Archive for December, 2008
Arianna isRight
December 23, 2008
I&;ve often taken a critical look at the Huffington Post, because of their uncool policy of not paying contributors, which is bad in itself and can lead to horrible work like this. Then there&;s their habit of &;borrowing&; work on the Web.
But there&;s no denying the intelligence and wisdom of its founder, the eponymous Arianna Huffington. Interviewer Choire Sicha recently asked her, &;What was the most under-covered story of 2008?&;
&;I think the most under-covered story for me was: How did we get here? How did we get suddenly, or appear suddenly, in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression? And exactly how did all these billions of dollars disappear? I think most immediately, the most under-covered story is how are the billions of bailout money being spent.&;
She&;s right. Henry Paulson&;s bailout &;plan&; seems to be to fly a helicopter over Wall Street dumping out buckets of cash.
But the coverage problem rests with the news media, which seems unwilling and unable to cover the crash of home values, banks, stocks and jobs in ways America can understand and act on.
One reason is that business desks are being slashed and the survivors are dispirited, wondering if their own jobs will be next, making for low-energy reporting. A second is the &;innumeracy&; too common in the news media, which Yglesias notes has &;almost no understanding of quantitative methods.&; Finally, you can blame our celebrity culture from Barack to Britney, whether it&;s force-fed to consumers by editors or whether the media is responding to pressure for ratings from their own pressured bosses.
Tags:Arianna-Huffington, Huffington-Post, innumeracy, Yglesias Posted in Huffington-Post, Journalism | Leave a Comment &;
Playboy Gives Skoal HappyEnding
December 16, 2008
I opened the mail today and got my new Skoal edition of Playboy. Under the clear plastic wrap, a woman was posed naked on hundreds of cans of Skoal, smiling alluringly. Skoal had the look, the goods guys like and most of all the official Playboy logo, if not the endorsement of the National Cancer Institute.
Turned out it was the back cover; the front cover is Carmen Electra, again.
But there&;s a fine line between selling advertising, and selling out to your advertisers, especially one selling so morally questionable a product. Is Playboy so desperate that it doesn&;t know who it is anymore?
Tags:advertising-lows, dipping-tobacco-cancer, Playboy, Playboy-sells-out, Skoal, snuff-cancer Posted in Advertising, death-of-magazines, Playboy, Uncategorized | 1 Comment &;
Mistakes of the LiberalMedia
December 11, 2008
Yes, we know things are very bad now in the media; today&;s Mediabistro bucket of cheer talks of layoffs at Newsweek, NPR and the death of local newspapers.
But that&;s no excuse for making ridiculous, egregious errors like mispelling &;Montecito&; or inventing a new car, the &;Ford Malibu.&; But those are innocent mistakes compared to not checking the background of spokespeople before they&;re interviewed, or bowing to political correctness.
Today, NPR&;s Marketplace had a long interview with Henry Blodget about whether he saw this &;bubble&; coming. Yes, the same Henry Blodget who was fined $4 million and banned for life from the securities industry is now a respectable commentator, like notorious anti-Semite Amiri Baraka this summer.
But when a host of a KCRW-FM show dares to compare firing someone for donating money to an anti-gay marriage cause to the Blacklist, he&;s slapped down by the station manager.
Tags:Amiri-Baraka, death-of-journalism, Henry-Blodget, KCRW.ORG Posted in Journalism, political-correctness | Leave a Comment &;
Things We May Have to DoWithout
December 11, 2008
Things we may have to do without: newspapers, American cars, television dramas, retirement savings, books.
Their replacement: PerezHilton.com, Twitter, Kias, unemployment benefits, five nights a week of Jay Leno.
It&;s change, all right, but not change I want to believe in.
Tags:death-of-books, death-of-newspapers, Jay-Leno, Kia, Perez-Hilton, Twitter Posted in Television | Leave a Comment &;
Ruth Seymour&;s KCRW: The State isMoi
December 10, 2008
Few general managers are as closely associated with a public radio station, for better or worse, than Ruth Seymour with KCRW-FM, beginning her tenure in 1978. So it&;s not surprising that the 70+ aging lioness (or dragon lady, as many would have it) in winter still believes as King Louis XIV of France believed &;L&;Etat, C&;Est Moi (The State, That&;s Me)
At KCRW, no one is bigger than the station, except Seymour, as acclaimed writer/performer Sandra Tsing Loh discovered a few years ago. The latest to feel her wrath, perhaps stirred by various KCRW constituencies, is Claude Brodesser-Aker, who decried the forced resignation of Rich Raddon from the LA Film Festival for his donation to &;Yes on 8&;, the proposition which actually said no to gay marriage. Seymour, who is certainly old enough to remember the Hollywood Blacklist, said the
&;The Business compared his resignation to the Hollywood Blacklist days when members of the film industry lost their jobs because of alleged Communist sympathies. The actors, directors, writers and producers who were targeted in the Blacklist never resigned their positions. KCRW regrets airing this out-of-the-blue opinion and has made it clear to those involved that it is unacceptable.&;
But Seymour-as-KCRW is often curiously silent when other &;mistakes are made&; on the station&;s airtime. In June, I wrote and blogged about another KCRW program giving airtime to one of America&;s most notorious anti-semites.
Queen Ruth never responded.
Tags:KCRW.ORG, Ruth-Seymour Posted in political-correctness | 3 Comments &;
The Chutzpah of HenryBlodget
December 8, 2008
What is chutzpah? The Yiddish expression means, roughly, a lot of nerve. One example of chutzpah is the man who kills both his parents and throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.
Another is disgraced Wall Street analyst Henry Blodget publishing an article called &;Why Wall Street Never Gets It.&; He claims wearily &;Our government—at our urging—will go to great lengths to try to make sure such a bust never happens again. We will “fix” the “problems” that we decide caused the debacle; we will create new regulatory requirements and systems; we will throw a lot of people in jail.&;
That&;s chutzpah from a man who could have gone to jail himself. And the esteemed Atlantic Magazine should receive the red badge of dishonor for publishing&;and paying&;Blodget, and for giving him a byline which reads &;Henry Blodget is the editor of Silicon Alley Insider, an online business publication.&; Omitted is the fact that he was fined $4 million dollars and permanently barred from the securities industries in 2003.
As you&;d expect, Blodget goes for self-exoneration.
&;By late 1998, I was cautioning clients that “what looks like a bubble probably is,” but this didn’t save me. Fifteen months later, I missed the top and drove my clients right over the cliff. &;
And guess whose fault it was? &;Later, in the smoldering aftermath, I was accused by Eliot Spitzer, then New York’s attorney general, of having hung on too long in order to curry favor with the companies I was analyzing, some of which were also Merrill banking clients. This allegation led to my banishment from the industry.&;
Blodget may call it an &;allegation&; but the SEC fined him a total of $4 million and as he says, banned him from the industry. Why he is allowed to comment professionally on Wall Street, and indeed run the Silicon Alley Insider, is beyond me.
But hey&;he&;s got chutzpah.
Tags:chutzpah, Henry-Blodget, The-Atlantic, Wall-Street-meltdown Posted in business-journalism | Leave a Comment &;
Websurfing is Good ForYou!
December 5, 2008
Survey says &;the Web-savvy group also registered activity in the frontal, temporal and cingulate areas of the brain, whereas those new to the net did not.&; (These areas of the brain control decision-making and complex reasoning.)
Study leader Gary Small of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA said &;A simple, everyday task like searching the Web appears to enhance brain circuitry in older adults, demonstrating that our brains are sensitive and can continue to learn as we grow older,&; Small said.
Of course, the survey didn&;t say anything about the effect of websurfing on one&;s s0cial skills, waistline, posture or self-respect.
Tags:Internet, Internet-and-aging, Internet-health Posted in technology-journalism | Leave a Comment &;
Facebook versusACT!
December 3, 2008
In the 1990&;s, it was common for professionals to &;live all day in ACT!&;, ACT! being a contact manager that also had a word processor, calendar, to-do list, etc. ACT! was all about productivity.
In fact, you were supposed to call people (remember calling people?) in your &;tickler&; every 30 days, where you had listed some conversation-starter like &;Saw your wife at the dog show.&;
Now those professionals live all day in Facebook, briefly departing to do actual work. Indeed, many IT types and other corporate drones would ban it if they could. Facebook versus ACT!: an interesting contrast between packaged, stand-alone software and a widely-shared web application.
But are they really so different? As the ACT! website puts it:
Keep important contact details in one place with ACT! so you have quick access to the information you need.
Be up and running quickly because ACT! is easy to learn and use.
Sound familiar, social networkers?
Tags:ACT!, Facebook, social-networking Posted in social-networking, technology, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment &;