Therese Poletti in The Wall Street Journal on Groupon Groupon's shares have fallen almost 80 percent since it went public a year ago. But those who thought deal sites would be the Internet's next big thing shouldn't scapegoat CEO Andrew Mason for the decline, argues Theres Poletti. "The Chicago-based company has had a flawed business model from the get-go," she writes, noting that coupon campaigns aren't as attractive to small businesses as they used to be. "Demoting or firing Mason from his current role probably won’t be a panacea for Groupon. If the board—including co-founder and executive chairman Eric Lefkofsky—is looking for a fall guy, they may find it won’t buy them much extra time."
Anthony Lane in The New Yorker on the Leveson report The judge responsible for investigating the News of the World phone hacking scandal has issued his report on the ethical state of the British press. Lord Justice Leveson indicts a wide swath of journalists for conduct which, he writes, "if it had involved the Government, Parliament, any other national institution or indeed any other organisation of significance, would have been subject to the most intense spotlight that journalists could bring to bear upon it." But after combing through the report, Anthony Lane finds it a bit clawless. All that Leveson recommends for fixing the problem is "a whistle-blowing hotline. The News of the World no longer exists, but its heirs continue to thrive, and their response to that paragraph, today and for years to come, is not hard to imagine: pick up the phone, put your lips together, and laugh."
Paul Krugman in The New York Times on class warfare We're coming up on the end of a long, politically charged year, and when Paul Krugman looks back on 2012 he sees a lot of class warfare. "The important thing to understand now is that while the election is over, the class war isn’t," he writes with dogfights over the fiscal cliff, Medicare, and Social Security in mind. "The same people who bet big on Mr. Romney, and lost, are now trying to win by stealth—in the name of fiscal responsibility—the ground they failed to gain in an open election."
Ana Marie Cox in The Guardian on Obama's social media strategy Yesterday, an analysis came out showing how skillfully the Obama campaign raised money over email. While Obama flooded inboxes for fundraising, he's using Twitter to change public discourse, writes Ana Marie Cox. "Last April, he asked those with student loans to weigh in with #dontdoublemyrate," she writes of Obama's hashtag strategy. He also used #40dollars to get American workers talking about what they'd give up every two weeks if the payroll tax expires. "Obama may still say 'tweet at' like he's pronouncing it phonetically from a cue card, but the White House has gotten what they wanted when it came to the payroll holiday and student loans."
Ruth Marcus in The Washington Post on Susan Rice Conservatives who say she bungled Benghazi insist that they're halting Susan Rice's confirmation as Secretary of State not out of any double standard on gender or race. Marcus notes that a women has been secretary of state all but four of the last 16 years, but, "The model of female leader has morphed from Iron Lady to soft power," Marcus writes. "And the controversy over Rice stems in part from the fact that she does not fit comfortably into this model of collegial, nurturing, division-healing woman."
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