Who's happiest of all that one huge financial news outlet (Bloomberg) bought another huge financial news outlet (Businessweek)? Flacks. Via Media Decoder:

"I think that News Corp. has reduced their reporting of core financial markets at The Wall Street Journal. and they haven't had a lot of competition, but now they will, which is great for those of us who are working to help companies get their message across," said Paul Taaffe, chief executive of Hill & Knowlton. "This is a big deal for financial news the world over. It is a total game changer for companies trying to release information, because now there is competition, and competition elevates everybody's game."

Huh. What he's actually saying here is "Bloomberg combining with BW means there's less competition and fewer news outlets, which makes the job of PR people easier." Fixed.


Big Think interviewed the New Yorker's Calvin Trillin. What did he have to say? Well, he says that kids these days don't really know shit about journalism, not like they used to, at least; and then in the second clip he says kids these days don't know shit about real journalism, not like they used to, at least. And he's right!


And meanwhile: The New Yorker has hired somebody. That's crazy! Well. They hired Nick Trautwein away from Penguin Press to replace departed senior editor Emily Eakin, who left the mag for medical reasons, according to John Koblin. Still. Hire?? Crazy!


Conde Nast dumped much of the sales staff at Brides and replace them with ex-Cookie staffers. But that might not have been the brightest idea—Keith Kelly says that move has caused "the magazine to hemorrhage ad pages." Well that's a totally unexpected consequence of an otherwise savvy management move. NOT, haha. Zinger.


The Washington Post has hired Katherine Zaleski away from the Huffington Post. Who's she? A well-connected, wealthy young woman with her own El Dorado apartment. Uh, journalism pays!

T. Boone gave up on wind power, which was a nice little land-grab scheme and PR boost, but the wind was always a front for his natural gas interests.

And you know, we could find some examples of Arianna Huffington and everyone else on that site decrying the Swift Boat attacks of 2004, or even just using "Swift Boat" as a shorthand for incredibly underhanded smear campaigns that are hurting America, and then we could point out that this man who is blogging about the Green-ness of his current attempt to have the federal government give him money is the same man who funded that Swift Boat campaign, but it's Friday, who has that kind of time?

Well, ok, we do.

Last night, media mogul Steven Brill sent us—unsolicited—his thoughts on the possibility of the New York Times charging for its website, which we wrote about yesterday. We will reproduce his thoughts in full, because how often do you get free, unsolicited musings from a media mogul on the area of his expertise (his new gig, Journalism Online, is all about this), even after you have derided him as usually wrong? Brill writes:

1. We have found in creating models like this for our newspaper and magazine affiliates that one of the other key advantages for them is that charging for online will actually enhance their PRINT revenues and circulation. There are two reasons: First, it allows the paper to "bundle" a discount offer for both, so that a would-be print subscriber or renewer can be offered a discount on his online subscription if he or she takes the print edition. (As in "Save 50% off the online subscription if you renew your print subscription.") You can't do that if you're not putting any value on, and not charging for, the online version. Second, if you keep giving one version (online) away for free, then you increasingly undercut sales of the other (print) version, not to mention your ability to raise the price on the newsstand, something most newspapers and magazines are trying to do. The long and short of it is that where papers have charged online in Europe and the U.S. they have enhanced their PRINT revenues. Indeed, the list of newspapers in the U.S. that have not suffered losses in print circulation lately looks like a list of those that are charging for their online versions.

2. In the models we are developing with affiliates, we show that you really needn't give up much if any online ad revenues when you charge online, because you really don't reduce your traffic much. That's because you can use a variety of methods to maintain most of your current (free) page views, such as: only charging readers who visit online more than, say, five time a month; only charging readers who visit frequently and who are outside your geographic base (locally-based online advertisers aren't paying to reach them anyway; or allowing readers to sample the first two paragraphs of a story before asking them to pay. We have created about 15 such varieties of free visits/sampling/charging methods. All of them contradict the notion of some kind of magic "pay wall" suddenly coming down and charging everyone for everything.

Rebecca Dana, reporter for the WSJ's Speakeasy blog and subject of the august paper's sultriest headcut ever, is leaving to take a job with the Daily Beast—her "dream job," she says. "I'm going to write about culture for them, with a focus on fashion. Will also do some editing and some general entertainment/media stuff," Dana tells us. She adds, "You won't have this stipple-portrait to kick around any more!" Oh?

The Claremont, NH Eagle Times folds, leaving the town without a newspaper. The Washington City Paper brushed off criticisms from witless Marion Barry fans who could not recognize the unadulterated brilliance of their latest cover. And other papers continue to try to fashion some sort of overarching editorial philosophy for the Huffington Post. Hint: It doesn't exist.

Do not expect Bill Keller to laugh and chuckle the next time a satirical cable news show comes calling! He says about his Daily Show experience: "Well, that's the last time I try to be a good sport. Even my wife told me that I looked faintly ridiculous, and she was trying to make me feel better. Among the people who would miss us most would be the wise-guy pundits and scriptwriters for satirical TV shows, because they riff on the news we produce." Bill Keller will punch Jason Jones right in the snoot, on sight.

Hruska, the smart, city-savvy Omaha import who quietly stormed the NYC media and socialite scene after quitting her hedge fund gig and starting a successful blog covering New York nightlife got a much-ballyhooed* profile in the New York Times today. Most of it's just fluff, and fun fluff, at that: it's nice to see a young upstart - even if they are funded by a Winklevoss Twin, ahem - come wide-eyed from Middle America and get her Blog Empire on. Hruska's unflappably charming, has few detractors and lots of friends in this town, who she gets to flit around with and make part of her story. But there was one part of the profile that might've tugged on some pretty sensitive nerves: the fact that the piece touted her "energetic, well educated and impressionable" staff that is "largely unpaid."

Gawker emerita Sheila McClear rips into Hruska over at ASSME:

As long as you're grateful to work for free in exchange for cocktails, hors d'oeuvres, and social cache, your "career" is going nowhere. Try crashing parties for your schmoozing opportunities, and you can freeblog for fun but don't spend too much time on it–real adults get paid. Jesus, I sound like a Dad, but seriously–do you want to be popular, or do you want to make money?

Yes, I've checked: ASSME pays. Which raises the question: if ASSME can pay, why can't Hruska? Or why won't she? Even the potential conflict-of-interest-ridden minefield that is media expert Dan Abrams' site Mediaite will be paying their contributors. What gives?

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.It's my guess that Hruska doesn't give a shit about the future of journalism, and if she does, it doesn't have much to do with her blog, which is a social scene site. The girls writing for Hruska - not to pigeonhole them - probably aren't looking for a full-time gig in what she does so much as (A) a mentoring from her (B) a good time, which is a kinda fair barter or (C) enough perks to supplement their full-time gigs. If anybody's trying to get gainful employment directly from working for Hruska, that's their fault, not hers, no matter how impressionable they are. But then comes the philosophical imperative: is it bad for society to not pay writers?

Well, that depends on how important you think Guest of a Guest is to society.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Which brings us to The Huffington Post, who, on the other hand, some people definitely think is important to the future of journalism. Among those people: Lorraine Branham, dean of the S.I. Newhouse School of Journalism at Syracuse, who awarded Arianna Huffington with a lifetime achievement award on June 9th. Now, mind you: the Huffington Post doesn't pay for the majority of the content that appears on their site. Journalism School students pay lots of money to (hopefully) one day be paid for the content Arianna Huffington is putting on her site for free-nintey-nine. AdAge media writer Simon Dumenco took on the award a while back. And today, Dumenco absolutely lays into Huffington for grievances held against her nearly universally.

First, Arianna Huffington's dismissive views regarding journalism itself:

...Huffington's own defensive explanation, at the Mirror Awards, for why her bloggers earn nothing...she declared, "Our bloggers come and go. They write when the spirit moves them, and they do it because they want to be part of the conversation." Yikes. So after all these years of Huffington giving lip service to the idea that her legions of bloggers are the heart and soul of her supposedly revolutionary über-blog, it turns out she thinks they're marginal, fly-by-night, "come and go" wannabes.

Dumenco could be on to something: if writers are writing for free to gain exposure, this could eventually become so circular - the job I'm writing from right now could be a job done "for exposure" - that the foundation that journalism jobs are built on could become an (ironically) inverted pyramid, one where free content sits at the top, with only those who survive through an income-less period of life scoring paid gigs.

How 'bout those writers who aren't paid, though? How do you ensure quality or liability? Every time the Huffington Post puts shoddy journalism on their site, they risk their reputation as a place to get news. And maybe that - the reputation - is the currency Arianna Huffington has to barter with her "writers." And quality control is important to the press!

And that would be the case with HuffPo. If it weren't turning into a content-repurposing tabloid. Dumenco did the math about the actual content on her site. The stuff that wasn't one of her celebrity-friend-penned columns, or written by one of her five paid reporters:

By HuffPo's own tally, more than a quarter million readers viewed the Heather Graham post, which quoted 13 sentences, totaling 142 words, from Britain's Daily Mail — a paper that (stupidly, naively, I suppose) pays its entertainment reporters. HuffPo's contribution to the, uh, discourse? Just 58 words of its own — which simply set up the Daily Mail's interview with Graham and further summarized the article. And that, folks, is HuffPo's true business model...

The Oncoming Apocalypse Of Journalism - of which Huffington might be one of the Four Horsepeople - could just be a Noah's Ark-esque flood, one in which the only thing holding you above water is a paycheck for quality. Or people could just stop giving a shit about quality, and that could go, too. Either way, Huffington and Hruska make two things about making a buck writing very, very evident: (1) there will now always be someone behind you to do your job for less, at the same rate you're doing it at, and (2) in the economy of writing - shit, in any economy - owning the shop always has and always will have perks. It may be lonely at the top, but at least you're gettin' paid. And if you're Huffington and Hruska, you get to bring your friends along for the ride, too.

Cocktails and Backslaps Don't Pay My Rent–Do They Yours? [ASSME]
Trashy Parasitism as a Get-Rich-Quick Scheme? Hi, HuffPo [AdAge]

So you can go through her terrible speech and read some old Gingrich op-ed and painstakingly find every sentence or phrase that rings similar, if you want, and cry "plagiarism!" But we gave up on that once we read this bit of Palin's speech: "Recently, Newt Gingrich, he had written a good article about Reagan...." She then goes on to summarize many of the things Newt Gingrich wrote about Ronald Reagan.

So, yes, it is not by any standard a very good speech, and it is quite lazy, but to call it "plagiarism" is bullshit.

The brilliant model of new journalism site The Evening Huffington Express-Telegraph is getting a shitload of content for free, because as we all know, nothing that can be accessed for free is worth paying for, which is why music is so great, these days.

They have stepped up their game, though! They are auctioning off an internship! For the charity, sure, but also because they can! The "internships" in New York media that can be yours as long as you're related to Jann Wenner or Graydon Carter (or, if you aim lower, as long as you can afford to work for free while getting your useless $150k degree) certainly worked out very well the magazine and publishing industries, right? So let's do that, on the internet, now, but even more extreme.

We are auctioning off our own job, here at Gawker, for $40,000. Just PayPal it to us. Then Jumpstart Your Career, as a Blogger!

Betsy Perry is a "strategic marketing and branding consultant" and goes a long way towards proving that everyone with that title is a fraud. She resigned from the New York City Commission on Women's Issues this week—just in time for Cinco de Mayo!—because Mexicans, in addition to being flu-ridden, are apparently too sensitive for a little joshing:

Used to be the worst thing about visiting Mexico was drinking the water or tickling an ice cube in your margarita; it was guaranteed regardless of safety measures that within hours you would be physically attached to the "commode." Warned against eating anything that might have been touched by the Mexican help with hands washed in parasite infested tap water, you'd live on guacamole and Doritos even at the finest hotels.

That's just the first paragraph! Anyhow Betsy's not working for you, the Women of New York, any more, thanks to Mexican sensitivity. Shame—tacos of shame.
[NYT]

For the last fucking time, celebrities, vaccines do not cause autism.

It is fine and noble to say "we should look into what (beyond better, earlier detection and diagnoses) is causing all this autism!" and even "we should make sure we are testing these vaccines extensively!" but to just go around shouting, without evidence, and in spite of evidence to the contrary, "VACCINES CAUSE AUTISM" is 9/11 Truther hysterical idiocy at its dumbest.

But hey, all you non-doctors with absolutely no understanding of the scientific method or medical research can just go ahead and keep using your massive platforms to convince parents not to vaccinate their kids, because what is the worst that could happen?

Last week official figures showed that 1,348 confirmed cases of measles in England and Wales were reported last year, compared with 56 in 1998. Two children have died of the disease.

Good work, Arianna, letting this famous person promote his little pet cause on your website, thus is the vast potential of the citizen-driven new media landscape realized.

After all, the number of people willing to write for free is vast. In 2007, I was in charge of recruiting writers for the expansion of The Huffington Post. I calculated that I would need 75 unpaid blog submissions per day, Monday through Friday, in order to make the site work. That target seemed absurd at first. Yet within two months, hundreds of willing bloggers had signed up, the majority of them credentialed authors published by major publishing houses.

Thanks a lot, Francis!

(Mickey Kaus is the noted liberal Democrat blogger who hates unions and immigrants.)

Then he seems to insinuate that a union drive at HuffPo's headquarters would involve intimidation tactics by SEIU, and the terrible, nightmarish end result he predicts: Sam Stein and the wonderful Jason Linkins get rich, on Arianna's dime. Which would be terrible! For everyone! Can you imagine? The HuffPo management not being allowed to fire anyone they like based on Arianna's mercurial whims! Content-producers getting paid to produce content!

Unless he's arguing simply that rich liberals are hypocrites, which, welcome to the working week, Mickey. But, hah, the fact that a rich person wouldn't want their company unionized and that such a unionization would basically be impossible to accomplish at the moment and the fact that the end result of such a unionization would be that good workers like Linkins would be better-compensated is basically the argument for the terrible scary Card Check legislation, so good for you, Mickey, you are doing the lord's work.

It is 2009 and the British Royal Navy is going after pirates. The Honourable East India Company will probably be re-founded by London merchants? These Somali pirates keep stealing ships and demanding ransoms and disrupting trade so obvs they are menaces who mut be stopped! But Johann Hari, writer for The Independent, sez maybe the pirates are not so bad! Because Somalia is basically the most failed state ever, and Europeans have been dumping nuclear waste all over the place and also stealing all the seafood. So the pirates originally started out as an unofficial coast guard, and now they've just branched out a bit.

The Somali Pirates are young capitalists, as their ransom riches dissolve the clan barriers that have caused generations of nation-destroying fighting among competing warlords. They're made up of former fishermen, who took to the seas a decade ago to protect their livelihoods as international thugs began stealing their food and dumping in their waters, and armed strongmen, who'd be engaging in yet more destructive inter-clan civil wars at home if they weren't out making money with piracy.

Also they are pirates, and we all know that pirates are very popular on the internet, like cats and bacon, so obviously they need our support.

The mere fact that Arianna's liberal political junkie site got that money in the first place was astounding. First, because the overall economy sucks, and investment in general is scarce. Second, because investment in media companies of any type is even more scarce. And finally, because it was just common sense that HuffPo's traffic would rise to an artificially high peak during campaign season, and then head back downhill.

Which is exactly what's happening! You can see by this graph that their weekly page views starting ticking up significantly by September, and topped 90 million by election day. Today—a month later—they're back down in the 40 million range.

Now, perhaps HuffPo figures that, hey, just this past summer they were averaging in the 20-millions, so if they can keep their average moving forward around 40, that's 100% improvement. The question is, to what extend did her investors factor this post-election plunge—and the shitty advertising trends—into their projections? We assume they saw this coming, and still invested anyhow, for some reason! Or else they fell prey to deadly optimism.

Arianna Huffington, you are one impressive internet market-timer. We salute you.
[Graph: Quantcast]

She got the accent and nonsense-making fairly right, but what about Arianna's legendary pettiness? Hopefully next time we see Arianna, she'll be huddled over three BlackBerrys in her bathroom sobbing. All things considered, we preferred the original audition:

• The original story said only that Huffpo "will confirm within the next week that it has completed a $15 million (£10 million) fundraising from investors."
• PaidContent says that their sources have confirmed to them that the investor is Oak Investment Partners, which has invested in several other digital media companies. Before this, the site's backers had put in $25 million into the site. PaidContent estimates the deal's valuation of HuffPo at around $100 million.
• But! AlleyInsider says that "A source close to the company tells us these reports are 'stupid and false' and 'wrong across the board.'" Then they add, "HuffPo cofounder Ken Lerer is an investor in our parent company." HMMM.
• HuffPo itself is not commenting.
• But you might reasonably say: Sure, their traffic has been great through the election season. But won't it fall off a cliff now that the election is over? It sure looks like it according to Quantcast's numbers (see below). But maybe not! Number-crunching wunderkind Nate Silver's fivethirtyeight.com, HuffPo has actually increased its average traffic by 9% since the election.
• 
  
  
  

The truth will come out shortly. If these reports are accurate, we're impressed.

According to Reuters, she said there won't be any details for three months. Perhaps in that time the economy will improve and donors will look to throw money at investigative journalism? Ha, no. So where will this cash come from? Some guesses:

• She could fund it out of her own amply filled pockets. Not likely.
• She could find an investor or donor to fund some staff positions. Not likely.
• Volunteer investigative journalism!

I guess we'll have to wait and see. If you know the answer to fundraising these days, email us, and send money. [Mediafile]

Media futurist Jack Myers knows how to make billions of dollars for the media!

Media companies need to convince investors they have the management team in place that can develop and implement a coherent and intelligent vision for the future – a future in which they will be forced to be less dependent on advertising revenues...
Go to www.JackMyers.com to see the chart or to order your free copy of Jack Myers' Investment forecast.

How exactly can all the flailing media companies scoop up these billions they've left on the table? Simple, folks:

Each media brand needs to be assessed for its potential to generate revenues from events, sales promotion, database marketing, cause related initiatives, long-tail sales, and other below-the-line marketing communications budgets.

But I don't understand. Help!

To communicate with or to be contacted by the executives and/or companies mentioned in this column, link to the JackMyers Connection Hotline.

Thanks, media futurist and "blogger" for HuffPo Jack Myers!

Franklin Roosevelt protected this country from the statist dictatorships that were emerging in the rest of the world. He protected capitalism by creating programs and institutions to protect innocent people but did not raise taxes and did not remove incentives for private wealth creation. In another era, with real fiscal deficits larger than we face currently, President Kennedy reduced taxes.

In 1932, the top marginal tax rate was 63%. In 1960, it was 91%. Lynn Forester de Rothschild is an idiot. Seriously, you really, really have to be an idiot of the highest order to write this sentence:

There is a reason why immigrants fly to America to achieve their dream. Now, in the guise of a "middle class tax cut" Barack Obama is threatening that dream. If he succeeds, Barack Obama will bring the kind of radical transformation that this country does not need and never has. And the country will be in for a shock.

Barack Obama should probably, once in office, raise Lynn Forester de Rothschild's taxes by a million percent.