Steve Cochrane, a senior managing director at Moody’s Economy.com. outlined what he called “the shape of the coming recovery” during a recent journalism conference in Indiana.

He said this includes a starring role for Oklahoma and the middle tier of the country in continuing to lead in economic growth and job retention. Cochrane, who oversees Moody’s reports on all fifty states, the territories and the District of Columbia, delivered a speech that could be characterized as pessimistic in the near-term and cautiously hopeful in the mid-to-long-term.

Briefly put, Cochrane said that he expects the technical end of the recession by the end of this year. Growth will continue to be weak in 2010, then stronger in 2011-12. He also outlined continuing risks to the American financial system in the area of foreclosures, specifying that continued employment erosion will put more homeowners under economic stress. A time of seeming deflation, he said, could be followed by strong inflation due to mounting deficit spending.

“Of the eleven recessions since World War II, this is the worst,” Cochrane told statehouse reporters from across America at the annual conference of CapitolBeat, the association for state capitol reporters and editors. In the end, he outlined the “script” for a 22-month long recession that began in December 2007 and will end next month or the month after.

For all the continuing bad news, including a national unemployment rate that will probably “continue to worsen,” part of the secret in the emerging recovery, Cochrane said, is that higher income households quickly adjusted to the recession by substantially increased savings rates. “They felt their reduction in wealth rapidly in the stock market, but then adjusted their habits rapidly,” the analyst said, to the benefit of the economy as a whole.

Labor markets will continue to be weak as federal stimulus spending fades away, Cochrane said. Nonetheless, he credited the stimulus package and said it had benefited the economy as a whole.

Cochrane said that the central tier of the country from Texas north through the Dakotas to the Canadian border will in some ways be leading indicator of the ultimate national recovery. While he said Texas might experience slight employment increases in the coming months, Oklahoma will face some continued erosion, with recovering job numbers in 2011 and thereafter.

Even as Cochrane spoke in Indianapolis, new data from the Oklahoma Employment Security Commssion found Oklahoma unemployment rates went from 6.4 percent of the workforce to 6.5 percent.

As for the major states of California and Florida and the cluster of northeast states already experiencing high unemployment, Cochrane predicted California will be the first on the road to recovery, with Florida a ways behind and the northeast states, including New York lagging behind.

Cochrane found it “pretty remarkable” that so many states have so far avoided major spending and government employment cuts. He predicted however, that governments across the nation ultimately have “no choices” but to bring significant fiscal restraint to bear in order to weather the aftermath of the recession.
Last Updated ( Monday, 31 August 2009 )

Gov. Mitch DanielsINDIANAPOLIS — In wide-ranging remarks and a lively exchange with reporters from across America, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels made the case for the brand of pragmatic conservatism that has made him the subject of thousands of news stories and garnered him what is now a 70% approval rating.

As Oklahoma faces a rising financial crunch and a possible special session that could lead to "spending down" some of the state’s Rainy Day Fund, Daniels’ words on government spending habits and behavioral patterns may be instructive to policymakers in the Sooner State.

Daniels described himself as an enthusiastic reader who is "very discouraged about the decline of newspaper readership." He said he recognized "the quality of journalism is as erratic as the quality of public service," and lamented the loss of Robert Novak, who he described as "hard-bitten, impossible to con and hard working. He should be remembered not for his opinions, but for his reporting, including a stint as a statehouse reporter here in Indiana."

The Hoosier State, as he described it, is "still solvent, and we had a modest increase in spending" for government last year. The state is one of the few in the nation with a surplus, but a $1.3 billion cushion essentially eroded to $1 billion in the most recent budget. He predicted that regardless of national or regional recovery, "Indiana will have fewer dollars to work with in 2011 than in 2007." As is the case with journalism business models, government, Daniels said, "cannot stay the same."

When a reporter asked him to share Indiana’s "secret" to fiscal solvency in a time of recession, Daniels joshed, "We spent less money than we took in." Speaking seriously, he said the state had eliminated an estimated $700 million to $800 million in "structural deficit" and "more or less" froze spending as a whole. In his first year in office, a tax amnesty was "spectacularly successful" in getting one-time money that was used to pay back state government debts and not for any new spending. While Gov. Daniels experienced a substantial decline in popularity early in his tenure, his approval ratings recovered and now match or exceed those of a handful of other popular chief executives, including Oklahoma’s Brad Henry.

The challenge to change government operations remains, Daniels said. "How can we deliver services at lower cost?" He also said some sacrosanct areas of spending must be examined for efficiency and purpose: "Entitlements eat the budget," a situation that cannot forever be ignored. Speaking of broad economic concerns, Daniels said he is concerned some federal stimulus spending has "taken care of long-standing wish lists" rather than actual economic stimulus. Still ahead in his final term, Daniels said, is a tough look at government economic incentive packages in terms of effectiveness.

In the end, "the business environment is crucial." What Daniels described as "the sand box" – the business prevailing culture a state offers to businesses — is more important than up-front incentives and direct subsidies for operations or relocations.

Daniels, a Republican, also observed President Barack Obama "ran a
brilliant campaign in Indiana" – but only narrowly won the state after outspending John McCain $18 million to $2 million.  Daniels came to politics as an aide to U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar. In the 1980s he worked for President Ronald Reagan. He was elected governor of Indiana in 2004 with 54% support, then reelected in 2008
with 57% backing.

The 2009 Capitolbeat conference was held August 20-22 at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Indianapolis.

Last Updated ( Monday, 31 August 2009 )

One highlight of the recent national conference for state capitol reporters and editors was a panel of “new media” practitioners who described emerging new business models and methodologies for delivering news and analysis to tech-savvy modern audiences.

A Saturday panel at the conference focused on “new business models for statehouse coverage.” The panel consisted of organizations that “are forging new models to pay for the collection of news,” according to sponsors.

Participants included Dennis Welch of The Arizona Guardian (www.arizonguardian.com) and Brian Howey of The Howey Political Report, a weekly analysis of Indiana politics. Also describing experiences in the brave new world of journalism were James Pindell of the New Hampshire Political Report (NHPoliticalReport.com), the panel moderator, and Michael Grass of the Center for Independent Media (www.newjournalist.org), a Washington-based non-profit group founded in February that has carved out a visible impact on news coverage and citizen activism in Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and New Mexico. One of the most engaging speakers at a frequently engaging event was the fifth panelist, Trent Seibert of Texas Watchdog (www.texaswatchdog.org), an online non-profit concentrating on state and local government in the Lone Star State.

Whereas the Arizona and Indiana operations are for-profit, the D.C-based operation and the Texas Watchdog are non-profit. The Arizona Guardian relies on high-dollar subscriptions, while both Texas Watchdog and the Center for Independent Media engage in grass roots citizen training, enterprise reporting and analysis.

Like many other new media, the five news groups have become new homes for refugees from the financial stress and strain evident at many newspapers across America.

The four men spoke at the 2009 “Capitolbeat” conference in Indianapolis, Indiana, a two-day seminar that touched on the full range of issues deserving detailed coverage and journalistic competition in an era of declining news resources and non-competitive relationships among key elements of the mainstream news media.

The least pessimistic speaker at the conference was probably Ed Fouhy, a career print and broadcast journalist and one of the first presenters on Friday, although his remarks could scarcely be described as pollyann-ish. Fouhy said there is little doubt that, across America,  “An already small but merry band of state Capitol reporters has gotten smaller and a little less merry.”

Indeed, numbers were part of the focus at the Indianapolis conference. In the late 1990s, there were some 626 state Capitol beat reporters across America, according to the American Journalism Review. By the early 1990s, that number had shrunk to around 500. Today, there are around 350, in the estimate of Capitolbeat. Capitol press rooms across the nation typically include empty desks, with some of the occupied desks filled by reporters using non-traditional news delivery systems.

“The world of journalism has changed more in the last 10 years than it did in the previous fifty,” Fouhy said. Nonetheless, he believes there is still a market for journalism’s goals of, as he described them, accuracy, objectivity and independence: “It’s fashionable to be downbeat, but I’m an optimist.” To justify that optimism, he spoke on the emergence of new web-based enterprises, some combining print and web work, and both for-profit and non-profit models.

He said modern journalists need “someone with deep pockets, advertising, foundation support, big subscribers and little subscribers,” and that the audience for straight reporting is strong: “Voters are starving for information.” The future will belong, he said, to those who invent “local journalism that works” in local markets.

Fouhy, still involved in the work of the Pew Center on Journalism, is the winner of five Drew Pearson awards, among many other professional accolades.

Oklahoma City, just a little over a century old, is still inventing or reinventing itself. The profession of journalism, reacting to a transformation of business models rooted in the global economy, is certainly in search of new models.

Perhaps weekly newspapers like  The City Sentinel, and online models like Tulsa Today, can be part of a Renaissance for American journalism.

About the author: An award-winning journalist, Pat McGuigan is a longtime
contributor to Tulsa Today and serves as our contributing editor. He is also
managing editor of a weekly newspaper in Oklahoma City.

Last Updated ( Tuesday, 25 August 2009 )

Mike Gottfried, a former ESPN college football analyst and commentator, has a new show starting called  “College Football This Week."

The show airs Mondays at 6:05 p.m. Central time on the American Family Radio network.  Gottfried and American Family Association President Tim Wildmon will discuss college football with a distinctively Christian perspective.

The association is a pro-family advocacy organization with more than 2.5 million online supporters.

“We are thrilled to have someone of Mike Gottfried’s caliber host a weekly college football show on American Family Radio," said Wildmon. "In addition to being recognized as an expert on college football, Mike is also a strong Christian, so some of our focus will be on the influence of faith in sports.

“We will also talk to some of the best coaches and players in the game today," Wildmon added. "There is nothing like the passion and pageantry of college football in America and we will talk about it each Monday evening on AFR.”

Gottfried says the program will feature the latest on college football teams, coaches and players.

  “The stories of all the people’s lives and what they’ve gone through, mistakes they made, are all a part of it – trying to get the message out there of salvation," he said. "So, I think it’s going to be interesting to find out even about the past and future of a lot of the sports celebrities in our country.”

Gottfried was an NCAA Division I football coach at Murray State, Cincinnati, Kansas and Pittsburgh from 1978 to 1989. He was also on the broadcast staff of ESPN from 1990 To 2004 as a college football analyst and color commentator.

The AFR Network can be heard around the country through nearly 200 stations and affiliates.  Stations are listed on their website, http://www.afr.net.  The 55-minute “College Football This Week” can also be heard live through the same web site.
Last Updated ( Monday, 24 August 2009 )

Forty-six rural utilities and cooperatives will receive $1.6 billion in loans for system improvements for more than 100,000 rural customers, according to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

The loans, spread among 30 states, will include building and improving more than 11,000 miles of distribution and transmission lines for 109,250 rural customers. Two Oklahoma-based cooperatives will receive almost $40 million in loans.

"Our rural communities need reliable, affordable electric service to support business expansion and broaden economic opportunities, and President Obama is delivering on his commitment to invest in America’s infrastructure and create jobs," Vilsack said. "These loans will spur growth in rural America by helping cooperatives and rural utilities deliver improved service to more customers."

For example, Fox Islands Wind, LLC, in Vinalhaven, Maine, has been selected to receive a $9.5 million loan to provide clean, low-cost renewable energy through wind power. Fox Islands provides power to 1,900 consumers in rural Maine on the Penobscot Bay via submarine cable to the mainland, where electric rates range from two to seven times the national average. When the Fox Islands project is complete, it will be the largest coastal wind-power facility in New England and the second-largest facility on the East Coast.

Below is a complete list of the selected borrowers. Funding of each loan recipient is contingent upon the recipient meeting the conditions of the loan agreement.

Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas:

Southwest Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corporation; $40,000,000 loan

Colorado and Nebraska:

Highline Electric Association; $4,121,000 loan

Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Wyoming:

Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, Inc.; $102,511,000 loan

Florida:

West Florida Electric Cooperative Association, Inc.; $19,845,000 loan

Talquin Electric Cooperative, Inc.; $47,571,000 loan

Idaho and Montana:

Missoula Electric Cooperative, Inc.; $17,837,000 loan

Idaho, Nevada, and Utah:

Raft River Rural Electric Cooperative, Inc.; $7,225,000 loan

Illinois:

Monroe County Electric Cooperative, Inc.; $7,000,000 loan

Iowa:

Southwest Iowa Rural Electric Cooperative; $6,000,000 loan

Kansas:

Heartland Rural Electric Cooperative, Inc.; $10,600,000 loan

Flint Hills Rural Electric Cooperative Association, Inc.; $5,000,000 loan

The Lane-Scott Electric Cooperative, Inc.; $9,860,000 loan

Kentucky:

Big Sandy Rural Electric Cooperative Corporation; $10,397,000 loan

East Kentucky Power Cooperative, Inc.; $140,716,000 loan

Grayson Rural Electric Cooperative Corporation; $16,438,000 loan

Louisiana:

Southwest Louisiana Electric Membership Corporation; $71,247,000 loan

Northeast Louisiana Power Cooperative, Inc.; $9,200,000 loan

Maine:

Fox Islands Wind, LLC; $9,500,000 loan

Minnesota:

Stearns Cooperative Electric Association; $20,000,000 loan

Crow Wing Cooperative Power and Light Company; $28,000,000 loan

Mississippi:

Magnolia Electric Power Association; $31,000,000 loan

South Mississippi Electric Power Association; $55,663,000 loan

Missouri:

New-Mac Electric Cooperative, Inc.; $5,800,000 loan

Citizens Electric Corporation; $26,000,000 loan

North Carolina:

Central Electric Membership Corporation; $7,500,000 loan

Rutherford Electric Membership Corporation; $16,000,000 loan

North Dakota:

McLean Electric Cooperative, Inc.; $6,500,000 loan

North Dakota and Minnesota:

Square Butte Electric Cooperative; $13,235,000 loan

Ohio:

Consolidated Electric Cooperative, Inc.; $21,182,000 loan

Oklahoma:

Verdigris Valley Electric Cooperative, Inc.; $15,246,000 loan

Northwest Oklahoma Electric Cooperative; $19,370,000 loan

Oklahoma and Texas:

Southwest Rural Electric Association, Inc.; $4,628,000 loan

Pennsylvania:

REA Energy Cooperative, Inc.; $17,850,000 loan

South Carolina:

Horry Electric Cooperative, Inc.; $118,935,000 loan

South Dakota:

Central Electric Cooperative, Inc.; $11,412,000 loan

Butte Electric Cooperative, Inc.; $13,331,000 loan

South Dakota, Iowa, and Minnesota:

Sioux Valley – Southwestern Electric Cooperative, Inc.; $40,697,000 loan

South Dakota, Montana, and North Dakota:

Grand Electric Cooperative, Inc.; $10,890,000 loan

Tennessee:

Meriwether Lewis Electric Cooperative; $15,000,000 loan

Duck River Electric Membership Corporation; $47,500,000 loan

Sequachee Valley Electric Cooperative; $13,000,000 loan

Texas:

Rita Blanca Electric Cooperative, Inc.; $12,216,000 loan

Rusk County Electric Cooperative, Inc.; $13,164,000 loan

San Patricio Electric Cooperative, Inc.; $8,545,000 loan

Virginia:

Central Virginia Electric Cooperative; $24,000,000 loan

Wisconsin:

Jump River Electric Cooperative, Inc.; $4,000,000 loan
Last Updated ( Friday, 21 August 2009 )