott Moore, a Yahoo senior vice president and head of media.

''We've created a very rich stew that is put together by our newsroom editorial staff,'' Mr. Moore said.

Analysts say that while Google's computer-driven approach to packaging news is reasonably effective, it may have limitations.

''There is only so far you can go with an algorithm,'' said Mark Glaser, editor at PBS MediaShift, a site about online media. ''In the long run, people want a human touch.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: WEB SITES (90%); RANKINGS (90%); ONLINE CONTENT & INFORMATION SERVICES (89%); TELEVISION INDUSTRY (89%); DELAYS & POSTPONEMENTS (78%); PRODUCT ENHANCEMENTS (73%); JOURNALISM (73%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (71%)
COMPANY: GOOGLE INC (94%); NBC UNIVERSAL INC (91%)