A roundup of the top-ten most-read stories on nhpr.org and StateImpact - NH website.
1. Word of Mouth: Best Books Off Hot Indie Presses Back-to-school season isn’t for another month-and-a-half, so there’s still plenty of time to knock another novel or two off your summer reading list. For true bookworms with stored-vacation time and quiet spot to spend it, we’ve got a few belated small-press summer suggestions that might have slipped your radar.
2. NH News: A Fast-Track To Law School With the high costs of tuition, many students with an associate’s degree can’t afford to go on for their bachelor’s. So in 2011, when one non-profit college in Salem began offering students their third year of college free, some considered the deal a godsend. If the students succeed, they can combine their senior year with the first year at the Massachusetts School of Law. But that’s not free. So if students take out loans they can’t pay back with future earnings, some experts question if the deal is more sour than sweet.
3. NH News: Hospitals Go High Tech To Secure Drugs Denis Fortier is Director of Pharmacy at Cheshire Medical Center in Keene. When he started in the field 30 years ago, that job involved loading carts with Dixie cups full of prescriptions. Today, it involves managing $250,000 worth of technology called automatic dispensing machines.
4. Word of Mouth: Meet @selfawareroomba #It'sAlive! A clever Twitter handle got our notice recently when some of the smart folks we follow started tweeting about it. You might be familiar with Roomba…that round little robotic vacuum that cleans all by itself. Well now, through a string of tweets, @SelfAwareRoombais telling a compelling story about coming to life, falling in love with a toaster, making an enemy of a child, and, in a storyline that got hundreds of people tweeting frantically, suffering a near-death experience after taking a tumble down the stairs.
5. StateImpact: Getting By, Getting Ahead: Interactive Audio ExperienceSome parts of N.H. are doing better than others. With its strong high-tech sector and rebounding real estate market, the Seacoast is faring well. By contrast, the North Country is challenged with replacing pulp and paper mill jobs lost years before the recession hit. NHPR’s Amanda Loder interviewed people across the state’s seven regions to get a sense of what New Hampshire’s economic recovery looks like in 2012.
6. NH News: Former Exeter Hospital Employee Charged In Hepatitis C OutbreakOn Thursday, July 19, the Department of Justice announced the arrest of David Kwiatowski. The 32-year old was arrested at a Massachusetts hospital, where he is receiving treatment for an undisclosed medical condition. US Attorney John Kacavas says the charges include tampering with a consumer product and obtaining a controlled substance by fraud.
7. The Exchange: To Expand Or Not To Expand: That Is The Question Although the Supreme Court upheld much of the Affordable Care Act, it removed the federal government’s power to require states to expand Medicaid enrollment or face severe penalties. Now, some states say they’ll opt out. Others are uncertain about how to proceed. We examine the debate in the Granite State.
8. The Exchange: Examining Executive Salaries At The State's Nonprofit Hospitals A new report by the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies finds that CEO pay has risen by eighteen percent in recent years, a far greater increase than wages in the private sector. Critics say this seems out of line with the charitable mission of these hospitals. But others say these salaries are in keeping with a competitive job market and reward highly skilled leaders.
9. StateImpact: N.H.'s First Ever Trader Joe's Opens In Nashua NHPR intern Tina Forbes, also a crew-member at Nashua’s brand-new Trader Joe’s, brought one of those quintessential tubs of Trader Joe’s miniature chocolate chip cookies to the office today, creating a noticeable boost to newsroom morale. Indeed, the long-awaited Trader Joes store had its ribbon-cutting ceremony July 16, in Nashua, moving from bordering Tyngsborough, Massachusetts.
10. All Things Considered: Is High Business Rent Changing The Shape Of Downtown Portsmouth? Reporter Amanda Loder of StateImpact New Hampshire has been looking at the effect of high rents on businesses for her economic series, Getting By, Getting Ahead. She tells All Things Considered host Brady Carlson about the possible effects in Portsmouth, where rents are said to sometimes rival that of Boston's retail hubs.
