From India, Proof That a Trip to Mars Doesn’t Have to Break the Bank

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Shortcuts: Planning for a Needed Break From Work

JOSEPH BUBMAN took six months off his job as a management consultant two years ago to work with a charity in Kenya and Guatemala. It was something he had dreamed of doing and he spent almost a year planning it.

“It exceeded my expectations,” he said. “I was able to have a unique life experience and it afforded me opportunities I wouldn’t have once I returned to my employer. I would absolutely do it again if I could.”

It may seem unwise, in these economically shaky times, to request time off, even without pay. Some people fear that the mere act of asking will make them look less committed than their colleagues. Or send a signal that they are thinking of leaving their current job. Or hurt their chances for promotion or a raise.

While none of that is necessarily so, it’s more important than ever to plan how you will approach your employer and to think in terms of a mini-sabbatical — a month or two to do something you have always dreamed of doing — rather than six months to a year.

First, find out if your company has a sabbatical program and what kind. According to an overview of employee benefits this year by the Society for Human Resource Management, 5 percent of about 500 companies surveyed offered paid sabbatical programs in 2009. That dropped to 4 percent in 2013. But unpaid sabbatical leave grew to 16 percent from 12 percent during that time period.

That reflects a trend that Barbara Pagano, co-founder of YourSabbatical, which helps companies and individuals develop sabbatical programs, has observed.

“Companies are slowing down the activation” of such programs, she said, while “I see more employees trying to create their own sabbaticals.”

If your workplace has a program, you are in luck. If not, start researching.

First of all, said Pat Katepoo, founder of WorkOptions, which is aimed at helping employees negotiate for flexible work time, you would be wise to not even ask for a sabbatical unless you have been at a place four or five years.

“A one- or two-year employee is not in a strong negotiating position,” she said.

And make sure you are considered a valuable employee, as well as have some sense of how supportive your boss might be.

“How does she react if you say you need to pick up your kid or bring your mother to an appointment?” Ms. Katepoo said. That might indicate how receptive she is to the concept of a mini-sabbatical.

Six weeks is a good time period to keep in mind for a mini or short-term sabbatical because it allows a full month to go overseas or immerse yourself in a program, with one week at either end to get ready and decompress.

But don’t just shoot off an email to your supervisor asking her to consider the idea. It takes a lot more work than that.

“A sabbatical takes a good deal of research,” Ms. Pagano said. “I would suggest a year to prepare.”

Mr. Bubman would agree. He started working for Vantage Partners, a management consulting company, in 2007 and in 2011 took a six-month sabbatical doing conflict-management work in Guatemala and Kenya with a nonprofit.

He laid the groundwork for his proposal early, first by letting it be known he had an interest in international work and “that if I didn’t have the opportunity to do it, I wouldn’t be around much longer.”

This might not work for everyone. First of all, Mr. Bubman was in his 20s, without a family or a mortgage, and could afford to be flexible. More important, he said, he worked for a company “with a unique culture where being transparent about long-term plans is valued.”

Nonetheless, he knew just expressing an interest wasn’t enough. He tried to be a model employee, even going so far as to volunteer for less glamorous assignments. Once he proposed the sabbatical in March 2010, he agreed not to leave until the following year.

Mr. Bubman’s sabbatical had some unusual aspects. His company had a relationship with Mercy Corps, the international development charity he worked for during his sabbatical, and it donated money to the nonprofit to help pay his stipend.

Disruptions: Apple’s Next Unveiling Could Make or Break a Business

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The Media Equation: In Boston, CNN Stumbles in Rush to Break News

It’s a common impulse, although less common than it used to be. The news audience has been chopped up into ideological camps, and CNN’s middle way has been clobbered in the ratings. The legacy networks’ news divisions can still flex powerful muscles on big stories, and Twitter and other real-time social media sites have seduced a whole new cohort of news consumers.

But the biggest damage to CNN has been self-inflicted — never more so than in June, when in a rush to be first, it came running out of the Supreme Court saying that President Obama’s health care law had been overturned. It was a hugely embarrassing error.

Still, when big news breaks, we instinctively look to CNN. We want CNN to be good, to be worthy of its moment. That impulse took a beating last week. On Wednesday at 1:45 p.m., the correspondent John King reported that a suspect had been arrested. It was a big scoop that turned out to be false.

Mr. King, a good reporter in possession of a bad set of facts, was joined by The Associated Press, Fox News, The Boston Globe and others, but the stumble could not have come at a worse time for CNN. When viewers arrived in droves — the audience tripled to 1.05 million, from 365,000 the week before, according to Nielsen ratings supplied by Horizon Media — CNN failed in its core mission.

It was not the worst mistake of the week — The New York Post all but fingered two innocent men in a front-page picture — but it was a signature error for a live news channel.

CNN has been in the middle of a rehabilitation ever since Jeff Zucker was appointed at the end of last year to run CNN Worldwide. Until now, the defining story in the Zucker era had been a doomed cruise ship that lost power and was towed to port, where its beleaguered passengers dispersed. This week, CNN seemed a lot like that ship.

It’s clear after a busy week that Mr. Zucker can hire all the talent he wants, broaden the scope of their coverage and freshen the look of the joint, but if the network continues to whiff on the big stories, all of that will be for naught. Two people I spoke to at the network, which featured a lot of good work and tireless reporting when it wasn’t getting it wrong, called the error “devastating.”

Twitter and commentators vibrated with umbrage — “Breaking News Is Broken” suggested a headline on Slate — all asking some version of how can this keep happening.

Here’s how: As a general practice, wall-to-wall live television reporting is perilous. Maybe instead of the constant images of police tape, television news should frame their own coverage with a virtual version, indicating that viewers proceed at their own risk.

Despite the suggestion otherwise, people who are on the air talking about the news cannot report while they are doing it. Producers make hundreds of decisions on the fly. The incrementalism and vamping required to fill the hours — “Again, as we have been saying, Anderson ... ” — makes everyone desperate to say anything vaguely new.

Throughout the week, I saw anchors and reporters staring at their phones, hoping a new nugget might arrive to give them something to say. (Memo to television executives everywhere: news is a better product when presenters look at the camera.) And the live environment means that at a certain point, the bosses have to quit shouting into the ear piece, trusting their staff and crossing their fingers.

Several people involved in reporting the Boston bombing case said the story presented particular challenges. In a large-scale assault on public safety, the audience wants to know everything, right this second. Yes, they want you to be accurate, but the implicit promise of a 24-hour news service is that it will happen quickly.

The pressure to produce is ratcheted up accordingly. Editors and producers begin leaning on their reporters, and they, in turn, end up in the business of wish fulfillment, working hard to satisfy their audience, and meeting the expectations of their bosses. It creates a system in which bad reporting can thrive and dominoes can quickly fall the wrong way.

In the instance of the Boston story, the scope of the crime, the number of victims and the fact that it smacked of terror on American shores provoked a vast law enforcement response at the federal and local level. A multiagency array of command centers and responsibilities created a target-rich environment for reporters. But it also created an unwieldy patchwork of sources, all operating in the fog of war, albeit a domestic one.

E-mail: carr@nytimes.com;

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