Like transportation itself, covering it is a beautiful thing when it works. When it doesn’t, the failures are out there for all to see. Bernie Kohn, team Leader at Bloomberg News, outlines basic building blocks for smart transportation coverage.
Joe Ducey, Lauren Gilger and Gerard Watson of ABC 15 in Phoenix won an Edward R. Murrow award from the Radio Television Digital News Association and a Peabody Award from the University of Georgia for their investigative series on a Ford recall. What stood out to me was footage of the “smoking gun.” The reporters [...]
Nothing like the topic of travel hassles to get people talking. Or weight. Or personal finances. Roll them all together and you’ve got a business news peg of epic proportions, especially just before the start of the summer travel season. Samoa Airlines has served up just such a morsel with its announcement that it will [...]
Spring break is coming up for college students and families, and it’s an opportunity to prepare not only some interesting feature stories about the tourism, transportation and hospitality industries, but to take a look at college student spending patterns in light of the ongoing drumbeat about the trillion-dollar student loan “bubble” some say looms. Travelocity says [...]
Ken Leiser of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch recently found a new economic indicator: the airport shoeshine stand. He writes: “As with other airport businesses, the loss of flights has taken a toll on the shoeshine market. In 2001, Lambert officials were guaranteed $105,000 in revenue from the shoeshine operations. When the contract was renewed last [...]
As the most telegenic first-world problem in years continues to play out in the saga of the powerless Carnival Triumph and its hungry, mostly incommunicado and sewage-dodging thousands of passengers, you may be looking for more business angles to the story. Since power knocked out the ship’s power off Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, discomforts have escalated and [...]
Just in time to give winter-weary northeasterners a healthy shot of schadenfreude, and barely a year after the bungled journey of the Costa Concordia, another winter cruise ship disaster is unfolding on picturesque blue seas. While not deadly like the Costa Concordia accident, the journey of the Carnival Triumph must be ranking pretty high on the misery index, with [...]
With East Coast regions expecting as much as three feet of snow shortly, courtesy of what the Weather Channel has named Winter Storm Nemo, the financial effects already have begun to ripple nationwide. Even if you’re in one of the balmier markets nationwide, businesses in your area likely will be experiencing either a boost or [...]
A news story about a railroad pedestrian death doesn’t usually prompt a three-part series. But after some digging, Todd Frankel, an enterprise reporter at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, realized it wasn’t an isolated incident. “It’s the leading cause of death on railroads,” Todd says. “It surprised me because I assumed most deaths were at railroad [...]
New U.S. car sales are due out today, and TrueCar forecasts November to boost the annual sales pace to its highest since early 2008, boding well for car makers and retailers. Pent-up demand from consumers who are hanging on to their old vehicles for a record number of years, along with incentives and slowly improving [...]
