List of articles on Wall Street Journals

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America's Newest Profession: Bloggers for Hire
The Wall Street Journal - April 20, 2009
In America today, there are almost as many people making their living as bloggers as there are lawyers. Already more Americans are making their primary income from posting their opinions than Americans working as computer programmers or firefighters.

Paid bloggers fit just about every definition of a microtrend: Their ranks have grown dramatically over the years, blogging is an important social and cultural movement that people care passionately about, and the number of people doing it for at least some income is approaching 1% of American adults.
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Fearless Freddies: Bungee-Jumping in the New Economy
The Wall Street Journal - April 1, 2009
In these uncertain times, most people are seeking protection and safety from the prospect of even more economic turbulence. But another group is going bungee-jumping into the middle of the financial crisis -- bravely increasing their investments even as the markets and the financial system collapse and gloomy predictions abound.

These "Fearless Freddies" are the ones who had the stomach to invest in Citigroup when its share price dipped below a dollar. They are the ones buying oil (and oil stocks) as it hits new lows. They are down in Florida looking for condos and checking out the foreclosures. They are either the smartest people in this changed economy -- or the dumbest.
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Value Is the New Green
The Wall Street Journal - March 13, 2009
Until recently, being green was the best way for companies to demonstrate a sense of social responsibility, and for consumers to feel good about their purchases. Healthy food, hybrid cars, energy efficiency -- these were the attributes that burnished brands.

But now green is taking a back seat to a new core value -- value. Green hasn't gone away, but companies are having to consider their "value" equation to try to serve the millions of consumers who either can't afford premium experiences, or just don't want them anymore.
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Laid-Off Lawyers and Other Professionals
The Wall Street Journal - March 2, 2009
With all the concern about America's manufacturing sector losing jobs, it is easy to miss that the newest phenomenon is the wholesale loss of professional jobs, the very jobs that fueled America's economic resurgence and political realignment over the last decade.

America has been losing manufacturing jobs for decades. The rest of the world has, too, including China, mostly because automation has made manufacturing more efficient. In the meantime, we have had huge growth in America's professional class: engineers, software writers, lawyers, doctors -- even licensed massage therapists.
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Green Workers
The Wall Street Journal - February 19, 2009
Presidents and politicians no longer talk about simply creating jobs -- now they are creating "green jobs." Just in the stimulus bill alone, there are said to be four million new green jobs. It's a great term -- it conjures up neatly dressed employees working under compact fluorescent lights, and factory workers in white and green helmets huddled over solar cells and wind turbines. These aren't boring office jobs or repetitive manufacturing plant jobs -- no, they're socially useful and rewarding jobs. And they'll save the planet, too.

Not so long ago, the buzzword was "new economy" jobs. Then as manufacturing jobs shrank and professional jobs mushroomed, this term became politically incorrect: it implied that America was going to abandon the manufacturing sector in favor of software coders, engineers and other geeks.
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Committed Cohabiters
The Wall Street Journal - February 3, 2009
With all the stimulus ready to go into more broadband, bigger tax cuts and infrastructure, some of America's most expensive societal investments are also on the decline and in need of a bailout -- getting married.

Marriage in America is on the rocks. People skirt the issue, talking about how career women delay marriage until it's too late, or about how men marry younger the second time around. But the truth is, except for the highest-income Americans among us, fewer and fewer of us are getting married at all.

Married couples with children now make up fewer than one in four U.S. households. That's half the rate of 1960. Married households of any type have been in the minority since 2005.
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New Info Shoppers
The Wall Street Journal - January 8, 2009
With so much attention on psychological marketing these days -- finding new ways to tap into people's heads -- perhaps the single most neglected trend out there is the move towards more hard-nosed information-based shopping and purchasing.

While elites were busy shoveling money into Madoff's black box these past few years, strapped consumers have been poring over product spec sheets, third-party reviews and expert blog sites. This past holiday season they watched every dollar. A special kind of consumer has taken a major role in the marketplace -- the new info shopper.
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Quasi-Government Workers
The Wall Street Journal - December 24, 2008
Just as more people in China are working for firms that are privately owned, more workers in America are waking up to find themselves working for companies that are -- at least for now -- state-owned.

This new class of workers and executives in newly state-owned businesses is getting a crash course in what and what not to do as a quasi-government worker. Risk is out. Bonuses out. Off-site conferences out. Job security in. Paperwork in. Accountability in. Political limelight in.
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The Impressionable Elites Get Snookered
The Wall Street Journal - December 16, 2008
For most of this century, con men and hucksters preyed on the uneducated and the elderly who couldn't read the fine print. Some still are.

But now we learn that the real mother lode for con artists is not composed of uninformed dowagers who were left an estate they don't know how to manage, but rather the Impressionable Elites* of country clubs, and the rarefied hedge fund managers of Wall Street and Greenwich.
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The Mattress Stuffers
The Wall Street Journal - December 10, 2008
As the financial crisis swept across the nation these past few months, one of the first microtrend groups to emerge is the New Mattress Stuffers -- people who have lost their trust in the financial world, and are preparing for the next meltdown.
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