Best of the Week – Happy Friday! It's time for some of the top highlights from this week at PolicyMic:
- Matthew Gross wrote one of the most viewed articles this week (8,272) for his coverage of the Texas GOP runoff entitled, Texas Runoff Election Results: Ted Cruz Wins, May Spark Summer of Tea Party Upsets; Courtney Hodrick wrote the most shared article (259) for her excellent coverage of the Chick-fil-A controversy, 11 Business Leaders That Put Anti Gay Companies Like Chick-fil-A to Shame; and Jieun Baek wrote the most mic'd article (32 mics) and my personal favorite! for her story, Inside North Korea's Auschwitz: Survivor Reveals Shocking Secret Torture Camps.
- We revamped and re-started our OpenMic debate feature, in which we pose one hot topic for debate every day and have you join the conversation. Join in for the top debate of the week: Will the Mitt Romney Tax Plan Help or Hurt the Economy?
- We've moved into our first official office in downtown Manhattan! Come pay us a visit when you can. We're thinking of cool ideas to decorate our big walls, so please send them over if you have some suggestions.
Feedback – Our editors would love to hear feedback from our pundits about our assigning process for articles. Do you ever check the story queue or the morning emails for story ideas? Or do you rely more on personal emails from the editors suggesting topics? Is there anything we could do to make it easier for you to determine what is trending and what to write about? Can you think of any web tools or features that would make it easier to determine what you should write about?
Top PolicyMic Stories – Chinese Swimmer Steroids: Ye Shiwen Suspected of Doping, But Her Chinese Work Ethic is Reason for Her Success (Warren Rizzi) – The Chinese have a unique ability to push themselves to the limit when it comes to anything.
All the Anti Gay Companies You Fund When You Spend $5.25 On a Chick-fil-A Sandwich (Courtney Hodrick) – At $5.25 for a Classic sandwich, the $1,974,380 that Cathy donated would buy roughly 376,072 sandwiches. Let’s follow the money to see where they’re all going.
FB Stock Woes: Why the Facebook IPO Disaster Could Take Down the Entire California Economy (Jeanne Vickery) – Like investors, California is getting bit by the Facebook IPO slump.
Why No One Criticizes the US Socialized Heath Care Which Has Been Around for 100 Years (Jacob Shmukler) – People in the U.S., despite the loud and visceral claims to the contrary, would and have accepted the idea of socialized medicine being instituted in this country already.
News From Across the Web – July Jobs Numbers – U.S. employers in July hired the most workers in five months, adding 163,000 new positions, but the unemployment rate rose to 8.3 percent. DRUDGE headline: "41 straight months above 8%" and "Longest stretch on record."
What States Would Get a Romney Tax Hike? The Obama campaign released a clickable map that allows individuals to see how many middle-class families in each state would see their taxes increase under the Romney tax plan. http://bit.ly/Mndt1x
Chick-fil-A Protesters to Hold "Kiss-In" – Gay rights organizations are promoting a "National Same-Sex Kiss Day" today where people are encouraged to head to a Chick-fil-A and lock lips with a member of the same sex, in order to protest the fast-food chain owners' opposition to same-sex unions. The kissing crusade comes after President Dan Cathy told the Baptist Press that his company supports "the biblical definition of the family unit." Earlier this week, former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee supported a Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day to urge his supporters to come to eat more chicken sandwiches, in support of Cathy.
Friday Fun – Trickle down economics adorably debunked in 2 minutes (Upworthy); Facts about the U.S. that foreigners don't believe until they come here (Quora); Tiesto named highest-earning DJ (NME); Pharrell Williams has an idea (NY Times, tip-off: David Haber).
What We’re Reading – The life of the party (Bill Clinton) (WSJ); Sexual harassment in the video game world (NY Times); Professors admit anti-conservative bias in academia (Washington Times); Become as mentally fit as an Olympian (AP); Nursing schools brace for faculty shortage (NPR).
