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Transportation Secretary: Short-Term Fix for Highway Trust Fund Inadequate
Fast-moving Congressional efforts to rescue the Highway Trust Fund from becoming bankrupt next month will not solve the long-term crisis in funding the nation’s crumbling transportation infrastructure, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx warned at National Press Club luncheon July 21. Noting that the House last week cleared a $10 billion extension of the fund through May of 2015 and that the Senate is due to take action on a similar measure this week, Foxx called the legislation only a “short-term patch.” If it passes, he said, “It will not be a time to celebrate.” “It’s hard to…
Type: News
Marine follows a hero's journey in new novel by Tom Young
``I will confess to you it's easier to write a novel when you're using a plot somebody else already came up with three thousand years ago." That was novelist Tom Young joking to a National Press Club Book Rap July 15 on how he derived the structure of his new military thriller, "Sand and Fire," from the work of Joseph Campbell, the noted scholar of comparative mythology. Young explained that Campbell found in epic stories across many cultures "a common plot pattern that seems to have universal appeal," which he called the "hero's journey." "I've used elements of that plot pattern in the past…
Type: News
'Act of War' author Brad Thor raps about writing at Press Club
A favorite mantra of author Brad Thor is “everything happens for a reason,” he told a National Press Club Book Rap July 9. The publishing of Thor’s first book got a boost from a chance meeting with a contact with Simon & Schuster while on his honeymoon. His new wife told him to stop worrying about the last leg of the trip –- an overnight train trip from Munich to Amsterdam in a shared compartment. Remember your own mantra, she told him. After spending the night in the shared compartment talking with a woman about books and telling her that he planned to write a novel, she gave him her…
Type: News
Secrecy key to Civil Rights passage, reporter tells NPC Book Rap
One of the keys to passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was secrecy, Todd Purdum, author of "An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Two Presidents, Two Parties and the Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964," told a National Press Club Book Rap on July 8. “It sounds paradoxical here in the Press Club, and for a reporter to say that one of the other things that made the bill possible was secrecy,” Purdum, an NPC member since 2006, said. “The handful of people who were there who are still alive tell me that one of the absolutely crucial elements of this was that no one was posturing for the C-Span…
Type: News
Retiring Postmaster General Urges Congress to Forgo 'Absurd Mandate' and 'Shortsightedness'
Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe, retiring this month, used a Tuesday Newsmaker to urge Congress, postal unions and the mailing industry to grant the Postal Service flexibility to adjust to changes. He started his list of recommendations with retiree health benefits, which he called "my favorite example of an absurd mandate" because Congress requires the Postal Service to prepay a 40-year obligation in 10 years. This could have been done if the Internet had not been invented, he said. "To compound the issue, we massively overpay for retiree health insurance," because the postal plans don't…
Type: News
Podcast Features History of PR
The latest National Press Club podcast is now on the website and iTunes. Public relations is widely viewed as a contemporary development, but PR executive and lecturer Shelley Spector begs to differ. As founder of the Museum of Public Relations, based at Baruch College in New York, Spector’s extensive collection of artifacts, books and video interviews shows that PR can be traced back thousands of years with roots in psychology and other social sciences. NPC member Adam Konowe spoke with Spector, whose museum was recently profiled by The New York Times, about the collection, its growing…
Type: News
Bloomberg's John Hughes Elected National Press Club President
John Hughes of Bloomberg News has been elected president of the National Press Club, the world's leading professional organization for journalists. Hughes is an editor for Bloomberg First Word, the breaking-news desk in Washington. Before that he was Bloomberg's aviation and transportation reporter for more than a decade, covering the Sept. 11 attacks, airline and auto bankruptcies and aviation accidents including the Miracle on the Hudson. Hughes will assume the presidency Jan. 16 and be sworn in Jan. 24 at the Club’s inaugural gala. He is the 108th president of the Club, founded in 1908. "…
Type: News
'Kalb Report' hears how Edward R. Murrow influenced NPR's unique sound
The spirit of Edward R. Murrow flowed through the National Press Club ballroom Dec. 9 as Marvin Kalb, host of "The Kalb Report," interviewed five icons of NPR about how NPR news developed and where it is heading. Discussing “The Sound of News: An Evening with NPR,” veteran public radio correspondents Scott Simon, Nina Totenberg, Susan Stamberg, Mara Liasson and Steve Inskeep told how Murrow in his radio reports from London during World War II set the standard for the NPR sound. Kalb, who was the last CBS News correspondent hired by Murrow, played a Murrow report from London during the Blitz…
Type: News
Data analytics help control infectious diseases, make Hershey candy kisses -- and more
BSA | The Software Alliance, an advocate to governments for the software industry -- whose members include Adobe, Apple, Dell, IBM, Microsoft and 20 other companies -- reported survey results showing that 97 percent of large businesses in the United States and Europe regard data analytics as important to their companies at a Dec. 10 National Press Club Newsmaker event In releasing the results, an expert panel revealed how software, computing power and an explosion of data from business, government and connected devices are producing analyses that are transforming all aspects of contemporary…
Type: News
Leonsis, Bettman tout hockey's Winter Classic Jan. 1 in D.C. at luncheon
The capital of the United States will become the capital of hockey on New Year’s Day when Washington, D.C., hosts the National Hockey League’s wildly popular annual Winter Classic, a game that will be played in the way the sport originated -- outdoors in shivering cold. “There is no better way for us to start 2015,” longtime NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman told a Dec. 5 luncheon audience at the National Press Club, where he appeared with Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis to promote the game. The game will pit Leonsis’s Capitals against the Chicago Black Hawks at Washington Nationals…
Type: News