Everybody shops, but the retail beat is about much more than going to the mall. We asked Ylan Q. Mui, who covers consumers and the economy at The Washington Post, to explain how and why.
The Senate was expected to vote Monday on the Marketplace Fairness Act, or MFA, a bill that would require online sellers to collect state and local sales taxes just like their brick-and-mortar counterparts do. For the past decade or so, traditional merchants have opined that e-commerce sites like Amazon.com have a pricing advantage because (at [...]
While reading about the Boston bombing and the West, Texas, explosion, I came across a Sun Sentinel story noting interesting ways lawyers get paid for their services. It was the kind of lighthearted trend story that many of us need this week. Reporter Paula McMahon writes: “A herd of cattle in Venezuela is one of [...]
Earth Day 2013 will be here on April 22. Organizers say more than 1 billion people observe the eco-friendly event; it was just announced that this year will feature the global theme “The Face of Climate Change.” Stateside, entities from government offices like the Environmental Protection Agency and the USDA to corporations to communities are commemorating [...]
We seem to be whisking through 2013 at a fast clip, and among other things that brings us closer to 2014 and near-full implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA), otherwise known as Obamacare. If you haven’t tackled a health-insurance or health care story in a while, some recent headlines [...]
Kavita Kumar of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch knew something was up with CPI Corp., the St. Louis-based photo studio company. She’d gotten phone calls from employees wanting to know more about rumors speculating the company’s future, she says. But nobody at the company was talking. And there were no analysts following the company. “I decided [...]
Easter is little more than a week away, and some reports predict a lackluster selling season for trinkets, apparel and other holiday staples, because the moveable feast falls so early in the spring calendar. The National Retail Federation’s annual forecast says spending is expected to be flat, compared to 2012 – but it’s still a [...]
I thought my recent blog post about faith-based tourism, prompted by the resignation of Benedict XVI, would be the one and only Vatican-inspired post of this millennium. But less than 24 hours after Pope Francis appeared to crowds in St. Peter’s Square, factories already are whirring to create merchandise bearing his visage and entrepreneurs already are [...]
Zoe Chace and the Planet Money team were brainstorming story ideas about JC Penney. The company had brought in Ron Johnson to turn things around as he had with Apple and Target. When fourth-quarter earnings time came, they decided the time was right. But, unlike most news outlets, they chose a different route. “We didn’t [...]
Amid the doom and gloom of sequestration, a pending jobs report that likely will be tepid at best and more foreclosure scams, it’s nice to get something warm and cuddly in the business pages for an occasional change. And since we’re in the midst of the national Professional Pet Sitters Week, slated for March 3-9 [...]
