EDIEAL PINKER, deputy dean of the Yale School of Management, bristles at the suggestion that the MBA, long seen as a stepping stone to corporate success, has been made less relevant by the covid-19 crisis. The traditional two-year degree remains vital, he insists. “Do you think the problems the pandemic created for society and the economy are narrow specialised problems or complex ones that cut across sectors and disciplines?” Listen to this story Your browser does not support the element. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android. His words would have sounded odd a year ago. The MBA was falling out of fashion. With the global economy booming, the opportunity cost of this pricey degree (top schools charge $100,000 or more a year) did not seem worthwhile to many. Some schools could not cover their expenses. In 2019 the University of Illinois said it would end its residential MBA programme. Dozens of middling schools have done the same in recent years. Surely Mr Pinker’s defence of the MBA seems even odder in the new pandemic reality? On the contrary. “Students held up and schools stepped up,” says
Netflix’s video streaming service has surpassed 200 million subscribers for the first time as its expanding lineup of TV series and movies continues to captivate people stuck at home during the ongoing battle against the pandemic. The subscriber milestone highlighted Netflix’s fourth-quarter results released Tuesday. The service added another 8.5 million subscribers during the October-December period, capping Netflix’s biggest year since its inception as a DVD-by-mail service in 1997. Netflix ended the year with nearly 204 million worldwide subscribers. The fourth-quarter gains easily topped the projections of the roughly 6 million additional subscribers projected by Netflix’s own management and Wall Street analysts. Netflix’s stock surged by more than 13 percent extended trading after the latest subscriber numbers came out. After its upending of the DVD-rental industry, Netflix introduced the then-revolutionary concept of streaming TV shows and films 14 years ago. At that time, its service had a mere 6 million subscribers. The streaming service began to grow rapidly seven years ago when Netflix started producing its own shows and accelerated a worldwide expansion that now spans more than 190 countries. Since the February 2013 debut of its first original series, “House of Cards,” Netflix has attracted more than 170 million
The scandal over the New York Times’ botched “Caliphate” podcast widened Tuesday when dozens of public radio stations accused the Gray Lady of multiple “lapses in judgment” while trying to stem the controversy. A letter posted on the website of the Public Radio Program Directors Association called it “extremely troubling” that the host of the Times’ podcast “The Daily,” Michael Barbaro, contacted journalists to “attempt to influence their coverage of errors made by Caliphate.” The letter also faulted a “lack of transparency” by the Times’ Audio Division for “not disclosing the personal relationship between Barbaro and Lisa Tobin, [executive producer] of Caliphate, when you issued the 30-minute corrective interview that he hosted.” In addition, the letter criticized the Times’ for reassigning star terrorism reporter Rukmini Callimachi over the Caliphate debacle “while giving greater visibility to her white male counterpart Andy Mills,” who’s been accused of inappropriate behavior toward women while working earlier at New York public radio station WNYC. “We respectfully request that the New York Times acknowledges and takes responsibility for these lapses in judgment and takes steps to remedy them now and in the future,” PRPD President Abby Goldstein wrote. The letter, dated Monday, was co-signed by representatives
