Features

When it comes to people who enjoy wealth and public esteem, some of us who spent the bulk of our adult lives laboring away in low-paying, low-respect careers — yes, journalism — maintain a reservoir of resentment so deep the bottom may never be found.

Still, we try.

It is with this disclaimer that I approach today’s subject: the salaries of Utah’s public university presidents. The gods of serendipity have smiled, and during the past week or so, two things happened:

The Chronicle of Higher Education released its national ranking of the highest-paid state-university presidents. Utah State University’s Stan Albrecht placed 76th with $498,057 in total compensation for the 2011-12 school year. The University of Utah’s David Pershing hauled in $624,123, good enough for 46th.

• Willard author Gabriel Rincon will sign copies of his book “They Dared to Find Freedom” (Tate Publishing, $22.99) from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Saturday, June 1, at Hastings, 340 E. 525 North, Harrisville. The book, subtitled “A Brief History of Benito Juarez and Mexico, From 1806 Through 1872,” is written in both English and Spanish. This is a free event.

TOP OF THE MORNING: INSIDE THE CUTTHROAT WORLD OF MORNING TV. By Brian Stelter. Grand Central Publishing. 320 pages. $28.

Dishy accounts of behind-the-scenes turmoil in the television industry can be a fun read, and there are moments when “Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV” rises to the occasion.

But this recent history of the falling fortunes of NBC’s “Today” and the ratings ascendency of ABC’s “Good Morning America” by New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter suffers from the author’s strained attempts to entertain and today’s general abundance of media coverage.

If you thought there would be little original programming this summer, think again.

Cable always shines in the summer, but this year even the broadcast networks are debuting more scripted series than usual.

Please note: This is not an exhaustive list.

On a recent trip to San Francisco, I rented a car for four days. But not just any car. Somebody else’s car. Somebody who was on a trip like me, except that while I was landing at SFO, this person was taking off — or more likely was already gone. I’d have the car back long before the person needed it, or so went the plan.

FlightCar, the California startup behind all this, aims to be the Airbnb of rental cars. It began when Kevin Petrovic, then 18, had a striking realization when he was returning from a trip: Long-term parking was full of cars sitting idle while their outbound owners traveled, and in the next lot over a fleet of rental cars sat idle waiting for inbound travelers to pick them up.

“We thought, ‘Couldn’t we make those two lots the same thing?’ ” said Petrovic, now 19, one of three teenagers behind FlightCar. He and the other two founders, Rujul Zaparde and Shri Ganeshram, put their college plans (MIT, Harvard and Princeton) on hold once they determined that the answer was yes.

Finding a babysitter for Saturday night can be tough in neighborhoods where people rarely know one another’s names. But that’s changing, thanks to Nextdoor, a local social network designed to connect neighbors.

Over the past year or so, more than 12,600 neighborhoods in 50 states have joined Nextdoor, and about 1 million messages are posted every day. San Francisco, Seattle and Denver neighborhoods have each surpassed 90 percent participation, but Nextdoor isn’t just for urban areas. It’s for everyone.

Nextdoor members have been largely reliant on computers for access to the network, but they now can use a free app for iPhone and iPad. I spoke with Nirav Tolia, Nextdoor’s co-founder, to find out the differences between the website and the app. Mostly, it’s one of convenience.

Twelve times over five years, Yazmin Cruz and Marcio Hernandez went to court to try to make their uncontested divorce happen. Twelve times, their paperwork got caught in a snag, and to their great consternation, kept their marriage intact.

This month, they were back in Sacramento’s William R. Ridgeway Family Relations Courthouse, for the 13th time. Once again, something came up: a child support issue. But this time, they would not leave the building in frustration. This time, they had signed up for the Sacramento Superior Court’s new one-day divorce program.