Newspaper Page Text
Humor
before
hard sell
Rental market
can be tough
By Sharon Nelton
Now York Times News Service
It’s a fairly unusual treat when an
apartment marketer displays a sense
of humor in its advertising giving
you a spoonful of sugar to make the
medicine of its message go down.
So it was with pleasure recently that
I read every word of a mailer from
Muirfield Woods, a Sterling, Va.,
complex that was trying to sell me on
renting one of its luxury apartments.
Before it got to the medicine
(’’plush clubhouse,” “no-wax vinyl
flooring,” “private deck,” and so on),
the brochure asked you to fill out a
questionnaire about the apartment
you’re currently renting. Some sam
ple questions:
1. The landscaping can best be de
scribed as...
Several blades of grass
Best viewed at night
Death Valley
2. My storage situation is as
follows:
Holds at least three pairs of shoes
What fits under the bed
My suitcase is larger
3. Describe the paint job inside your
apartment.
What paint?
The cracks and flakes are
interesting
Calling it a paint job is stretching
it
4. Is sharing a bathroom a problem?
No, I’m bigger and stronger than
my roommate
Reservations are made well in
advance
I use facilities down at the gym
5. I have recently suffered a rent
increase...
That was more than expected
That was a lot more than
expected
And this place isn’t worth it
Pretty silly stuff, but it gave me a
chuckle. And if the bank should fore
close on the mortgage on my town
house, I’ll think of Muirfield Woods.
But then, of course, Muirfield Woods
probably wouldn’t want to think of
me.
And now the sequel.
Recently in this column I an
nounced that I would have my town
house tested for radon. I had just
learned that a study of homes in my
zip code area found that one third had
unacceptably high levels of radon, a
colorless, odorless gas that can enter
a residence through drains, cracks in
the cellar and even the water system.
Radon is thought to cause 5,000 to
20,000 lung-cancer deaths annually in
the United States.
A subsequent study in my county
had even worse results, with nearly
half the homes showing radon concen
trations that exceeded the federally
recommended safety level.
So I nervously went ahead with my
test, using testing canisters from the
Radon Testing Corporation of Ameri
ca (RTCA), one of the services that
meets Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) standards for profi
ciency in measuring radon.
I placed one of the canisters at base
ment level and one on the main floor
of my three-story townhouse. After
four days, I returned the canisters, in
mailers provided by RTCA, for lab
oratory analysis.
About a week later, I received the
report: The radon levels in my home
were considered safe. According to
the EPA, a home is unsafe when ra
don levels reach concentrations of
more than four picocuries per liter of
air. (A picocurie is a measurement of
radioactivity.)
My tests indicated concentrations
of 2.4 picocuries per liter on the
ground level and 1.8 on the main level.
It was a relief for me. I wanted to
avoid the expense of corrective mea
sures and I certainly wanted to know
that I was living in a healthy
environment.
But the report also cautioned that
radon levels can change greatly from
season to season. It noted that radon
is a decay product of uranium and
added, “Uranium can partially dis
solve in water and can be relocated
with changes in the water table.” The
report recommended retesting every
year.
If you’re as concerned as I was
about radon, let me remind you that
the July 1987 issue of Consumer Re
ports offers an excellent discussion of
the subject in an article called, “Ra
don Detectors How To Find Out if
Your House Has a Radon Problem.”
The article also lists radon-detection
services that meet EPA standards.
Most tests cost from sl2 to SSO. It’s
best to conduct your test during win
ter, while your home is closed up
against the cold weather.
If you have
to eat your words
be sure they come
from the food section
of the
Forsyth County News
Consumer Reports faces controversy with articles on poor
By Nancy Mullen
The Christian Science Monitor
MOUNT VERNON, N.Y. Con
sumer Reports, the magazine that
has come to be known as the “shop
per’s bible,” unsettled its affluent
readers earlier this year by run
ning a series about the problems of
the working poor.
Amid the usual fare of articles
evaluating goods and service,
“Life at the Edge” profiled several
families who often cannot afford to
buy food, clothing, and shelter,
much less the new cars, VCRs, and
food processors the magazine
features.
Some readers were angry. One
wrote, “Other publications tell us
all we want to know about the injus
tice of not having enough money.
Let’s have more consumer advice
and leave the philosophy to the
sociologists.”
Others were grateful, like the one
who applauded the “awareness
that consumer issues involve not
only product performance but hu
man values as well.”
Rhoda Karpatkin, executive di
rector of Consumers Union (CU),
the nonprofit organization that pub
lishes the magazine, is unfazed by
the mixed reactions. She is not
about to let the 51-year-old organi
zation settle back into a comfy mid
dle age.
“We did the series in order to
dramatize this issue for our sub
scribers and the public,” she ex
plains. “We’re sending the series to
legislators and journalists in order
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to heighten their awareness of what
the face of poverty is and how peo
ple just like them could be poor.”
CU’s surveys show that, despite
some strong responses, the series
was not widely read among its 3.7
million subscribers. Nevertheless
Irwin Landau, editorial director of
the magazine, says he feels it’s im
portant to continue doing some so
cial reporting, and he doesn’t mind
losing a few points with readers
now and then. “Our mandate is
much broader than simply telling
people what the best buy i 5.... Co
nsumer Reports is a good deal more
than a service for the upwardly
mobile.”
Consumers Union itself has been
through hard times, and its execu
tive director is no stranger to con
troversy. The last recession, com
bined with a postal rate increase,
caught the organization unpre
pared, and it slid into debt. Karpat
kin was forced to close CU’s sub
scription fulfillment plant, whose
CU director Rhoda Karpatkin has
gotten heat over management de
cisions, but moves company
forward
costs were three times as high as
the market price for such services.
That closing was one of several
disputes Karpatkin has had with
the union representing CU workers
disputes that have diverted some
attention from her efforts to add
new dimensions to the organiza
tion’s work, including an emphasis
on advocacy for the disadvantaged.
“The union still attacks manage
ment for having done it (closed the
plant), but now that I’ve seen the
numbers since 1980, I am 100 per
cent convinced that the organiza
tion would have been out of busi
ness but for that,” she says, adding
that there was plenty of belt-tight
ening, along with layoffs among
management.
CU’s empoyees got another
shake-up this year when Karpatkin
proposed a merit pay system rath
er than the usual across-the-board
pay raise. The resulting dispute
with the Newspaper Guild has been
bitter. Many of the organization’s
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FORSYTH COUNTY NEWS-WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1987
270 engineers, chemists, nutrition
ists, writers, and other personnel
can be seen picketing outside the
laboratory every Thursday, calling
for a boycott of Consumer Reports.
Karpatkin, who was CU’s outside
attorney before coming to her cur
rent post in 1974, defends the merit
pay system as a way of rewarding
excellence, and adds that the orga
nization has “one of the best among
all the Guild’s contracts.”
Gordon Hard, a staff writer at
CU and unit vice-chairman of the
Newspaper Guild, contends that
the merit-pay plan is a union-bust
ing tactic. “Every contract since
(Karpatkin) has been the chief has
been an agony to negotiate. She’s a
lawyer and she likes to fight. She
doesn’t like to lose,” he says.
Adding poignancy to the conflict
is the keen sense of missing the em
ployees tend to have about their
work. ‘People feel tom apart,” one
worker says. “On the one hand,
they really love working here.
They’re proud of the organization
and the opportunity to do good. On
the other hand, they’re also
crushed by what management is
trying to d0....We see (the merit
pool plan) as a divisive tool that
pits employees against one
another.”
These days money is much less a
concern than in the past. The orga
nization has a surplus of more than
$6 milion, and its income is no long
er as dependent on subscriptions to
Consumer Reports, to diversify its
revenue sources, Consumers Union
has expanded into other areas, in
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cluding syndicated newspaper and
radio features, a monthly travel
newsletter, an auto price serive, a
consumer magazine for children,
and a book publishing operation.
“People are getting a lot of con
sumer information from books,”
Karpatkin notes. “I thought we
should have ours out there, because
they will be sound and reliable, and
I hope, as often as possible, the
best.”
This greater financial stability
has given CU more freedom to de
velop another key part of its mis
sion advocacy. “Part of our ini
tial statement of purpose included
the idea of joining with others to
achieve a decent standard of liv
ing,” Karpatkin explains. The or
ganization’s three advocacy of
fices, along with other groups, have
adopted a successful strategy of re
searching prime consumer issues,
letting the media publicize the find
ings, and then, when the public be
gins to grumble, proposing legisla
tion to lawmakers.
Top on Karpatin’s list of targets
is health care. “We have about 37
million Americans who have no
coverage whatever for health car
e...at a time when costs are astro
nomical,” she says. “Our response
to this is that it its the No. 1 con
sumer protection issue for our
three advocacy offices right now.”
Joan Claybrook, president of the
national consumer group Public
Citizen and also a member of CU’s
board of directors, says, “I think
Consumers Union is doing many
things that are wonderful.”
PAGE 5B