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No company likes to be told it is contributing to the moral decline of a nation. “Is this what you intended to accomplish with your careers?” Senator Robert Dole asked Time Warner executives last week, “You have sold your souls, but must you corrupt our nation and threaten our children as well?” At Time Warner, however, such questions are simply the latest manifestation of the soul-searching that has involved the company ever since the company was born in 1990. It's a self-examination that has, at various times, involved issues of responsibility, creative freedom and the corporate bottom line.
At the core of this debate is chairman Gerald Levin, 56, who took over for the late Steve Ross in 1992. On the financial front, Levin is under pressure to raise the stock price and reduce the company's mountainous debt, which will increase to $17.3 billion after two new cable deals close. He has promised to sell off some of the property and restructure the company, but investors are waiting impatiently.
The flap over rap is not making life any easier for him. Levin has consistently defended the company's rap music on the grounds of expression. In 1992, when Time Warner was under fire for releasing Ice-T's violent rap song Cop Killer , Levin described rap as a lawful expression of street culture, which deserves an outlet. “The test of any democratic society,” he wrote in a Wall Street Journal column, “lies not in how well it can control expression but in whether it gives freedom of thought and expression the widest possible latitude, however disputable or irritating the results may sometimes be. We won't retreat in the face of any threats.”
Levin would not comment on the debate last week, but there were signs that the chairman was backing off his hard-line stand, at least to some extent. During the discussion of rock singing verses at last month's stockholders' meeting, Levin asserted that “music is not the cause of society's ills” and even cited his son, a teacher in the Bronx, New York, who uses rap to communicate with students. But he talked as well about the “balanced struggle” between creative freedom and social responsibility, and he announced that the company would launch a drive to develop standards for distribution and labeling of potentially objectionable music.
The 15-member Time Warner board is generally supportive of Levin and his corporate strategy. But insiders say several of them have shown their concerns in this matter. “Some of us have known for many, many years that the freedoms under the First Amendment are not totally unlimited,” says Luce, “I think it is perhaps the case that some people associated with the company have only recently come to realize this.”
1. Senator Robert Dole criticized Time Warner for ______.
A. its raising of the corporate stock price
B. its self-examination of soul
C. its neglect of social responsibility
D. its emphasis on creative freedom
2. Levin cited his son at last month's stockholders' meeting because ______.
A. he thought rap is a lawful expression of street culture
B. he wanted to develop standards for distribution
C. he was backing off his hard-line stand
D. in the Bronx, teachers use rap to communicate with students
3. According to the text, which of the following is TRUE?
A. Luce is a spokesman of Time Warner.
B. Gerald Levin is liable to compromise.
C. Time Warner is united as one in the face of the debate.
D. Steve Ross is no longer alive.
4. In face of the recent attacks on the company, the chairman ______.
A. stuck to a strong stand to defend freedom of expression
B. softened his tone and adopted some new policy
C. changed his attitude and yielded to objection
D. received more support from the 15-member board
5. The best title for this text could be _______.
A. A Company Under Fire
B. A Debate on Moral Decline
C. A Lawful Outlet of Street Culture
D. A Form of Creative Freedom
Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones was a teenager before he saw his first cow in his first field. Born in Jamaica, the 47-year-old grew up in inner-city Birmingham before making a career as a television producer and launching his own marketing agency. But deep down he always nurtured every true Englishmen dream of a rustic life, a dream that his entrepreneurial wealth has allowed him to satisfy. These days he's the owner of a thriving 12-hectare farm in deepest Devon with cattle, sheep and pigs. His latest business venture: pushing his brand of Black Fanner gourmet sausages and barbecue sauces.
Emmanuel-Jones joins a herd of wealthy fugitives from city life who are bringing a new commercial know-how to British farming. Britain's burgeoning farmers markets—numbers have doubled to at least 500 in the last five years—swarm with specialty cheesemakers, beekeepers or organic smallholders who are redeploying the business skills they learned in the city. “Everyone in the rural community has to come to terms with the fact that things have changed,” says Emmanuel-Jones. “You can produce the best food in the world, but if you don't know how to market it, you are wasting your time. We are helping the traditionalists to move on.”
The emergence of the new class of superpeasants reflects some old yearnings. If the British were the first nation to industrialize, they were also the first to head back to the land. Migration into rural areas is now running at about 100,000 a year, and the hunger for a taste of the rural life has kept land prices buoyant even as agricultural incomes fall. About 40 percent of all farmland is now sold to “lifestyle buyers” rather than the dwindling number of traditional farmers, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
What's new about the latest returnees is their affluence and zeal for the business of producing quality foods, if only at a micro-level. A healthy economy and surging London house prices have helped to ease the escape of the would-be rustics. The media recognize and feed the fantasy. One of the big TV hits of recent years, the “River Cottage” series, chronicled the attempts of a London chef to run his own Dorset farm. Naturally, the newcomers can't hope to match their City salaries, but many are happy to trade any loss of income for the extra job satisfaction. Who cares if there's no six-figure annual bonus when the land offers other incalculable compensations?
Besides, the specialist producers can at least depend on a burgeoning market for their products. Today's eco-aware generation loves to seek out authentic ingredients. “People like me may be making a difference in a small way,” Jan McCourt, a onetime investment banker now running his own 40-hectare spread in the English Midlands stocked with rare breeds. Optimists see signs of far-reaching change: Britain isn't catching up with mainland Europe; it's leading the way. “Unlike most other countries, where artisanal food production is being eroded, here it is being recovered,” says food writer Matthew Fort.
1. Which of the following details of Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones is incorrect?
A. He was born and brought up in Birmingham.
B. He used to work in the television industry.
C. He is wealthy, adventurous and aspiring.
D. He is now selling his own quality foods.
2. Most importantly, people like Wilfred have brought to traditional British farming _______.
A. knowledge of farming
B. knowledge of brand names
C. knowledge of lifestyle
D. knowledge of marketing
3. Which of the following does NOT contribute to the emergence of a new class of farmers?
A. Strong desire for country life.
B. Longing for greater wealth.
C. Influence of TV productions.
D. Enthusiasm for quality food business.
4. What is seen as their additional source of new income?
A. Modern tendency to buy natural foods.
B. Increase in the value of land property.
C. Raising and selling rare live stock.
D. Publicity as a result of media coverage.
5. The sentence in the last paragraph “Britain isn't catching up with mainland Europe; it's leading the way” implies that _______.
A. Britain has taken a different path to boost economy
B. more authentic foods are being produced in Britain
C. the British are heading back to the countryside
D. the Europeans are showing great interest in country life
“Museum” is a slippery word. It first meant (in Greek) anything consecrated to the Muses: a hill, a shrine, a garden, a festival or even a textbook. Both Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum had a mouseion, a muse's shrine. Although the Greeks already collected detached works of art, many temples—notably that of Hera at Olympia (before which the Olympic flame is still lit)—had collections of objects, some of which were works of art by well-known masters, while paintings and sculptures in the Alexandrian Museum were incidental to its main purpose.
The Romans also collected and exhibited art from disbanded temples, as well as mineral specimens, exotic plants, animals; and they plundered sculptures and paintings (mostly Greek) for exhibition. Meanwhile, the Greek word had slipped into Latin by transliteration (though not to signify picture galleries, which were called pinacothecae) and museum still more or less meant “Muses-shrine”.
The inspirational collections of precious and semi-precious objects were kept in larger churches and monasteries—which focused on the gold-enshrined, bejewelled relics of saints and martyrs. Princes, and later merchants, had similar collections, which became the deposits of natural curiosities: large lumps of amber or coral, irregular pearls, unicorn horns, ostrich eggs, fossil bones and so on. They also included coins and gems—often antique engraved ones—as well as, increasingly, paintings and sculptures. As they multiplied and expanded, to supplement them, the skill of the fakers grew increasingly refined.
At the same time, visitors could admire the very grandest paintings and sculptures in the churches, palaces and castles; they were not “collected” either, but “site-specific”, and were considered an integral part both of the fabric of the buildings and of the way of life which went on inside them—and most of the buildings were public ones. However, during the revival of antiquity in the fifteenth century, fragments of antique sculpture were given higher status than the work of any contemporary, so that displays of antiquities would inspire artists to imitation, or even better, to emulation; and so could be considered Muses-shrines in the former sense. The Medici garden near San Marco in Florence, the Belvedere and the Capitol in Rome were the most famous of such early “inspirational” collections. Soon they multiplied, and, gradually, exemplary “modern” works were also added to such galleries.
In the seventeenth century, scientific and prestige collecting became so widespread that three or four collectors independently published directories to museums all over the known world. But it was the age of revolutions and industry which produced the next sharp shift in the way the institution was perceived: the fury against royal and church monuments prompted antiquarians to shelter them in asylum-galleries, of which the Musee des Monuments Francais was the most famous. Then, in the first half of the nineteenth century, museum funding took off, allied to the rise of new wealth: London acquired the National Gallery and the British Museum, the Louvre was organized, the Museum-Insel was begun in Berlin, and the Munich galleries were built. In Vienna, the huge Kunsthistorisches and Naturhistorisches Museums took over much of the imperial treasure. Meanwhile, the decline of craftsmanship (and of public taste with it) inspired the creation of “improving” collections. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London was the most famous, as well as perhaps the largest of them.
1. The sentence “‘Museum’ is a slippery word” in the first paragraph means that _______.
A. the meaning of the word didn't change until after the 15th century
B. the meaning of the word had changed over the years
C. the Greeks held different concepts from the Romans
D. princes and merchants added paintings to their collections
2. The idea that museum could mean a hill or an object originates from _______.
A. Rome
B. Florence
C. Olympia
D. Greek
3. “the skill of the fakers grew increasingly refined” in the third paragraph means that _______.
A. there was a great demand for fakers
B. fakers grew rapidly in number
C. fakers became more skillful
D. fakers became more polite
4. Paintings and sculptures on display in churches in the 15th century were _______.
A. collected from elsewhere
B. made part of the buildings
C. donated by people
D. bought by churches
5. Modern museums came into existence in order to _______.
A. protect royal and church treasures
B. improve existing collections
C. stimulate public interest
D. raise more funds
Innovation is key to business survival, and companies put substantial resources into inspiring employees to develop new ideas. There are, nevertheless, people working in luxurious, state-of-the-art centers designed to stimulate innovation who find that their environment doesn't make them feel at all creative. And there are those who don't have a budget, or much space, but who innovate successfully.
Research shows that the fit between an employee's values and a company's values makes a difference to what contribution they make and whether, two years after they join, they're still at the company. One of the most famous photographs in the story of rock n'roll emphasizes the view. The 1956 picture of singer Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis jamming at a piano in Sun Studios in Memphis tells a hidden story. Sun's “million-dollar quartet” could have been a quintet. Missing from the picture is Roy Orbison, a greater natural singer than Lewis, Perking or Cash. Sam Phillips, who owned Sun, wanted to revolutionize popular music with songs that fused black and white music, and country and blues. Presley, Cash, Perkins and Lewis instinctively understood Phillips's ambition and believed in it, While Orbison wasn't inspired by the goal, and only ever achieved one hit with the Sun label.
Molecular biologist James Watson, together with Francis Crick, discovered the structure of DNA, the genetic information carrier of all living organisms. When asked how they had cracked the code ahead of an array of highly accomplished rival investigators, they said they succeeded because they were aware that they weren't the most intelligent of the scientists pursuing the answer. The smartest scientist was called Rosalind Franklin who was so intelligent she rarely sought advice.
Writing, visualizing and prototyping can stimulate the flow of new ideas. Scores of research papers and historical events prove that even something as simple as writing deepens every individual's engagement in the project. It is the reason why all those competitions on breakfast cereal packets encouraged us to write in saying, in no more than 10 words: “I like Kellogg's Corn Flakes because...” The very act of writing makes us more likely to believe it.
Many theorists believe the ideal boss should lead from behind, taking pride in collective accom-plishment and giving credit where it is due. Leaders should encourage everyone to contribute and simultaneously assure all concerned that every recommendation is important to making the right decision and will be given full attention. The frustrating thing about innovation is that there are many approaches, but no magic formula. However, a manager who wants to create a truly innovative culture can make their job a lot easier by recognizing these psychological realities.
1. The example of the “million-dollar quartet” underlines the writer's point about ______.
A. recognizing talent
B. working as a team
C. having a shared objective
D. being an effective leader
2. James Watson suggests that he and Francis Crick won the race to discover the DNA code because they ______.
A. were conscious of their own limitations
B. brought complementary skills to their partnership
C. were determined to outperform their brighter rivals
D. encouraged each other to realize their joint ambition
3. The writer mentions competitions on breakfast cereal packets as an example of how to _____.
A. inspire creative thinking
B. generate concise writing
C. promote loyalty to a group
D. strengthen commitment to an idea
4. In the last paragraph, the writer suggests that it is important for employees to ______.
A. be aware of their company's goals
B. feel that their contributions are valued
C. have respect for their co-worker's achievements
D. understand why certain management decisions are made
5. A leader could ______ to encourage innovation.
A. take various methods
B. find a magic formula
C. do nothing but give employees enough freedom
D. sparkle new ideas