The youngest reporter at Oscarland

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Mar 20, 2002

LOS ANGELES (NYT) -- As Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe make their way to glitzy parties after Sunday's Academy Awards, amid the throng of reporters seeking face time with Tinseltown's elite will be a clean-cut kid who seemingly would be more at home at a high school prom. But Fred Medill won't have to fight to be noticed. He will easily be the youngest journalist there, wearing a tuxedo as he files celebrity interviews for his popular FredTV Web site.

"I admire people for who they are and their talent but I'm not usually star-struck," said the articulate 16-year-old (right), who launched www.fredtv.net in March 1999.

Fred's rapport with Hollywood's major players has been evident at industry events like Saturday's premiere of E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, where he chatted up director Steven Spielberg for the first time. At the Directors Guild of America Awards the weekend before, Fred was placed at the end of the red carpet and far away from the likes of Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood. But the celebrities still found their way to him.

"Hi, Fred!" said Kidman, the most sought-after star at the event. The Moulin Rouge actress gave Fred a lengthy interview -- she approached him -- as did the film's charismatic director, Baz Luhrmann. "I see Nicole Kidman at a lot of events and she is always very nice to me," Fred explained later. "She took a liking to me and so did her publicists. You have to get to know the publicists and be nice to them."

FredTV combines the teen's exclusive interviews with celebrities with movie trailers and analysis. It is available in about 600 hospitals in the United States and Canada where hospitalized children can view the Internet broadcasts on special mobile computers called PC Pals. The teen has also become involved in the Starlight Foundation, a charity that grants wishes to seriously ill children who Fred sometimes brings with him to Hollywood events.

The dumbest moments in business

ATLANTA (Cox) -- The list of "dumbest moments in business" is probably endless, but Business 2.0 (April) selected 101 for its second annual report on corporate follies.

Enron shows up several times. Among the examples was former Chief Executive Jeffrey Skilling's comment that he could not remember details of a key meeting because "the room was dark." The magazine even put itself on the list for featuring Skilling on the cover of its August/September issue as a positive symbol of the digital revolution.

And then there was Philip Morris, which offered an economic analysis of the "indirect positive effects" of early deaths from smoking. "It might be wonderful to live in a world where this type of list did not need to exist, but the fact is, it's hard to avoid the banana peels of life, especially in business," Editor Ned Desmond observed.

The big comeback, sort of

DETROIT (NYT) -- The next big thing, according to automakers, is a class of vehicles that will have three rows of seats that look like beefed-up station wagons or slimmed down minivans. Automakers say the new wagons will appeal to families who want space for the children but do not want something as cumbersome or costly at the gas pump as a sports utility vehicle. They are also meant to attract drivers who want more space and prefer the handling and looks of a luxury car, and want more space.

Though the automakers say these new vehicles, like the Pacifica from Chrysler and the SRX from Cadillac, are being introduced because consumers want them, their is another practical motivation, too: helping the companies meet fuel standards. Traditional station wagons were classified as cars under federal fuel economy rules. These will likely be classified as light trucks, a category that also includes sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks that are less fuel- efficient.

Including this new type of vehicle in that group could allow automakers to build more gas guzzlers and still meet federal standards for fuel economy. Fuel economy regulations require automakers to meet fleet-wide averages that work like a seesaw. Roughly, speaking, for every big truck, there must be a little truck; for every big car, a little car.

Some of these wagons are so big, though, they will probably not meet even the mileage standard for light trucks.

The bulking up of the wagon has already begun with several sporty looking offerings already being sold on their rugged appeal, including the Audi allroad quattro, the Subaru Forrester and the Volvo V70 Cross Country. Like traditional wagons, these models have two rows of forward-facing seats, but federal regulations permits automakers to categorize them as light trucks because of "off road" features like all-wheel drive and more than eight inches of ground clearance.

This first crop of rugged wagons, which sell for $35,000 to $40,000, presage even bigger models that will start arriving next year from the Big Three as well as Nissan, Volkswagen and Audi. These new wagons will have a third row of seats that face forward and all- wheel drive, and some appear to be designed so that the area behind the front seats could be configured into a flat loading floor, like a truck bed. Chrysler used this configuration to get its PT Cruiser categorized as a light truck.