Here is a sampling of links and notes about Carolina people and programs cited recently in the media:
National Coverage
Branding Success in Emerging Market Companies
Bloomberg Television “Bloomberg Surveillance
UNC Kenan-Flagler’s Jan-Benedict Steenkamp discusses branding as it pertains to emerging market companies and consumer trust.
MBA.com: Online degrees getting big, and expensive
CNBC
Carlo Pedrazzini isn't your typical new MBA graduate from a top-tier school. He's one of the first students to complete the online master's in business administration program at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Back when the school launched its program two years ago, tuition initially cost $89,000—the same as if students attended the old-fashioned way.
Bezos' Post buy blast from the past (Column)
USA Today
The problem for newspapers in the past two decades has not been their loss of readership so much as the loss of monopoly power. When they owned the toll road that carried advertisers' messages to their customers, they could respond to hard times by raising prices. (Philip Meyer is a retired professor of journalism at the University of North Carolina,Chapel Hill, and author of a recently published memoir, Paper Route: Finding My Way to Precision Journalism.)
State and Local Coverage
NCHSAA procedures intended to keep student-athletes safe
WNCN-TV (NBC/Raleigh)
Over the years, several North Carolina high school athletes have collapsed and died, either during or right after their sports. … But practice schedules and procedures end up playing a bigger part in making sure young athletes are safe. For instance, a recent study out of UNC-Chapel Hill found that football players are 11 times more likely to suffer heat-related illnesses when compared to all other sports combined.
UNC study finds incense can inflame lungs
WCHL-FM (Chapel Hill)
Before you light up a stick of incense, you may want to read this. A study by UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health finds that burning incense can cause lung inflammation. Kenneth Sexton, retired research assistant professor of environmental science at UNC and co-author of the study, compared the products of incense burned in the study to those found in cigarette smoke.
UNC Release: http://uncnews.unc.edu/content/view/6151/71/
Issues and Trends
State employees get some protections in bill, but grievance procedures shortened
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Gov. Pat McCrory is expected to sign a bill that speeds up the employee grievance process for state workers but backs away from earlier efforts to sharply curtail their civil service protections. The measure, initiated by the McCrory administration, also increases the number of political hires the governor can make to 1,500, moves the State Personnel Office under the direct control of the governor’s office and shortens the appeal process for state employees who are fired or disciplined.
Chapel Hill 2020 snags another award
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
The town’s Chapel Hill 2020 plan is a winner again. This time, the plan that will guide growth and development in the town over the next 20 years has been awarded the N.C. Chapter of the American Planning Association’s 2013 North Carolina Marvin Collins Outstanding Planning Award in the Special Theme – Innovations in Planning Services, Education and Public Involvement category.
From recession’s wake, education innovation blooms
The Associated Press
…Investment dollars are flooding in — a record-smashing 168 venture capital deals in the U.S. alone last year, according to the springtime conference’s host, GSV Advisors. The computing power of “the cloud” and “big data” are unleashing new software. Public officials, desperate to cut costs and measure results, are open to change. And everyone, it seems, is talking about MOOCs, the “Massive Open Online Courses” offered by elite universities and enrolling millions worldwide.