Congress

Source: revolution-21.blogspot.com --- 1 hour ago
A new report finds that people don't want to pay for news online, says an Associated Press . This is what I could get of it. I think it was entitled something like "No S***, Sherlock," but don't quote me on that. I ran out of nickels to plug the meter on the Internets "tubes". report ANYWAY. . . this is what I could steal excerpt for "educational use" with the change I had on me : Getting people to pay for news online at this point would be "like trying to force butterflies back into their cocoons," a new consumer survey suggests. That was one of several bleak headlines in the Project for Excellence in Journalism's annual assessment of the state of the news industry, released Sunday. The project's report contained an extensive look at habits of the estimated six in 10 Americans who say they get at least some news online during a typical day. On average, each person spends three minutes and four seconds per visit to a news site. About 35 percent of online news consumers said they have a favorite site that they check each day. The others are essentially free agents, the project said. Even among those who have their favorites, only 19 percent said they would be willing to pay for news online - including those who already do. There's little brand loyalty: 82 percent of people with preferred news sites said they'd look elsewhere if their favorites start demanding payment. "If we move to some pay system, that shift is going to have to surm ...

Source: 20twentytwo.blogspot.com --- 5 hours ago
It was exactly 12 years ago that Sonia Gandhi was appointed party chief, in a development that stemmed the Congress’s downward slide, helped it capture Dilli Durbar after a decade-long power drought and put the party on the road to re-capturing its pre-eminence. Twelve years, to paraphrase former British PM Harold Macmillan, may be a long time in politics, but few would have imagined the turnaround that Sonia has scripted since the day when members of the Congress Working Committee, deeply worried about the party’s existential crisis, turned against the incumbent Sitaram Kesri to hand over the reins to her. Sonia helped woo back Muslims and upper castes .In 1998, the Congress, which had lost the pole position to a resurgent BJP two years earlier, was adrift and threatened to sink further. The polarisation brought about by Mandal-Mandir politics saw the party losing the crucial constituencies of Muslims, OBCs and Dalits in north India as well as huge political spaces across states to rivals. Its ‘catch-all’ appeal was blunted with the middle class, put off by the stink of corruption and compromises, embracing the BJP’s offer of a clean alternative and the bold espousal of economic reforms making the poor and vulnerable doubt the party’s intent. The task that faced Sonia as she set out to pull organisational chestnuts out of the fire was tougher than the challenge Indira Gandhi had encountered after the party’s first-ever defeat in 197 ...