INVESTING IT;Tenneco's Big Shipyard May Soon Sail Off Solo
Date: 18 February 1996
By James Sterngold
James Sterngold
WHAT'S a good used shipyard worth? That question is much on the minds of the shareholders of Tenneco Inc., one of the last big industrial conglomerates. Tenneco, which has interests ranging from gas pipelines to auto parts to packaging materials, also owns the Newport News Shipbuilding yard in Virginia. The yard is huge -- the only place on earth capable of building a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
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Books in Brief: NONFICTION
Date: 18 February 1996
By Alexandra Hall
Alexandra Hall
UNSECULAR MEDIA Making News of Religion in America. By Mark Silk. University of Illinois, $19.95.
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OFF THE RACK: BRETT BRUNE;When a Portrait Doesn't Include the Wrinkles
Date: 18 February 1996
THE net worth of black families is "just 10 percent that of white families," Worth magazine says in its March issue as it proceeds to describe a black man out to fill the financial chasm between the two races. He is Kelvin Boston, who is the host of a PBS program on personal finance and who wrote "Smart Money Moves for African-Americans," published Jan. 3 by G. P. Putnam's Sons. The brief portrait might have been less glowing than it is if Worth's editors had looked into Mr. Boston's past or had a chance to read an article on him in The Detroit News on Jan. 21.
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The Media Missed the Message
Date: 18 February 1996
By James Fallows
James Fallows
Iowa is history," the Republican strategist Ed Rollins told Larry King on CNN. It was Feb. 12, the evening of the caucuses, and within hours nearly all of the 3,000 correspondents and TV crew members who had gathered to cover the event had left the state. Many headed for New Hampshire, whose voters' political values and heritage they will find deeply fascinating until the polls close there, Tuesday night. But the real problem with campaign coverage is that Iowa is not history in the normal sense. Real history involves fitting events together with some kind of pattern and consequence. This year's political reports have almost exulted in the idea that what was said, done and predicted yesterday has no effect on today.
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Notable Quotables: Why Images Become Icons
Date: 18 February 1996
By Thomas Hine
Thomas Hine
TIRED OF THE SAME OLD TELEPHONE RING? Now you can purchase, through a special television offer, a device that plays the first four portentous notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, complete with lyrics. "AN-swer the PHONE," sings the electronic baritone. "AN-swer the PHONE!" Not interested? Perhaps you would like a Mona Lisa liquid-soap dispenser. The plastic pump emerges from the top of her head. Or how about Michelangelo's David as a refrigerator magnet set, available at many museum shops. You can dress him in a cowboy hat and blue jeans. Then, as the mood strikes, you can remove the hat -- or the blue jeans.
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POLITICS: LOSING MOMENTUM;The Surge Has Waned, but Forbes Remains Hopeful
Date: 19 February 1996
By Ernest Tollerson
Ernest Tollerson
Barely two weeks ago in Iowa, Steve Forbes was a heavyweight. His Presidential candidacy spooked the front-runner, Senator Bob Dole of Kansas. Now, on the eve of New Hampshire's primary, Mr. Forbes finds himself a bantamweight candidate, hoping to do well enough to get an economy-class ticket to future primaries. This, of course, is not a fate Mr. Forbes muses about, at least in public. He has settled into a survivalist mode. "This race is now wide open," he said in an interview on Saturday. "Dole has lost his aura of invincibility. Buchanan has become a serious player. Alexander has become a serious player. The question is, Can Buchanan and Alexander survive the examination that every candidate goes through? So it's going to be very fluid, very fluid for another three weeks before it shakes out."
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Beirut Radio-TV Plan Protested
Date: 18 February 1996
By The New York Times
A battle of words has broken out in Lebanon over the Government's plans to tighten control of radio and television stations, most of which first went on the air during the country's 15-year civil war. Broadcast media owners and operators, supported by the powerful Confederation of Trade Unions, professors and journalism students, have scheduled a nationwide strike on Feb. 29. Many fear the protest could turn violent because of a Government ban on demonstrations.
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Buchanan on Air
Date: 18 February 1996
To the Editor: A. M. Rosenthal (column, Feb. 16) is outraged that the news media employed Pat Buchanan as a commentator in the years before he decided to run for President and after his candidacy in 1992.
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Seeing Life Steadily And Seeing It Whole
Date: 18 February 1996
To the Editor: In his review of James Fallows's "Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy" (Jan. 28), Kevin Phillips excerpts some words that Mr. Fallows credits to Charles Prestwich Scott, a 19th-century editor of The Manchester Guardian: that the function of a good newspaper is "to see life steady and see it whole."
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