The Arizona Republic is looking for young entrepreneurs
The paper’s preparing its annual “"35 Entrepreneurs 35 and Under” feature, to be published in October.
There’s a nomination form here
The applicant must have been born after Oct. 1, 1975 to be eligible. The entrepreneur has to have been involved in starting and running and Arizona-based business that already is showing revenue growth and potential.
Applications must be submitted by Aug. 31.
4:35 PM
US Airways — the "ugly girl"?
After United’s dalliance with Phoenix’s US Airways over the past few months, the Chicago airline suddenly dropped US Airways and proposed to Continental, in a deal that could create the country’s largest airline.
Continental capo Jeff Smisek made this comment at a news conference:
“I didn’t want (United CEO Glenn Tilton) to marry the ugly girl. I wanted him to marry the pretty one.”
PBJ story—with a press release from a stung US Airways CEO Doug Parker—here.
8:16 AM
The state's biggest companies and highest paid CEOs
The former is listed by the Arizona Republic this a.m.
The trouble is that the top fifty companies are dispensed by the paper in no fewer than 25 groups of two, requiring some 24 additional clicks to see them all.
And since this is the miserable web site of the Arizona Republic, you can be assured that each click takes from between six and ten seconds to give you a new page, and that, during that time, the page will, annoyingly, re-situate itself a few times.
It’s an imensely pleasureable reading experience!
You’d think that by hitting print you might get a coherent list to read. Look how this page resolves itself:
Note how that instead of the full list, it just gives you the two entries on that page, and that it doesn’t even do that right. You can also see that the intro paragraph from the beginning of the story is repeated on each printed page.
If, laboriously, you print the whole thing out, you’d have those literary pearls of wisdom 25 times.
Finally, if you look closely on the bottom right-hand corner of the print page, you can see this legend: “Print powered by FormatDynamics”!
In other words, the Republic, like so many other media outfits, is actually paying some other company do to a crummy job formatting its print pages.
Exactly the sort of thing a media company should outsource.
Anyway, if you’re interested in how the state’s execs are doing, The PBJ is on the case tracking executive pay. It’s list of recent dispatches from company reports is here.
7:40 AM
The dark side of the solar industry!
The increase in the number of contractors shifting from the nearly dormant housing industry into solar to pay bills has accelerated, but many haven’t received the proper training to make that transition. While problems don’t appear to be major, the industry is trying to police itself to prevent a bad image, and regulators are trying to get inspectors up to speed as fast as they can.
“Anecdotally, yes, we’re seeing more complaints on solar,” said Tyler Palmer, a spokesman for the Arizona Registrar of Contractors.
AROC doesn’t have hard numbers on how many complaints it has received, but Palmer said given the industry’s growth as other sectors decline, those complaints draw more attention.
It’s a fairly substantive story, but it ends on a less-than-upbeat note. Palmer, the contractor spokesperson, says that making sure contractors are licensed correctly for solar will require some action by the state:
“It’ll be a process, and some of them will require rule changes,” he said, adding that likely would involve a change in policy by Gov. Jan Brewer, who has frozen new rules at state agencies.
7:20 AM
US Airways in another round of merger talks with United
Both the NY Times and now the WSJ are reporting that serious talks are underway.
The combined operations—including those of America West, which Phoenix-based US Airways merged with four years ago but still, like a snake trying to swallow a recalcitrant mongoose, can’t seem to digest it—would create the nation’s second-largest carrier, after Delta.
The Times:
The negotiations represent the latest efforts to consolidate the struggling airline industry, which lost $60 billion over the last decade as fuel costs soared and the number of travelers fell. Both companies have been vocal in calling for greater partnerships.
Of the major airlines, only the low-cost carrier Southwest Airlines turned a profit last year. And analysts have said that despite the steep cuts in capacity by all the airlines in the last couple of years, there are still too many airlines chasing too few travelers. A combination of United and US Airways could help both return to profit faster than they could going it alone.
Both stories note the talks are tentative and could fall through. The WSJ notes this fly in the ointment:
US Airways, itself the result of a 2005 merger of the old US Airways and America West Airlines, still hasn’t been able to combine its pilot and flight-attendant ranks because the unions won’t agree on seniority. And US Airways pilots have a stipulation in their contract that would raise their wages back to pre-bankruptcy levels if a merger occurs that would trigger a change of control—another aspect United and US Airways would have to confront.
The Arizona Republic … has a web post about the NYT story.
9:11 PM