text:
The impact of big-box retailers on communities, jobs, crime, wages and more: Research roundup
(Pixabay)
By Denise-Marie Ordway and Leighton Walter Kille
Year zero in the history of U.S. big-box stores was 1962: In that one year, the first Walmart, Target and Kmart stores opened. While the firms' origins varied, their common focus was on deep discounts and suburban locations. Shoppers would arrive by car, not foot, so what mattered was highway access, acres of parking and massive scale.
In the five decades since, the American retail landscape and built environment have been profoundly altered. At the end of 2015, Wal-Mart had 4,614 stores and Supercenters in the United States, while Target operated 1,805 stores and Best Buy had 1,050. Then there are smaller chains — still huge by any measure — as well as "category killers" and all the diverse residents of the shopping-mall ecosystem. While some big-box retailers have stumbled in recent years, the rise of Internet commerce and the increasing appeal of cities has helped them remain a powerful force: Wal-Mart alone is estimated to employ approximately 1 percent of the American workforce and reported nearly $486 billion in revenue for fiscal year 2015.
All that retail and economic muscle hasn't come without significant controversy. A 2008 study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology indicates that Wal-Mart's rapid expansion in the 1980s and 1990s was responsible for 40 percent to 50 percent of the decline in the number of small discount stores. According to 2014 research in Social Science Quarterly, a similar effect continues: On average, within 15 months of a new Wal-Mart store's opening, as many as 14 existing retail establishments close. Other research has found that the arrival of Wal-Mart stores was associated with increased obesity of area residents, higher crime rates relative to communities that were not by stores, lower overall employment at the county level, and lower per-acre tax revenues than mixed-use development.
Despite such well-documented effects, big-box retailers are often courted by cities and regions, as suggested by a 2014 paper from the Harvard Kennedy School. A 2011 report by a Missouri metropolitan planning organization found that over 20 years, more than $5.8 billion had been given to private developers in the St. Louis region, with a substantial portion going to retail-oriented projects. And because big-box stores dominate the malls in which they operate, subsidies continue long after opening day: A study of more than 2,500 stores found that 73 percent of mall anchors paid no rent. Instead, mall owners use their presence to attract smaller retailers that pay elevated rates in the hope of benefiting from the big stores. Some research suggests that small retailers in such malls indeed see more patrons, and municipalities that do attract big box stores can see increased tax revenue, although there may be revenue lost when smaller businesses fail.
Still, a 2014 study from researchers at Stanford and the University of Michigan finds positive effects for wages, relative to pay levels traditionally available through small stores and firms: Indeed, the "spread of these chains has been accompanied by higher wages. Large chains and large establishments pay considerably more than small mom-and-pop establishments. Moreover, large firms and large establishments give access to managerial ranks and hierarchy, and manage rs, most of whom are first-line supervisors, are a large fraction of the retail la bor force, and earn about 20 percent more than other workers."
Given the outsized role that chain retailers play in the U.S. economy, media coverage often focuses on business issues, such as the wave of closures hitting J.C. Penney and other firms, or the rise of "small-box" urban stores. Walmart's overseas operations get a lot of attention, including its pledge to sell more U.S.-made goods, or an investigation into its use of bribery in Mexico. Workplace issues are also important, such as why openings at the company often attract hundreds of applicants and the company's February 2015 announcement that it would raise the entry wage to at least $10 an hour by February 2016.
For state and local reporters, particularly those on a municipal beat, the challenge comes in understanding the positive and negative effects that the potential arrival or departure of a big-box retailer can have. For example, if politicians propose tax-increment financing or other tax-based incentives for a retail project, is that an appropriate use of public funds? What are the potential effects — long and short term — on other retailers and employers in the area? Could an expansion of low-wage jobs increase use of taxpayer-funded assistance programs?
Below are a series of studies that shed light on the effects of big-box retailers on other businesses, employment, wages, crime and health. Beat reporters also can find industry statistics and related resources from organizations such as the National Retail Federation, Retail Industry Leaders Association and the International Council of Shopping Centers.
"The Evolution of National Retail Chains: How We Got Here"
Foster, Lucia; Haltiwanger, John; Klimek, Shawn D.; Krizan; C.J.; Ohlmacher, Scott. U.S. Census Bureau Center for Economic Studies paper, March 2015.
Abstract: "The growth and dominance of large, national chains is a ubiquitous feature of the U.S. retail sector. The recent literature has documented the rise of these chains and the contribution of this structural change to productivity growth in the retail trade sector. Recent studies have also shown that the establishments of large, national chains are both more productive and more stable than the establishments of single-unit firms they are displacing. We build on this literature by following the paths of retail firms and establishments from 1977 to 2007 using establishment- and firm-level data from the Census of Retail Trade and the Longitudinal Business Database. We dissect the shift towards large, national chains on several margins. We explore the differences in entry and exit as well as job creation and destruction patterns at the establishment and firm level. We find that over this period there are consistently high rates of entry and job creation by the establishments of single-unit firms and large, national firms, but net growth is much higher for the large, national firms. Underlying this difference is far lower exit and job destruction rates of establishments from national chains. Thus, the story of the increased dominance of national chains is not so much due to a declining entry rate of new single-unit firms but rather the much greater stability of the new establishments belonging to national chains relative to their single-unit counterparts. Given the increasing dominant role of these chains, we dissect the paths to success of national chains, including an analysis of four key industries in retail trade. We find dramatically different patterns across industries. In General Merchandise, the rise in national chains is dominated by slow but gradual growth of firms into national chain status. In contrast, in Apparel, which has become much more dominated by national chains in recent years, firms that quickly became national chains play a much greater role."
"Do Large Modern Retailers Pay Premium Wages?"
Brianna Cardiff-Hicks; Francine Lafontaine; Kathryn Shaw. NBER working paper, July 2014.
Abstract: "With malls, franchise strips and big-box retailers increasingly dotting the landscape, there is concern that middle-class jobs in manufacturing in the U.S. are being replaced by minimum wage jobs in retail. Retail jobs have spread, while manufacturing jobs have shrunk in number. In this paper, we characterize the wages that have accompanied the growth in retail. We show that wage rates in the retail sector rise markedly with firm size and with establishment size. These increases are halved when we control for worker fixed effects, suggesting that there is sorting of better workers into larger firms. Also, higher ability workers get promoted to the position of manager, which is associated with higher pay. We conclude that the growth in modern retail, characterized by larger chains of larger establishments with more levels of hierarchy, is raising wage rates relative to traditional mom-and-pop retail stores."
"Business Churn and the Retail Giant: Establishment Birth and Death from Wal-Mart's Entry"
Ficano, Carlena Cochi. Social Science Quarterly, March 2013, Vol. 94, Issue 1, 263-291. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-6237.2012.00857.x.
Abstract: "This analysis examines separately the establishment, birth and death rate implications of Wal-Mart's entry into a community as a means of reconciling the inconsistency between sizable documented poverty effects and more limited employment and payroll changes from Wal-Mart. I estimate instrumented county and year fixed effects regressions of county establishment birth rate and establishment death rate on the predicted number of Wal-Mart stores and years of operation in a county for the retail sector, the aggregate local economy, and the manufacturing sector, where the latter serves as a falsification test. I find that within 15 months of a new Wal-Mart store entry, between 4.4 and 14.2 existing retail establishments close while at most 3.5 new retail establishments open. The article provides new and strong evidence that, through its effect on establishment births and deaths, Wal-Mart's expansion has had a larger impact on the employment situations of those working in retail than net employment and payroll numbers would indicate."
"The Impact of an Urban WalMart Store on Area Businesses: The Chicago Case"
Merriman, David; Persky, Joseph; Davis, Julie; Baiman, Ron. Econonomic Development Quarterly, November 2012, Vol. 26, No. 4, 321-333. doi: 10.1177/0891242412457985.
Abstract: "This study, the first on the impact of a WalMart in a large city, draws on three annual surveys of enterprises within a four-mile radius of a new Chicago WalMart. It shows that the probability of going out of business was significantly higher for establishments close to that store. This probability fell off at a rate of 6% per mile in all directions. Using this relationship, we estimate that WalMart's opening resulted in the loss of approximately 300 full-time equivalent jobs in nearby neighborhoods. This loss about equals WalMart's own employment in the area. Our analysis of separate data on sales tax receipts shows that after its opening there was no net increase in retail sales in WalMart's own and surrounding zip codes. Overall, these results support the contention that large-city WalMarts, like those in small towns, absorb retail sales from nearby stores without significantly expanding the market."
"Shops and the City: Evidence on Local Externalities and Local Government Policy from Big Box Bankruptcies"
Shoag, Daniel; Stan Veuger. Harvard Kennedy School, Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP14-019, April 2014.
Abstract: "Large retailers have significant positive spillovers on nearby businesses, and both private and public mechanisms exist to attract them. We estimate these externalities using detailed geographic establishment data and exogenous variation from national chain bankruptcies. We show that local government policy responds to the size of these spillovers. When political boundaries allow local governments to capture more of the gains from these large stores, governments are more likely to provide retail subsidies. However, these public incentives also crowd out private mechanisms that subsidize these stores and internalize their benefits. On net, we find no evidence that government subsidies affect the efficiency of these large retailers' location choice as measured by the size of the externalities at a given distance, rather than within a certain border."
"Rolling Back Prices and Raising Crime Rates? The Walmart Effect on Crime in the United States"
Wolfe, Scott E.; Pyrooz, David C. British Journal of Criminology, January 2014. doi: 10.1093/bjc/azt071.
Abstract: "Concentrating on the 1990s, results [of this study] reveal that Wal-Mart is located in United States counties with higher crime rates, net of robust macro-level correlates of crime. Wal-Mart selected into counties primed for the 1990s crime decline, but, after accounting for endogeneity, growth of the company stunted crime declines when compared to matched counties. A Wal-Mart–crime relationship exists. If Wal-Mart did not build in a county, property crime rates fell by an additional 18 units per capita from the 1990s to the 2000s. A marginally statistically significant, yet stable, effect for violent crime was also observed, falling by two units per capita. These findings provide important theoretical implications regarding the influence of specific economic forces on aggregate crime trends and offer important implications for local governments faced with the prospect of Wal-Mart entering their communities."
"When Walmart Comes to Town: Always Low Housing Prices? Always?"
Pope, Devin G.; Pope, Jaren C. National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 18111, May 2012.
Abstract: "Walmart often faces strong local opposition when trying to build a new store. Opponents often claim that Walmart lowers nearby housing prices. In this study we use over one million housing transactions located near 159 Walmarts that opened between 2000 and 2006 to test if the opening of a Walmart does indeed lower housing prices. Using a difference-in-differences specification, our estimates suggest that a new Walmart store actually increases housing prices by between 2 and 3 percent for houses located within 0.5 miles of the store and by 1 to 2 percent for houses located between 0.5 and 1 mile."
"Walmart and Other Food Retail Chains: Trends and Disparities in the Nutritional Profile of Packaged Food Purchases"
Taillie, Lindsey Smith; Ng, Shu Wen; Popkin, Barry M. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, October 2015. doi: 10.1016/j.amepre.2015.07.015.
Summary: This study looks at the nutritional profile of packaged food purchases (PFPs) from food retail chains. Little is known about the nutritional profile of PFPs from such retailers, which include Walmart, the nation's largest grocer. The study finds that Walmart's packaged food purchases in 2000 had a less "favorable" nutritional profile compared to those of other food retail chains. But Walmart purchases' nutritional profile has improved and was similar to that of other food retail chains in 2013.
"Supersizing Supercenters? The Impact of Walmart Supercenters on Body Mass Index and Obesity"
Courtemanche, Charles; Carden, Art. Journal of Urban Economics, March 2011, Vol. 69, Issue 2, 165-181. doi: 10.1016/j.jue.2010.09.005.
Abstract: "Researchers have linked the rise in obesity to technological progress reducing the opportunity cost of food consumption and increasing the opportunity cost of physical activity. We examine this hypothesis in the context of Walmart Supercenters, whose advancements in retail logistics have translated to substantial reductions in the prices of food and other consumer goods. Using data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System matched with Walmart Supercenter entry dates and locations, we examine the effects of Supercenters on body mass index (BMI) and obesity. We account for the endogeneity of Walmart Supercenter locations with an instrumental variables approach that exploits the unique geographical pattern of Supercenter expansion around Walmart's headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. An additional Supercenter per 100,000 residents increases average BMI by 0.24 units and the obesity rate by 2.3% points. These results imply that the proliferation of Walmart Supercenters explains 10.5% of the rise in obesity since the late 1980s, but the resulting increase in medical expenditures offsets only a small portion of consumers' savings from shopping at Supercenters."
"Does Local Firm Ownership Matter?"
Fleming, David A.; Goetz, Stephan J. Economic Development Quarterly, August 2011, Vol. 25, No. 3, 277-281. doi: 10.1177/0891242411407312.
Abstract: "A data set for U.S. counties that includes residence status of firm owners is used to assess whether per-capita density of locally owned businesses affects local economic growth, compared with nonlocal ownership. The database also permits stratification of firms across different employment size categories. Economic growth models that control for other relevant factors reveal a positive relationship between density of locally owned firms and per capita income growth but only for small (10-99 employees) firms, whereas the density of large (more than 500 workers) firms not owned locally has a negative effect. These results provide strong evidence that local ownership matters for economic growth but only in the small size category. Results are robust across rural and urban counties."
"Mom-and-Pop Meet Big-Box: Complements or Substitutes?"
Haltiwanger, John C.; et al, National Bureau of Economic Research, September 2009, Working Paper No. 15348.
Findings: This study quantifies the effects of the entry and growth of multi-store retailers within the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. Key findings include: Employment growth and survival of independent stores and smaller chains that operate in the same industry as a big-box chain are negatively affected by the entry and growth of big-box stores. Most of the negative effect is due to smaller stores being forced to close rather than reducing the scale of their operations. The negative effect is greatest for stores that are located within one to five miles of a big-box store. In terms of smaller chain stores in other sectors, the results are mixed. The one positive big-box effect is on smaller chain restaurants.
"What Happens When Wal-Mart Comes to Town: An Empirical Analysis of the Discount Retailing Industry"
Jia, Panle. Econometrica, November 2008, Vol. 76, Issue 6, 1263-1316. doi: 10.3982/ECTA6649.
Abstract: "In the past few decades, multistore retailers, especially those with 100 or more stores, have experienced substantial growth. At the same time, there is widely reported public outcry over the impact of these chain stores on other retailers and local communities. This paper develops an empirical model to assess the impact of chain stores on other discount retailers and to quantify the size of the scale economies within a chain. The model has two key features. First, it allows for flexible competition patterns among all players. Second, for chains, it incorporates the scale economies that arise from operating multiple stores in nearby regions. In doing so, the model relaxes the commonly used assumption that entry in different markets is independent. The lattice theory is exploited to solve this complicated entry game among chains and other discount retailers in a large number of markets. It is found that the negative impact of Kmart's presence on Wal-Mart's profit was much stronger in 1988 than in 1997, while the opposite is true for the effect of Wal-Mart's presence on Kmart's profit. Having a chain store in a market makes roughly 50% of the discount stores unprofitable. Wal-Mart's expansion from the late 1980s to the late 1990s explains about 40-50% of the net change in the number of small discount stores and 30-40% for all other discount stores. Scale economies were important for Wal-Mart, but less so for Kmart, and the magnitude did not grow proportionately with the chains' sizes.
"The Effects of Wal-Mart on Local Labor Markets"
Neumark, David; Zhang, Junfu; Ciccarella, Stephen. Journal of Urban Economics, March 2008, Vol. 63, Issue 2, 405-430. doi: 10.1016/j.jue.2007.07.004.
Abstract: "We estimate the effects of Wal-Mart stores on county-level retail employment and earnings, accounting for endogeneity of the location and timing of Wal-Mart openings that most likely biases the evidence against finding adverse effects of Wal-Mart stores…. The employment results indicate that a Wal-Mart store opening reduces county-level retail employment by about 150 workers, implying that each Wal-Mart worker replaces approximately 1.4 retail workers. This represents a 2.7% reduction in average retail employment. The payroll results indicate that Wal-Mart store openings lead to declines in county-level retail earnings of about $1.4 million, or 1.5%. Of course, these effects occurred against a backdrop of rising retail employment, and only imply lower retail employment growth than would have occurred absent the effects of Wal-Mart."
Keywords: consumer affairs, development, crime, obesity, consumer affairs, research roundup, retail, prices, economic impact, brand performance, minimum wage, Supercenter
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<h1>The impact of big-box retailers on communities, jobs, crime, wages and more: Research roundup</h1> <p class="byline">by Denise-Marie Ordway, Journalist's Resource <br />December 16, 2015</p> <p>Year zero in the history of U.S. big-box stores was 1962: In that one year, the first Walmart, Target and Kmart stores opened. While the firms' origins varied, their common focus was on deep discounts and suburban locations. Shoppers would arrive by car, not foot, so what mattered was highway access, acres of parking and massive scale.</p> <p>In the five decades since, the American retail landscape and built environment have been profoundly altered. At the end of 2015, Wal-Mart had <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170130062317/http://corporate.walmart.com/our-story/locations/united-states" target="_blank">4,614 stores and Supercenters</a> in the United States, while Target operated <a href="https://corporate.target.com/press/corporate" target="_blank">1,805 stores</a> and Best Buy had <a href="http://s2.q4cdn.com/785564492/files/doc_financials/2016/q3/BBY_SquareFootageandStoreCount_Q3-FY16.pdf" target="_blank">1,050</a>. Then there are smaller chains -- still huge by any measure -- as well as "category killers" and all the diverse residents of the shopping-mall ecosystem. While some big-box retailers have <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20150108061814/http://www.bloomberg.com:80/news/2012-03-30/the-era-of-big-box-retail-dominance-is-coming-to-an-end.html">stumbled in recent years</a>, the rise of Internet commerce and the increasing <a href="http://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/municipal/economic-social-change-us-cities-research-roundup">appeal of cities</a> has helped them remain a powerful force: Wal-Mart alone is <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-employees-pay" target="_blank">estimated to employ approximately 1 percent </a>of the American workforce and reported <a href="http://news.walmart.com/news-archive/investors/2015/02/19/walmart-announces-q4-underlying-eps-of-161-and-additional-strategic-investments-in-people-e-commerce-walmart-us-comp-sales-increased-15-percent" target="_blank">nearly $486 billion</a> in revenue for fiscal year 2015.</p> <p>All that retail and economic muscle hasn't come without significant controversy. A <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.3982/ECTA6649/abstract">2008 study</a> from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology indicates that Wal-Mart's rapid expansion in the 1980s and 1990s was responsible for 40 percent to 50 percent of the decline in the number of small discount stores. According to <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-6237.2012.00857.x/abstract">2014 research</a> in <i>Social Science Quarterly, </i>a similar effect continues: On average, within 15 months of a new Wal-Mart store's opening, as many as 14 existing retail establishments close. Other research has found that the arrival of Wal-Mart stores was associated with <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119010000690">increased obesity</a> of area residents, <a href="http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/01/09/bjc.azt071.short">higher crime rates</a> relative to communities that were not by stores, lower <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119007000915">overall employment</a> at the county level, and <a href="http://bettercities.net/article/best-bet-tax-revenue-mixed-use-downtown-development-13144">lower per-acre tax revenues</a> than mixed-use development.</p> <p>Despite such well-documented effects, big-box retailers are often courted by cities and regions, as suggested by a <a href="https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/workingpapers/citation.aspx?PubId=9403&type=WPN">2014 paper</a> from the Harvard Kennedy School. A <a href="http://www.ewgateway.org/pdffiles/library/regdev/devincresfinal.pdf">2011 report</a> by a Missouri metropolitan planning organization found that over 20 years, more than $5.8 billion had been given to private developers in the St. Louis region, with a substantial portion going to retail-oriented projects. And because big-box stores dominate the malls in which they operate, subsidies continue long after opening day: A study of more than 2,500 stores found that 73 percent of mall anchors paid no rent. Instead, mall owners use their presence to attract smaller retailers that pay elevated rates in the hope of benefiting from the big stores. Some research suggests that small retailers in such malls indeed see more patrons, and municipalities that do attract big box stores can see increased tax revenue, although there may be revenue lost when smaller businesses fail.</p> <p>Still, a <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w20313">2014 study</a> from researchers at Stanford and the University of Michigan finds positive effects for wages, relative to pay levels traditionally available through small stores and firms: Indeed, the "spread of these chains has been accompanied by higher wages. Large chains and large establishments pay considerably more than small mom-and-pop establishments. Moreover, large firms and large establishments give access to managerial ranks and hierarchy, and manage rs, most of whom are first-line supervisors, are a large fraction of the retail la bor force, and earn about 20 percent more than other workers."</p> <p>Given the outsized role that chain retailers play in the U.S. economy, media coverage often focuses on business issues, such as the <a href="http://fortune.com/2015/01/08/jcpenney-store-closings/" target="_blank">wave of closures</a> hitting J.C. Penney and other firms, or the rise of <a href="http://www.npr.org/2015/04/01/396757476/the-neighborhood-wal-mart-a-blessing-or-a-curse" target="_blank">"small-box" urban stores</a>. Walmart's overseas operations get a lot of attention, including its pledge to sell more <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/16/business/walmart-to-offer-more-us-made-goods.html">U.S.-made goods</a>, or an investigation into its <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/business/walmart-bribes-teotihuacan.html">use of bribery</a> in Mexico. Workplace issues are also important, such as why openings at the company often attract <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/11/27/why-do-1-4-million-americans-work-at-walmart-with-many-more-trying-to/">hundreds of applicants</a> and the company's February 2015 announcement that it would <a href="http://blog.walmart.com/in-letter-to-associates-walmart-ceo-doug-mcmillon-announces-higher-pay" target="_blank">raise the entry wage</a> to at least $10 an hour <a href="http://blog.walmart.com/in-letter-to-associates-walmart-ceo-doug-mcmillon-announces-higher-pay" target="_blank">by February 2016</a>.</p> <p>For state and local reporters, particularly those on a municipal beat, the challenge comes in understanding the positive and negative effects that the potential arrival or departure of a big-box retailer can have. For example, if politicians propose <a href="http://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/municipal/tax-increment-financing-economic-development-urban-politics">tax-increment financing</a> or other <a href="http://journalistsresource.org/studies/economics/taxes/tax-based-business-incentives-corruption">tax-based incentives</a> for a retail project, is that an appropriate use of public funds? What are the potential effects -- long and short term -- on other retailers and employers in the area? Could an expansion of low-wage jobs increase use of <a href="http://journalistsresource.org/studies/economics/workers/public-costs-low-wages-paid-fast-food-industry">taxpayer-funded assistance programs</a>?</p> <p>Below are a series of studies that shed light on the effects of big-box retailers on other businesses, employment, wages, crime and health. Beat reporters also can find industry statistics and related resources from organizations such as the <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20161021232959/https://nrf.com/" target="_blank">National Retail Federation</a>, <a href="http://www.rila.org/Pages/default.aspx" target="_blank">Retail Industry Leaders Association</a> and the <a href="http://www.icsc.org/" target="_blank">International Council of Shopping Centers</a>.</p> <p>----------------------</p> <p><strong><a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2589175">"The Evolution of National Retail Chains: How We Got Here"</a><br /> </strong>Foster, Lucia; Haltiwanger, John; Klimek, Shawn D.; Krizan; C.J.; Ohlmacher, Scott. U.S. Census Bureau Center for Economic Studies paper, March 2015.</p> <p><strong>Abstract:</strong> "The growth and dominance of large, national chains is a ubiquitous feature of the U.S. retail sector. The recent literature has documented the rise of these chains and the contribution of this structural change to productivity growth in the retail trade sector. Recent studies have also shown that the establishments of large, national chains are both more productive and more stable than the establishments of single-unit firms they are displacing. We build on this literature by following the paths of retail firms and establishments from 1977 to 2007 using establishment- and firm-level data from the Census of Retail Trade and the Longitudinal Business Database. We dissect the shift towards large, national chains on several margins. We explore the differences in entry and exit as well as job creation and destruction patterns at the establishment and firm level. We find that over this period there are consistently high rates of entry and job creation by the establishments of single-unit firms and large, national firms, but net growth is much higher for the large, national firms. Underlying this difference is far lower exit and job destruction rates of establishments from national chains. Thus, the story of the increased dominance of national chains is not so much due to a declining entry rate of new single-unit firms but rather the much greater stability of the new establishments belonging to national chains relative to their single-unit counterparts. Given the increasing dominant role of these chains, we dissect the paths to success of national chains, including an analysis of four key industries in retail trade. We find dramatically different patterns across industries. In General Merchandise, the rise in national chains is dominated by slow but gradual growth of firms into national chain status. In contrast, in Apparel, which has become much more dominated by national chains in recent years, firms that quickly became national chains play a much greater role."</p> <p> </p> <p><a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w20313"><strong>"Do Large Modern Retailers Pay Premium Wages?"</strong></a></p> <p>Brianna Cardiff-Hicks; Francine Lafontaine; Kathryn Shaw. NBER working paper, July 2014.</p> <p><strong>Abstract:</strong> "With malls, franchise strips and big-box retailers increasingly dotting the landscape, there is concern that middle-class jobs in manufacturing in the U.S. are being replaced by minimum wage jobs in retail. Retail jobs have spread, while manufacturing jobs have shrunk in number. In this paper, we characterize the wages that have accompanied the growth in retail. We show that wage rates in the retail sector rise markedly with firm size and with establishment size. These increases are halved when we control for worker fixed effects, suggesting that there is sorting of better workers into larger firms. Also, higher ability workers get promoted to the position of manager, which is associated with higher pay. We conclude that the growth in modern retail, characterized by larger chains of larger establishments with more levels of hierarchy, is raising wage rates relative to traditional mom-and-pop retail stores."</p> <p> </p> <p><b><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-6237.2012.00857.x/abstract">"Business Churn and the Retail Giant: Establishment Birth and Death from Wal-Mart's Entry"</a></b></p> <p>Ficano, Carlena Cochi. <i>Social Science Quarterly</i>, March 2013, Vol. 94, Issue 1, 263-291. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-6237.2012.00857.x.</p> <p><b>Abstract: </b>"This analysis examines separately the establishment, birth and death rate implications of Wal-Mart's entry into a community as a means of reconciling the inconsistency between sizable documented poverty effects and more limited employment and payroll changes from Wal-Mart. I estimate instrumented county and year fixed effects regressions of county establishment birth rate and establishment death rate on the predicted number of Wal-Mart stores and years of operation in a county for the retail sector, the aggregate local economy, and the manufacturing sector, where the latter serves as a falsification test. I find that within 15 months of a new Wal-Mart store entry, between 4.4 and 14.2 existing retail establishments close while at most 3.5 new retail establishments open. The article provides new and strong evidence that, through its effect on establishment births and deaths, Wal-Mart's expansion has had a larger impact on the employment situations of those working in retail than net employment and payroll numbers would indicate."</p> <p> </p> <p><b><a href="https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/workingpapers/citation.aspx?PubId=9403">"The Impact of an Urban WalMart Store on Area Businesses: The Chicago Case"</a><br /> </b>Merriman, David; Persky, Joseph; Davis, Julie; Baiman, Ron. <i>Econonomic Development Quarterly, </i>November 2012, Vol. 26, No. 4, 321-333. doi: 10.1177/0891242412457985.</p> <p><b>Abstract: </b>"This study, the first on the impact of a WalMart in a large city, draws on three annual surveys of enterprises within a four-mile radius of a new Chicago WalMart. It shows that the probability of going out of business was significantly higher for establishments close to that store. This probability fell off at a rate of 6% per mile in all directions. Using this relationship, we estimate that WalMart's opening resulted in the loss of approximately 300 full-time equivalent jobs in nearby neighborhoods. This loss about equals WalMart's own employment in the area. Our analysis of separate data on sales tax receipts shows that after its opening there was no net increase in retail sales in WalMart's own and surrounding zip codes. Overall, these results support the contention that large-city WalMarts, like those in small towns, absorb retail sales from nearby stores without significantly expanding the market."</p> <p> </p> <p><b><a href="http://edq.sagepub.com/content/25/3/277.abstract">"Shops and the City: Evidence on Local Externalities and Local Government Policy from Big Box Bankruptcies"</a><br /> </b>Shoag, Daniel; Stan Veuger. Harvard Kennedy School, Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP14-019, April 2014.</p> <p><b>Abstract: </b>"Large retailers have significant positive spillovers on nearby businesses, and both private and public mechanisms exist to attract them. We estimate these externalities using detailed geographic establishment data and exogenous variation from national chain bankruptcies. We show that local government policy responds to the size of these spillovers. When political boundaries allow local governments to capture more of the gains from these large stores, governments are more likely to provide retail subsidies. However, these public incentives also crowd out private mechanisms that subsidize these stores and internalize their benefits. On net, we find no evidence that government subsidies affect the efficiency of these large retailers' location choice as measured by the size of the externalities at a given distance, rather than within a certain border."</p> <p> </p> <p><b><a href="http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/01/09/bjc.azt071.short">"Rolling Back Prices and Raising Crime Rates? The Walmart Effect on Crime in the United States"</a><br /> </b>Wolfe, Scott E.; Pyrooz, David C. <i>British Journal of Criminology</i>, January 2014. doi: 10.1093/bjc/azt071.</p> <p><b>Abstract: "</b>Concentrating on the 1990s, results [of this study] reveal that Wal-Mart is located in United States counties with higher crime rates, net of robust macro-level correlates of crime. Wal-Mart selected into counties primed for the 1990s crime decline, but, after accounting for endogeneity, growth of the company stunted crime declines when compared to matched counties. A Wal-Mart–crime relationship exists. If Wal-Mart did not build in a county, property crime rates fell by an additional 18 units per capita from the 1990s to the 2000s. A marginally statistically significant, yet stable, effect for violent crime was also observed, falling by two units per capita. These findings provide important theoretical implications regarding the influence of specific economic forces on aggregate crime trends and offer important implications for local governments faced with the prospect of Wal-Mart entering their communities."</p> <p> </p> <p><b><a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w18111">"When Walmart Comes to Town: Always Low Housing Prices? Always?"</a></b><br /> Pope, Devin G.; Pope, Jaren C. National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 18111, May 2012.</p> <p><b>Abstract: </b>"Walmart often faces strong local opposition when trying to build a new store. Opponents often claim that Walmart lowers nearby housing prices. In this study we use over one million housing transactions located near 159 Walmarts that opened between 2000 and 2006 to test if the opening of a Walmart does indeed lower housing prices. Using a difference-in-differences specification, our estimates suggest that a new Walmart store actually increases housing prices by between 2 and 3 percent for houses located within 0.5 miles of the store and by 1 to 2 percent for houses located between 0.5 and 1 mile."</p> <p> </p> <p><strong><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749379715004043">"Walmart and Other Food Retail Chains: Trends and Disparities in the Nutritional Profile of Packaged Food Purchases"</a><br /> </strong>Taillie, Lindsey Smith; Ng, Shu Wen; Popkin, Barry M. <em>American Journal of Preventive Medicine</em>, October 2015. doi: 10.1016/j.amepre.2015.07.015.</p> <p><strong>Summary:</strong> This study looks at the nutritional profile of packaged food purchases (PFPs) from food retail chains. Little is known about the nutritional profile of PFPs from such retailers, which include Walmart, the nation's largest grocer. The study finds that Walmart's packaged food purchases in 2000 had a less "favorable" nutritional profile compared to those of other food retail chains. But Walmart purchases' nutritional profile has improved and was similar to that of other food retail chains in 2013.</p> <p> </p> <p><b><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119010000690">"Supersizing Supercenters? The Impact of Walmart Supercenters on Body Mass Index and Obesity"</a><br /> </b>Courtemanche, Charles; Carden, Art. <i>Journal of Urban Economics</i>, March 2011, Vol. 69, Issue 2, 165-181. doi: 10.1016/j.jue.2010.09.005.</p> <p><b>Abstract: </b>"Researchers have linked the rise in obesity to technological progress reducing the opportunity cost of food consumption and increasing the opportunity cost of physical activity. We examine this hypothesis in the context of Walmart Supercenters, whose advancements in retail logistics have translated to substantial reductions in the prices of food and other consumer goods. Using data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System matched with Walmart Supercenter entry dates and locations, we examine the effects of Supercenters on body mass index (BMI) and obesity. We account for the endogeneity of Walmart Supercenter locations with an instrumental variables approach that exploits the unique geographical pattern of Supercenter expansion around Walmart's headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. An additional Supercenter per 100,000 residents increases average BMI by 0.24 units and the obesity rate by 2.3% points. These results imply that the proliferation of Walmart Supercenters explains 10.5% of the rise in obesity since the late 1980s, but the resulting increase in medical expenditures offsets only a small portion of consumers' savings from shopping at Supercenters."</p> <p> </p> <p><b><a href="http://edq.sagepub.com/content/26/4/321.short">"Does Local Firm Ownership Matter?"</a><br /> </b>Fleming, David A.; Goetz, Stephan J. <i>Economic Development Quarterly</i>, August 2011, Vol. 25, No. 3, 277-281. doi: 10.1177/0891242411407312.</p> <p><b>Abstract: </b>"A data set for U.S. counties that includes residence status of firm owners is used to assess whether per-capita density of locally owned businesses affects local economic growth, compared with nonlocal ownership. The database also permits stratification of firms across different employment size categories. Economic growth models that control for other relevant factors reveal a positive relationship between density of locally owned firms and per capita income growth but only for small (10-99 employees) firms, whereas the density of large (more than 500 workers) firms not owned locally has a negative effect. These results provide strong evidence that local ownership matters for economic growth but only in the small size category. Results are robust across rural and urban counties."</p> <p> </p> <p><b><a href="http://journalistsresource.org/studies/economics/business/mom-and-pop-meet-big-box">"Mom-and-Pop Meet Big-Box: Complements or Substitutes?"</a><br /> </b>Haltiwanger, John C.; et al, National Bureau of Economic Research, September 2009, Working Paper No. 15348.</p> <p><b>Findings:</b> This study quantifies the effects of the entry and growth of multi-store retailers within the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. Key findings include: Employment growth and survival of independent stores and smaller chains that operate in the same industry as a big-box chain are negatively affected by the entry and growth of big-box stores. Most of the negative effect is due to smaller stores being forced to close rather than reducing the scale of their operations. The negative effect is greatest for stores that are located within one to five miles of a big-box store. In terms of smaller chain stores in other sectors, the results are mixed. The one positive big-box effect is on smaller chain restaurants.</p> <p> </p> <p><b><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.3982/ECTA6649/abstract">"What Happens When Wal-Mart Comes to Town: An Empirical Analysis of the Discount Retailing Industry"</a><br /> </b>Jia, Panle. <i>Econometrica, </i>November 2008, Vol. 76, Issue 6, 1263-1316. doi: 10.3982/ECTA6649.</p> <p><b>Abstract: </b>"In the past few decades, multistore retailers, especially those with 100 or more stores, have experienced substantial growth. At the same time, there is widely reported public outcry over the impact of these chain stores on other retailers and local communities. This paper develops an empirical model to assess the impact of chain stores on other discount retailers and to quantify the size of the scale economies within a chain. The model has two key features. First, it allows for flexible competition patterns among all players. Second, for chains, it incorporates the scale economies that arise from operating multiple stores in nearby regions. In doing so, the model relaxes the commonly used assumption that entry in different markets is independent. The lattice theory is exploited to solve this complicated entry game among chains and other discount retailers in a large number of markets. It is found that the negative impact of Kmart's presence on Wal-Mart's profit was much stronger in 1988 than in 1997, while the opposite is true for the effect of Wal-Mart's presence on Kmart's profit. Having a chain store in a market makes roughly 50% of the discount stores unprofitable. Wal-Mart's expansion from the late 1980s to the late 1990s explains about 40-50% of the net change in the number of small discount stores and 30-40% for all other discount stores. Scale economies were important for Wal-Mart, but less so for Kmart, and the magnitude did not grow proportionately with the chains' sizes.</p> <p> </p> <p><b><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119007000915">"The Effects of Wal-Mart on Local Labor Markets"</a></b><br /> Neumark, David; Zhang, Junfu; Ciccarella, Stephen. <i>Journal of Urban Economics</i>, March 2008, Vol. 63, Issue 2, 405-430. doi: 10.1016/j.jue.2007.07.004.</p> <p><b>Abstract:</b> "We estimate the effects of Wal-Mart stores on county-level retail employment and earnings, accounting for endogeneity of the location and timing of Wal-Mart openings that most likely biases the evidence against finding adverse effects of Wal-Mart stores.... The employment results indicate that a Wal-Mart store opening reduces county-level retail employment by about 150 workers, implying that each Wal-Mart worker replaces approximately 1.4 retail workers. This represents a 2.7% reduction in average retail employment. The payroll results indicate that Wal-Mart store openings lead to declines in county-level retail earnings of about $1.4 million, or 1.5%. Of course, these effects occurred against a backdrop of rising retail employment, and only imply lower retail employment growth than would have occurred absent the effects of Wal-Mart."</p> <p> </p> <p><i>Keywords: consumer affairs, development, crime, obesity<em>, consumer affairs, research roundup, retail, prices, economic impact, brand performance, minimum wage, Supercenter</em><br /> </i></p>
This <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/municipal/impact-big-box-retailers-employment-wages-crime-health/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org">Journalist's Resource</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.


Security Event : Recon 2011 Conference !
RECON is a computer security conference held annually in Montreal, Canada. It offers a single track of presentations over the span of three days with a focus on reverse engineering and advanced exploitation techniques.
The registration fee includes an access pass to the conference as well as breakfast, lunch, and coffee breaks for all three days of the conference. Provincial and federal sales taxes will be applied to all registration fees. All registration fees are payable in Canadian dollars (CAD).
There will be 250 tickets sold.
Registration opens March 21. The rate is discounted for early registrations.
Recon will be held in downtown Montreal, Canada at the Hyatt Regency Montreal.
$149 CAD per night for a regular room.
$199 CAD per night for a Regency Club room.
A hotel registration code will be posted once conference registration opens.
The Call For Papers ends on May 15.


text:
package com.facebook.buck.zip;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.OutputStream;

class ByteIo {
  private ByteIo() {
    // utility class.
  }

  public static long writeShort(OutputStream out, int value) throws IOException {
    out.write((value & 0xff));
    out.write(((value >>> 8) & 0xff));
    return 2;
  }

  protected static long writeInt(OutputStream out, long value) throws IOException {
    out.write((int) (value & 0xff));
    out.write((int) ((value >>> 8) & 0xff));
    out.write((int) ((value >>> 16) & 0xff));
    out.write((int) ((value >>> 24) & 0xff));
    return 4;
  }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Hamilton Hamilton (American 1847 - 1928) Girl in Blossom
Watercolor, 19.25 x 8.25 inches/Signed lower left
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Click the button above, then 3 easy steps:
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Hamilton was born in Oxford, England, but came to Cowlesville (near Buffalo), New York with his family while young. Although his parents did not fully support his choice of art as a profession, they financed his trip to Paris, France in 1870. When he returned home in 1872, he opened a portrait studio; however, the following year, he was in Colorado on a sketching trip. His Colorado landscapes and were chosen for inclusion at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. For more than 20 years, Hamilton returned to Denver to paint. A second trip to France in 1878 found him painting en plein air with the Barbizon artists at the Pont Aven artists' colony in Brittany. In 1881, Hamilton moved to New York City and opened a studio. While there, he became acquainted with other well-known artists of that time-- Robert Blum, William Merritt Chase, Birge Harrison, Winslow Homer, and Thomas Moran. Following his return to the United States after an 1895 trip to the Cornish coast of England, he began painting scenes of Long Island and Peekskill, New York. Southern California also beckoned the artist; he spent a year there in 1907–08, and in 1910 he moved to Pasadena until circa 1912, followed by a permanent move to Norwalk, Connecticut. He painted at the nearby artists' colony at the nearby town of Silvermine,founded by artist Solon Borglum. After Borglum's death in 1922, Hamilton and other artists founded the Silvermine Guild of Artists, of which Hamilton became the informal "dean." He was a member of the National Academy of Design; Silvermine Guild of Artists; American Watercolor Society; and the Century Association. Frisino exhibited at the National Academy of Design (1881 – 1905, 1911-12, 1928); Brooklyn AA (1881 – 1884); PAFA(1881 – 89); Boston Art Club (1881 – 82); AIC (1889, 1891, 1896, 1913), Buffalo Fine Arts Academy and the Buffalo Society of Artists.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Wessex Coin is one of the leading distributers of coin operated gaming and amusement equipment. Supplying new and high quality refurbished machines across the UK and abroad it was important that their website was simple and easy to use.
A product catalogue utilising WordPress to create a responsive, easy-to-update website. This allows the client to keep their products up-to-date for prospects and provide support for customers. The site also allows the client to load their videos from YouTube.
IDASS care about helping people get fit for life. It's about healthy eating and targeted exercise. The main IDASS website promotes their range of health and fitness related products, but they also have a WordPress blog where industry experts chip in with tips for a healthier life. The existing blog was supposed to mirror the look and feel of the main site, but it was falling short in a number of areas. IDASS needed a quick solution and turned to me to optimise their WordPress installation for their needs and add a few extras such as image slider and social networking links. I also added plugins to help manage their site for areas such as SEO and database backups.
Ellingham Darcy is a recruitment consultancy working in niche areas within the media industry. Having recently rebranded they needed a new content managed website to communicate with their audience (both clients and candidates). WordPress was the perfect solution, and utilising a core Theme they already owned I developed this website to fit their requirements of incorporate vacancy listings as well blog posting, along with core company details and their latest twitter feed (as social media is a key tool for the company).
Architectural FX design innovative and creative LED based lighting solutions. They approached me to update their website to include 2011 products and revised information, as well as to start to address some little annoyances in the Joomla CMS system. I provided them with a mix of web editing (content updating) and development (where changes were needed in the Joomla templates).


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Home Home & Office Networking
IBM sells fresh air
It's a tough business, selling fresh air but that's what datacentre builders are now doing.Over 70 percent of datacentres are over seven years old, according to IBM, so new datacentre builds need to take account of new technologies and techniques.
Written by Manek Dubash, Contributor on Dec. 8, 2010
It's a tough business, selling fresh air but that's what datacentre builders are now doing.
Over 70 percent of datacentres are over seven years old, according to IBM, so new datacentre builds need to take account of new technologies and techniques. And of course, the 'new' economics that make fresh-air cooling the -- er -- hot topic in the datacentre world.
Naturally, IBM wants to be there to help you spend your cash on a new, fresh-air cooled facility. Along with SGI, whose Ice Cube Air launched this week, last month's launch of EcoBreeze by APC, not to mention Bladeroom which launched a similar facility in May, IBM has joined the fresh-air converts with its brand new Portable Modular Data Centre.
What's different about it, according to Big Blue, is that it threw its analytic expertise -- how much gained from its Cognos acquisition for $5 billion in November 2007 isn't clear -- at the problem and came up with a way of helping CIOs convince the FD to spend on this kind of technology by providing figures showing clear returns, right down to practical advice on which servers are best to move when, and what the consequences are for the rest of the facility.
How it works Designed and supplied by an IBM partner, AST Modular, the facility uses air-to-air heat exchangers combined with water evaporation to lower incoming air temperatures, and the same contained air technique as APC to ensure that air inside the facility remains clean and uncontaminated by external pollution.
IBM's kit is supplied in two containers: the top half contains the cooling system. It sits above the datacentre container from which it sucks warm air and returns cool air using a sealed cold aisle/hot aisle arrangement. Cold aisle temperatures are expected to be between 22 to 24 degrees C. You can, if you prefer, implement it as a cooler-only system so and apply it to an existing or newly-built facility, as has Thor Data Center, an Icelandic early adopter that IBM wheeled out to show off the new product. Thor reckoned it has achieved a PUE of 1.1 -- so it's using just 10 percent more power to cool the servers, storage and networking systems than they consume.
Iceland is of course not a very warm place, with the highest monthly average temperature being 14 degrees C and the lowest -2 degrees C, so it's a good candidate for this kind of facility. AST Modular claimed though its systems can work in hot countries too, and that even though the chillers may need to be working in support up to 75 percent of the time, efficiency savings can still be had.
True or not, fresh air cooling is clearly here to stay -- you could expect a growing proportion of new facilities to start using these techniques, and for those who recently built facilities without them to feel a little -- er -- green.


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A vibrant, free press that uncovers the truth and holds power to account is essential to our democracies. But in recent years, we've seen rising threats to press freedom across the world.
An International Fund for Public Interest Media is called for. The Fund will act as a lever with which to tackle the mounting threats to media freedom and attacks on journalists.
It will support courageous investigative journalism, sustain independent media – especially in low- and middle- income regions – and build innovative business models so that media can work for democracy.
So far, extensive consultation has taken place to evaluate the feasibility of such a fund, carried out by BBC Media Action. It explored how the Fund would offer a powerful, multi-faceted response to many of the current challenges to media freedom.
After over two years of consultation and development, the Fund has built critical momentum. It is led by founding Executive Director, Sheetal Vyas. It has operational funding from Luminate, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the National Endowment for Democracy. The Fund now has the runway needed to accelerate its efforts to raise a billion dollars from governments, big tech and other private sector companies, development agencies, philanthropists, and others. It aims to open its call for grant applications in 2022. The Fund is a sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, a 501(c)(3) organisation.
The Fund now has the runway needed to accelerate its efforts to raise a billion dollars. We need international donors to get serious about the public interest media crisis.
Maria Ressa is the co-founder, CEO and President of Rappler, the digital news site in the Philippines known for its hard-hitting investigative journalism.
A journalist in Asia for more than 35 years, she has endured political harassment and arrests, and been forced to post bail ten times to continue her work. Awarding her the Unesco/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize in April 2021, the jury said: "Maria Ressa's unerring fight for freedom of expression is an example for many journalists around the world. Her case is emblematic of global trends that represent a real threat to press freedom, and therefore to democracy."
For her work on disinformation and fake news, Ms. Ressa was named Time magazine's 2018 Person of the Year and has received many other international awards. Before founding Rappler, Ms. Ressa focused on investigating terrorism in Southeast Asia, running CNN's Manila bureau for nearly a decade, followed by the Jakarta bureau from 1995 to 2005. She wrote "Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of Al Qaeda's Newest Center of Operations in Southeast Asia," published in 2003; and "From Bin Laden to Facebook: 10 Days of Abduction, 10 Years of Terrorism," published in 2013.
Mark Thompson is Chairman of Ancestry.com, an advisor to the Supervisory Board of Axel Springer SE and a Trustee of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
He stepped down as President & CEO at The New York Times Company in the summer of 2020 after an eight-year tenure in which the 170-year-old news brand was transformed into a digital powerhouse. Digital subscribers jumped to nearly six million, up from half a million when he joined, while digital revenues topped $450 million at the end of 2019.
Mr. Thompson's appointment at The New York Times Company followed an eight-year term as Director General of the BBC. He is widely credited with expanding the BBC's digital reach and overseeing development of the BBC iPlayer.
He joined the BBC from Channel 4 where he was Chief Executive from 2002 to 2004. Before Channel 4 he held a series of senior posts at the BBC including Director of Television. His BBC career began as production trainee. He went on to edit several news programmes including The Nine O'clock News and Panorama before becoming Controller of BBC Two.
His book, "Enough Said: What's Gone Wrong with the Language of Politics?" was published in the UK and US in September 2016.
This is the team that has been developing the concept and working through the initial phases and bringing in our first funding partners
Sheetal Vyas
Before joining the Fund, Sheetal was Director covering finance, strategy and innovation at Larry Ellison Foundation. Before that, she spent 20 years working for PricewaterhouseCoopers covering international development, strategy consulting and finance. She has worked with clients from governments, international organisations, investors, industry and tech firms to: design and implement challenge funds; develop strategy and partnerships; shape policy and regulatory agendas; advise on transactions; support new business ventures and start-ups; and measure impact.
She is currently based in the UK but has lived and worked in India and Zimbabwe and has delivered projects across 30 countries. Sheetal is a qualified chartered accountant.
Colin Crowell
US Representative
Colin is the former VP of Global Public Policy, Government and Philanthropy at Twitter. While there, Colin built an award-winning philanthropy programme and engaged with global policymakers and civil society on a range of Internet policy issues. Prior to Twitter, Colin worked in the Obama Administration as Senior Counselor to the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Before that, Colin spent over two decades on Capitol Hill drafting telecommunications and Internet laws on the committee staff of the then U.S. Representative (now Senator) Ed Markey (D-MA).
Colin was Sen. Markey's top staffer during consideration of numerous foundational laws for the Internet era, including the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.
Khadija Patel
Head of Programmes
Khadija pushes words on street corners. She is the former editor-in-chief of the Mail & Guardian in South Africa, a co-founder of the youth-driven, award-winning digital news startup, The Daily Vox, and a vice chairperson of the Vienna-based International Press Institute (IPI).
As a journalist she has produced work for Sky News, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Quartz, City Press and the Daily Maverick, among others. She is also a research associate at WISER (Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Witwatersrand). She is passionate about the protection and enhancement of global media as a public good.
James Deane
Consultant to Luminate
James was instrumental in conceiving and developing the feasibility of an International Fund for Public Interest Media. He has spent over 30 years in leadership on media development and communication for development issues. He is the former executive director and founding member of Panos Institute, London. As well as working as a part time consultant to Luminate on the International Fund for Public Interest Media, James is also Head of Policy at BBC Media Action, the BBC's international media support charity. He is a writer, commissioner and editor of numerous books, briefings, articles and blogs on the role of media and communication in democracy and development.
He is also an organiser of numerous conferences on the issue. James has provided strategic advice to most bilateral and multilateral development organisations, as well as numerous foundations and NGOs on media development and communication for development. He is the Chair of Global Voices and a steering committee member of Global Forum for Media Development.
Pierrick Judéaux
Senior Programme Manager and EU representative
Pierrick spent the first years of his career in the Strategy Unit of Europe's largest broadcasting group, RTL Group, and advising various media and telecommunications companies in Europe, before embracing an international development career.
In the past 10 years, Pierrick has been a senior advisor to multiple Heads of State across Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe on economic and democratic development. He has led large-scale international development initiatives such as the USAID-funded Power Africa Senior Advisory Group and was an Associate Director of Policy at the Open Society Foundations.
Nishant Lalwani
Managing Director, Luminate
Nishant leads Luminate's global strategy for funding independent media and the organisation's work in narrative change across all its impact areas. He also oversees Luminate's strategy, learning and impact, and partner support teams. Prior to joining Luminate, Nishant co-founded the non-profit Global Innovation Fund (GIF).
Nishant was also on the founding team of the Monitor Inclusive Markets (MIM) group in India, which sought to drive scale among market-based solutions to poverty. He previously worked at the UN Development Programme in Zambia, developing new financing products for supply chains that engaged small businesses.
We're grateful for the guidance and input of the following
Alan Soon
Co-Founder and CEO, Splice Media
Dele Olojede
Pulitzer Prize winner and former Foreign Editor, Newsday, Nigeria
CEO, Rappler, Philippines
Media development organisations
Christophe Deloire
CEO, Reporters Without Borders
Camille Grenier
Information and Democracy Forum
Mira Milosevic
Director, Global Forum for Media Development
Mark Nelson
Senior Director, Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA)
Director, Division for Freedom of Expression, UNESCO
Sarabeth Berman
CEO, American Journalism Project
Mohamed Nanabhay
Deputy CEO, Media Development Investment Fund, South Africa
Kathy Im and Lauren Pabst
Journalism & Media John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Helena Bjuremalm
Senior Adviser, Civil Society Support, Sida
Madhav Chinnappa
Director of News Ecosystem Development, Google News Initiative
Ethan Zuckerman
Director, Center for Civic Media, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
Director, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford
Ying Chan
Founding Director and Professor, Journalism, University of Hong Kong
Founders & funders


Alnwick Medical Group is a large 6-partner practice covering Alnwick and its surrounding villages that launched in Summer 2017 from the merging of The Bondgate Practice and Infirmary Drive Medical Group.
Each site has a limited amount of parking. There are designated disabled bays at Alnwick and Longhoughton locations.


text:
People: Washington Professor Elected To Oversee Dermatology Foundation Grant Committee
Karen A. Holbrook, a professor of biological structure at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, has been elected by the Dermatology Foundation to chair its medical and scientific committee. Holbrook's primary role as new chairwoman will be to lead the Evanston, Ill., organization's grant application review process for basic research. The 16-member committee, which will oversee the foundation's 1992 Career Development awards, fellowships, and grants program, will have its f
Ron Kaufman
Karen A. Holbrook, a professor of biological structure at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, has been elected by the Dermatology Foundation to chair its medical and scientific committee. Holbrook's primary role as new chairwoman will be to lead the Evanston, Ill., organization's grant application review process for basic research.
The 16-member committee, which will oversee the foundation's 1992 Career Development awards, fellowships, and grants program, will have its first meeting in December. In its 25 years of existence, this awards program has collected more than $7 million to assist dermatologic research in the United States. This year, Holbrook says, she expects well over 100 grant applications.
Holbrook describes her organization as the major granting institution in the United States for dermatologic studies. "I think this is the major [program], besides the federal funding agencies, to give new investigators a good start in academic medicine and biomedical...


"Hudson Made is an online retailer selling highly curated artisanal products from the Hudson Valley, North Country and Brooklyn. Small batches. Limited quantities. 100% American made.
Line of bbq and chill sauces designed and illustrated by Steve Simpson.


MatchRX is proud to be listed as #16 in the July 2017 "Idea Issue" of NCPA's America's Pharmacist. Over 4,600 independent pharmacies use MatchRX on a daily basis. We make selling your overstock to other member pharmacies simple and DSCSA compliant. Buy from members to fill a script and save on average 36% below WAC. It's a win-win. No fee to join and no contract to sign. Register today (click here) or dial 877-590-0808 to speak to a MatchRX associate.
Read the full "Idea Issue", click here. It's a great idea for Community Pharmacies!


Every home needs a beautiful kitchen and TWS Doors can help you create the kitchen of your dreams. We specialize in design and installation and will customize a plan to fit your style and budget. Whether you prefer a timeless and versatile traditional style kitchen, or a sleek and modern contemporary style, we offer a wide range of solutions to suit all your kitchen remodelling needs.
We design, manufacture and install kitchen doors, cabinets and countertops. We also supply cabinet components such as boxes, case goods, and hardware to cabinet industries.
Our innovation and endless pursuit of quality, service, and high value for the customers have always been our key components.


Alex Feldstein blogs New Bagle worm is making rounds?. SANS Internet Storm Center reports that a new Bagle worm variant is making rounds. Make sure that your antivirus is up-to-date and enabled.
My Inbox (running on a Mac) is already filling up with these. One more time, let's remember the rules: NEVER open an attachment from an untrusted source. There are no trusted sources. NEVER EVER open an unexpected attachment without verifying with the sender that they did intend to send you that attachment. If you have some confidence you know what you're doing, save it to disk, scan it and test it. If you aren't confident of your abilities to detect a problem, contact your IT support person. Don't have any of those? Don't open the attachment.
There is no throat to choke. There never has been.


A shallow 6.4 magnitude earthquake has struck the Indonesian holiday island of Lombok this morning. At least three people are reported to have been killed. Lombok is 100 kilometres east of Bali.
The United States Geological Survey reports that the quake hit at 6:47 am local time today. The epicentre is believed to been around 50 kilometres north east of Lombok's main town Mataram, which is a long way from Lombok's tourist hot spots.
Three people are reported to have died and at least two dozen others have been injured according to initial reports. Officials have closed the popular hiking trails on Mount Rinjani temporarily citing fears of possible landslides. People living close to the epicentre report "feeling a strong jolt".
Lombok sits amid an archipelago of small island along the 'Pacific Ring of Fire', bordering one of the world's most active tectonic plates.


Well, we're not sure where summer has gone - we reckon it's so appalled by the quality of the UK's EU Referendum 'debate' that it's pushed off until it's all over.
Anyway, the amount of rain we've had in the last few weeks has been a bit of a shock.
We think they are the common smooth newt - well, they may be 'common', but it was nice to see them. We will keep an eye out for them in and around the swimming pool - but it is not a chlorinated pool, so a short spell in the pool water does not seem to harm them.
Isaac said he's voting to stay in, by the way.
So, we'll do our next blog post in celebration of BruelFest 2 at the end of June and hopefully you'll see the pizza oven in action and Bruel's first pizza margaritas being relished!
Isaac sounds a very intelligent newt and we hope to meet him soon and share a pizza with him! Let's hope people listen to him and vote to stay in.


text:
How I Upgraded a Business Award to Air France La Première
HanChicago
Born in Seoul and raised in and around Chicago, Han likes to escape the Midwest whenever he can. His favorite destinations—and frequent subjects of conversation—are New York City, Las Vegas, and Macau. He is usually cooking up trips with points and miles that combine his interests in film, design, architecture, fine dining, gambling, and baseball (real and fantasy).
Air France Upgrade to First Class
My Inspiration to Fly in Air France 777 First Class
How to Fly Air France La Première: Step by Step
Details of My Air France Bookings
A Brief Diversion Using FlyerTalk, ExpertFlyer, and Google Flights
Upgrading to La Première (from a Business Class Award)
Issues with My La Première Experience
Final Thoughts: Air France First Class Review
Back in October 2021, I was scrolling through YouTube, and well-known aviation vlogger Sam Chui's video review of Air France La Première (LP) caught my eye. Here was some more digital footage of a first class product I was unlikely to ever fly! Bah! Or, as the French might say, N'importe quoi!
A La Première flight usually costs between $5,000 and $10,000. Moreover, Air France first class award flights are bookable only when you have top-tier elite status (gold or platinum) in the Air France/KLM Flying Blue loyalty program. And even with such status, you'll still need to burn 200,000-plus miles to book an LP ride between Paris and most (if not all) of the cities where it's made available. To be clear, Air France doesn't make first class award space available to any of its airline partners.
These hurdles—let's be frank, they're more like steep stone barriers with fleur-de-lis patterns chiseled across them—make Air France first class one of the most challenging products to book economically. (The only product that rivals it in terms of degree of difficulty in booking inexpensively is SWISS first class.)
LP's exclusivity is part of its allure to travel bloggers and the points and miles community at large. However, that shouldn't deter you from trying it out yourself. You just have to be willing to gamble a bit with my strategy, which was inspired by Sam Chui's video.
#BougieAF La Premiere Ride
At first I was just watching Chui's video for vicarious fun. But then toward the end of it, Chui shared his "secret" for flying in Air France first class for cheap: At online check-in the day before departure, he was able to upgrade into LP for around 1,000 euros (an amount I don't personally find absurd or offensive) for his flight on a 777-300ER (77W) from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport Airport (CDG) to Dubai International Airport (DXB).
Now, that tip from Chui's video got me to wondering if you could book a business class award on Air France metal and then upgrade into first class with cash the same way he did. (It's not as if revenue Air France business class tickets come cheap, though they're cheaper than first class ones.) In his YouTube video, Chui was not forthcoming about whether he booked his original business class itinerary from Nice to Dubai via Paris with cash or miles, but I suspect it was a revenue ticket, not an award.
Related: British Airways Upgrades Using Avios (Business Class & First Class)
My googling eventually led me to a FlyerTalk (FT) thread on the outlook for La Première, which an FT member started in mid-2020. And after studying that thread of 50-plus pages and others like it, I gathered it was probably a decent bet that booking a business class award on Air France metal with Flying Blue miles or a partner's miles and then later upgrading to first class with money in the French carrier's coffers would work out just fine.
FT threads indicated cash upgrades to La Première were generally cheaper when flying out of Paris than when flying in. But notably, you can still access the much lauded LP lounge in Paris when you arrive in first class and head onward elsewhere, even in another class (it's pretty straightforward with a single two-segment ticket, but this can be done on two separate tickets with some finagling, according FT members). Also, the FT threads suggested that the CDG-DXB route (the one Chui flew on in his video) offered one of the least expensive cash upgrades into first; only the LP upgrade on the route between CDG and Mexico City International Airport (MEX) was cheaper (I'll have more to say about that a little later).
I also wagered that once I booked a business class award, there would still be some empty first class seats left to upgrade into 30 hours before departure time in Paris if I chose my flight strategically. According to the FT LP outlook thread, T-30 hours was the earliest time that relatively economical LP upgrade offers would be made to business class passengers checking in online (I just wasn't sure if passengers who had booked with cash were prioritized over those who had booked with Flying Blue or partner miles—it turned out that this factor didn't matter at all). I figured that during these uncertain times, first class seats (even the coveted window seats) might well be available if I chose the right date of travel. But this was a bet I felt less sure about.
There weren't tons of data points for upgrading to La Première from a business class award among the FT threads that I could track down, but there were just enough that I was open to becoming a data point myself. Flying on Air France (whether ultimately in business class or first class) would be the focal point of my first trip overseas since early March 2020, when the pandemic shut down much of international leisure travel.
Lounge Scotch Bar: Gotta Love That "Free" Blue Label
Here are the basic steps for getting into LP economically (each step is covered in detail afterward).
Identify a long-haul Air France flight on a 77W with empty first class seats. I recommend flights on the CDG-DXB route (or maybe the CDG-MEX route) for the least expensive cash upgrade.
Book a business class award with the Flying Blue program or a partner's miles (I used Delta's) on the 77W flight you've identified.
If you use a partner's program, make sure the award booking also shows up on the Air France website.
Book a positioning Air France flight to CDG, Paris—ideally arriving six to eight hours before the departure time of the business class award flight (on the 77W with first class on it).
Thirty hours before departure time in Paris (T-30) for the business class award flight, log in to the Air France site to check in. You should be offered the cash upgrade to first. Purchase it and choose your seat.
If successful with the online upgrade, email or phone Air France to let them know you're flying in on a separate Air France flight and would like to be escorted from the jet bridge to the first class lounge.
If not successful with the online upgrade or if unable to contact Air France that you're arriving on a separate flight before your upgraded flight, go to an Air France business class lounge to get the upgrade (if seats are still available) and/or to be escorted to the first class lounge by car from there.
La Première Luggage Tags
I have absolutely no status with any airline, and my stash of points and miles is rather modest compared with many other enthusiasts' (much more so after mid-December, which I'll go into toward the very end).
Around mid-October 2021, I began looking for business class award space on Air France metal that had first class on the CDG-DXB route between November 2021 and February 2022.
First, using Google Flights, I found that the lone direct flight with La Première on the CDG-DXB line was Air France flight number 662 (AF 662), which departed Charles de Gaulle at 1:30 pm Paris time.
Google Flights: Air France Flight
Next, I logged on to ExpertFlyer (I have the Pro Basic Plan, which costs $4.99 per month) to check which dates featured AF 662 flights with the most empty first class seats to upgrade into. Ideally, you'll be flexible enough to book your business class award on a date when all four first class seats are empty. I checked the seat maps of AF 662 on various dates, and eventually targeted mid-December 2021 for my trip (many of the dates in that time frame had at most one seat in first class already reserved).
ExpertFlyer: Empty Air France First Class Cabin
Naturally, to search for business class award space on AF 662, I started with the Flying Blue program, which I'd joined several years ago, though seldom used since. Unfortunately, the trip dates that I preferred didn't have the lowest rate available at the time: 55,000 Flying Blue miles plus 264 euros.
Besides the fact Flying Blue is Air France's (and KLM's) own program (offering more award space to fly on Air France metal than its partners), there are other reasons to consider using this program to book your Air France business class award. First, Flying Blue is a transfer partner of several transferable currency programs (including those of American Express, Capital One, Citi, and Chase), so it's easy to accrue Flying Blue miles. Second, each month the Flying Blue program offers its members Promo Rewards, which discount economy class and sometimes business class award flights for designated markets. I was only recently reminded of Promo Rewards, so I'm not sure if back in the final months of 2021, Dubai was one of the targeted markets. Regardless, I didn't check Promo Rewards when I was booking, but you should if you decide to try to fly LP like I did.
Flying Blue: Air France Business Class Availability
Striking out with Flying Blue, I next searched for Air France award space with the Delta SkyMiles program. I ended up booking a business class award on AF 662 departing on December 12, 2021, for 42,500 SkyMiles plus 264 euros. Checking Delta's website in early January 2022 as I'm writing this piece, I see this CDG-DXB Air France business class award space with the same "Sky pesos" pricing is widely available in the coming months. Just make sure you book AF 662 (which is nearly always operated with a 77W) and not another Air France direct flight on this route (which is operated with different aircraft).
I could've searched the sites of other partner programs (such as Virgin Atlantic Flying Club) for AF 662 business class award space. Yet I considered a business class redemption of 42,500 SkyMiles plus some cash for a nearly seven-hour flight to be a bargain, and none of the alternatives I was familiar with were going to reduce the taxes, fees, and other charges significantly, so I didn't bother to check them.
Delta SkyMiles Partner Program: Air France Business Class Availability
Read More about First Class options from the us
I also used Delta's site to book a positioning flight in economy on Air France metal from Chicago O'Hare (ORD) to CDG. This was a revenue flight, as Delta's award pricing to cross the Pond in mid-December 2021 was way too steep for my blood, even for an economy class flight. (I couldn't find better alternatives to pay with miles to get over the Atlantic on Air France metal.)
At the time of booking, I thought it would be critical to fly on Air France metal in order to be met by an attendant on the jet bridge and be whisked away in a posh car to the La Première lounge (just like Sam Chui in his video). Although I was going to be flying under two separate Air France tickets, that is, two passenger name records (PNRs), I was fairly certain that I could communicate with Air France staff while still in the U.S. so that I'd get the same treatment as if I were under a single PNR with two flight segments (like Chui). But unfortunately, my plan didn't work out, which I'll explain in the next section.
If I could've found inexpensive business class award space from Chicago (or New York) to Dubai by way of Paris on Air France metal, I might have avoided the problems associated with booking under two PNRs. But I think I wouldn't have been able to maximize my time in the LP lounge in Paris had I taken this approach. And back in October and November, I simply couldn't track down such award space at reasonable redemption rates.
Here's a key point: If you use a partner's miles to book AF 662, make sure to get the Air France ticket number or booking reference (which will be different from the ones for Delta or another partner). You'll likely need this information to check in online on the Air France website (not the partner's) at T-30 hours in order to get the LP upgrade offer.
Allow me to indulge in a side trip: According to FT threads, the very least expensive cash upgrades for LP tend to be offered for the CDG-MEX route; but last fall, I didn't take that option into serious consideration because 1) I'd been too influenced by Chui's video about the CDG-DXB route; 2) I'd never been to Mexico City, whereas I'd visited Dubai before, and during the pandemic, I wanted to stick with semi-familiar settings; and 3) I'd found some compelling award space to fly in British Airways business class back to the U.S. from Dubai. But in retrospect, I likely would've ended up with a somewhat cheaper cash upgrade to LP, a better chance of getting my LP seat of choice (based on ExpertFlyer seat maps), and a greater return on investment in terms of flight time in the first class cabin (around five additional hours) if I'd booked the CDG-MEX route (specifically, AF 178, per Google Flights); I also would've spent much less in cash or points to get back to Chicago from Mexico City. As of this writing, I'm seeing plenty of Air France business class award space for 65,000 Flying Blue miles plus $362.20 for this route over the next few months. So, keep that in mind.
The only remaining reservation I have about this theoretical booking is that I might've gotten some odd stares from airline staff had I flown from Chicago to Paris only to transit (without ever officially entering France) to fly to MEX, but such bonkers eccentric itineraries are not unheard of among professional content creators in the travel space.
Regardless of which route you choose (CDG-DXB or CDG-MEX), if you're truly committed to trying out LP, I suggest you start planning to book sooner rather than later. It's not clear to me how long these inexpensive LP upgrades will stick around. Whenever the pandemic becomes endemic and travel spikes up and stays up, I suspect the cost of LP upgrades will jump accordingly.
First Class Pajamas
Obviously, one potential pitfall of trying to get into La Première this way is that there's no way to lock in your first class seat until T-30 hours. So, if you're going to be sorely disappointed about having to fly to Dubai in Air France business class (or in a first class seat you didn't select), then don't bother trying this approach.
A few weeks after my initial booking, around Veterans Day in the U.S., I saw via ExpertFlyer that another first class seat had been sold on the December 12 AF 662 flight (leaving me just two empty seats to try to snap up at T-30 hours), so I ended up switching to the AF 662 flight departing on December 11 (with only one first class seat reserved by then). I thought I'd incur a $150 fee from Delta (or Air France) for switching the departure date for a flight not originating in North America, but it turned out to be an even exchange (that is, no extra costs were incurred for switching). I did, however, pay a little extra (just the small fare difference) to switch my positioning flight from December 11 to December 10, and I had to connect through New York JFK instead of going directly to CDG from ORD.
About three or four days before the trip, I noticed, yet again via ExperFlyer, that both first class window seats on the December 11 AF 662 flight had been filled (leaving me once again with just two empty first class seats to try to snag). Up until then, I thought I was going to nab first class seat 1A, but it got away from me (as I knew might happen). By that point, I didn't want to shift my flights for a second time, so I just played out the hand I'd been dealt.
At 12:30 am Chicago time on December 10, which is 30 hours before 1:30 pm Paris time on December 11 (the time difference of seven hours having been accounted for), I completed online check-in on the Air France website for my AF 662 flight. On the online check-in page, I was indeed given the opportunity to upgrade to LP for $1,231.60. I accepted that offer, paying for the upgrade with my American Express Platinum Card to earn 5X on the airline transaction (and ultimately paying off that charge with profits from reselling U.S. Mint coins in 2020 and 2021). I chose seat 1E, the center seat toward the port side. (If I hadn't gotten the LP upgrade offer at online check-in, I would've tried to purchase it at a business class lounge in CDG.)
La Première Upgrade Confirmation
My economy class flight to Paris by way of New York proceeded without a hitch. While at JFK, I had staff at the Air France lounge in Terminal 1 attempt to contact their colleagues at CDG to have someone greet me on the jet bridge and escort me to the first class lounge. (In retrospect, I probably should've phoned or emailed Air France to inform them of my two-PNR itinerary right after I'd upgraded to first—which a staff member in the LP lounge also confirmed I should've done.)
JFK-T1: Air France Business Class Lounge
Unfortunately, when I arrived in Paris around 7 am on December 11, I was met by no one from the first class lounge on the jet bridge or anywhere nearby. When I spoke with Air France staff from the plane and at the arrival gate, I was given directions to walk to the La Première lounge on my own. I probably should have spoken with other staff at the Air France transit desk, who probably would've called the LP lounge staff to come get me, but I was a tad miffed (irrational, disoriented, what have you) and just tried to stubbornly follow the verbal directions and airport signage to get to the lounge by myself.
So, wow, Charles de Gaulle is terribly, awfully, dreadfully difficult to navigate. To me, it's a gargantuan labyrinth on par with Caesars Palace Las Vegas in terms of its configuration. So, after I made it past the security checkpoint, I wandered around for a while, schlepping my luggage, and then caught an airport shuttle train to somewhere within Terminal 2. After walking up (or was it down?) some stairs and through some hallways, I finally made my way to an Air France lounge, but it wasn't the La Première lounge. It turned out to be the airline's business class lounge in Terminal 2E, Hall L (which I only identified long after my visit). To be frank, never in a million years would I able to reproduce how I got to that lounge from my arrival gate. Ah, the notorious CDG: You definitely lived up to your reputation!
To their credit, the staff in the Air France business class lounge apologized for no one having met me upon my arrival in Paris (technically it wasn't their fault, given I'd been on two PNRs) and then put in a call to the La Première lounge on my behalf. After I waited for about 30 minutes, sipping coffee and soaking in the calm vibe of the early morning hours within that lounge, a smartly dressed La Première staff member introduced herself and escorted me to a fancy car outside. (While her name escapes me, I recall she was warm and easy-going and knew multiple languages; and she kindly loaned me her personal European charging adapter while I was in the LP lounge.)
After I was driven to the first class lounge, I cleared security a second time and then dined well, showered, and dined well again during the five hours I spent there.
CDG-T2E-Hall-L: Air France Business Class Lounge
Eventually, after bidding the lounge and its staff a fond farewell, I was driven in another fancy car to the 77W. On board, I genuinely enjoyed being in the middle seat (I was alone in the center, which probably helped, especially when the privacy curtains for both 1E and 1F were drawn). I also appreciated the refined yet friendly service from the attentive flight attendant, as well as the superb French cuisine catered out of Paris, on my flight to Dubai—where I ended up spending the bulk of my time at the World Expo 2020.
I'm not going to write an extensive review of my LP lounge and flight experience, given that a multitude of professional bloggers and vloggers have already covered them both. I'll just post a few photos below to give you a sense of what I got to experience firsthand in mid-December.
So, was Air France La Première worth the time, effort, and money? I would say yes. This entire experience of booking and flying LP quenched a curiosity that I'd had for some time. With that said, to me, the LP lounge, while pretty, is on the small side and falls short of some of the more modern lounges, such as Qatar Airways' Al Safwa First Class Lounge in Doha (personally, that remains my favorite first class lounge in the world). To me, the LP lounge doesn't even match Lufthansa's First Class Terminal in Frankfurt, Germany. Unless you happen to be a huge fan of Gallic gastronomy (which admittedly I'm not), I think you might be a little disappointed with the LP lounge, especially if you've been fortunate enough to have already visited other first class lounges in the Middle East. I think the La Première lounge was simply too hyped up for me.
While the first class hard product on the Air France 77W is beautiful and comfortable, it pales in comparison with the more innovative and more private first class products featured on many Asian and Middle Eastern carriers, such as Singapore Airlines and Emirates. The in-flight entertainment options on my Air France flight were also mediocre at best; the wi-fi acceptable. The LP amenity kit and pajamas were quite good, but not truly exceptional to me.
I will say this much for Air France: Its first class ground service at CDG—and even at the DXB outstation—is second to none. This is where Air France really excels over other carriers (as long as you can communicate in advance you're an LP customer!). But for me, LP's stellar ground service doesn't make up for what I find lacking in its lounge and 77W hard product. Everything associated with LP is elegant and understated. I guess I prefer some of the bling and whimsical flourishes of its competitors.
I think with some better planning I could have reduced the downsides of upgrading to La Première the way I did. I'll admit the two-PNR method can be problematic if it's very important to you to be met by LP staff at the jet bridge for a seamless first class experience from arrival at CDG. However, if you don't care about that, you could secure an LP seat by upgrading online at T-30 hours, fly into CDG on almost any carrier, and go to an Air France business class lounge like I did (albeit you'd be doing that on purpose) and probably still be driven over to the LP lounge (like me).
So, the real biggest downside of going on this trip—my lone, lingering regret—was that I missed out on that spectacular American Airlines (AA) SimplyMiles deal in mid-December 2021, which Bethany had the scoop on and other travel bloggers declared the points and miles deal of the year!
PSA…. Activate those offers ASAP. American Airlines Huge Holiday Miles Bonus Offer (500% Extra) https://t.co/3Wr2xVg4vn
— Bethany Walsh (@BougieMiles) December 10, 2021
I even retweeted Bethany's original December 10 tweet to remind myself to study her Bougie Miles post more carefully later, but then I lost track of it while traveling through Europe and the Middle East. It didn't matter anyways because I hadn't brought along any Mastercard plastic (which I needed to buy all those millions of miles for very cheap). I don't mean this, of course. Well, maybe just a little I do. Oddly, that remarkable AA deal will always be associated with LP for me.
I'm very grateful to have flown in Air France first class: It was truly an enriching experience (just not in AA miles).
Many thanks to Bethany for letting me guest blog about this once-in-a-lifetime journey!
Filed Under: Booking Travel, Travel Tagged With: air france, first class, international flights, loyalty programs, luxury travel, upgrades
About HanChicago
This was really fascinating! I always love that this blog has genuinely original, unique content, and it's good to see that from another author!
hanchicago says
Yes, Bethany always approaches the points and miles game from unusual angles.
I hope I can come up with more content up to her standard.
Thank you, Bill 🙂 and thank you for coming back!
What a great review. I got an offer on AF 662 somewhere mid November, but I declined. After reading your review i regret it very much 🙁
I don't know if I'll fly LP again, but I'm glad I took a shot at least once.
Jacob says
Excellent trip report. It was very helpful to me. I especially appreciate your comments that helped me get a good prespective of LP. Your photos of the middle seats showed me what it is really like if you get the middle seat, which does not impress me – there is zero privacy when the divider and curtains are all open. Unlike in ANA, SQ etc where you always have a lot of privacy. If I fly First Class, I want privacy so this would devalue LP for me.
Based on your review, I personally would not go out of my way to fly LP. I would definitely do it if I had the chance to upgrade and use their CDG LP lounge.
Appreciate your taking the time to read my post.
Yes, that's right: Privacy isn't a huge priority in the LP cabin. The window seats would offer a bit more than the middle, with or without the curtains drawn.
I'm guessing the next iteration of LP (which they say will appear on an A350) might provide more privacy. But then it'll probably be even harder to upgrade into!
The LP lounge (if you love French cuisine) and ground service make it worthwhile to try it out at least once.
But like you, I enjoyed my F experience in SQ, EK, EY, etc., better.
Am I still eligible for paid upgrade if booked award using flying blue but crediting my delta skymiles account for the trip? Thanks in advance.
Alec Walker says
This is exactly the article I needed to read. I have an AF business class flight from New York to Paris, and have tried to upgrade using miles or cash with no luck. Now I know to check 30 hours before, fingers crossed!!
Definitely let us know how it turns out and good luck!
toast flowers says
i try this from mex to cdg in august, i use aeromexico points on business class air france ticket, i hope, i can upgrade to la premiere