DailyDirt: Scams To Get Rich Quick

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There are all kinds of ways to make a little bit of extra cash -- and some methods are more unsavory than others. Maybe you think you can convince a bunch of people to join your new multi-level marketing scheme. Or maybe you think you've outsmarted an insurance company with your own (better!) actuarial formula. Here are a few stories on the topic of making some easy money, as long as you don't mind being a bit of a sleazeball.

• Dmitry Argarkov didn't like the terms and conditions in a letter offering him a new credit card, so he modified the agreement, signed it, sent it back to the bank, and the bank accepted it and sent Argarkov a new credit card. According to Argarkov's terms, that card had a 0% interest rate, no fees and no limit -- and obviously there are pending lawsuits over this agreement. [url]
• An extortion scheme that seems to work: step 1 -- publish public domain mugshots, step 2 -- ask for money to stop publishing aforementioned mugshots, step 3 -- profit. States like Florida seem to make it pretty easy to obtain mugshots... (so don't get arrested in Florida!) [url]
• Billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens and 27 other wealthy individuals already had enough money to live comfortably, but rich people live longer than the average Joe -- and taking out a life insurance policy could be an interesting way to finance a significant endowment to Oklahoma State University. The 'Gift of a Lifetime' plan fell through, but Pickens is rich enough that he's covering the financial hit for the university. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: credit card, endowment, extortion, fraud, gift of a lifetime, life insurance, money, mugshots, oklahoma state university, plot, public domain, rich, scams, scheme, t boone pickens

Newspapers Are Not The Only Source Of Journalism

from the a-little-reminder dept

The NY Times has an interesting article looking at the concept of endowed newspapers, with the idea being that, if you could build an endowment for a newspaper, such that it doesn't need to focus on a business model, it would get us past this whole "newspapers are failing" issue. The idea is that they would be set up like universities, as 501(c)(3) nonprofits, and with a large enough endowment, they wouldn't have to worry about business models anymore. As the article notes, a newspaper like the NY Times could survive on a $5 billion endowment -- which really isn't that much money. Of course, this isn't a new idea at all, and has been talked about for over a century, with plenty of critics pointing out why it would never work all that well.

That said, even if the idea has some merit, what bothers me about the NY Times piece is that it seems to fall back on the assumption that journalism equals newspapers. It starts off with the Jefferson quote: "were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate to prefer the latter" and proceeds to point out that we may be heading towards the former. Of course, that's not accurate. What Jefferson really meant was not "newspapers" but journalism. He used the term newspapers because that was the only outlet for journalists of the time. However, these days, that's no longer true. There are many different media types where journalists exist -- from newspapers to radio to television to the internet. So, the crisis in newspapers is not a crisis in journalism, and acting as if it is distorts the debate.

Filed Under: endowment, journalism, newspapers