Archive for the &;newspapers&; Category

Parade Plays Softball with QueenLatifah

January 28, 2011

The January 2, 2011 issue of Parade featured a cover story on Queen Latifah, her life as a role model, her hosting the People&;s Choice Awards and of course a plug for her cosmetics line.  What makes the 7-page (cover plus 6) story remarkable is what&;s not there&;any discussion of her personal life, beyond the vague comment that in 10 years, the 40-year old Queen expects she&;ll have &;a couple of kids under my belt&;&; Latifah is widely believed to be a lesbian, not even that deep in the closet.  She&;s been photographed hugging her reputed long-time girlfriend.  So why didn&;t Parade ask her about her personal life&;the readers would certainly like to know.  Was it a ground rule established by Latifah&;s &;camp&;&;no questions about the &;L&; word?  Or a cowardly editorial decision by Parade&;not to ask in return for access?  Would women stop buying her cosmetics if they thought Latifah was gay? More importantly, did both underestimate their audience?  Americans have shown they can &;embrace&; gay stars like Ellen DeGeneres and Elton John, or gay heroes like Daniel Hernandez.  Latifah isn&;t a leading lady with romantic roles &;in danger&; if she comes out  (a fear that&;s reputed to keep leading men like John Travolta and Tom Cruise in the closet) so why the fear? It all reminds me of how the Enquirer and its ilk used to play ball with Rock Hudson, despite its muckraking reputation.  For almost 30 years, the tabs, the studio and Hudson&;s people manufactured stories about his &;latest romance&; (with women) to keep the readers happy, no gay revelation that would shatter reader illusions and kill the cash cow. Everyone played ball&;until AIDS brought out the inconvenient truth.

Tags:Hollywood, National-Enquirer, tabloid-journalism Posted in newspapers, tabloid-journalism | Leave a Comment &;

What Will Finally KillNewspapers

July 17, 2009

Newspapers have been taking a pounding.  Display advertisers, following the lead of the depressed car companies, department stores and furniture stores, are dying, drying up or disappearing.  Craigslist.org has hammered away on the classified ads.  And subscribers and newsstand buyers are dropping off, politically offended or just angry at the reduced product they&;re being asked to pay more for&;when they can get it for free on the Internet. Only one thing keeps local papers publishing.  On a foray to Beverly Hills, I picked up a copy of Beverly Hills Weekly from someone&;s lawn, saving it from the gardener&;s throwing it in the trash.  The free weekly is a rag of the first order, featuring random interviews with local non-entities and a boosterish write-up of how well the Beverly Hills High School touch football team played in a 7-on-7 tournament. What keeps this compelling read in business?  In the 20-page issue I perused, there were 5 pages of service directiory ads for truly local businesses; rooters, roofing, plastering, maid service, trainers and the like, lured by the un-Beverly Hills price of 10 weeks for $250.   But the real money-maker for this rag and so many like it has to be the legal advertising and public notices.  They should supply a free magnifying glass with every issue; one page had more than 80 fictious business statements and public notices! When public notices can be published on the Internet, newspapers will themselves be a &;fictious business&;, and the publishing game will finally be over.

Tags:death-of-newspapers, death-of-print, fictious-business Posted in death-of-newspapers, newspapers | Leave a Comment &;

Sarah Palin Meets NationalEnquirer

September 2, 2008

Extending their celebrity franchise into politics, the National Enquirer is apparently launching a bipartisan campaign to investigate America&;s best-looking national politicians.   For months a lonely beacon of truth about John Edwards, the Enquirer is now looking into Sarah Palin.  Not surprisingly, they find a mother-daughter catfight in this &;Jamie Lynn Spears&; family.  Says the Enquirer:

&;Palin planned for the wedding to take place right after the Republican National Convention and then she was going to announce the pregnancy.But Bristol, 17, refused to go along with the plan and that sparked a mother-daughter showdown over the failed coverup.&;   

Interestingly, the Enquirer claims that it was their reporting (again) that reluctantly pulled the truth out of Palin, not her truth-telling nature.

&;The ultra-conservative governor’s announcement about her daughter’s pregnancy came hours after The ENQUIRER informed her representatives and family members of Levi Johnston, the father of Bristol’s child, that we were aware of the pregnancy and were going to break the news. In a preemptive strike Palin released the news, creating political shockwaves.&;

  How do they do it?  This CBS story shows a bit&;although in a blunder now sadly typical of the mainstream media, they get the name of the Enquirer&;s founder wrong&;it was Generoso Pope, not David Pope.

With Palin, once again the mainstream media (and apparently the McCain campaign) is being scooped by the National Enquirer.  So far the Enquirer&;s circulation hasn&;t responded to its newfound public-spiritedness, but if the national media wasn&;t so stubborn in its death spiral, it too could learn from the plucky tabloid. They have the story the public wants to read &;even before the investigative reporters have settled into Anchorage.&;    

Tags:Bristol-Palin, John-Edwards-lovechild, National-Enquirer, Sarah-Palin Posted in Journalism, National-Enquirer, newspapers, Politics, public-relations-disaster | Leave a Comment &;

Newspapers Pass theHat

March 24, 2008

With the crisis in American newspaper publishing, it&;s time to look how bringing readers the news, often seen as a public service, can be funded. The current advertising-and-subscription model is failing.  Most publications (save only the Wall Street Journal and a few others) put essentially the entire newspaper on line for free, so they don&;t get that 50 cents a day per reader.  As for advertising, oy vey.  The problem is that other models don&;t work that well either.  When the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) sends me letters begging for a donation, I send back the postage-paid form with three words written on it &;Sell some ads!&;  As in KCET&;s appeals for donations to &;public&; television, my attitude is &;Let Exxon pay for it&;, in the same way that Archer Daniels Midland buys benign coverage on NPR. Eric Alterman notes another contribution-funded effort.  &;ProPublica, funded by the liberal billionaires Herb and Marion Sandler and headed by the former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger, hopes to provide the mainstream media with the investigative reporting that so many have chosen to forgo.&; Most newspapers and other outlets would probably look at such offerings as contributed (ie, free) articles, filler on the order of &;New Restaurant Offers Intriguing Entrees&;. Government funding is another, even worse option.  At best, it will deliver a Voice of America or BBC, a hotbed of bias.  At worst, Pravda or the Chinese news agency, delivering articles on the &;merciless rioters&; of the Tibet uprising&;and not delivering this. So like it or not, market capitalism, as Churchill said of democracy, the worst of all systems  except for all others, will probably come up with a solution to deliver the news.

Posted in Archer-Daniels-Midland, BBC, death-of-newspapers, newspapers, NPR, ProPublica, Tibet-uprising | Leave a Comment &;

Give Rupert Murdoch aBreak

June 18, 2007

The editorial staff of the Wall Street Journal, plus sundry other journalists, are running around like chickens with their heads cut off.  Their fear?  That Rupert Murdoch, publisher and destroyer of worlds, will take over the Journal with his stained hands.  They bleat he&;ll dumb it down and change its editorial mission.  Which is what&;to make the world safe for capitalism?  Then the Journal should be applauding Murdoch&;s $60 a share offer. Murdoch has a history, they say, of using his media empire to advance his own causes and line his pocket. No shit, Sherlock!  What does a publisher do?  Yellow journalism was Joseph Pulitzer, who got a prize named after him, and William Randolph Hearst, who got an empire, battling in a gutter war for circulation&;and to see who could get the U.S. into the Spanish American war first. Murdoch focuses his chirpy Fox News, smarmy New York Post and the rest on sensationalism and celebrities.  He likes to sell papers and make money.  As they say, the new Golden Rule is the one who has the gold, makes the rules.  The Wall Street Journal may not like it&;but hey, that&;s capitalism. So give me&;and Rupert&;a break.

Posted in Fox-News, New-York-Post, newspapers, Wall-Street-Journal, yellow-journalism | 3 Comments &;

From the SF Chronicle to Chrysler: Dislocation at InternetSpeed

May 23, 2007

The San Francisco Chronicle is making one of the biggest newsroom cuts yet; 25%, writes a Chronicle reporter(!)  Eighty reporters, photographers, copy editors and others will be laid off. &;Analysts predicted the reductions at The Chronicle could have repercussions for readers. While an increasing number of people get news from online aggregators such as Google News and Yahoo, those stories are most often originally reported by print journalists. &; Then there&;s the news website in Pasadena, that has unrepentently (and to great publicity) outsourced its city council coverage to India to reporters paid $7500 a year. While I have sympathy for those cutback or outsourced, I&;m not going to cry crocodile tears.  As my Dad told me more than 30 years ago, you&;ll never see pro-labor sentiment in a newspaper because they&;re an employer.  As the last person I know who owns three American cars, (a Ford, a Lincoln and a Jeep) where were these people and their publications in terms of supporting U.S. industries? Still, it&;s tough times, and for a communications person, the whirling scythe dumps more competitors into the pool.

Posted in death-of-newspapers, Ford, Journalism, newspapers, Public Relations, Publishing, sf-chronicle | Leave a Comment &;

Journalism&;s Problems: Sampling the ConventionalWisdom

May 17, 2007

The Los Angeles Times has been running a long and windy  &;dust-up&; on the state of journalism today. It&;s debated/written by two professors (Robert W. McChesney, professor of communication at the University of Illinois, Glenn Harlan Reynolds,  professor of law at the University of Tennessee) and reads like it.  And it&;s preaching to the choir, newspaper readers, rather than the unchurched, the thousands who&;ve abandoned newspapers lately. McChesney illustrates some issues well, describing &;the sharp decline over the past two decades in the number of working journalists covering stories at the local level, and the sharp decline in the number of journalists over the same period covering the world for U.S. news media.&; &;This contributes to a journalism where we are more dependent upon those in power to tell us what is happening, and our journalists have become more inclined to accept what they say at face value.&;  Then there&;s &;the commercialization of news and the softening of news standards to include celebrity fluff and trivia. This gives the illusion of controversy while never antagonizing anyone in power.&;  Yup&;every TV channel has a &;trouble shooter&; who takes on dirty restaurants and angry opticians, but never McDonald&;s or Exxon.  But someone has to pay to put on the news, and if it&;s not the angry taxpayers as in Britain, it&;s McDonald&;s and Exxon. Both men have some interesting insights, but like most journalists, they&;re long on asking questions, short on answers.

Posted in death-of-newspapers, Journalism, newspapers | Leave a Comment &;