More Marketers Hail Veterans, and Try to Help Them, Too

A campaign for Boeing includes television commercials that shine a spotlight on employees who are veterans of the armed forces.

Madison Avenue is paying greater attention to those who are serving or have served in the armed forces. It was true last year, and the year before, and for the 2012 Veterans Day holiday the trend is continuing to gain strength.

First, the ranks of sponsors of Veterans Day campaigns are expanding beyond retailers to include consumer product marketers. Also, the campaigns are evolving from quotidian affairs - sales on cars or mattresses - into programs offe ring veterans assistance in areas like finding jobs or buying homes.

For instance, the Coca-Cola Refreshments unit of the Coca-Cola Company said on Thursday that it had exceeded a goal, announced in May, of hiring 800 military veterans.

As of this week, 807 have been brought on board. And more may be hired; information about job opportunities is available at www.enjoycareers.com/military.

Chase, part of JPMorgan Chase, also has a section of its Web site devoted to current and former members of the military, where there is information about programs that include a commitment to hire “at least 100,000 veterans” by 2020 and a plan to give away 1,000 “mortgage-free homes” by 2016 and waive fees and balance requirements on certain accounts.

The USO, which helps service members and their families, has signed up additional sponsors for its annual Grant a Wish for Our Heroes campaign. Marketers and brands like American Cr ew, AOL, ESPN and Old Navy are joining returning sponsors that include American Airlines, CVS and Cheerios.

Cosmopolitan magazine, published by a division of the Hearst Corporation, will team up on Monday with the USO and the Maybelline New York cosmetics brand for a “Kiss Station” to be located at Father Duffy Square in Times Square.

Passers-by will be invited to plant kisses on postcards that will be delivered to the members of the armed forces serving in Afghanistan and Iraq in time for another holiday, Valentine's Day.

Other organizations that help veterans and active duty troops are being supported by other marketers. For example, Brooks Brothers is working with Dignity U Wear and its Suits for Soldiers program. It is also offering 25 percent off all in-store purchases, from Thursday through Monday, to active-duty and retired military personnel.

The Uno Chicago Grill restaurant chain is joining with Services for the UnderServed, which assists veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq and their families, by pledging donations to the organization. Uno will donate 10 percent of each sale from a new line of family-size pizzas available for takeout orders.

And the H.J. Heinz Company is helping the Wounded Warriors Project for the second year in a row with a promotion centered on its Heinz ketchup brand.

Consumers are being asked to scan QR codes on the backs of ketchup bottles to send “thank you” messages to active-duty service members and veterans. For each message that is sent, Heinz will donate a dollar to the Wounded Warriors Project.

And for each of those messages that consumers share with friends and family on Facebook and Twitter, Heinz will donate an additional 57 cents, echoing its corporate “57 varieties” slogan. The ceiling for all Heinz donations is $250,000.

Boeing is running a television, print and online campaign aimed at saluting American veterans as well as troops on active dut y. The campaign features Boeing employees who have served in the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps and Navy.

A section of the Boeing Web site is being devoted to “honoring those who serve,” at boeing.com/tribute.  A 30-second television commercial started running this week and a 60-second version is to make its debut on Sunday.

Three agencies collaborated on the Boeing campaign: DraftFCB, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies; Frontline Communications Partners; and R&R Partners.

Stuart Elliott has been the advertising columnist at The New York Times since 1991. Follow @stuartenyt on Twitter and sign up for In Advertising, his weekly e-mail newsletter.

NAACP Opposes Effort to Change Online Royalties

The Internet Radio Fairness Act, a federal bill supported by Pandora, Clear Channel and others that would change the way online radio royalties are set, has come under new opposition from the N.A.A.C.P., which said in a letter to members of Congress that the bill would “unfairly deprive artists and performers of fair pay for their hard work.”

The bill, introduced in September, would direct a panel of federal judges to use the same standard in setting royalty rates for Internet radio that they use for satellite and cable radio services, a change that Pandora and others believe would substantially lower their rates.

It already has been opposed by music industry groups, as well as by the A.F.L.-C.I.O. But the N.A.A.C.P. letter, dated last Friday and publicized by a music industry coalition on Thursday, adds new pressure, portraying the issue not just as a business dispute, but as a civil rights matter.

“Quite frankly , the I.R.F.A. bill fails the basic test of economic fairness and discriminates against singers and musicians by slashing the compensation they receive when their work is played over digital online radio,” says the letter, which was signed by Hilary O. Shelton, director of the N.A.A.C.P.'s Washington bureau.

Members of the Internet Radio Fairness Coalition, which in addition to Pandora and Clear Channel includes the Digital Media Association and the Consumer Electronics Association, argue that the current royalty system is unfair and impedes the development of the industry.

Pandora, for example, has paid a much higher portion of its revenue in royalties than satellite and cable radio services. The new bill would make a number of other alterations to the rate-setting procedure, including a change in the way the copyright royalty judges are appointed.

This week, Pandora also started a new front in its campaign to lower royalties when it sued Ascap, a perfor ming rights group that represents songwriters and publishers.

A spokeswoman for Pandora did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday afternoon.

Ben Sisario writes about the music industry. Follow @sisario on Twitter.

Three Studios Agree to Plan to Certify Who Deserves to Be a Producer

LOS ANGELES - Three major Hollywood studios, in a move to regulate the often chaotic ways in which producer credits are assigned for films, have agreed to let the Producers Guild of America certify some of those credits, the guild and studios said on Thursday.

Beginning immediately, Universal Pictures, 20th Century Fox and two units of Sony Pictures Entertainment have agreed to place the letters “p.g.a.” after the name of any producer who requests the designation and whose work on a particular film is certified by the guild. The certification will serve as a stamp of approval of sorts for those who engaged in the complicated decision-making and advisory functions of what the guild views as a genuine producer.

The agreement was long sought by the guild, a professional organization that does not have the collective bargaining rights of unions like the Directors Guild of America or the Screen Actors Guild. It is intended to stem the traditionally generous awar ding of producers' credits to wide array of people - those who simply contributed funding, executive backing or other support for a film.

“This will change the dynamic of peoples' request for the credit,” said Mark Gordon, the producers guild president, who spoke by telephone on Thursday. Mr. Gordon is a prolific movie and television producer whose film credits include “Source Code” and “2012.”

To earn the new designation, a producer must meet standards that consider supervision of the script, contribution to casting decisions, and presence on a set, among other things.

The designation - which already is being implemented by DreamWorks Animation and the Weinstein Company - will apply only to a full producer credit, and will not affect executive producer, co-producer or associate producer credits, Mr. Gordon said. Under the agreement, it will still be possible to have a full producer credit on a film without the “p.g.a.” certification, which is a voluntary distinction.

Standards for assignment of the “p.g.a.” logo will be identical to those already in place for the Oscar process, Mr. Gordon said. And, as in the awards review, he said, it will probably be given only rarely to more than three people on a single film. (Disputes have marked the review of credits for Oscar consideration, and the rules have been tweaked over the years to allow more room for the occasional award of credit to more than three producers.)

The divisions at Sony that joined the agreement are Columbia Pictures and Screen Gems. Warner Brothers, Walt Disney Studios and Paramount Pictures have all declined so far to agree to the new system.

Mr. Gordon said he hoped that those companies would come on board. But, he said, they remain wary of creating a new process that might complicate or delay the process of finishing films, and are concerned that any limitation on the producer credits might hamper their ability to make de als.

The agreement, he noted, applies only to films actually made by studios involved. Films that are made by others and distributed by the three will not be covered because it would be difficult to conform contractual arrangements on such independent productions to a new standard, he said.

In announcing the new agreement, the guild and studios said the new producers mark would be awarded without distinction to guild members and non-members alike, and that non-members would serve on arbitration panels. They said no compensation would be tied to award of the designation.

Thus, a producer who never requested the mark, they pointed out, could not be assumed to have done less work than one who received it.

Despite studio efforts to curtail producer credits, they have proliferated over the years, as it became more difficult to finance films and producers frequently resorted to collaboration.

A relatively small, indepen dent film like “A Better Life,” which was released last year by Summit Entertainment, cost only about $10 million to make, but carried five producer credits, for instance.

This year, “Lawless,” released by the Weinstein Company, had at least 19 producers of various sorts. At least four of those were credited as full producers. Two of those, Lucy Fisher and Doug Wick, carried the “p.g.a.” designation, according to information provided by the guild.

The Writers Guild of America and the Directors Guild of America have long imposed standards over the assignment of credits in their respective fields; and the writers guild operates a complex arbitration process that annually sorts through conflicting claims of authorship on films.

Mr. Gordon said award of the producers mark would involve an appeals process of some sort. But, he said, he did not expect it to become complicated or time consuming.

“Granted, in the beginning it will be a little bi t of work,” said Mr. Gordon. But the bother would diminish, he said, “once this becomes part of the culture.”

Michael Cieply covers the film industry from the Los Angeles bureau.

ESPN, as Usual, Spurs Quarterly Growth at Disney

LOS ANGELES â€" Disney's theme park and consumer products units each produced robust fourth-quarter growth, but it was ESPN â€" as usual â€" that delivered the biggest boost to the entertainment conglomerate, the company reported Thursday.

For the fiscal quarter ended Sept. 29, Disney reported a profit of $1.24 billion, or 68 cents a share, a 14 percent increase from $1.09 billion, or 58 cents a share, a year earlier. Disney met analyst expectations (although it is customary for the company to beat them.) Revenue increased a modest 3 percent, to $10.78 billion.

Results were not uniformly positive, however. Disney's movie studio reported weak operating income of $80 million, a 32 percent decline from the year-earlier period â€" even though the studio released the DVD of its “Avengers” blockbuster in the quarter. Lower worldwide theatrical results and high marketing costs for “Frankenweenie,” which flopped at the box office, were to blame.

Still, Disney's cable television division, centered on ESPN and Disney Channel, saw operating income climb 9 percent, to $1.38 billion. The increase was powered by growth at ESPN that came from higher contractual rates from cable system affiliates, as well as decreased marketing costs. These increases were partly offset by higher ESPN programming costs tied to Major League Baseball and expanded Wimbledon rights.

The company's Parks and Resorts unit - closely watched as an informal barometer of discretionary spending in the broader economy â€" reported an 18 percent increase in operating income, to $497 million. Higher attendance at Disneyland Paris and Hong Kong Disneyland helped, but more capacity at Disney's cruise line appeared to be the largest contributor. Results for Disney's North American parks were flat.

Strong sales of Spider-Man and Avengers merchandise helped deliver operating income of $267 million, a 29 percent increase from a year earlier, at Disney's consumer products unit, a signal that efforts to rewire the division are working.

The troubled Disney Interactive, home to the company's video game business and Disney.com, reported a loss of $76 million, an improvement from a loss of $94 million a year ago. But the division has now suffered 16 consecutive quarters of losses â€" over $1 billion in total.
Disney hopes a barrage of recent changes at Disney.com and the Nov. 18 release of the video game “Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two” will help to finally turn the tide.

Qatar Holdings Is Said to Invest $100 Million in Chernin Group

Mario Anzuoni/Reuters Peter Chernin

LOS ANGELES - The Chernin Group, a private media company founded by a former News Corporation president, Peter Chernin, on Thursday continued to expand its financial support, this time with an equity investment from Qatar Holdings, the group said.

The investment by the Qatar firm, a unit of the government-backed Qatar Investment Authority, means it will be one of the two largest backers of the Chernin Group, along with Providence Equity Partners. Providence invested about $200 million in the Chernin Group this year.

“They're trying to give us more firepower,” said Mr. Chernin, who spoke by telephone on Thursday.

The two big investors, he said, “hav e significant interest in the possibility” of providing additional financing as potential media acquisitions, partnerships or other investments become available.

Mr. Chernin declined to say how much Qatar Holdings would immediately invest. But another person, who was briefed on the transaction and spoke on condition of anonymity because the partners had not disclosed terms, put the investment at about $100 million.

Mr. Chernin founded the media group after resigning his post at News Corporation in 2009. It has since been involved in the production of films like “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” television series like “New Girl” and entrepreneurial ventures like Pandora and Tumblr.

Reports in October said the company was considering a merger with Endemol and the Core Media Group, a pair of television-oriented companies. Mr. Chernin declined to discuss any possible combination with Endemol or others.

The Chernin Group, through a unit based in Hong Kong, has focused particularly on Asia-based investments in the last year. Asked whether the addition of Qatar Holdings as an investor signaled any shift in emphasis, Mr. Chernin said: “No, it does not take me in any direction.”

Earlier Coverage of Peter Chernin

• 2010: For Chernin, an Empire of His Own
• 2009: News Corp. President Is Leaving

Michael Cieply covers the film industry from the Los Angeles bureau.

Goodbye to Rachel From Cardholder Services

So long, Rachel. I certainly won't miss you or your annoying phone calls from “Cardholder Services.”

The Federal Trade Commission recently acted to shut down five “robocalling” firms in Arizona and Florida that it says are responsible for millions of illegal telemarketing calls, including the familiar pre-recorded messages from “Rachel.”

“At the F.T.C., Rachel from Cardholder Services is public enemy No. 1,” Jon Leibowitz, chairman of the F.T.C., said in a statement.

(Actually, Rachel is a voice recorded years ago and recycled by various firms, according to a New York Times story from June.)

Federal courts granted the agency's request to temporarily halt the operations of the five firms. The agency asserted that they tricked consumers into paying hundreds of thousands of dollars by making phony claims that they could reduce credit card interest rates in return for a fee - sometimes as high as $3,000 - paid up front.

I admit I wasn't aware of what exactly Rachel was pitching, since if I immediately hung up when I heard her greeting. But many other consumers apparently listened, and even pressed a number to hear more from a live person.

After the telemarketer “approved” the consumers for a “program” to get rates as low as 0 percent, according to the F.T.C., the telemarketer informed them that there was an upfront fee, ranging from several hundred dollars to nearly $3,000. To persuade consumers to pay the fee, the F.T.C. said, telemarketers would often say that it would be more than offset by the money the consumer would save through the program.

In some cases, the F.T.C. asserted, consumers' credit cards were charged, even if they didn't agree to pay for the service. In other cases, the F.T.C. contended, the telemarketers did not disclose a fee at all, or claimed there would be no fee.

After consumers paid the fee, the F.T.C. alleged, they typic ally found - surprise, surprise! - that the companies did little or nothing to lower their credit card interest rates. And they often reneged on promises to refund the fees.

The F.T.C. is trying to crack down on robocalling, and is even offering cash prizes for proposals for innovative technology  to curtail the practice. (Some robocalls, like those from political candidates or charities seeking donations, are allowed, the F.T.C. says. But if the recording is a sales pitch, and you haven't given written permission to get the calls, it's illegal - and most likely a scheme.)

The agency also provided tips on what to do if you get unwanted automated telemarketing calls. Hanging up is at the top of the list.

Did you ever hear from Rachel? Did you end up getting charged a fee?

In Deal With Wiley, Houghton Acquires Cookbooks and CliffsNotes

Betty Crocker is moving.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt said on Thursday that it had acquired the culinary portfolio of John Wiley & Sons as well as its reference books, including the classic Webster's New World Dictionary and CliffsNotes.

The cost of the transaction was not disclosed.

Wiley's cooking portfolio includes the all-American Betty Crocker cookbook series and Mark Bittman's “How to Cook Everything” franchise, which produces apps for other high-profile cookbook authors like Rose Levy Beranbaum, Marcus Samuelsson and Ellie Krieger.

Houghton said the acquisition would complement its current stable of writers and franchises, including Jacques Pépin and “The Gourmet Cookbook,” and reflects the publisher's confidence in this market.

“Even as digital sales increase, the print cookbook segment shows particular strength, both at HMH and within the market in general,” Gary Gentel, president of Houghton's Trade and Reference division, said in a news release.

Webster and CliffNotes, both with strong bases among students, are an obvious fit with the company's other educational assets.

Clear Channel Bets on Electronic Dance Music, Signing Up Pete Tong

Pete Tong

Clear Channel Communications is turning to the electronic dance music craze to help build its online brand, iHeartRadio, with a new channel featuring Pete Tong, the British D.J. and radio personality who has been one of the genre's biggest taste makers for two decades.

The channel, called Evolution, will start on Monday, joining iHeartRadio's hundreds of online stations. Its first week will be loosely structured, with Mr. Tong playing music and inviting guests. The full, around-the-clock programming schedule begins Nov. 19, with “All Gone Pete Tong,” a two-hour live show from Mr. Tong each weeknight; shows by star dance D.J.'s like Diplo, Wolfgang Gartner and Fatboy Slim; and a rundown of the Top 100 hits on Beatport, the leading digital retailer for electronic dance music (or E.D.M., the catch-all name that the genre's leaders have grudgingly begun to accept).

“There's been a huge rise in the popularity of dance music in America, but it's been quite polarized on the commercial end of it, the top 4 or 5 percent,” Mr. Tong said in an interview. “I think there's so much more to the genre, and that's what Evolution is going to be about: broadening that base, providing the platform for the other 95 percent.”

Since the early 1990s, Mr. Tong has been an influential voice for the genre on the BBC's flagship pop station, Radio 1, acting as a sort of combination of Casey Kasem and John Peel - playing all the big hits of the genre and constantly combing the underground for the next game-changing sound.

“We knew that we needed to have that kind of credibility in anything we created,” said Tom Poleman, Clear Channel's president of national programming platforms. Evolution will join several other E.D.M. outlets on iHeartRadio, like Electric Sound Stage and Trancid, that are so-called “playlist stations” - music only, with little or no human presence.

Evolution, particularly with the involvement of Mr. Tong, will be a challenge of sorts of Sirius XM Radio, which was early in recognizing the mainstream appeal of dance music. Sirius has four E.D.M. channels and features dozens of top D.J.'s, like Tiesto, Skrillex, Paul Oakenfold and A-Trak.

Streaming Music Keeps Growing: The popularity of all kinds of streaming services continues to grow, challenging “traditional” listening formats like CDs and downloads, according to a new study by the NPD Group, a market research firm.

In a report released Thursday, NPD said that half of Internet users in the United States, or around 96 million people, have listened to an Internet radio or on-demand streaming music service in the l ast three months. This encompasses a wide array of outlets, both paid and free. Of all Internet users, NPD said, 37 percent had listened to an Internet radio service like Pandora or iHeartRadio, and 36 percent had listened to music through so-called on-demand services - ranging from video sites like YouTube and Vevo to subscription services like Spotify and Rhapsody.

Based on a survey completed by 4,000 people, NPD reported that the number of people who said they listened to music on CDs dropped 16 percent; the music audience for AM/FM radio dropped 4 percent; and the number of people listening to digital downloads fell 2 percent.

“Although AM/FM radio remains America's favorite music-listening choice, the basket of Internet radio and streaming services that are available today have, on the whole, replaced CDs for second place,” Russ Crupnick, an NPD analyst, said in a statement. “We expect this pattern to continue, as consumers become more comfortable with ownership defined as a playlist, rather than as a physical CD or digital file.”

Sony Digital Executive Resigns: Tim Schaaff, the president of Sony Network Entertainment, its division for video games and online music and video, will leave at the end of the year, the company announced.

Mr. Schaaff, who came to Sony from Apple in 2005, has been in charge of its slow-going efforts to compete in streaming media.

Its Music Unlimited service, for example, introduced two years ago as Qriocity, offers access to millions of songs through Sony entertainment devices and most mobile phones, but by the beginning of the year it had only one million users. Spotify, by comparison, announced this summer that it has 15 million users, four million of them paying subscribers.

Ben Sisario writes about the music industry. Follow @sisario on Twitter.

Goodbye Orange Ball, Hello Capital One 360

Capital One

The distinctive ING Direct orange ball is bouncing into oblivion.

Customers of the online bank, which was officially acquired in February by Capital One, were notified yesterday that as of this coming February, the bank will become Capital One 360.

Instead of the orange ball, the bank's identity will be represented by Capital One's red-and-blue logo, with the addition of a red ball enclosing the number “360” with a sideways chevron.

“ING DIRECT's new name come February will be Capital One 360,” the bank announced on its Facebook page. “New name, new logo, new colors and the same focus as always â€" You.”

As has been the case since the acquisition was first announced in 2011, many customers reacted with dismay on ING Direct 's Facebook page.

“Unlike!” said a woman identified on Facebook as Tammy Russell. She added a frowning emoticon with this comment: “I love that ING is orange â€" not boring conservative other bank colors!”

Also on Facebook, Maria Elena Villegas had this to say: “So, Capital One bought the rights to the orange ball only to destroy any brand recognition and customer loyalty amongst ING customers? If anything, they should have rolled everything over to look and feel and work as ING Direct works. This is an absolute waste of branding, customer loyalty, and potential goodwill or at least neutrality from current ING customers by Capital One. I feel sorry for the current ING employees, as this was, of course, totally Capital One's call. Does not bode well.”

Chad Burton pronounced the new name “lame.”

David Mejias went so far as to start a “save the orange ball” petition on Change.org.

An ING Direct spoke swoman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. But in a response to the posts, ING Direct responded on Facebook that the name change was a necessity: “Legally, we had to change our name, Saver. As for our colors, we have to be all color coordinated with our new family. We love Orange too, but we think red will look good on you.”

Since the acquisition closed, the bank has added new features, like tools to track savings in different accounts.

But the reaction is more evidence that customers remain skeptical about Capital One's insistence that the acquisition wasn't going to change ING Direct, known for higher-than-average interest rates and helpful customer service.

To help allay such concerns, the bank posted a “company pledge” on its new Web site and sent e-mails to customers that included e-mail contact information for Jim Kelly, head of direct banking for ING Direct, and John Witter, president of retail and direct banking at Capital O ne.

What do you think of the bank's new name and logo? Do they matter if the bank maintains its level of service?

The Breakfast Meeting: Numbers-Crunchers Defeat Pundits, and Sex Film Industry Is Stung

While everyone was watching how voters would settle the Obama-Romney contest for the presidency, they also settled, for now, another dispute, Michael Cooper writes: the pundits versus the number crunchers. It was the number crunchers in a landslide, as polls - especially when they had been looked at cumulatively as a so-called “polls of polls” - were quite accurate. The political pundits, including those with a partisan bent - like Karl Rove, Dick Morris and Michael Barone - were far from the mark with their predictions of a big Romney victory.

• Karl Rove's awkward on-air confrontation on Fox News on Tuesday night, challenging the decision by Fox News experts to project President Obama's victory in Ohio, exposed the unprecedented role he plays in contemporary politics, Jeremy W. Peters writes. At 11:13 p.m., Mr. Rove, a Fox commentator, was on the phone with a senior Romney campaign adviser who insisted that Fox News had blown the call. Mr. Peters writes of M r. Rove:

Was he acting as the man who oversaw the most expensive advertising assault on a sitting president in history, unable to face his own wounded pride? The fund-raiser who had persuaded wealthy conservatives to give hundreds of millions of dollars and now had a lot of explaining to do? Or the former political strategist for George W. Bush, who saw firsthand how a botched network call could alter the course of a presidential contest?

• The influx of multimillion-dollar campaign contributions from megadonors to the Republican side in the end didn't tip the scales in the presidential race and in many Senate contests. The best that strategists like Mr. Rove could tell these donors, Nicholas Confessore and Jess Bidgood write, is that without the hundreds of millions of dollars the races wouldn't have been as close. And the megadonors still had a deep impact on the 2012 campaigns, they write, including “reshaping the Republican presidential nominating contest, clogging the airwaves with unprecedented amounts of negative advertising and shoring up embattled Republican incumbents in the House.”
• Los Angeles County voters on Tuesday approved a ballot measure that requires actors in pornographic movies to wear condoms. Its backers said they consider it to be a “referendum on the subject of safer sex,” The Los Angeles Times reported. While the industry, which says its system of aggressive testing for H.I.V. has been a success, is threatening to move outside the county. The Times has a nice roundup of commentary on Twitter, including one actor's looking-on-bright-side Tweet: “measure b seemed to pass… Hopefully people will learn safe sex from it and at least now I get to travel… a lot!!!! (Always an up side)”

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the man behind the anti-Islam YouTube video that in September ignited bloody protests in the Muslim world, was sentenced to a year in pris on for violating the terms of his parole in a bank fraud case, Brooks Barnes writes. The charges in the plea bargain didn't relate directly to the video, “Innocence of Muslims,” but the prosecutor spoke about Mr. Nakoula's film project - and the deceitful manner in which he carried it out - as part of his sentencing argument.

Noam Cohen edits and writes for the Media Decoder blog. Follow @noamcohen on Twitter.

Thursday Reading: Jeans Tight? Blame the \'Sandy Five\' Weight Gain

A variety of consumer-focused articles appears daily in The New York Times and on our blogs. Each weekday morning, we gather them together here so you can quickly scan the news that could hit you in your wallet.

• A school cut off from technology faces its intrusion. (National)
• Devising passwords that drive hackers away. (Business)
• Losing power but finding a way to connect. (Business)
• The pay-as-you-go remodel. (Home)
• Plus-size bloggers blaze new fashion path. (Thursday Styles)
• Jeans tight? Blame the “Sandy Five” weight gain. (Thursday Styles)
• Hyundai overstatement of fuel economy no surprise to owners. (Wheels)
• Walk in a mall, get mobile coupon. (Bits)
• What is a 4G network? (Pogue's Posts)
• Trading recyclables for rosemary. (Green)
• When breast isn't best. (Motherlode)
• Wondering about Alzheimer's risk?Ask here. (The New Old Age)
• Nailing down your Thanksgiving turkey plan. (Diner's Journal)