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media
Cable: The Old New Big Thing
TV is dying, right? We read about it online. Kids these days spend all their time on YouTube, and television is left to geriatrics watching Depends ads, right? But no! One word, friends: Cable. Just today, news came out that the executives at Discovery Communications, home of the Discovery Channel, are some of the highest paid in all of the media—their CEO took home $20 million, right up there with the Viacoms and Time Warners of the world. How did little old cable get so rich? Good timing, good programming, and a little bit of luck. Learn and marvel! More »
publicity stunts
"There are many layers" To The Fake Assassination Artist
Yazmany Arboleda, the masterful young media manipulator and artist of debatable talent, still has the national press talking two days after the Secret Service shut down his "art exhibit" about the Assassination of Barack and Hillary. But that's okay, because now the kid is digging his own grave with grand pronouncements. Hoax, you say? No, this whole stunt is probably just over your head: More »
postscripts
The New Digital Reality
The Dove "Campaign for Real Beauty" photo retouching controversy was left as an unresolved disagreement between truth-in-advertising purists and photo professionals who say retouching is a necessity. Television and movies may be moving in the opposite direction; a lighter touch with makeup is needed in the face of exacting HD cameras. But for print ads of all kinds, the wonders of Photoshop manipulation will prevail. James Danziger, the photo gallerist who represents celebrity image producer Annie Leibovitz, weighs in with a cogent postscript to the Dove controversy and its legacy: "We are living in both the digital age and the age of hypocrisy.": More »
tv
Katie Couric, CBS, the 'Wall Street Journal' and the New York 'Times' in Journalism Love Quadrangle
The Wall Street Journal broke a terribly large piece of media news this week—CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric is leaving the network after the elections, before her contract is up. That they had this story and not, say, the Times—who generally handle the TV media beat pretty well and on their own, thank you—is a nice coup for Murdoch's newest acquisition. It took a little while for the Times to catch up, but they came out last night with their own story on the meeting that ended Couric's career. (Amusingly, they credit "press reports in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and elsewhere on Thursday" for breaking the Journal's exclusive scoop. Petty!) While some speculate as to what Katie will do next, or when she'll leave, Henry Blodget wonders who killed her. We're inclined to believe she killed herself. More »
analysis
Adventures In ROYGBIV: Why The 'Daily News' Is Going Color
The Daily News was very busy this afternoon telling everyone and their mom that the city tabloid will go all color by the end of 2009, making it the "first major market daily newspaper in the United States" to do so, according to a release. (Never mind that Europe's been doing this for years, along with plenty of far more inferior weeklies stateside.) Publisher Mort Zuckerman may not be losing quite as much money on his tabloid as Rupert Murdoch does on his Post, but we're fairly sure Mort's not changing the hue of his paper just so it'll look a little prettier at the prom. More »
instant analysis
Murdoch v. Microsoft
Wily old Rupert Murdoch. His media conglomerate, News Corporation, is in talks to merge its social network site, MySpace, with Yahoo, reports the Wall Street Journal. Why is this so clever? More »
charts and graphs
100 Jamie Lynn Spears Headlines Analyzed
With the news that Britney's little sister Jamie Lynn Spears was preggers came an avalanche of media insanity. Will we have not one, but two Spears vaginas to keep track of now? Whose baby will fetch more cash for tabloid photos? Whose baby's daddy will have the worse rap career? And what about Gramma Spears' bookdeal? Let's take a look at the sibling rivalry and the JLS reaction. More »
analysis
How To Tell If You're A Freelancer Or An Employee
Is anyone confused by all the fuss over freelancer benefits in the Viacom mess? Freelancer, permalancer, part-time employee, full-time employee: What's the difference anymore? Why are Viacom's independent contractors complaining about having their benefits cut when the general impression is that freelancers don't qualify for benefits in the first place? Where does the actual, you know, law come down on this issue? And do most media companies abide by it? Let's learn more! More »
apologies
'The New Republic' Grudgingly Retracts 'Baghdad Diarist' Stories
The New Republic has finally concluded its investigation into its "Baghdad Diarist" scandal. (The magazine ran a series of articles by a TNR staffer's friend and then husband, Scott Beauchamp, who happened to be stationed in Iraq, and who may have invented or fudged some of his stories.) Franklin Foer, the magazine's editor, pens the magazine's apology, which doesn't really sound like much of an apology in the first place. Instead, the nostra culpa comes across as petulant and bitter, which pretty effectively defeats the point of the 7,000-word piece. More »
Each Friday, NYT.com General Manager Vivian Schiller and 'Times' deputy managing editor Jonathan Landman write an in-house email on the subject of The Future and The Internet and The Newsroom. This week, do your own textual analysis: "Look at the nytimes.com homepage, or any section front. There's lots and lots of stuff. Words. Pictures. Headlines. (Big ones and little ones.) Ads. (Little ones and big ones.) Video. Vertical things. Horizontal things. Icons. Navigation bars. Tabs. It's a riot of activity. It's built around information—getting it before impatient users, grabbing little bites of attention span. Look again at T Online. Not so much stuff."
Does Julia Allison have an Electra complex? "He is gregarious, a consummate networker, and one of the best public speakers I have EVER seen... Happy Birthday, Dad. I love you!" wrote Star Editor at Large Julia Allison on her blog. She also posted this picture of her pops, circa 1979. We put that next to a picture of her boyfriend, Jakob Lodwick. And, well. Hmm! [Julia Allison]
an actor prepares
No more junkets for Jake Gyllenhaal—locking him in a hotel room at the Toronto Film Festival and quizzing him about waterboarding and torture for his upcoming film Rendition resulted in this meandering and actually sorta disturbing conversation on "Showbiz Tonight." Dude. You're an actor! Talk about puppies or something! He sounds like someone kept him up all night in a secret C.I.A. prison or something. Umm, if those exist.
Jake Gyllenhaal's Policy On Waterboarding Less Coherent Than Dick Cheney's
No more junkets for Jake Gyllenhaal—locking him in a hotel room at the Toronto Film Festival and quizzing him about waterboarding and torture for his upcoming film Rendition resulted in this meandering and actually sorta disturbing conversation on "Showbiz Tonight." Dude. You're an actor! Talk about puppies or something! He sounds like someone kept him up all night in a secret C.I.A. prison or something. Umm, if those exist.
diagnose jobs
Understanding Alex Kuczynski
Taken as a continuously unreeling whole, the oeuvre of Times style writer Alex Kuczynski is one of the more astonishing texts of our time. From her days at the Observer through her stint as serious auteur of a book about plastic surgery, Kuczynski's work has managed to move, baffle, and alarm nearly everyone it's touched. We wondered if maybe there was a method to her madness. Turns out, there is! More »
postgame analysis
The Bancrofts Were Totally Outgunned
The Observer takes another look at the Murdoch takeover today, and argues that the Bancrofts were kinda misled by their advisers about the takeover deal. Why? Well, it has to do with James Ottaway Jr.'s rather unfortunate choice of words ("30 shekels of silver to their investment bankers, and 30 shekels of gold to their corporate lawyers") about how much money the Bancrofts had to shell out to their outside advisers to get the deal done. $30 million! And all of it was paid by... News Corp.? The most obvious problem being: say that Rupert was reportedly working on this deal for two years. The Bancrofts were working on it for, what, two months? Yeah.
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