This, the first of our regional blogs, is authored by the technology and financial journalist Dominic Basulto. Dominic is a New York native, has been a senior editor at Corante since day one and has written for a number of online and offline media companies. Send tips or story ideas to: basulto@gmail.com.
About this weblog
Here we'll report daily on the latest tech and business developments in New York City. Impossible we concede: comprehensive coverage of the city's every story. What we hope you'll find: tips, tidbits and perspectives you won't find elsewhere. As well as unique insights, original interviews and more that should be of interest to New York's vibrant community of technologists and those who track, invest in and report on them.
Donny Deutsch will announce the winner of the Media Person of the Year on CNBC's "The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch" on Monday. According to Deutsch, the frontrunner in the contest sponsored by I Want Media is shock jock Howard Stern, but there are a number of darkhorse candidates in the running, including Craig Newmark of Craig's List and Nick Denton of Gawker Media:
"Blog pal Arianna Huffington calls Nick Denton "the Rupert Murdoch of the blogosphere." Actually, his Gawker Media stable of popular blogs seems more like Conde Nast of blog world, attracting desirable demos and big-name advertisers. While Jason Calacanis sold his Weblogs outfit to AOL and Andrew Sullivan hooked up his blog to Time.com, Denton licensed Gawker content to Yahoo, insisting that "the whole point about blogs is that they're not part of big media." Denton and his crew of scrappy, buzz-making bloggers have probably done more than about anyone to establish blogs as a legit alternative medium."
Let's just hope that Martha Stewart doesn't win. (yes, she's one of the 10 candidates)
The official Web site of the city of Toronto brazenly includes a list of productions (both film and TV) shot in Toronto, while supposedly representing New York. There's a whole archive of films, from 1979-2004. In just the past three years, for example, The Cinderella Man, Dark Water, Ice Princess, 111 Gramercy Park (a TV pilot), Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen and Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle were all filmed in Toronto.
Here's a link to "Great Locations to Shoot in Toronto" from the Toronto Film & Television Office -- see if any of these locations can possibly recreate the ambience and feel of New York City. The image to the left, for example, is Union Station Hall - a poor man's version of Grand Central Terminal.
Rachel Sklar of FishbowlNY was positively ga-ga about the latest Huffington Post party in Los Angeles that featured a spectacular commingling of Old Media and New Media. A number of boldfaced names were in attendance - including literary stars from both Left and Right Coasts, a raft of New York bloggers flown in special for the event, big-time media names like Bill Maher, assorted glitterati friends of Arianna, and execs from Yahoo. At Fishbowl NY, that potent combination of media stars (new and old) translated into two days of full-color pictures on the blog and two days of breathless recounting of who said what, to whom, over what kind of cocktail:
"As any reader of December's Vanity Fair can surmise, [Arianna Huffington's] house is gorgeous, spacious and lovely and warm and unpretentious, and the perfect venue for a glittering and convivial party for all sorts of glamorous media/entertainment types. Which was fortunate, because hundreds of them were about to arrive for her party for Defamer's Mark Lisanti and Gawker Media, her happy reciprocation of Nick Denton's party for her in September, co-hosted by Gawker's new business associate Scott Moore of Yahoo! We're not sure how to end that sentence with anything other than an exclamation point, but really the night was so exciting and fun that we didn't need to try."
If you can get past all the party details above, one thing is clear: we have just witnessed a mad mating of Old Media and New Media, brokered by companies like Yahoo and individuals like Arianna Huffington. Companies like Gawker Media (built on an amalgam of low-cost blogging tools and celebrity-fueled scandal chatter), it seems, are now just as mainstream as the highbrow, up-market New York Times or Washington Post. Check out the FishbowlNY photos one more time (like this lovely pic of Arianna) and then write down the date: November 17. That's the day that the distinction between Old Media and New Media officially blurred away. While Internet gearheads were worried about blog widgets and RSS doodads, media-savvy folks from Yahoo were figuring it all out.
Over at Gelf Magazine, David Goldenberg interviews David Hauslaib of Jossip, who discusses his blog's coverage of the Peter Braunstein ("the Chelsea rapist") story and adds his insights about the difference between bloggers and journalists. As we pointed out yesterday on Corante New York, Jossip and Gawker were two of the blogs raked over the media coals by David Carr of The New York Times for their obsessive speculation and light-hearted treatment of the Chelsea Rapist over the past ten days or so. Hauslaib responds to his detractors at the Times:
"I'm glad Jossip is on David's radar, as I'm a big fan of his and respect his work intransigently. But sure, it's a little hypocritical for such a respected reporter to harp on a blog's journalistic credibility (of which Jossip claims to have in very limited capacities), when he doesn't so much as fire off an email asking for explanation. That said, he made some great points, but Jossip's editorial isn't about placating his ego, so of course we're going to go on the offensive, if only to pretend to feel hurt."
If you haven't seen the cover of this week's New York Magazine, be forewarned... The front cover is a soft-porn orgy of grabbing and groping. Not a single piece of clothing on any of the fifteen or so naked individuals participating in what can only be described as no-holds-barred group sex. As if to emphasize the point, there's the word "SEX" in about 30-point font in the middle of the cover. Turn to page 40 - there's a 2-page anime-style spread of characters having sex in every possible position in every possible place on a New York City street (on top of taxicabs, against the side of limos, next to subway stations, on the ground, in the back seats of cars...). There's boy-on-girl, girl-on-girl, boy-on-boy and girl-on-boy-on-girl.
It's a sad day for New York Magazine. Sex sells, and now New York Magazine is using sex to sell magazines. Supermodels in skimpy outfits on the cover are cool, but orgies of naked flesh? While we appreciate lascivious behavior as much as the next person (perhaps even more...), isn't New York Magazine supposed to be some kind of issues-oriented city magazine that you're not embarrassed to read on the subway? Not only are the back 10-to-15 pages of the magazine usually stuffed to the gills with call girl ads and escort (i.e. prostitution) offers, now the front of the magazine has copied a page from Larry Flynt's Hustler playbook.
New York Magazine - Oh, I only read it for the articles (snicker)... What do you think? Am I overreacting?
UPDATE: I've included the graphic of this week's New York Magazine in place of the Larry Flynt "Hustler" graphic
"I think anyone who has lost a son, a daughter, or a loved one in the war in Iraq should sue The New York Times for Judith Miller's false reporting about the so-called "weapons of mass destruction" as a premise for that war. It's one thing to get a bad review, it's another to lose more than 2,000 lives because of false or inaccurate reporting. Imagine having the Judith Millers of the world working for you and getting away with things that are inconceivable to a journalist. We have to draw the line somewhere, and that's where I draw the line. All the news that's fit to print seems to have evolved into "whatever we decide to print is the news, whether it is correct or not!"
[... brief digression about stock market portfolio...]
In addition, the current mess with Judith Miller has made me wonder what is going on there. What kind of reporting is The New York Times doing? Who are they really working for? Can we afford to believe anything they print? Do they have a conscience? Do they know that power includes responsibility? Do they even know what they are doing? I think The New York Times has some big-time cleaning up to do, but I wonder if it's too late."
"What's happening on Wall Street? What's happening at the Stock Exchange? I wanna kno-ow! Now, thanks to BusinessWeek, CNBC Money Honey Maria Bartiromo will tell us on a bi-weekly basis in her new column in the magazine and at BusinessWeek.com... The column is called "Face Time with Maria Bartiromo," because oy, look at that punum. We saw her at a breakfast sponsored by The Week magazine a few months back and she's objectively still adorable."
Oh, how times have changed. Six months ago, the arrival of the Huffington Post super-blog was greeted with scorn, derision, even laughter. Now, it looks like the skeptics have been proven wrong. Not convinced? Even the snark-prone FishbowlNY has written a resoundingly positive review of the Huffington Post on the blog's six-month anniversary:
"Congratulations, Huffington Post! Today is your six-month anniversary since your much-heralded and skeptically-greeted debut on May 9, 2005... Pretty decent six months, no? [Huffington's] bloggers have only gotten stronger, too; shrewdly [Arianna] has invited all sorts of good people to join her ranks, understanding that the next blog star can come from anywhere... and that new content is like crack. The breaking news, the links, the unapologetically constant taking the Bush administration task -- they're all working to engage the audience (the comments section on the blog are always overflowing).
No one could have fully predicted the rise of HuffPo, and Arianna (nice Vanity Fair profile this month, by the way!), mostly because it's resulted from nimbly responding to stories and shrewdly capitalizing on opportunity. At this rate, who knows where the h*** they'll be at a year."
"Someone just wrote a book about me. It's the biggest pile of garbage I've ever seen, written by a highly questionable and, some people say, disgraced reporter named Tim O'Brien. I looked up O'Brien on the Internet and found stories comparing him to Jayson Blair. Blair was The New York Times' infamous reporter, who was fired in shame after he was found guilty of fabricating stories, sources, and quotes. Jayson Blair almost took down The New York Times, and now the paper might be taken down by Judith Miller, who's just as bad as Jayson Blair...
The fact is The New York Times is going to hell. They published a major story about me on Sunday that they knew was wrong... The paper's editors knew the story was wrong, but they wanted to try and sell newspapers. The New York Times was once a great newspaper, but it's not worth the paper it's printed on anymore. Changes have to be made. The New York Times is now reeling from so many huge mistakes by reporters and management that people are saying it's one of the worst newspapers in America."
If you happen to cross paths with Donald Trump this week, it's probably best to change course and start running in the opposite direction - at least until things simmer down. And don't mention the hair, whatever you do.
Don't miss Columbia Journalism Review's interview with Elizabeth Spiers, the [soon to be former] editor-in-chief at Mediabistro.com and the original editor of the media & celebrity gossip blog Gawker. Spiers discusses her new book deal, analyzes the recent blogger firings at Conde Nast and CNN, clarifies the "incestuous and confusing" links between bloggers at Mediabistro and Gawker, and weighs in on whether or not the "15 minutes of fame" for bloggers like herself have ended:
"Regarding bloggers' 15 minutes -- I think the media focus on the format is dying down, which means it's maturing. I'm on record somewhere in 2002 as saying that the blog bubble was going to burst any minute, and Nick Denton is on record agreeing with me --and that was well before we started Gawker. But you're not going to stop hearing about blogs; they're just going to become such a fixture that they're no longer unique and they're no longer portrayed as an isolated media phenomenon."
His media company may be splitting in two, but that doesn't mean 82-year-old Sumner Redstone plans to take a more laissez-faire approach to overseeing the twin pillars of the new Viacom media empire. In an interview covered by the New York Daily News, Redstone reminded the media world that, "I never said I would take my hands off the wheel. I said I would share the wheel with the two companies' CEOs." In fact, Redstone also said that he plans to keep working "another 20 or 30 years." That would make Mr. Redstone, well, 102 years old. You'll have to pry his cold, clammy fingers off Viacom at that point.
That may not be good news for investors, who have already punished Viacom's stock this year and have grown disenchanted with Redstone's efforts to boost Viacom's stock price. Redstone is convinced, though, that splitting the company in two will unlock shareholder value and, quite possibly, assure his legacy in the world of conglomerate media.
The Media Giraffe Project, sponsored by the journalism program at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, hopes to find and spotlight the hundreds of individuals across the nation who are "making innovative, sustainable use of media (old and new) to foster participatory democracy and community." As part of this effort, the Media Giraffe project is asking people to email them if they happen to spot a media giraffe in the wild.
And, indeed, a few media giraffes have already been spotted in New York City... According to the Media Giraffe database (free to browse), the following individuals have already been tagged as media giraffes: Michael Bloomberg (yes, that Michael Bloomberg), Nick Denton (Gawker Media), Scott Heiferman (MeetUp.com), Nicholas Kristof (New York Times), Andrew Rasiej (Personal Democracy Forum and Wi-Fi advocate), Joshua Schachter (del.icio.us), Jon Stewart (The Daily Show) and Noah Winer (MoveOn.org).
The Wall Street Journal's new, smaller tabloid-sized format went live in Europe and Asia today - a change intended to "make its articles more accessible to readers." The change to a smaller format could save the paper $17 million a year. The Wall Street Journal is playing down the cost savings, though, and touting the greater readability of the paper - there will be shorter news stories, a slightly new design, more color and a jazzy new typepace. That means more readers and, it's hoped, more advertisers. It's a sign of what's to come in the U.S. market, where the WSJ recently unveiled a new weekend edition and announced plans for a smaller-size format for the paper beginning in 2006.
In its "Best of NYC 2005" issue, The Village Voice hands out a number of awards to local New York bloggers. In fact, sometimes it seems like you can't turn a page of the issue without mention of a blog. So, without further ado, some of the best blogs in the Big Apple:
Alan Meckler, CEO of Jupitermedia, writes that the deck chairs of the media Titanic are being arranged at a faster pace than ever before. If you thought traditional media was threatened by the Internet iceberg way back in 1999, you ain't seen nothin' yet:
"The deckchairs are being rearranged at an even faster pace today. Every Google announcement (or speculated announcement) causes acute consternation amongst fellow Search companies, WiFi organizations, media conglomerates and the advertising industry in general.
And if Google did not exist, Internet angst would still be so acute that the deckchair dance would still be at fever pitch. The future of music, television, radio, newspapers, movies, games and related industries is up in the air. Readers and content users are moving to the Net in droves so much so that media empires could be gutted overnight. Thus we have the traditional media companies making big bets once again on Internet properties that may or may not help replace "traditional revenue streams" and market share."
Take, for example, Time Warner's sudden fondness for its AOL property. Just a month or two ago, one would have been forgiven for thinking that Time Warner had finally disposed of that unsightly little blemish. Now, AOL is front and center in any discussion of building shareholder value at AOL. What's more, now Google, Microsoft and Comcast are knocking at Time Warner's door, asking for a piece of the AOL action.
Not only is Microsoft considering a bid for Time Warner's AOL unit - now it appears that Google and Comcast also are talking to Time Warner (off the record) about a potential deal. Google and Comcast, though, want nothing to do with AOL's dial-up business - they just want access to AOL's web portal and content. According to the New York Times, "the development means that Time Warner, which has long been under pressure by Wall Street to sell off its AOL unit, now finds itself in the enviable position of having multiple suitors, which may drive up AOL's value." Somewhere, corporate raider Carl Icahn must be smiling - he's been pressuring Time Warner to do something - anything! - to unlock shareholder value.
The Wall Street Journal is getting smaller -- and not just in terms of shorter articles and fewer market quotes. By January 2007, the paper will physically shrink to a narrower width. Anytime you can trim $18 million a year in costs from the annual budget by getting rid of things nobody notices anyway, I guess it's a good thing. Although I'll miss the current size and heft of the Wall Street Journal, executives from the newspaper insist that commuters in cities like New York will embrace the smaller, narrower version of the WSJ: "The change... reflects consumer preference for smaller newspapers that are easier to read while traveling on crowded buses or subways... Readers do like smaller products, particularly in commuting markets, and the Journal is to large extent a commuting newspaper,"
Christopher Byron of the New York Post has an excoriating piece ("End the Martha-thon") on Martha Stewart and the precipitous drop in shareholder value at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. According to Byron, Martha Stewart is nothing more than a glorified ex-con and a national embarrassment. But he saves the biggest pie in the face for the "media elite" -- the misguided souls at NBC who are responsible for putting together the reality TV disaster known as "The Apprentice: Martha Stewart":
"For the aforementioned [reality TV guru] Mark Burnett bloke to have begun cobbling together a celebratory knockoff of his Donald Trump reality TV show for Stewart even before she headed for the joint, may have seemed at the time like a clever, if cynical, way to capitalize on her rapidly spreading notoriety, if not fame. But for NBC's Zucker to take Burnett's fatuous drivel about Stewart and her business smarts, and power-spray it every Wednesday evening into millions upon millions of American homes, is arrogance and cynicism of a sort one rarely encounters even on Sixth Avenue. This isn't "The Beverly Hillbillies," it's a reality TV fraud show about a woman pretending to be a paradigm of business virtue when she's actually a recently released white-collar jailbird."
Mark Glaser of Online Journalism Review says that Yahoo has emerged as "public enemy No. 1" of the mainstream media. Like it or not, old-time media conglomerates better start thinking of Yahoo as a media company:
"Yahoo is a media company; it has designs on doing original news and entertainment content tailored specifically for the Web; and it's time for old-line media companies to think hard about how they're going to compete. News Corp. and Barry Diller's InterActiveCorp have already showed their hands, rolling up all the Internet content they can buy. But the MSM is caught between a rock and hard place, because dozens of news outlets have licensed content to Yahoo News and rely on Yahoo and Google to do their online search, paid-search advertisements, and contextual ads."
According to a new report prepared by a professor at Ball State University, "the average American spends a staggering nine hours a day tuned in, plugged in, online, on the phone, scanning a newspaper or using some other form of media — more time than he or she spends sleeping," And three of those hours are spent multi-tasking - surfing the Web while watching TV or talking on the phone while watching TV. At times, the report manages to sound like a Kinsey study: "Men seek media contact of "short duration and instant gratification" while women are interested in "longer, more thoughtful" interaction."
The "nine hours" cited in the report is an attention-grabber -- but consider the following scenario... You wake up, check e-mail and news in the morning on the PC (1 hour), head to work where you read the newspaper on the subway (30 minutes). Then, you work at your computer or make phone calls to clients all day (4 hours). Afterwards, you head home and read a magazine on the commute home (30 minutes). After a nice takeout dinner from Zabar's, you turn on the TV and watch the Yanks beat the Angels (3 hours). That's 9 hours, real easy.
CNN/Money summarizes what we've all known for some time now: media conglomerates like Walt Disney, Viacom, News Corp. and Time Warner are all experiencing tough times while, at the same time, companies like Google, eBay and Yahoo have shown a surprising ability to reinvent themselves and uncover new growth opportunities. A sluggish advertising market and weaker than expected box office results for Hollywood films - these are just two of the factors why investors have soured on Big Media stocks over the past nine months (shares of these companies are down more than 11% through the first nine months of 2005). So, is there any upside potential for these media stocks?
"Some professional investors are starting to think that the sell-off in the media sector has been overdone. Despite all the short-term concerns, analysts expect the four leaders to post earnings increases of at least 16 percent in 2006 and more than 10 percent annually for the next few years. Yet, the stocks all trade in a range of 16 to 21 times 2006 earnings estimates. That's only a slight premium to the broader market multiple of about 15.6 even though earnings for the S&P 500 are only expected to be up 7 percent next year and 9 percent over the next few years."
It's not only East Coast papers like the New York Times that are coming to grips with the fact that they might be ink-stained dinosaurs. The Los Angeles Times, still one of the best newspapers in the country, is undergoing some major financial problems and a lot of soul-searching about its future. According to the Wall Street Journal, the newspaper's bigwigs have decided that the only possible way to boost circulation and bring in more advertisers is to pander to their readers: "After five years of sagging circulation and advertising, new managers at the Times are pushing for more coverage of Hollywood and celebrities. They want shorter stories and more regional reporting in the intensely competitive bedroom communities around Los Angeles..."
Hmmm... celebrities, gossip, soft news, short punchy items. Sounds like the LA Times is being Gawker-ized. Or, at least, Defamer-ized.
Speaking of Gawker, the New York Observer recently had an interesting feature on Nick Denton, the so-called Gawker King. ThePoliticker called Gawker "the combination steroid and tonic that both inflates and slaps down societies in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, as well as the borderless society of Web-porn fans." (memo to the LA Times: you forgot the porn)
Oh, and there's a great quote from Denton that sums up the basic problem facing all newspapers as they attempt to hang on to readers:
"You can’t pretend to yourself that people actually have highfalutin taste... Nobody ever searches for ‘Inequality in America.’"
New York Press, in its Best of Manhattan 2005 issue, has named ThePoliticker as "Best Political Blog" and Brownstoner as "Best New Blog to Feed Our Real Estate Whore."
In its Media & Politics section, New York Press explains why Brownstoner is worthy of a daily read:
"[The] web site is a refreshing breath of homespun air in the slimy world of real estate blather... While similarly minded Web sites like Curbed (2004's Best Blog to Feed Our Real-Estate Whore) attack the housing market with a cynical wink-wink, Gawker-style nudge, Brownstoner purveys a plain-talkin', no-nonsense approach. It kind of feels like a bearded, know-it-all dad discussing his favorite subject. Namely, brownstone Brooklyn."
Ever wonder how the cartoonists over at The New Yorker consistently come up with humorous cartoons, week after week, year after year? At the Cartoonists Unleashed event at last week's New Yorker Festival, the secret formula was revealed (and later uploaded to Flickr).
In Column A, there is a list of words: grim reaper, robber, cat, pig, boss, shrink. In Column B, there is a list of words: dog, naked people, santa, receptionist. In Column C, there is a list of possible destinations: beach, business meeting, office, cocktail party, etc.
Then, all you do is combine Column A with Column B and Column C... A dog is talking to another dog at the office: "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."
Monday marked the debut of NYP@Work, the new 12-page supplement in the New York Post devoted to professional lifestyle issues. There are stories on beating the CrackBerry addiction, comfortable shoes to wear to work during the morning commute (sorry fellas, this one is for the ladies), and trendy office supplies to turn you into a "professional powerhouse." Quite frankly, not a lot of meat the first time out. Despite a full-color BlackBerry picture on the front of NYP@Work that lured us in, there's not much inside to keep our attention.
Too bad. It's just the latest sign that traditional business news doesn't bring in the advertisers - look at the Wall Street Journal's new weekend edition and all the various changes at the New York Times. What brings in advertisers is product-oriented fluff (Hey, look at the cool new desk lamp from Target!).
According to the chairman of Time Warner, bolstering the financial performance of AOL is a "priority" and the strategic key to unlocking shareholder value at the media giant. The New York Times points out that these comments from the Time Warner executive suite signal "a tweak in strategy and a belief that the stigma of the AOL-Time Warner merger is finally a thing of the past." What's strange is that if you read the first half of the article in the New York Times, it sounds like Time Warner is trying real hard to improve things at AOL and that AOL is definitely part of the long-term future at Time Warner. Then, if you read the second half of the article, it sounds like Time Warner still is thinking of selling off AOL to the highest bidder, whether it is Microsoft or Google or Yahoo.
Anyway, in early January, I wrote a piece for Tech Central Station ("The Internet Company That Time Almost Forgot") about all the reasons why AOL could have a big year in 2005. Maybe it's time for Mr. Parsons and Mr. Icahn to take a look.
On Monday, I received a small note from the head of Community Affairs/Media Relations at The New York Times about the new TimesSelect "premium content" offering. Towards the end of the correspondence was a mention that "plans are in the works for some Op-Ed columnists to produce weblogs."
Apparently, FishBowlNY received the same memo, and was just as surprised to find out about the new op-ed blogs:
"Excuse me? We're getting 8 brand-spankin' new blogs? I haven't seen this anywhere else but the mind frankly reels. MoDo, we'll link to you if you link to us! Details as we have them..."
"It's a shame that the center of the media industry has moved to Silicon Valley and nobody told New York :-) I should write Mayor Bloomberg a letter about that. It would point out that many Silicon Valley companies such as Google, Yahoo, and Ebay, are in fact media companies. They are technology enabled media companies. They publish digital rather than paper pages but they carry content and advertising just like a newspaper or magazine paper page.
And our media industry is growing like gangbusters while New York's is not. Our media industry is hiring like crazy (Yahoo has 700 new positions to fill, Google a similar number) while New York's media industry continues to cut jobs and budgets..."
David Lidsky of Fast Company has some unkind words for the new Weekend Edition of the Wall Street Journal:
"Here's why the Journal's Saturday paper is dead on arrival: There are no surprises whatsoever. At least at this point, there's no evidence of a single fresh idea, or even the deft execution of a well-worn chestnut of an idea. It's a focus-grouped, advertiser-friendly confection with nothing that I can't get in hundreds of other venues. What the Journal seems to have fallen victim to is the kind of insular thinking that kills so many entrenched enterprises: It seems to believe that there's value in the information being delivered by the Wall Street Journal, as if that were enough to carry the day. The decided lack of splash here is also another tale of the downside of hype. If you can't live up to it, the backlash isn't going to be pretty."
According to Lidsky, the "Pursuits" section of the Weekend Edition was especially odious -- what he called "a juiced up version of Personal Journal that's basically a cliche of every entertainment or general-interest magazine's front of the book and every "weekend" section of a major-market daily newspaper."
Unfortunately for Mr. Lidsky, it appears that he doesn't take much of an interest in the financial markets, since there were more than a few new features that got my attention. In the "Money & Investing" section, there was a first-rate article on "New Tools to Hedge Your Home." In the "Pursuits" section, we agree that the article called "When Tough Guys Want Comfy Shoes" was a bit on the cheesy side, but there was also a book review of a new book about Google. The Money & Investing section also has a brand-new column ("Green Thumb") on matters of personal finance. There's also expanded coverage of Friday's financial markets performance and a new "Breaking Views" column that has insights about Wall Street inside dealings (this weekend, it was speculation as to whether Carl Icahn's takeover bid would impact Time Warner's stock price).
A bit of news from last week: according to the New York Post, Viacom's MTV Networks and Comcast are working on a joint venture that will create several new cable networks. An unnamed Comcast source says that the new offerings will include "several lifestyle channels — on topics such as cars and wealth — as well as video-on-demand and e-commerce." Reps for both MTV Networks and Comcast were tight-lipped about the move.
Alan Meckler of Jupitermedia is none too pleased to find that many of the brilliant op-ed columnists of the New York Times are now hidden behind $49.95-per-year subscription walls:
"Readers know that I feel that the Times continues to make a big mistake by getting more restrictive with their free offerings. I guess they feel their purchase of about.com, a free site, gives them license to make the quality Times content an increasingly closed environment?"
Daily Kos also weighs in on the decision by the New York Times to put op-ed columnists like Paul Krugman behind bars (oops, walls):
"I'll be sad to lose Krugman. I also think the Times might be making a mistake here - not only will they be removing their op-ed columnists from the ever-growing "discussion" in the blogosphere and the online world in general, but Krugman's columns are almost always some of the site's most popular pieces. I'm sure they've crunched the numbers and have decided the subscription fees will outweigh the loss in traffic and ad revenue, but only time will tell."
Jason Kottke points to Paragraph, a workspace for writers in New York (we assume noisy, keyboard-clacking bloggers are welcome). The Union Square space is kinda like an incubator -- for writers. At $132/month, it's cheap. You get a private workspace, a lounge, a kitchen, and a locker. Plus, there's free Wi-Fi access throughout the facility. And, as a bonus, there's a fireplace (non-working).
The Wall Street Journal has been preparing big-time for the launch of its new weekend edition on September 17. A brief item in Tuesday's print edition tipped us off that the company BreakingViews will be supplying financial news and opinions for the WSJ Weekend Edition. (In fact, it looks like a larger collaboration might be involved -- a week or two ago, I remember seeing an op-ed piece on hedge funds from a BreakingViews contributor).
Here's the tagline from the BreakingViews Web site:
"Breakingviews leads the way in international financial commentary. Where other websites provide only news, we bring you views: pithy, sophisticated opinion on the top financial stories, as they break. Now we're bringing our unique brand of journalism to America, with a dedicated US edition launching at the end of the year... At a time when people are being deluged with information, breakingviews cuts to the chase. Short, punchy articles. Real-time analysis, delivered while the markets are still open. And above all – views, not news.
There are a few other plugs on the company's site touting "real-time comment on the big US and global stories" and "agenda-setting commentary." Of course, it's all hidden behind subscription walls, so most bloggers and Internet surfers are probably blissfully unaware of the existence of the company.
Without taking anything away from BreakingViews (maybe it's my deep-seated inferiority complex when it comes to the Brits), is this type of "real-time commentary" anything different than what's supplied by the various Corante contributors or by other bloggers? Don't bloggers provide "real-time comment" and try to create "agenda-setting commentary"? Bloggers provide views, not news, so what's so achingly different about BreakingViews? Is the Wall Street Journal afraid to call a blog a blog?
This week's New York Magazine - in addition to having a lovely cover photo of Gwyneth Paltrow for its Fall Preview edition - features a preview of a far different sort inside: a look at all the reasons why the Wall Street Journal could be up for sale by the end of the year. The likely bidders in any kind of deal would involve some of the biggest names in the media world: the Washington Post, News Corp. and The New York Times. The article is not one of those pump-and-dump articles churned out by hedge fund manager James Cramer for the magazine -- it's an eight-page dissection of all the reasons why the Wall Street Journal is a "beleaguered" newspaper desperately trying to right a sinking ship. So, without more ado, a list of the 10 reason why the WSJ could find itself with new ownership sooner rather than later:
(1) The newspaper's new "Weekend Journal" (due out on September 17) is nothing more than a panicked, bet-the-house attempt to bring in more advertising dollars from companies that usually do not advertise in the Journal (i.e. Coach, Ralph Lauren, Best Buy and "importers of Ligurian olive oil").
(2) Even with the new advertisers, the new "Weekend Journal" will do little to add to the newspaper's bottom line -- the new venture is "so expensive and complex" that the costs outweigh the benefits
(3) Content at the Journal has been becoming more advertising-driven than at any time in the paper's history, thanks to an increasing diversion of resources to "Personal Journal" type of articles (e.g. "the rising number of home chefs using dishwashers to cook fish"). As a result, the newspaper's reputation for sterling, well-researched pieces has taken a hit.
(4) Demographics -- the readers of the Journal aren't getting any younger
(5) Bad management and horrendous corporate governance
(6) High staff turnover, as even the individuals responsible for shepherding through the "Weekend Journal" are jumping ship at the first opportunity
(7) The CEO of Dow Jones (Peter Kann) and the publisher of the WSJ (Karen Elliott House) are husband & wife -- what New York Magazine calls "an obvious managerial idiosyncrasy." Hint: employees of the WSJ sometimes refer to Karen Elliott House as "Karen Elliott Spouse."
(8) A failure to diversify the WSJ brand into other media-related ventures
(9) A failure to keep up with the Joneses (the Dow Joneses, maybe, but not the Joneses). According to New York Magazine, the managing editor of the WSJ (Paul Steiger) "wears a faded tie and a yellow shirt that looks as if it slid off a Brooks Brothers shelf twenty years ago..."
(10) Management succession questions - both Paul Steiger and Peter Kann are set to retire two years from now, which could lead to the mother-of-all-board-battles for control of the WSJ.
All that being said, though, I can't think of a better-written newspaper in New York, and it would be a shame to see the Wall Street Journal snatched up by someone like Rupert Murdoch (who also publishes the New York Post). A reporter for the WSJ sums up this sentiment perfectly at the end of the New York Magazine piece:
"As the company’s advertising crisis continues, with few signs of abating, these reporters have found themselves with no choice other than to root hard for Kann to pull off an eleventh-hour victory with the “Weekend Edition,” to ensure that the company retains its independence. After one reporter angrily itemized his grievances against Kann, he took a deep breath and sighed. “On the other hand, he’s all that separates us from ‘Page Six’ and Bill O’Reilly. May God bless him and keep him safe."
Vanity Fair has released its annual "powerbroker ranking," which lists the two founders of Google (Sergey Brin, Larry Page) at #1, followed by a number of big-time media moguls such as Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone (#3) and News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch (#4). As the New York Daily News points out, "The young Google guys have toppled the old-line media moguls," marking a changing of the guard in the world of media and advertising.
Think you know a lot about the future of media? Well, I Want Media is offering its readers a chance to win a free copy of Veronis Suhler Stevenson's 2005 Communications Industry Forecast. All you have to do is submit a brain-busting question about the future of media and communications by September 19:
"For your chance to win, submit one question about the publication to I Want Media. Jim Rutherfurd, executive vice president and managing director of Veronis Suhler Stevenson, will answer the most intriguing question submitted, and his response will be posted on I Want Media.
The reader who submits the selected question will receive a FREE copy of the 2005 edition -- a $1,995 value. The private equity firm's annual publication is a "must-have" tool for media executives, according to USA Today."
For hints about what kinds of questions to ask, check out Veronis Suhler Stevenson's press release. Hint: four years from now, the worlds of media and advertising will have likely experienced massive transformations.
While we stopped reading the New York Press after the paper's "Death of the Pope" fiasco, we still happened to stumble across the paper's list of its "50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers" via a del.icio.us tag. The New York Press list, composed about five months ago, includes a handful of writers and bloggers who were singled out for their, well, loathsomeness.
There's Nick Denton, publisher of Gawker, who came in at #38:
"Though far from a pioneer, Franken-headed Gawker Media emperor Nick Denton takes partial blame for the dubious distinction of introducing the word "blog" to grandmothers in Dubuque. Denton single-handedly sandbagged and snarked his way to a post-crash brand of media-mogul-dom through his ubiquitous cultural blogs—Gawker.com, Fleshbot.com, Wonkette.com—while letting his lowly writer drones peck away all day for Birkenau pay rates... Denton has been secretive about the income he made off of his blogger slaves; writers and editors looking for stories about his alleged riches are, he says, "obsessed, and disoriented: nostalgic, cynical and now, with the revival of independent web media, daring to dream again."
And, there's Weblogs Inc. impresario Jason Calacanis, who came in at #23:
"During the dotcom boom, Jason Calacanis was one of those floppy-haired internet hucksters who beat the drum so loudly for tech companies that he became one of the era's major figures. The New Yorker even commissioned a fawning profile when he was editor of the now-defunct Silicon Alley Reporter. Now Calacanis is back and shamelessly beating the drum for (guess what?) blogs. Calacanis is chairman of Weblogs Inc., which now hosts more than 70 blogs about, well, who the fuck knows? His is a blog company that will make money from advertising while allegedly paying his army of typers a pittance in a "partnership" that promises a payday from future earnings."
We just hope that The New York Press, under the tutelage of new editor Harry Siegel, is more readable and less mean-spirited than it has been for the past two years.
According to the New York Times, Conde Nast Publications plans to start a new business magazine and Web site -- despite the fact that the advertising market has been in the doldrums for rivals like BusinessWeek and Forbes. Leading the charge at Conde Nast will be Joanne Lipman, formerly the deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, and David Carey, publisher of The New Yorker magazine (a Conde Nast publication).
While Conde Nast has plenty of firepower to make the new magazine a success (Carey was one of the creative forces behind SmartMoney magazine and Lipman has 22 years of experience at the WSJ), many analysts are skeptical:
"A lot of the traditional business books are still struggling. It is a crowded cluster of magazines of which there are some underperformers. So it is a curiosity."
Conde Nast's move into the world of business was so stunning that even Fishbowl NY - usually never at a loss for words - was left speechless. Conde Nast, after all, is better known for chick mags like Glamour and Lucky, and not at all for hard-hitting business coverage.
Reports are trickling in now about the much-anticipated meeting between billionaire corporate raider Carl Icahn and Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons. The New York Post reported that the two men met for fifteen minutes, but Newsday says that the chat was closer to 50 minutes. Either way, both parties described the talks as "frank and open." The New York Times also uses the term "productive" to describe the meeting. Time Warner, obviously, doesn't want to be seen as being bullied by Icahn and his hedge fund gang, so the company only released a tersely-worded statement full of corporate gobbledygook: "The board and management are committed to moving as aggressively as appropriate on its current course to deliver long-term value for shareholders."
Earlier today, we linked to coverage in the New York Times about plans afoot at CBS News to change - perhaps dramatically - the look and feel of the 30-minute evening news broadcast. According to insiders, the changes go far beyond just new outfits for the news anchor(s) -- CBS is leaving no stone unturned, going so far as to consult with the "Dr. Phil Show" and MTV News about ways to make the evening news more, well, interesting.
With that in mind (and with apologies to Fellini), here are a few (admittedly tongue-in-cheek) ways that CBS could revitalize the CBS Evening News:
(1) Bring back Max Headroom. CBS could jump to the front of the retro-cyberpunk movement, revolutionize the world with the use of blipverts (thirty seconds of commercial information compressed into a mere three seconds) and become the Zic-Zac of the 21st century.
(2) Go with a cartoon character like Bart Simpson as the lead anchor. After all, Fox News has skipped the 6:30 newscast altogether, instead running episodes of The Simpsons in that all-important time slot. Why not compromise and have a cartoon character like Bart Simpson reading the news?
(3) Change the name of the show to "CBS Evening Rumors." Instead of news, offer rumors. Isn't that what Dan Rather did anyway? The 18-to-34 demographic already has all of its news by 6:30 anyway via the Internet, so why not just focus on rumors and gossip that people on the Net will be talking about tomorrow?
(4) Remake the show in the style of Naked News. Or, better yet, called it "Nekkid News." Anything with the word "naked" in it has to be a winner, right? What an easy way to appeal to different demographics: each night would be a different naked newscaster.
(5) Combine reality television with the network news. Network interns can compete for the role of lead anchor by completing a series of tasks over the course of the year. The winner gets a job with CBS News and a big fat paycheck from Viacom's Sumner Redstone for saving the company.
(6) Remake the show in the style of CBS's wildly-popular CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Hasn't that show already had a multitude of spin-offs anyway? Viewers like the show, so give 'em more of what they want, right? There's no better lead-in for CSI than a real-life news broadcast dedicated to stories that will later be scripted into future CSI shows.
(7) Copy the best parts of the Late Show With David Letterman. There would be a "Top 10" news countdown, a live-studio band, and really silly stunts like "Stupid Newsmaker Tricks."
(8) Change the name of the show from CBS News to "See B.S. News" The evening "news" would become just a lot of BS. You know, crazy stories lifted from Fark.com or wild conspiracy rumors about Bush and Cheney's plan to takeover the world.
(8 1/2) Remake the look and feel of the CBS Evening News to look exactly like a Web page. Add lots of annoying banners and Google text ads for CBS shows for good measure so that TV viewers forget that they're in front of the TV. Make sure that the video feed starts and stops at random times, just like the "buffering" process on my broadband connection when I download clips. Once interactive TV becomes a reality, viewers will be clamoring to buy the ties and outfits of the lead anchor (whoever it turns out to be).
CBS News is experimenting with a number of different formats for the post-Dan Rather 30-minute evening news broadcast. Details are speculative at best, mostly because CBS News staffers said the process of developing an evening news format was "too sensitive" to give anything more than anonymous tips. Maybe it's a sign of "out-of-the-box" thinking at the media titan -- or maybe it's a sign of panic at a dying media brontosaurus -- but it sounds like CBS News is pulling out all the stops to create something fresh and new:
"In trying to elicit fresh ideas, [the chairman of CBS] has cast a wide net. Earlier this year he sought advice from executives far afield of the news division, including those who conceived the "Dr. Phil" talk show and others from MTV News. A report yesterday in The New York Observer said the network had asked dozens of college-age summer interns to give Olympic-style ratings - on a scale of 1 to 10 - to ideas for revamping the news."
Somewhere, Walt Mossberg, the personal tech guru at The Wall Street Journal, must be smiling... Tech advertising at The Wall Street Journal jumped by 22% last month, mainly due to increases in ads for consumer electronics, networking, personal computers, office products and software. For the year, however, technology ads in the Journal are down 14.7%.
Going forward, it will be interesting to see how the Journal's upcoming weekend edition (slated for sometime in September) impacts tech advertising.
UPDATE: Just heard from Walt Mossberg (check the comments below) - he makes clear that there is a Chinese Wall between the editorial and advertising sides of the house at The Wall Street Journal. Two separate teams walled off from each other. Wanted to clarify that -- guess it was a bit of reckless name-dropping there by myself... That's the way we do things here in blog-land.
With the Dolan family squabble at Cablevision almost resolved (we hope), The New York Observer dives into the mess at yet another troubled family dynasty: the Murdochs. With the announcement two weeks ago that Lachlan Murdoch would resign as deputy chief operating officer of News Corp., The Observer speculates about what it all means for the New York Post, as the 33-year-old Lachlan Murdoch is replaced as publisher of the New York Post by its former publisher, the 74-year-old Rupert Murdoch. Behind the scenes, the struggle for power was messy, says the Observer, with Lachlan chafing under the "absolute authority" and "tyranny" of Rupert.
It's perhaps fitting that the Post - the "beloved tabloid" of Rupert known for ruffling the feathers of not a few New Yorkers - is at the center of the Murdoch family intrigue:
"The restoration of the 74-year-old Mr. Murdoch to the vehicle into which he has thrown so much capital and passion comes after a week of the kind that the Post itself would revel in, of public family turmoil and power Parcheesi that exacted an emotional cost from his son."
The New York Post, citing a report from Newsweek.com, says that NBC is in the hunt for a "news czar" to oversee the three jewels in its media crown: NBC, CNBC and MSNBC. Already, the company has made overtures to senior executives at Martha Stewart Living, Time Warner and ESPN. The rumor on the street is that the new hire at NBC will be tasked with "a sweeping restructuring of NBC's entire approach to the news business."
Want a "hot summer beach read" full of intimate details about the dating life of a twenty-something New York woman? You won't find it at Barnes & Noble or The Strand, but you will find it in the blogosphere... The New York Times profiles Stephanie Klein, the "Carrie Bradshaw of New York bloggers. According to Technorati, her Greek Tragedy blog ranks in the top 1% of all blogs, giving her instant name and face recognition in the New York area:
"Today the blog has an international readership with fans who recognize Ms. Klein when they see her gallivanting around Manhattan and the Hamptons, and who find parallels to their own lives in her candid, freewheeling stories."
And that's not all: Klein now has a book deal ("Straight Up and Dirty") and a TV deal with NBC for a 30-minute comedy series.
Skimming through the latest issue of the Bay News, happened to run across a profile of Flatbush's SHEE, a "hip-hop recording artist, songwriter and, now, an aspiring web game hero." One of the videogames is "SHEE is Sheer Badness," which features SHEE "fighting off her enemies with two guns while wearing high heels and a miniskirt." A big hat tip to SHEE -- she made it out of a Flatbush housing project to become the first person in her family ever to graduate college. Now, she's got a mater's degree from Central Michigan University and runs her own record label, Sheer Badness Entertainment.
What enraged her bosses most of all was the scandalous tales of corporate perks lavished on anyone in a position to write up beauty products reviews -- items like "Marc Jacobs wallets and coats, plane ticket vouchers, iPods, overnight stays at the Mandarin Oriental, yearlong gym memberships..."
Over at her Jolie in NYC blog, Nadine Haobsh (the anonymous blogger) has a few words of warning for other insider types who plan to spill the beans:
"To all you would-be bloggers out there: even if you truly are "just being funny" or "don't really mean it", think before you write. And definitely don't write about your industry: things will absolutely be taken out of context or interpreted incorrectly, and that's just not fun for anybody."
According to Jossip, Ladies Home Journal is now putting in place a blogging policy to dissuade other would-be bloggers to dish out the dirt.
Under intense pressure to boost circulation and trim costs, John S. Carroll, the editor of the Los Angeles Times, stepped down yesterday. That move, of course, led to a lot of hand-wringing and navel-gazing by the MSM. New York Times editor Bill Keller, who knows a thing or two about newspapers losing credibility, says that the line between newspapers and blogs continues to blur:
"We've only got two things that distinguish us from blogs. One is we have reporting staffs who actually go out and see stuff and are trained professionals. And we have standards which are enforced by editors — you double-check things, make sure it's right — and all that costs money. If you aren't giving people the basics — good reliable news, smart analysis and in-depth investigations — then all they're going to see is the same stuff they can get on cable TV."
