Profile: Economist Richard L. Wobbekind

Blurb: CU-Boulder economists teaches students and businesses about the economy.

The Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado at Boulder boasts many distinguished professors and researchers, including Fulbright scholar Naomi Soderstrom and NASA grant recipient Manuel Laguna.

One of the school’s most recognized and distinguished faculty members, however, is Dr. Richard L. Wobbekind. Since joining the faculty in 1985, he has held several positions. He is an associate professor of business economics and finance and the Executive Director of Leeds' Business Research Division (BDR). In July 2000 became associate dean of the MBA and Enterprise Programs.

Wobbekind also serves the economic needs of the city of Boulder and the state of Colorado. With his colleagues at the BDR, he produces the annual Colorado Business Economic Outlook, a consensus forecast of the Colorado economy, a quarterly Business Leaders Confidence Index for Boulder and other economic services.

The Boulder Economic Council, the economic development branch of the Boulder Chamber of Commerce, relies on Wobbekind and the BDR to perform specific economic analyses of the Boulder and Colorado economy, such as the quarterly Leading Economic Indicators for Boulder Valley report and the Economic Drivers:City of Boulder, Boulder County and Colorado report published in May 2008.

Using this and other data, chamber president Susan Graf said, the council assesses the local economy and crafts their policies and programs accordingly.

During his career, Wobbekind has received a number of awards. In 1997, he received the University of Colorado Community Outreach Award, and in 2002 he was named a Member of Distinction by the Boulder Chamber of Commerce. Most recently, he was awarded the Robert L. Stearns Award in 2006.

Wobbekind teaches macroeconomics, public policy and entrepreneurship to MBA, undergraduate and executive students.

In addition to teaching and researching, Wobbekind also participates in professional organizations at the local, state and national levels. He is a former president of both the Denver Association of Business Economists and the Association of University Business and Economics Research. He is also a current board member of the National Association for Business Economics.

A long time Colorado resident, Wobbekind has spent much of his time studying the development of Colorado’s economy. He and his wife Carol have lived in Colorado for over 30 years. He received his BA in Economics from Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. He earned his MA and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

University Makes Ends Meet

The web version of our latest print assignment. Web writing is hard. Or at least awkward. I feel so constrained.

Anyway, here it is.

On Sept. 25, Gov. Bill Ritter announced a hiring freeze for state agencies. He asked institutions of higher education to follow suit as well. The University of Colorado at Boulder appeared willing to comply.

To an extent.

Under the Flagship 2030 initiative, the administration at CU-Boulder has big plans for the university. They look to expand campus facilities and add new faculty. Even an economic downturn won’t steer this 22-year plan off course.

Construction on the $63.5 million Visual Arts Complex is continuing, with completion scheduled for next fall. As early as next year, the university will also have some new faces.

According to Dr. Phil DiStefano, provost and vice chancellor at CU-Boulder, 25 new faculty positions will be created this semester. They will be allocated to various departments in the spring.

“State funding is very important to us,” said DiStefano, “but the hiring freeze hasn’t really affected Flagship 2030.”

State funding amounts to 8.5 percent of the total university budget, an estimated $85 million. The university gets most of its $1 billion from tuition. That’s why, DiStefano said, the administration has been so active in recruiting out-of-state students.

Roughly 45 percent of undergraduates currently come from other states. University recruiters host events across the country to increase that number. Professors and administrators hit the road seventeen times this semester to promote the university.

These events drew unprecedented numbers, said Paul Voakes, dean of journalism at CU-Boulder. He said the university has both academic and geographic appeal.

All this is good news for CU’s budget. Not everything is smooth sailing, however.

Planning-stage construction has fallen into bureaucratic limbo, and new hires face stricter scrutiny than ever.

“We’re certainly able to make the hires,” Voakes said. But it will be more difficult, even positions not supported by state funds. A new, grant-funded position in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, for example, had a few more hurdles to leap.

On Nov. 2, however, Gov. Ritter proposed his 2009-2010 budget. If the budget passes, higher education may be able to loosen its belt again. Though the governor described the budget as “frugal, conservative and balanced,” colleges and universities may see an increase of $40 million.

And while state funding may not be the bread and butter of CU’s budget, the university certainly appreciates Gov. Ritter’s support of education.

“We’re glad that he’s the governor,” Voakes said.

"How sad. Up next: purple tomatoes may solve cancer."

I guess I've never really watched the news before. This weekend I watched MSNBC Nightly News, the Channel 4 local news at 10, and the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. I took copious notes on each, but there were far too many stories (if you can call them that) to list each one here.

There's a lot to comment on. Cable, network and local news weren't exactly the same, of course, but there were some common trends.

The hectic pace was pretty common to all three. For example, the half-hour MSNBC Nightly News had five full stories and three news briefs. Local news was even worse. I could barely keep up with the number of stories they pumped out (luckily they repeated the sports stories a few times, so it wasn't too bad).

Content was very different in local news. While the two other shows had quite a bit of politics, the local news had a more scatter-shot approach. The 10 o'clock local covered everything from wild horses being rounded up to Gov. Ritter's new budget. I actually found that interesting, but it was a bit too frenetic. If this had been a newspaper that I could browse at my leisure, I'd appreciate the variety even more.

Attribution was interesting. For local news it wasn't as much of an issue because so much of the show was sports. And for that segment they had plenty of player interviews. The other two shows dealt more with politics and other controversies, so they needed more attribution. Most of the time they gave it, even if it was in tiny font shown for about two seconds.

Phrases like "earlier studies showed" and "experts say" abounded. For political stories, "McCain aides" and "Obama advisers" were very talkative. Just not on camera. Clips of stock campain footage cropped up a lot too, with either the original audio or reporter commentary.

A segment on Obama's fund raising really caught my attention. The CBS show tossed out figures for how much he raised got tossed about, but with no visible source (unless they flashed it so fast I missed it, but I really don't think so). They also made strong statements about who has been donating to Obama. Again, no sources. The most grievous lapse was when the show cast doubt on the legitimacy of certain donors. They showed a CG spread sheet, totally unofficial, showing the supposed "suspicious" donor and how much he or she gave. There was absolutely no clue where this information came from.

The news briefs on CBS were the worst. One segment said that gun sales were up 8%, likely because people feared Obama would take away gun right or because they feared an increase in crime. The entire clip was less than a minute, had no quotes or interviews and absolutely no sources. Awesome.

The choice of story length and order surprised me as well. Again, CBS Evening News rankled me the most. They gave in-depth coverage on a cancer study being canceled. The FBI's child prostitution bust only merited a 30-second news brief. Even the purple tomato segment had more coverage and actual interviews. The report on the death of a powerful al Qaeda leader only got half a minute too, now that I think about it. War on what?

Looking at these three shows, I feel like broadcast news is trying to do too much. Each show had a good number of stories, most of them covered very superficially. I almost wondered why they bothered. It's hard to fit a meaningful story into thirty minutes, especially when ten minutes are given to advertisements. Each show at least introduced the stories, which is something, I suppose. Broadcast just seems so inefficient for conveying the news. I'll stick to print.

Grammar Time!

Grammar exercise for Newsgathering 1.

a) She felt bad about missing the school board meeting, but her editor fired her regardless of her excuse.

b) We will join in prayer for the students who died in the shooting, and we will fly the flag at half-staff.

c) It is all right if you miss class for a job interview. You can make up the class tomorrow.

d) We will divide the workload among three students.

e) The St. Joseph Board of Commissioners is planning to submit a proposal for a bond issue to pay for road improvements, and the board is hoping the election committee will reach a consensus to put the issue on the ballot.

f) I know you are eager to get this job. Each of the applicants will have a chance to discuss his strengths and weaknesses with the personnel director.

g) Based on your writing skills, it looks as if you could be a good journalist.

h) Each of the students is going to receive a plaque with his or her diploma at graduation.

i) She was embarrassed that she had fewer than five answers correct on the quiz.

j) After the boss read the report, he gave it to Jim and me to rewrite. He said it is due back Monday.

Newsgathering Assigment

This is a practice article written for my Newsgathering class. Please enjoy.


Lead/Focus: Right-handed people live nine years longer than left-handed people

Articles: According to a study in today's New England Journal of Medicine, right-handed people live an average of nine years longer than left-handed people. Professor Diane Halpern of California State University, who led the study, called the results "striking in their magnitude."

Halpern and her colleague Stanly Coren, of the University of British Columbia, examined nearly a thousand death certificates from two southern California counties. They compared the manner of death with the individual's handedness, as reported by the deceased's family or friends.

They also broke the figures down by gender. Right-handed lived to an average of 78, six years longer than left-handed women. For men, the difference is even greater: right-handed men live to an average age of 73, compared to left-handed men's 62.

One reason for this sharp disparity may be that left-handed individuals, who make up only about 10 percent of the population, live in an world of right-handed gadgets and machines.

“Almost all engineering is geared to the right and right foot," Halpern said. "There are many more car and other accidents among left-handers because of their environment." Many indeed. According to the study, lefties are four times as likely to die an auto accident as righties. As for those "other" accidents? Lefties are six times as likely to die from them.

Halpern, herself right-handed, urges caution in interpreting the data however. The figures may look bleak, but she assures us, "There are many, many old left-handed people."

(A table or graph showing the life expectancy for right- and left-handed men, women and total populations would help illustrate the story.)

So I think that I am allowed to blog here, too.

ROOMMATE BLOG POST!!!!!!!!

I do not consider myself a "blogger." In fact, I knee-jerk despise any compound verbal monstrosity beginning with the prefix "blog-." However, I would like to take this moment to tell every law professor who has ever written a journal article to check your own stupid citations.

Oh, law school. It is pretty much just a three-year hazing process where alcohol consumption goes from "a blast" to "a problem and maybe there's a group you should join." I try to study, but most of the time I end up pondering things like whether an intelligible principle would (re-)animate a delegation of emergency powers from the legislative branch to the executive branch for the purpose of combating the inevitable zombie apocalypse. If anyone knows the answer to this, please tell me, because it is really bugging me.

Trust me, I'm a blogger

Blogs have the potential for great power. But, as Peter Parker's uncle taught us, with great power comes great responsibility. The freedom from an editor's influence or an institution's strictures can give a blogger the power to cover controversial topics with striking honestly. That same freedom, however, takes away a lot of the vetting, fact-checking and experience that is part of mainstream media.

Also, it's far too easy to get only the news I want with blogs. If I read my favorite pro-life blog everyday, it's pretty unlikely I'm going to get a broad picture of how abortion and women's rights are affecting America. The chances of reading news I don't like is much greater if I pick up The New York Times. And that's not a bad thing. Reading a conflicting opinion won't kill me.

Another weight on the balance is the accountability of a reporter. As a private citizen, I could write almost anything I wanted online and pass it off as fact. And if my blog post was quoted in a newspaper - bam! - instant credibility. But who am I? Who am I accountable to? What are my sources? I could be anyone with any agenda.

Tipping the scales further is the inherently amateur aspect of blogging. If trained reporters can have the wool pulled over their eyes, how much more so a citizen journalist? Would the average blogger know how to interview a source? Would she know what questions to ask or how to verify a lead? Maybe, but then again, maybe not. While professional reporters are far from infallible, there's a certain amount of trust entailed when a newspaper endorses a reporter's story enough to print it.

I think mainstream media has done the public a huge disservice in covering blogs so extensively. Networks have let themselves be led around by the nose in too many instances. If trained professionals are bowing to a small, vocal group of private citizens working from behind a screen name, then what good is a mainstream media at all? I can get all my news from a Republican blogging in Michigan or a Democrat in Oregon.

And that's the point: if I want an average person's opinion, I'll talk to my friends or classmates or people in my community. And that's about as far as I'll trust a blog, as someone's opinion. As soon as a blogger starts making claims and accusations, I'll turn to a reputable news source for more facts.

Blogs and other forums for public opinion are a great and necessary part of any democracy. They break up the homogeneous, national news and give a voice to under-represented citizens. They could even work to prod mainstream media into staying on the issues, in an ideal situation. Blogs, however, are just one component of the news, like community radio and other alternative media. There will always be a need and a place for mainstream media. I have a blog, but I sure as hell don't have the means, ability or credibility to report on conditions in Iraq or on the economic mood of Japan. Mainstream media do what private citizens can't and are held to a higher standard of accuracy. Blogs won't replace newspapers. (If they do, I'll just cash in my chips then and there.)