一、Paying Others to Worry About Your Online Image（慢速）A reputation -- what people think of you, good or bad -- is built one message at a time. The difference today is that people can get their messages out to lots of other people at lightning speed through websites and social media. So, not surprisingly, an industry is fast developing around managing online reputations for individuals and businesses.KEN WISNEFSKI: “Up to eighty percent of people have been influenced in a purchasing decision by what they‟ve read or seen online.”Ken Wisnefski is chief executive of WebiMax, a company he started in two thousand eight. WebiMax is a search engine optimization, or SEO, company. Search engine optimization involves different ways to improve the results of online searches.WebiMax offers several different services, but Ken Wisnefski says reputation management is growing the fastest.Some of his customers need help with urgent publicity problems. Others are seeking long-term management of their online image. Mr. Wisnefski says about one-fifth of his business is with companies and individuals outside the United States.How does reputation management work?WebiMax has two sides to its business. The company can organize online publicity campaigns to try to limit the harm done by negative comments or bad news. Mr. Wisnefski says when a client gets in the news for the wrong reasons, his company does not try to hide what happened. Instead, it develops a campaign to show that the client is dealing with the problem in a productive and positive way, he says.In that sense, the work seems a lot like old-fashioned public relations, but in cyberspace.But what if clients are the target of lies or maybe an organized effort to harm their reputation? Then WebiMax would use its legal team to try to have the comments removed.KEN WISNEFSKI: “We realized pretty early on that it wasn‟t going to just be a marketing function, that there also needed to be a legal function involved with it. And marrying the two together is what really has impact and makes this successful.”In the United States, not all speech is protected by the Constitution. And even if the comments are true, the threat of a costly legal fight may be enough to get them removed.Ken Wisnefski thinks the legal side of reputation management is only going to grow. He says WebiMax is profitable and expects ten to fifteen million dollars in revenue this year.Clients of companies that manage reputations can pay thousands of dollars a month or as little as a hundred dollars a year. But here is some free advice.KEN WISNEFSKI: "If you‟re not paying attention or at least monitoring what‟s being said about you online, you‟re making a mistake because other people are paying attention to that."And that's the Economics Report in VOA Special English. You can read and listen to more business news online at . I'm Mario Ritter.二、Chopsticks For China, But Made in AmericaDOUG JOHNSON: Welcome to AMERICAN MOSAIC in VOA Special English.I'm Doug Johnson. This week on our show, we play new music from Bon Iver.We also answer a question about the hours of American workers.But, first, we learn about a small American company that is answering a big demand for chopsticks in China.DOUG JOHNSON: In the United States, many manufactured goods include the words “Made in China.” But one small company in the American state of Georgia is making traditional Chinese chopsticks -- and sending them to China. Faith Lapidus has more.FAITH LAPIDUS: Chopsticks are sticks used in some Asian countries to eat food. They are often made out of wood, but can also be made of plastic. Most of the world‟s c hopsticks are made in China. Several hundred Chinese manufacturers produce about sixty three billion pairs of chopsticks a year. However, those manufacturers need more wood.One small company in the American city of Americus, Georgia has recognized this demand.It started producing chopsticks for export to China. Korean-American Jae Lee is the president of Georgia Chopsticks. He says the world market for chopsticks is huge.JAE LEE: “Right now, we are making about two million pairs of chopsticks per day. Bu t we are increasing. End of this month, we‟ll have seven machines coming in. So it‟ll increase to like four million per day. End of this year, we will produce ten million per day.”FAITH LAPIDUS: About one-third of the world‟s population uses chopsticks. J apan, for example, uses about twenty three billion pairs of the sticks each year.China may need more wood for producing chopsticks. But David Garriga says there is plenty of wood near Americus, Georgia. Mr. Garriga is the head of the local economic development council.DAVID GARRIGA: “Rural Georgia and the cities of rural Georgia, they‟re blessed with tons of natural resources. The Pacific Rim, especially areas in China and Japan, they‟ve run out of wood, but we have an abundance of it.”In central Georgia, sweetgum and poplar trees grow in large numbers. In fact, these trees make good chopsticks. This is because the wood is not firm and has a nice color. Unlike many Asian chopsticks, these Georgia-made chopsticks do not need to be lightened with chemicals and bleach.Georgia Chopsticks opened at the end of last year. It received four hundred fifty requests for jobs in just two weeks. Today, the company employs fifty seven people at its factory. Jae Lee hopes to increase production and add one hundred more workers by the end of the year.Every chopstick his company makes goes to Asia, where they are sold to stores in China, Korea, and Japan. Right now, Georgia Chopsticks cannot keep up with demand for its product.It costs Jae Lee less than one cent to make a pair of chopsticks. But he says he is not making any money yet. To earn a profit, he needs to produce more than four million chopsticks a day. He says he hopes to do this in the next month or two.David Garriga notes that the American connection to the production of chopsticks has a funny side.DAVID GARRIGA: “Suddenly, there‟s a huge nation, the fastest growing in the world, that finances part of our national debt, and here we are making their basic productsand shipping it to them, like they‟ve done for us for years. It‟s just kind of a reverse.”DOUG JOHNSON: Our question this week comes from China. Lisa wants to know about the work hours of Americans. Lisa says she works from seven thirty until eleven in the morning. She then has an hour to eat and rest. She returns to work at twelve, and stays on the job until four thirty.How much time do Americans spend working?Her question is timely since the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released results of its American Time Use Survey for twenty ten. The survey began in two thousand three. Its aim was to provide estimates about how, where and with whom Americans spend their time. This kind of information can be helpful to media organizations, economists, sociologists and other experts as part of their research.Rachel Krantz-Kent is program manager of the American Time Use Survey. She says one finding showed that men who have a job worked, on average, more hours than employed women.RACHEL KRANTZ-KENT: “One of the interesting things we know from the American Time Use Survey is that, on average, American men spend more time working for pay than American women. However, while men work more hours than women, we also observe that women are spending more time providing childcare and doing household work such as cle aning and food preparation.”The American Time Use Survey found that employed people work an average of seven and a half hours a day. Full-time male workers average eight point two hours a day, while women average seven point eight hours.The report shows that more people work on weekdays than on Saturday and Sunday – the traditional weekend days. Eighty-two percent of employed people work on an average weekday, compared with thirty-five percent who work on an average weekend.The report notes the times individuals work. Between two thousand five and two thousand nine, over fifty percent of American workers were at their job by eight in the morning.The report also tells how Americans spend their time away from work.On an average day, nearly everyone fifteen years of age and older took part in a non-work activity like watching television, socializing or exercising. The study found that people spend an average of two point seven hours a day watching television.Time spent reading was linked to age. Adults seventy-five years and older averaged one point one hours of reading a day on weekends. But people between the ages of fifteen and nineteen averaged about six minutes of reading a day. Those individuals spent more time playing games or using a computer for non-work activities.How many hours do you spend at work and at play? Leave a comment on our website, .HOST: Bon Iver is the musical project of singer and songwriter Justin Vernon. His second album, “Bon Iver” has received praise from critics across the United States. One reporter says this album proves that rock is not dead -- it is only sleeping and dreaming. Jim Tedder has more.JIM TEDDER: That was the song “Calgary.” Like many songs on the album “Bon Iver” this one is soft, dreamy, and poetic. It is often hard to understand the meaning of the words Justin Vernon is singing.But what is clear is that every song is linked to a place. All of the songs are named after a place, either real or imaginary. Justin Vernon is more interested in listeners having an emotional experience from his music than understanding meaning of the words.His first album, “For Emma, Forever Ago,” was released in two thousand seven. He recorded most of the music in a small house in the woods in his native Wisconsin. He went there to be alone for several months and to recover from personal problems, including the breakup of his band.The extreme quiet had a major influence on him. He began to write new music. This resulted in the creation of an album that caught the attention of several performers, including Kanye West. He asked Justin Vernon to work with him on his two thousand ten album “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.”On his latest album, Justin Vernon has expanded his sound and added more musical instruments and effects.We close with the last song on the album “Bon Iver, Bon Iver.” “Beth/Rest” sounds like it could have been recorded in the nineteen eighties. Justin Vernon says heloves the song and wanted it to be last on his album. He says he wants listeners to get lost in its sound.DOUG JOHNSON: I‟m Doug Johnson. Our program was written and produced by Dana Demange, with reporting by Philip Graitcer. If you have a question about American life, write to mosaic@.Join us again next week for music and more on AMERICAN MOSAIC in VOA Special English.三、Economic Forces Push Spanish to Learn EnglishThis is the VOA Special English Education Report.Spain is struggling with a recession. More than one in five Spaniards are out of work. Unemployment is the highest of the seventeen nations that use the euro. But one area of the economy that seems to be doing well is English classes.A report this year from the EF Education First company listed Spain is a "low proficiency" country in English. Spain ranked just below Italy and just above Taiwan.About a fifth of the world speaks Spanish.There are many Spanish language TV shows and movies. Spaniards can also watch Hollywood movies dubbed in Spanish or news from Latin America.One of the few English voice s on Spanish TV belongs to Richard Vaughan.RICHARD VAUGHAN: "Hello and welcome back to another half-hour segment of Cloverdale's Corner. Today is Tuesday, and Lourdes has had to leave but we still have four people here ... "Richard Vaughan is from Texas but for thirty-five years has lived in Spain. He operates that country's biggest English teaching company. It even has its own TV channel. "Aprende Ingles" -- Learn English -- is Spain's only national channel in English.He says people watch his channel and take his classes to get a better job.RICHARD VAUGHAN: "People don't learn English here for cultural reasons. Some do. But the motive is always, ninety-nine percent of the time, professional."Modern changes in the world economy -- globalization -- may offer chances for a better job in another country. But economic problems at home can also make people feel they have few other choices.NICK BYRNE: "People realize, you know, they are not only going to have to be mobile out of a choice, but they are going to have to be mobile because of necessity."Nick Byrne is director of the language center at the London School of Economics.NICK BYRNE: "We found that, in our university language centers across the UK and indeed across Europe, that language learning is up. We're not talking about people doing a whole degree in languages, but people going on evening courses -- English courses particularly."In Spain, some of those study ing English hope for jobs in Britain or the United States. But others want to work for international companies with offices in Spain. Many companies now require workers to be bilingual.Dominic Campbell is an American who lives in Madrid and teaches English part time.DOMINIC CAMPBELL: "It's a lot of jobs now are actually mandatory that you know at least two languages and a lot of them actually want at least Spanish and English. And, a lot of them are asking for Spanish, English and French -- especially airlines."Mr. Campbell says many of his students thought speaking Spanish was enough.DOMINIC CAMPBELL: "They just think, you know, 'My English is poor, I don't want to speak it, I don't want to learn how to speak it. I've got Spanish, that's all I need.'"But people also need jobs. More than forty percent of Spaniards in their twenties are out of work. Inigo Gomez has a degree in education.INIGO GOMEZ: "I'm a teacher, and I couldn't find a job here. So I think it's a good idea to go to the United Kingdom and try to find a job as a Spanish teacher."And while he does that, many Spaniards for the first time will be spreading their new education in English at home.四、Big Cats at Home on the Range（常速）And that's the VOA Special English Education Report. I'm Bob Doughty.Five years ago, U.S. conservation biologist Josh Donlan got some people howling with a controversial article in the scientific journal Nature. Almost literally howling, since the subject was his proposal to “re-wild” the Great Plains.Re-wild, meaning to re-locate wild animals, including predators such as lions and cheetahs - from Africa to vast, fenced “ecological history parks” on the American prairie.The goal would be to save species that are endangered because of theirever-shrinking habitat in Africa and to re-invigorate the predator-prey pecking order on the plains.The Nature article noted that 13,000 years ago, at the end of the Pleistocene geological era, the North American prairie teemed with big vertebrates such as woolly mammoths, five species of horses and an early version of the cheetah. They were all hunted to extinction when humans arrived.Saber-tooth tigers and the like are gone for good. But those who favor there-wilding idea say today‟s threatened elephants, camels, and big cats could avoid the same fate on the American plains. And what fabulous photographic safari attractions they would make for tourists.Critics had fun with all this. One writer envisioned elephants in the driveway throughout the Midwest. Someone else pictured camels frozen solid in prairie winter snowdrifts.But other conservationists said re-wilding deserved a fair look. The Nature Conservancy, for instance, gave it a “hats off” salute for being provocative, though it added, “If you want to think big, why not think big in Africa?”So it goes without saying that there are no elephants outside of circuses and zoos in Kansas or Oklahoma. But small steps have been made. Former television magnate Ted Turner is modestly re-wilding his New Mexico ranch, where he has brought back a giant, nearly extinct, breed of tortoise.Fine, say sheep and cattle ranchers. But inviting hungry l ions to roam America‟s grasslands would be insane, they say - fence or no fence.五、Prison Grooms Inmate EntrepreneursIt can be hard to find a job in the current tight U.S. economy, especially when you have a criminal record. At one prison in the American Northwest, inmates are learning not just how to get jobs, but how to open businesses of their own.A class called LIFE (Lifelong Information For Entrepreneurs), at the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, teaches inmates how to start their own businesses after they‟re released from the Oregon women‟s prison.MercyCorps Northwest, the local branch of a global development organization, started the program four years ago, based on its experience in international aid.“We were looking for ways that we cou ld apply our expertise around economic development and small business management to populations that could use it," says Doug Cooper, assistant director of MercyCorps Northwest. "It‟s identical to what we do internationally, except we apply it here in Oreg on and Washington.”The eight-month class mixes hardcore small business training with softer skills like goal setting and self care. Student Saresa Whitley is serving five years for assault. She has a job lined up after her release in January, but plans to also start a small business selling handicrafts.“When I was talking about knowing if my business is viable or not, through a profit-and-loss model, I was like …Wow, I didn‟t even know the word viable before, and now I do,‟" Whitley says. "I‟ve learned a lot, I‟ve learned a lot about how to write a business plan, about effective communications skills, how to listen, something I didn‟t know how to do before.”These lessons are an important part of the program. In fact, says student Cynthia Thompson, who‟s serving time for ID theft, they‟re kind of the point.“I think the goal of it is to produce people that are being part of the community, paying their taxes and being volunteers. Not just necessarily successful small businesses, but just successful, acc ountable people in the community.”So far it seems to be working. It‟s too soon for official results, but unofficially, MercyCorps says only three of its approximately 100 graduates have returned to prison. That‟s way below the national recidivism rate, which is over 50 percent. Graduates have opened courier businesses, cosmetology salons and craft stands at farmer‟s markets.Lori graduated from the first LIFE class while in prison for aggravated theft and now runs an auto repair shop. She prefers not to give her last name because she worries about the stigma of being an ex-convict.“We work so hard, and we go the extra mile for any customers, and, you know, bad word of mouth spreads faster than anything else,” she says.Even after graduating, Lori continued to check in with a MercyCorps mentor. Together, they worked through a whole host of small business questions.“What works, what doesn‟t? And is it worth having a website of your own, and what avenues of advertising can you exploit for free?" Lori says. "Those are the type of things that I found invaluable.”MercyCorps Northwest just started up another LIFE program at a women‟s prison in Washington state. Cooper hopes the idea spreads throughout the country‟s prisons and their 1.5 million inmates.“Ninety-five, 96 percent of those people are going to come back to our communities with the stigma of being an ex-felon," he says. "And to the extent that we make it hard for them to come back and be successful, it hurts everybody. It hurts our community. It hurts our tax base.”Cooper believes helping former inmates succeed is what a corrections system should be about. Student Saresa Whitley plans to apply what she‟s learned to that small craft business - and also to her life.“When I walk in that room, I‟m not just a number anymore. I‟m a person," she says about the LIFE classes. "And they have taught me to set goals, and I didn‟t have that before. I didn‟t have that hope that I can do something different.”六、Refugees Revitalize BuffaloHe spent five years as a political prisoner in his native country where Win says he was tortured and starved. Escaping after paying smugglers to hide him in the bottom of a fishing boat, he eventually made it to the United States where he was granted asylum. In 2005, he was resettled in Buffalo.Now, Win runs a laundromat where the walls are plastered with colorful posters denouncing Burma‟s military junta.“Whenever I put the sign, the customer they ask me question and they can explain current situation in my country," he says. "Where is location of Burma? What happening in Burma now? Who is the leader now? What is the military dictatorship?”Thousands of Buffalo residents already know the answers. Like Win, they fled from Burma. And they also landed in America‟s t hird poorest city unable to speak English with almost no money or job prospects. But some long-time residents see investing in these refugees as Buffalo‟s way forward.“What we feel like we‟re doing is just giving people a little leg up on prosperity and we‟ve seen people take hold of that and blossom with it," says Bonnie Smith. "Slowly the community begins to improve.”Working through her church, the retired businesswoman helped Win develop a business plan and provided collateral for him to get a micr oloan. It‟s something he never would have qualified for on his own. In the past decade, close to 10 nonprofits in Buffalo have started or added refugee resettlement to their mission. That can include English classes, driving lessons or help buying and improving one of the economically-depressed region‟s thousands of abandoned homes.Cities along the Great Lakes used to rule the American economy, manufacturing steel by the shipload. Now, these once mighty metros are known as the Rust Belt. Since the aging industrial plants in Buffalo started closing in the 1950s, more half of its population has left. But now, thousands are moving in: refugees from Burma, Sudan and other far-away, conflicted places. Officials are trying to turn their relocation into a renaissance.According to Aaron Bartley, director of PUSH Buffalo, refugees are perfect candidates to bring Rust Belt cities back to life. “The way we‟re going to solve that is by making it a neighborhood people want to stay in. And a neighborhood the various communities - whether they‟re Burmese, Somalian, Sudanese, Liberian - want to put down roots in. That they don‟t see it as a stopping point to get to another place.”This wouldn‟t be happening on such a large scale without the Refugee Protection Act of 1980. The law was designed to stop population loss in Rust Belt cities like Buffalo, Detroit and Cleveland by subsidizing refugee resettlement there. About 1,500 refugees came to Buffalo just last year.“Even with that 1,500 refugees, we still saw a popu lation decline in our community. We‟re still trying to catch up even with those refugees coming in,” says Molly Short, who runs Journey‟s End, one of Buffalo‟s four resettlement agencies.While most American cities have one agency like hers, the Rust Belt is home to dozens and Short says they can barely meet the demand. She adds that services like hers have been severely hurt by federal budget cuts in recent years. Often times, the agencies can‟t predict what help a refugee needs to feel at home.“Sometimes we‟ll have a refugee arrive who has literally never been in a car before they left a refugee camp, never used electricity and then we have refugees come in who are doctors and scientists and mathematicians.”And many times, the educated and illiterate are competing for the same small pot of jobs.While Burmese refugee Win feels quite welcome in Buffalo, some customers can be difficult and Win feels business could be better.“Not really bad, not really good. So-so. Not much money for my pocket. And then for future more and more better, I believe this.”Win says his microloan will be paid off in a year or two. Then, he plans to assist others just as he was aided - helping out-of-work refugees open their own shops and create their own jobs.七、Harvard's First Woman President Settles into RoleHarvard University is arguably one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1636, it is among the oldest in the United States.In 2007, Harvard named historian and scholar Drew Gilpin Faust its 28th president. She is the first woman to hold that position.Role modelOther American universities have had women presidents. But when Harvard named Drew Gilpin Faust as its first woman president, the world took note.“At a press conference right after the announcement of my appointment, I was asked something about what it was like to be the first woman president of Harvard,” Faust recalls. “My response, which I had not predetermined, was to answer that I was n‟t the woman president of Harvard, I was the president of Harvard.”But Faust soon realized that being the first woman to hold that position did matter to a lot of people.“The response to my appointment from young girls and women all over the world, f rom the parents of young girls, was so moving,” she says. “They found in my appointment an indication of hope and aspiration that they or their children could embrace."That, she says, made her recognize "that being the first woman president of Harvard has a lot of significance and that it is meaningful, and I ought not to forget that.”Breaking barriersWhile Faust serves as a role model for young girls today, she had no one to look to as she was growing up. She never dreamed of a life in academia, let alone becoming president of an Ivy League university.“I grew up at a time where very little was expected of women,” she says. “It was anticipated that probably I would marry and be a wife and mother. There was little discussion what I‟d be when I grew up beyond that.”Her mother, who never worked outside of the home, was not one to encourage Faust to higher ambitions. “My mother was very much a part of traditional views of women,” Faust says, adding that her mother seemed quite angry to have limited options for herself.“Something she said to me quite often when I was being rebellious or imagining something was possible for myself that she didn‟t think was possible, she would say, …It‟s a man‟s world, sweetie, and the sooner you figure it out the h appier you will be.‟”But Faust was able to take advantage of the growing wave of new opportunities for women in the 1960s. Sadly, Faust's mother didn't live to witness her daughter‟s success. She died when Faust was 19.Early influencesFaust grew up surrounded by history in Virginia‟s Shenandoah Valley.She lived on Lee Jackson Highway, named for two Civil War generals who fought for the south, in an area where many battles had been fought between the Union and Confederate armies.She recalls playing Civil War endlessly with her brothers. "I always had to be Grant, because my older brother got to be Lee, and it was a long time before I discovered that actually Lee had lost and Grant had won.”But the War Between the States became more than a game to Faust. She is a noted scholar of the American South and the Civil War.Her most recent book, "This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War," was named one of the “10 best books of 2008” by the New York Times.Cost of learningSince becoming president of Harvard, Faust has made it a priority to ensure that the cost of an education at the elite private university does not prohibit talented applicants from attending.The annual tuition, room and board for a Harvard undergraduate is more than $50,000, but the majority of students pay much less.Faust says 60 percent of the students receive financial aid from the university. “And, of those students, the cost of education is just about $11,000 a year. And for students from families with incomes under $60,000 a year, there is no parental contribution expected at all.”Model educationFaust‟s responsibilities as president of Harvard have taken her to many corners of the globe. She says American higher education is seen as a model in many other countries.She recalls meeting with a group of university presidents in China last year.“What they wanted to talk with me about was the liberal arts and humanities and how they could introduce some of those perspectives into their higher education system, in order to bring the kind of imaginativeness, curiosity and creativity that they saw as characteristic of American higher education.”It is, Faust says, a lesson for Americans to keep in mind. In this troubled economy, many are searching for immediate economic return when they graduate. But education, she says, should prepare people for a lifetime, not just a single career.。
