CES 2009 Cuts Room Rates: Signs of theApocalypse
November 21, 2008
In another sign of the economic apocalypse upon us (thanks Henry Paulson, another parting gift from the Bush Administration and the &;worlds most economically developed man&;) the Consumer Electronics Association notified preregistered attendees of significant price cuts on ten different Las Vegas hotels. No more the &;biggest and best CES ever?&; With Best Buy swooning, Circuit City expiring and all the manufacturers suffering, even long-time CEA head Gary Shapiro will have a tough time putting lipstick on this pig.
Tags:CES, Consumer Electronics, Henry-Paulson Posted in 2009 Consumer Electronics Show, Consumer Electronics | Leave a Comment &;
Diary of Reggie, Alligator at Large, Post
November 14, 2008
So now it&;s a state crime to buy a drink for an alligator? Believe me, you&;re sitting around all day in this oversized bathtub they call a zoo, you&;d want a drink too. Alligator apologies for such a long time posting, but between my failed escape attempts and just lying around depressed, haven&;t wanted to say much. But now, Ziggy&;s here! A friend! My kingdom for a friend! Or I&;m hoping, anyway. In LA, it seems like it&;s everyone&;s secret hobby to raise an alligator from a baby&;guess between the showers, sprinklers and pools, no one needs their bathtubs. Not to mention the lowlives with their shark tanks&;now Bill Maher wants Barack Obama to have a shark tank in the White House? Watch out, man&;we predators eat puppies. So get me a friend. Or a drink, at least.
Tags:Barack-Obama, Bill-Maher, Reggie-the-alligator Posted in Reggie-the-alligator | 1 Comment &;
Henry Blodget Belongs inJail
November 14, 2008
Yes, you can make an arguement that the American car companies should go out of business. But not if you&;re Henry Blodget, one of a pack of analysts with screaming conflicts of interests who contributed to the last financial meltdown, during the dot-com era. He was fined $4 million dollars and permanently barred from the securities industries in 2003 for his deceptive practics. Blodget was the dot-com one. A former managing director at Merrill Lynch and the senior research analyst and group head for the firm&;s Internet sector, Blodget was charged by the SEC with issuing &;fraudulent research under Merrill Lynch&;s name, as well as research in which he expressed views that were inconsistent with privately expressed negative views.&; Further, he &;aided and abetted violations of antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws and violated SRO rules by issuing research reports on one internet company (GoTo.com) that were materially misleading because they were contrary to privately expressed negative views.&; Blodget is now the CEO of the financial news site Clusterstock.com, which I have to say is pretty good (and comments on the securities industry from which Blodget was supposedly banned). Not bad for a pump-and-dumper who belongs with Dennis Kowzlowski&;behind bars.
Tags:Dennis-Kowzlowski, Henry-Blodget, pump-and-dump Posted in business-journalism, Journalism | 2 Comments &;
ABC&;s Spelling Error: Journalism&;sDecline
November 14, 2008
The copy editor and the fact checker are no more. Also no more, sadly, is proper spelling, attention to detail and just basic accuracy. Take today&;s ABCNEWS.COM story about the Montecito fires&;please. That&;s Montecito, ABC&;not &;Monticeto.&; In October an LA Times writer referred to an interview subject keeping a pair of &;Ford Malibus&; in his front yard. There&;s lots more of this every day. After an outcry from the readers, they fixed the Montecito story, but as one wrote, &;The town is Montecito, not Monticeto. Spelling matters. In a previous posting someone asked whether the line editor was asleep. Nope. Probably didn&;t see that the spelling was incorrect. Watch the crawl on CNN or MSNBC. During the course of a day there are scores of errors. As a nation we&;ve lost the art of paying attention to detail. That&;s why our economy is in trouble. We didn&;t read the fine print when we signed the mortgage papers.&;
Thousands Flee Tony California Town as Blaze Rages
Thirteen injured and more than 100 homes destroyed in fast-moving fire in Montecito
By MIKE VON FREMD and JONANN BRADY
Nov. 14, 2008
18 comments
Flames that ripped through multimillion-dollar mansions Thursday evening continuing burning this morning in the upscale Southern California community of Monticeto, near Santa Barbara. At least 100 homes have been destroyed.
Tags:copyediting, death-of-newspapers, fact-checking, Montecito, sloppy-journalism Posted in Journalism, Publishing | 2 Comments &;
The Dread Media &;Anniversary&;Story
November 10, 2008
If I ran the journalism world, the first thing I would ban would be the &;anniversary story.&; Even though I won an LA Press Club Award for this LA Times piece about the Rodney King beating. Basically, a media &;anniversary&; is an excuse for journalists to write a little history, bring up some (generally lurid) event from the past or do some &;Trivial Pursuit&; style follow-up (where is Kato Kaelin now?!) on half-remembered players. It&;s a hook to write something that will get page views or blog hits, requires little actual reporting, and often gives the reporter the chance to play historian, draw parallels to our own time, or better yet, pontificate. Certain dates are inevitable. I&;m sure November 22 this year (the 45th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination) will bring both memories of that tragic day in Dallas and the death of Camelot, and sober comments on the threats against President-Elect Obama. A few guidelines: generally, anniversary dates have to be for events in living memory. Hence, 9-11 will generate recaps of the events and commentary for at least the next fifty years, but April 14 won&;t get much (the date of Abraham Lincoln&;s assassination 143 years ago). Second, round numbers are key. Like my Princeton reunions or wedding anniversaries, the big ones are 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 40 and 50 years. Thus, January 28 won&;t be an important media anniversary date until 2011, when it will mark 25 years since the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986. Third, &;if it bleeds, it leads.&; Significant numbers of dead, or the notoriety of the incident, are sufficent reason for &;celebrating&; the anniversary. The last few weeks of October and early November have brought major looks back at the Jonestown massacres and even at the murder of Nancy Spungen by Sid Vicious (relived in New York Magazine&;s Entertainment Section!), each taking place in 1978, 30 years ago. Each of these stories fits the &;anniversary story&; criteria perfectly: In living memory, lurid, and a round number. A fourth criteria for the anniversary story, importance, is highly subjective and thus easily ignored. I was surprised and dismayed by the lack of update coverage on Los Angeles 15 years after the LA Riots last year. And the 70th anniversary of the Nazi pogroms of Kristallnacht, the terror against Jewish homes and businesses that ignited the Holocaust, while commemorated in Germany, received precious little coverage in the U.S.. As George Santayana said, &;Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.&; But whether we remember or not, all of us are condemned to a lifetime of anniversary stories from the media.
Tags:9-11, Barack-Obama, Kato-Kaelin, Kennedy-assassination, Kristallnacht, media-anniversaries, Nancy-Spungen, Rodney-King, Sid-Vicious, space-shuttle-Challenger Posted in Journalism, media-anniversaries | 1 Comment &;
Dumbest ElectionReactions
November 5, 2008
Ralph Nader called Barack Obama an &;Uncle Tom&; on Fox the other night, apparently because Nader thinks he&;s a corporate tool. Perhaps Nader would like someone more authentic like Jesse Jackson (last seen sobbing for the TV cameras after the election) to &;cut his nuts off?&; Then there&;s this NSFW missive, from my erstwhile employer Larry Flynt, the auteur behind the eagerly-awaited &;Nailin Palin&;. Meanwhile, NBA star Gilbert Arenas was convinced both contenders would raise his taxes if elected. Earning his &;Agent Zero&; sobriquet, he protested in the dumbest way possible: by not voting.
Tags:Barack-Obama, Gilbert-Arenas, Jesse-Jackson, Larry-Flynt, Ralph-Nader Posted in Politics, public-relations-disaster | Leave a Comment &;
20 Fired in Celebrity PrivacyViolation
November 1, 2008
Violating patient privacy doesn&;t just happen in Los Angeles, or to people like Farrah Fawcett. Even in Jacksonville, FL, there are celebrities&;and hospital workers anxious to violate their privacy. Twenty hospital workers &; nurses, admissions workers and patient relations staff &; lost their jobs this week, accused of breaking federal privacy rules by accessing the medical records of the (NFL Jacksonville) Jaguars&; Richard Collier. Two weeks after Collier &; who was shot 14 times &; was well enough to be discharged from Shands-Jacksonville Medical Center, 20 hospital employees were fired for violating Collier&;s medical privacy. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, (HIPAA) should not be a joke. My medical condition is between my doctors and appropriate supporting personnel and myself&;it&;s not watercooler chatter for the bored and stupid. While I admit that wheedling records out of hospital personnel is what tabloid reporters, as I used to be, are trained to do, doesn&;t mean that it&;s OK for medical personnel to sell or otherwise discuss a star&;s (or anyone&;s) medical condition. And this will not stop until doctors are among those fired or otherwise disciplined.
Tags:celebrities, Farrah-Fawcett, HIPPA, Jacksonville, NFL, Privacy, privacy-violation, Richard-Collier, tabloid-journalism Posted in public-relations-disaster | Leave a Comment &;