When layoffs are coming within 60 days, federal law requires employers to notify employees and their state labor department. An industry publication reports that yesterday, the venerable and bankrupt grocery chain A&P issued these layoff notifications, called Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notices, to employees at all of their stores. However, most of the stores remain on the market, and A&P hopes to sell them to competitors soon. [More]
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Historic A&P Grocery Chain Files For Bankruptcy Again, Plans To Sell Or Close Locations
By 7.20.15
For the second time in five years, 156-year-old grocery store operator Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. (A&P) filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, laying out plans to sell off or close many of its stores. [More]
AP Twitter Hack Shows That Not Every Scam Email Is Created Equal
By 4.25.13
So you think you’re savvy when it comes to scams, huh? Maybe you’d never click on a link in an email from someone you don’t know with a funny email address asking to send money to Nigeria — but what if it seemed to come from a coworker you know very well including a link that looks totally legit? That’s apparently how the hack of the Associated Press Twitter account went down, with a scam called “spear-phishing.” [More]
A&P Mails You Back Keys You Drunkenly Left In Cab A Month Ago
By 9.30.10
Shopper club cards might be part of an Orwellian masterplan to scrutinize your purchasing habits, but they also have another, less well-known use. Zach says that after an evening of drunken frolicking around New York, he lost his keys. A month later, this showed up in his mailbox. [More]
10 Top Retail Chains That Are Shrinking
By 8.23.10
Apparently, people haven’t been spending their unemployment checks at the mall in recent months, because a large number of prominent retail clothing and food chains — from Abercrombie & Fitch to Winn-Dixie — are being forced to shutter stores in the wake of the economic downturn. [More]
Woot To AP: You Owe Us $17.50 For Copying Our Content
By 7.6.10
When Woot announced last week that it was going to be acquired by Amazon.com, just about everyone wrote about it. However, of the many media organizations that covered the deal, only one has floated a policy that would charge bloggers for the kind of excerpting that’s historically been considered fair use. So, when the Associated Press, in writing about the Woot-Amazon deal, borrowed some of Woot’s own verbiage, the deal-a-day site struck back and told the wire service it expected $17.50 for the words. Or the AP could just buy two pairs of Sennheiser in-ear headphones and call it even. [More]
What Do Sales Data Show About This Recession?
By 8.23.09
People aren’t buying: Large appliances, furniture, and durable household goods
Why Do Some Stores Act Stupid About Coupons?
By 4.4.09
Some stores—like A&P Supermarkets and Bed Bath & Beyond, for example—seem to have a sort of antagonism against coupon users. (For that matter, some of our commenters do too, but they are wrong.) Steve Gosset notes on his “Reality Bites Back” blog that the shortsighted coupon policies at these two stores only ended up costing them more fees, or even a sale.
Update: 41 46 Million Americans Drink Pharmaceutical Waste
By 9.13.08
If you weren’t one of the 41 million Americans drinking water contaminated with sex hormones and pharmaceutical waste, welcome to the club! Testing prompted by the AP’s damning investigation has revealed that another five million people, including residents of Reno, Colorado Springs, and Chicago, now sip the potentially dangerous pharmaceutical soup.
ISPs Are Maniacal Stalkers Who Read Your Email And Watch You Surf The Web
By 4.6.08
Internet service providers are actively tracking 100,000 users, reading every email they send and every website they visit, according to the Washington Post. The report coincides with a damning Associated Press investigation of ISP contracts which finds that they reserve broad rights to read essentially anything you view on the internet without any intervening supervision or regulation.
TSA Declares Victory, Achieves Same Vaunted Status As IRS
By 12.23.07
The IRS is celebrating the results of an AP poll that ranks the TSA as the most hated arm of the federal government. More than anything, Americans apparently hate being inconvenienced by seemingly pointless and arbitrary security checks.
The AP poll, conducted Monday through Wednesday, found that the more people travel, the less they like TSA.
Consumers Are Manic Depressive
By 5.5.06
Unable to decide whether the economy is good or bad, the Chicago Tribune settles for a resounding, “Yes.”
A Worse Virus Than Mac Trojans: Bad AP Journalism
By 5.3.06
According to this piece by the Daring Fireball blog dissecting an AP article on the recent rumors that Macs are susceptible to viruses, sometimes journalism is fluffy and insipid.
MSM Plagiarize Raw Story Yet Again!
By 4.3.06
Poor Larissa. She’s long been the lefty light of our life, the fire of our loins. La-ri-ssa: tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to sizzle, at three, on the teeth. La! Ri! Sa! So we were heartbroken when we discovered that scarcely a week after her site, Raw Story, was plagiarized by the AP, mainstream media has done it again!
More on AP Blog Plagiarism: “We only credit blogs we know.”
By 3.29.06
Some follow-up to the story we reported on the other day about the AP not crediting bloggers. Luscious Larissa Alexandrovich, the blogger who was plagiarized by AP for a story she did on revised guidelines for US security clearance, wrote us to point our attention to the new tact AP is taking to excuse the plagiarism: now they claim that while they do credit bloggers, they don’t credit bloggers they don’t know.
AP Journalists Plagiarise Blogger
By 3.28.06
Journalists don’t respect bloggers. That’s okay, we don’t respect journalists much either. Although we will always admire a clever writer, an excellent observationalist, a sound investigator or a great reporter, the entire concept of the “journalist” — untouchable, clergy-like purveyors of knowledge and opinion in a modern world that would be lost without them — makes us want to headbutt splayed scissors. Journalists are the guys too inept and self-righteous to be good reporters, commentators or essayists.
