CDC Estimates 14 Million to 34 Million Cases of Swine Flu (H1N1) So Far

There have been between 14 million and 34 million cases of 2009 H1N1 between April and Oct. 17, 2009, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced yesterday.

It estimates that 2009 H1N1-related deaths range from 2,500 to 6,000.

The report also said that between about 63,000 and 153,000 2009 H1N1-related hospitalizations occurred during that time period.

The CDC warned that the estimated ranges generated by this methodology provide a sense of scale in terms of the burden of disease caused by 2009 H1N1. It may never be possible to validate the accuracy of these figures. The true number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths may lie within the ranges provided or it’s also possible that they may lie outside the ranges.

This methodology is not predictive and cannot be used to forecast the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths that will occur going forward over the course of the pandemic because they are based on actual surveillance data.

Pictured is a negative stain EM image of the 2009 H1N1 influenza A/CA/4/09 that was taken by C. S. Goldsmith and A. Balish of the CDC.

LA Times: How Low Will Obama Go in Bowing Before Emperor Akihito?

The Los Angeles Times asks the question this morning after President Barack Obama greeted Japanese Emperor Akihito today with a very low bow, which is often seen as a sign of great respect and deference to a superior in Japan.

The photo is sure to garner the ire of the conservative pundits for the next few days.

This photo will get Democrat President Obama a lot of approving nods in Japan this weekend, especially among the older generation of Japanese who still pay attention to the royal family living in its downtown castle. Very low bows like this are a sign of great respect and deference to a superior.


To some in the United States, however, an upright handshake might have looked better. Remember Michelle Obama casually patting Britain's Queen Elizabeth on the back during their Buckingham Palace visit? America's royalty tends to make movies and get bad reviews and lots of money as a sign of respect.

Obama could receive some frowns back home as he did for his not-quite-this-low-or-maybe-about-the-same-bow to the Saudi king not so long ago.

The story also compared Obama's posture to how Gen. Douglas MacArthur presented himself to the emperor.

As the conquering Allied general and then presiding officer of the U.S. occupation, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, decided to allow Japan to keep its emperor as a ceremonial unifying institution within a nascent democracy.

Tojo, on the other hand, was hanged.

MacArthur treated Emperor Hirohito respectfully but, as his body language in this black and white postwar photo demonstrates, was not particularly deferential.

(But then MacArthur was not known as a particularly deferential person, as Truman discovered just before firing him later. But that's another war.)

Anita Dunn's Final Parting Shots at Fox News

Sam Stein of The Huffington Post today wrote about Anita Dunn, the outgoing interim White House communications director, and her parting shots at Fox News:

The outgoing administration spokeswoman took a clear and enjoyable dig, first at Sean Hannity for recently airing spliced footage designed to make a crowd of anti-health care protesters seem bigger than reality.

"A fun fact from this week is that an opinion show on a certain news network was using edited footage to make it appear that a rally last week, and political opposition to the president, was much larger than it appeared," said Dunn, during her appearance at the Bloomberg News Washington Summit. "Some of you may have heard about it. The people who went in and did fact checking on that, and actually exposed the spliced edited was... Jon Stewart of the 'Daily Show' on Comedy Central. Well that is where you are getting fact-checking and investigative journalism these days folks. It is a different media environment."

Showing an even greater appreciation for the "Daily Show"'s Fox News fact-checking abilities, Dunn referenced another Stewart triumph later in her question-and-answer session.

"Jon Stewart actually did one of the most amazing pieces of journalism last week or a couple of weeks ago," she said, "in which he looked at the way Fox, on their opinion shows, raises some issue that then gets reported on by their news division as 'a controversy.' ... Now, that's a point of view. That's fine. That's entertainment. It helps their ratings. But I think if you go downstairs and walk through the Newseum that's not traditionally what you think of as traditional news -- to some extent inventing the story."

Approached in the halls outside the forum, the Huffington Post asked Dunn to put Glenn Beck's recent theatrics into the context of her critiques of Fox News's coverage. She chuckled. For the past few weeks, Beck has insisted that the outgoing communications director considers Mao Zedong a political hero and has put a red telephone on his set begging for her to call and explain her political dispositions.

"I think it was news to everybody who knows me," she replied. "You know, most media consultants usually are accused of other things, but that's not one of them."

Last month, Dunn got caught up in a war of words between the White House and Fox News when she made the rather bland observation that the network carries a Republican agenda. On Friday, she was asked whether she considered MSNBC to have a counter-balancing bias -- a common retort offered by Fox's defenders. Dunn replied by noting that for three hours every morning that network handed over its programming to "a former Republican congressman who was a member of Newt Gingrich's revolution": Joe Scarborough.

Elsewhere in her remarks, Dunn acknowledged that her decision to go after Fox News was not an example of her "going rogue." White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and perhaps even the president himself gave her the green light ...

Bucking a Trend, Two Brothers to Start a Newspaper in Detroit

Mark and Gary Stern, two brothers who are veteran publishers, announced today that they plan to launch a daily newspaper for the Detroit area, The Associated Press' Jeff Karoub reported.

Brothers said Friday they'll start publishing the Detroit Daily Press on Nov. 23, selling it for 50 cents daily and $1 on Sundays. Home delivery starts Nov. 30 in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties.

The paper's 60 full-time employees, many with experience at Detroit newspapers, are using the former offices of The Daily Tribune of Royal Oak, which moved to the offices of sister publication The Macomb Daily.

"We are affordable, both to the advertiser and the reader," Mark Stern told The Associated Press before a news conference.

He said he and his brother called themselves out of retirement when they learned of the Detroit newspapers' plans to scale back home delivery. The brothers also said they seek to start more daily newspapers in other metro areas, focusing on places where papers have shut down or scaled back.

The Sterns ran daily newspapers in Detroit in 1964 and 1967; New York in 1978; and Minneapolis in 1980 when workers at those cities' major newspapers went on strike.

Mark Stern, 64, published weekly dining and entertainment publications for 22 years in Fort Lauderdale, where he now lives. Gary Stern, 67, now lives in the Atlanta area. The Sterns, both Detroit natives, say they will also maintain a residence in the area.

New York Times News Service Trims at Least 25 Staffers

The New York Times News Service will dismiss nearly eyeryone on its editorial staff and will move the news operation to the Gainsville Sun, the service announced yesterday through a report in The New York Times.

David Kaplin writes on PaidContent.org:

The NYTNS edits and syndicates articles from the NYT and more than 100 other sources. It acts like the NYTCo’s version of the AP. It also provides videos and photos to members of its syndicate, as well as features for weekly newspaper supplements.

There’s some dispute about how many of the NYTNS editors and writers will lose their jobs. The NYTCo (NYSE: NYT) says that the 25 of total 30 staffers will be let go, while the Newspaper Guild, which represents the employees, claims that 28 are being dismissed. Either way, the numbers of laid of news service staffers will not count toward the 100 cuts the main NYT newsroom is looking to make by the end of the year.

The layoffs that the NYTNS effectively leave the operation shuttered in New York. By moving it to The Sun in Florida, the NYTCo will have the paper’s less-costly non-union staff handling the duties of running the service. There was no indication as to how much the company would save on the changes or how much the layoffs would initially cost.

Speaking if the non-union workforce at the NYTCo, the company said it would stop cease contributions to their pensions when the year draws to a close. Instead, the NYTCo would take 3 percent of their wages each year and put that in non-union staffers’ 401(k) plans. No word on how much that move would save either.

Here is the Guild's memo as published on Romenesko:

Times to Subcontract News Service

Times management informed the Guild late this afternoon that the company intends to subcontract the work of the News Service. Management representatives told the Guild the work will be sent to the Gainesville Sun, a property owned by The New York Times. The subcontracting would impact all 28 Guild staffers – one assistant to the editor, two editors, 23 staff editors, one news assistant and one news clerk.

After members had been informed by management of the subcontracting, the Guild met with the affected employees to answer questions and inform them of their rights under the collective bargaining agreement. Under the contract, The Times has given the contractually required notification to the Guild, which triggers a 60-day period that allows the Guild an opportunity to try to avert the subcontracting. The Guild, as always, will monitor the situation and keep members informed.

Times Freezes Nonunion Pension Plan

The Times this morning also announced it will freeze the nonunion pension plan, effective December 31, 2009. This action will not impact the Guild/Times Pension Plan that covers Guild employees, which was left unclear in a communication put out by the company earlier today. Because the Guild/Times pension is protected under our contract the Times cannot make unilateral changes to it.

While The Times has frozen the exempt pension plan and increased the cost of the exempt health care plan, the company cannot make these unilateral changes for Guild covered employees, thanks to our contract.

#####

Colorado Springs Gazette Lays Off 11 Employees

The Colorado Springs Gazette, a Freedom Communications Inc. newspaper, laid off 11 employees today, President and Publisher Steve Pope announced.

Seven employees are from the newsroom, three are from circulation and one is from advertising.

Wayne Heilman of the Gazette writes:

The cuts here included seven employees in the newsroom, three in circulation and one in advertising, leaving Colorado Springs’ only daily newspaper with a staff of fewer than 300, Gazette President and Publisher Steve Pope said Friday. The Gazette employed nearly 500 people in early 2007 but has cut its staff through attrition and several rounds of layoffs as competition from online advertising outlets has reduced advertising revenue across the industry.

Deteriorating economic conditions in Colorado Springs, particularly among retailers, auto dealers and the real estate industry, prompted cuts in The Gazette’s budget for 2010, which triggered the layoffs, Pope said during a meeting with employees. The company tried to avoid layoffs through mandatory furloughs, a 5 percent salary cut for all employees and a variety of cost-cutting measures this year, including trimming pages from the printed newspaper, he said.

Freedom has been operating in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection since Sept. 1.

I was a staff editor at the newspaper in the mid-80s, when times were good and circulation was growing with the town. But it's a different story now, as Pam Zubeck writes for the Colorado Springs Independent.

Things are so tight that Colorado Springs' daily newspaper has relinquished its credentials to cover the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, the first time it will pass on covering any Olympics with its own personnel since the U.S. Olympic Committee relocated to Colorado Springs in 1977.

The latest Audit Bureau of Circulations report shows the Gazette's Sunday circulation plunged by 10.6 percent in a 24-month period ending Sept. 30, dropping to 84,265, while the weekday count lost 12 percent to 63,404. Those figures represent average paid circulation at 50 percent or more of the subscription price.

2009 Weblog Awards

If you're happy with my efforts here, vote for News Cycle in the 2009 Weblog Awards in the Best Large Blog category (my Technorati Authority is 496 as of today. Four more and News Cycle joins the Very Large Blog category!

Commentators React to Dobbs' Departure From CNN

Here's a short one-minute snippet of reactions to Lou Dobbs sudden departure from CNN. It was compiled by POLITICO. Most everyone was gracious to Dobbs with the exception of Keith Olbermann and The New York Times, who both showed their class once again.

In addition to his on-air comments, Olbermann had this advice for Dobbs' soul on POLITICO's Arena:

I can only say that I always wondered if his stance on immigrants, legal or otherwise, took a bigger toll on him than on the immigrants. This is, whether he or others will admit it, a Hispanic issue, and not only are Lou's wife and kids Hispanic but the daughters are in the Horse Show game, which, after the restaurant industry, is the top employer of undocumented immigrants in this country - and Lou helps pay them. If that isn't the ultimate hypocrisy, it must be the ultimate self-contradiction and very painful psychologically.

I worked with Lou as long ago as 1981 and I never heard any of this back then. He's always been a bully and one of those put-up-your-dukes clowns, but I think the immigration stance was mostly opportunistic. The insincerity of the xenophobia would explain how he went from 2nd place to 4th.

As to what he should do next, his soul would benefit from a few years at Telemundo.

The New York Times used up valuable Editorial Page space to make this comment:

Lou Dobbs has left CNN, or maybe the other way around. Whichever it is, an old, odd, infuriating-to-many mismatch of sober network and strident host is over. CNN, for now anyway, changes back to something closer to the nonpartisan, straight-up news network it wants you to think of it as, different from its ideologically branded rivals Fox News and MSNBC. The real question is the effect the change will have on Mr. Dobbs.

Mr. Dobbs, once a pinstriped purveyor of financial news, has burrowed deep into the popular culture as a self-styled populist enraged by illegal immigration. When he resigned on the air Wednesday night, he made it clear that that aspect of his public persona is not going away. He listed immigration along with jobs, the middle class and war as among the issues urgently needing his kind of honest, straightforward examination.

“Unfortunately,” he said, “these issues are now defined in the public arena by partisanship and ideology rather than by rigorous, empirical thought and forthright analysis and discussion.”

Mr. Dobbs couldn’t have phrased a more apt criticism of himself. He calls himself Mr. Independent, but he is far closer in style and method to the right-wing ranters who mold the facts to shape the argument on television and on AM radio, where Mr. Dobbs still has a show. Mr. Dobbs’s CNN program has long been a nesting ground for untruths and conspiracy theories: fretting over a nonexistent, immigrant-borne leprosy epidemic; questioning President Obama’s citizenship; issuing dark warnings about the “North American Union,” a supposed plot to strangle United States sovereignty.

It’s hard to pinpoint how much damage these kinds of ideas have done to the national discussion of illegal immigration, but they have been corrosive. Solutions have withered as many politicians parrot the central myth that people desperate to seek new lives in the United States are an affliction to be feared, not an opportunity to be engaged, future Americans who could enrich the country as immigrants always have and will.

Now Mr. Dobbs has pledged to “engage in constructive problem solving.” Here is a problem to solve constructively: Illegal immigrants are, as Mr. Dobbs likes to say, decent, honest, hard-working people. They are exploited by greedy corporate interests. They are not about to deport themselves, and we aren’t about to deport them all.

It’s a problem to which Mr. Dobbs has never really offered an answer. Perhaps someday he will.

Lou Dobbs to Leave CNN After Tonight's Show

CNN host Lou Dobbs told The New York Times this evening that he is leaving the cable news channel effective immediately.

“Some leaders in the media, politics and business have been urging me to go beyond my role here at CNN and engage in constructive problem-solving,” Mr. Dobbs said just after 7 p.m., suggesting that he would remain involved in the civic discourse, but perhaps not on television.

“I’m considering a number of options and directions,” Mr. Dobbs added.

Wednesday’s program will be his last on CNN, one of his employees said earlier in the evening.

Once Again, Newspaper Layoffs Ease in October

Newspapers in the United States reported that they dismissed 375 people from their jobs in the month of October. It's the third consecutive month that the reported number of newspaper employees losing their jobs has been below 425 people.

The biggest cut came from The New York Times, which reported that it would let go 100 people.

The slowdown in newspaper job losses comes at a time when there are postive signs in advertising revenue. For instance, Times Co. president and chief executive Janet Robinson told Chris Lefkow of Agence France Presse that, "We have seen encouraging signs of improvement in the overall economy and in discussions with our advertisers. Early in the fourth quarter, print advertising trends, in comparison to the third quarter, have improved modestly, while digital advertising trends are improving more significantly."

Here is the list for October:

Oct. 29: The Wall Street Journal, nine people as the Boston bureau is closed.
Oct. 21: The Midwest City (Okla.) Sun ceases publication. The twice weekly will lay off 10 people.
Oct. 20: Los Angeles Times, at least 30 people.
Oct. 19: The New York Times, 100 newsroom employees.
Oct. 19: The Press-Enterprise of Riverside, Calif., at least 40 employees, 16 from the newsroom.
Oct. 18: Gannetoid.com now reports 1,514 people laid off from Gannett publications this year. This is 40 more than the Sept. 9 posting.
Oct. 16: La Frontera of McAllen, Texas, ceases publication. The number of employees laid off here was not released by Valley Freedom Newspapers, the chain has said 70 people have been laid off in the past 18 months.
Oct. 13: The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., 50 people.
Oct. 12: The Modesto (Calif.) Bee, seven people.
Oct. 2: The Decatur (Ala.) Daily, 19 people.

Here are News Cycle's month-by-month lists of newspaper job cuts this year:

December -- 752 people.
November -- 293 people.
October -- 375 people.
September -- 347 people.
August -- 425 people.
July -- 2,505 people.
June -- 318 people.
May -- 1,084 people.
April -- 1,350 people.
March -- 3,943 people.
February -- 1,492 people.
January -- 2,256 people.

Email me to report any job cuts in the newspaper industry.

Obama Honors Slain Heroes at Fort Hood

Here is President Obama at today's ceremony honoring the fallen at Food Hood.