The long standing lawsuit between the newspaper carriers and the Orange County Register has been settled for an amount of $30 million. The class-action law suit against the OC Register had been filed by thousands of newspaper carriers in 2003.
The lawsuit was a result of the classification of the newspaper carriers as independent contractors and not as employees by Freedom Communications Inc., which is the parent company of the newspaper. Due to this classification, the carriers were denied lunch breaks; overtime pay as well as business expenses. In addition to this the carriers alleged that the company was not keeping accurate payroll records and was indulging in unfair business practices. The court had ordered the company to pay the carriers to the tune of $28.9 million in June 2009 but the company filed for bankruptcy soon thereafter.
Then in 2010, the company managed to negotiate a $14.5 million settlement for around 5,000 newspaper carriers. After this the carriers sued the company's officers and directors who have now finally agreed to pay another $15.5 million. Daniel J. Callahan, the plaintiffs' attorney states that the 3,000 carriers that he represents are happy to get over with the lawsuit and this money would be secured for the carriers. The company itself had no part in the post bankruptcy litigation so they had no comment.

Since advertising is a must for businesses, especially large businesses, buyers have to be informed in order to make buying decisions that are in their own best interests and not just because they were influenced by the advertising. This, of course, doesn't mean that advertising is never backed up by good quality and value. It's just that there is some advertising which, in fact, is not backed up by good quality and value in the product, so the buyer has to be aware of this.

When we recently remodeled our home, we paid close attention to quality, such as in the paint we used, and in the appliances we bought, and the flooring we chose. In fact, the first thing we told the sales rep. from Empire Today when he came to our house to show us samples of
Empire carpett and other options, is that we wanted the best quality flooring that our budget could afford. We asked what makes a product better quality than the next step down, just as we asked the rep at the paint store and at the appliance store. If we had a hard time choosing between options, we did some research. The good thing is that there are plenty of options and plenty of information available these days. So it's a bit of homework, but it definitely pays off to be informed.

The Al Jazeera English language broadcast will be launching a new show where media coverage is guided by what people are talking about on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites, according to Wired's Dylan Tweney.

The show will be called The Stream, and it is set to appear later this spring, just in time to capitalize on all the western interest in Al Jazeera that is being generated by their outstanding coverage of the recent protests and revolutions in the North Africa and the Middle East. These revolutions have been fomented in part online, via social media, so it makes sense for the network to base a show around such influential outlets. The organizing principle of The Stream is that in place of a script or teleprompter, the hosts will make use of tweets, Facebook posts and YouTube videos.