I N S I D E
‘Carter High:’ Film Shows Impact Effort to Halt Prison Revolving of Bad Decisions Page 10 Door Loses Funding Page 17
Vol. 51, No. 4 Nov. 5 - Nov. 11 , 2015
Black Media Ownership in Drought by James Clingman - Pg. 28
Hospital Provides Breast Cancer Awareness Page 18
Storytellers Take to the Mic in Ward 8 Page 30
NNPA EXCLUSIVE
Russell Simmons Speaks Out on RushCard Glitch Vows to Regain Customers’ Trust By Stacy M. Brown WI Senior Writer, NNPA Contributing Writer Russell Simmons hasn’t slept much since news broke in mid-October that users of his RushCard couldn’t access their own money and were locked out of their accounts due to a computer glitch, which left some unable to make rent payments, pay utility bills or buy groceries for their families. “Technology glitches happen, but this was a tsunami,” said Simmons in an exclusive, hour-long interview with the National Newspaper Publishers Association News / Photo by Valerie Goodlow of NNPA
Wire. Users began experiencing problems when Simmons’ company switched to a new transaction-processing provider, something that he said it has done successfully at least four times. “We made the transfer of processes four separate times in the past, and the next thing you know, I get a text message that we sent to our customers that we were down for two hours,” said Simmons, the iconic business magnate who founded Def Jam Records and the Phat Farm clothing line. “Our call center usually gets about 600 calls – now it’s [getting] 600,000 calls.” Simmons said that three multi-billion dollar corporations
were involved in the process and each has been helpful in resolving the technical issues related to the latest transition. Simmons credited MasterCard CEO Ajaypal Singh Banga with immediately responding to the problem and helping to fix it. “He’s the CEO of a $120 billion company, and he picked the telephone up on the first ring,” Simmons said, adding that Banga has talked a lot about finding ways to reach underserved communities and others who don’t use traditional banks. In the aftermath of the outage that wreaked havoc on the lives of
SIMMONS Page 9
Exelon: Merger Opponents are ‘Misguided’ Stadium Deal not tied to Bowser Agreement By Stacy M. Brown WI Senior Writer Environmentalists are being disingenuous or they’re flat out wrong when they claim that the proposed $6.8 billion merger between Pepco and Exelon doesn’t provide tangible customer benefits and interferes with clean energy efforts, Exelon officials said. The fact is, the merger settle-
ment enjoys broad support in the District, said Paul Elsberg, the senior media relations manager for Exelon. “The merger settlement was endorsed and signed not only by the D.C. government, but by the Office of the People’s Counsel which is the ratepayer advocate, the Office of the Attorney General, the Apartment and Office Building Association of Metropolitan Wash-
ington, and the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority, among others,” Elsberg said. A majority of the District of Columbia Council – seven members – have sent a letter to the Public Service Commission stating their support for the settlement and urging the PSC to approve the deal. Also, numerous residents, business leaders, faith groups, nonprof-
EXCELON Page 26
Celebrating Over 50 Years of Service / Serving More Than 50,000 African American Readers Throughout The Metropolitan Area
Fall Foliage / Photo by Robert R. Roberts
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