The archives! The CBS show Eleventh Hour has a "sponsored archive" of free NYT stories about cloning humans and stuff, which presumably is a topic related to Eleventh Hour. It might grate on traditionalists, but we can't hate on things like this too much. Better to sell new online ads than, say, start plastering the front page of the print edition with ads. Besides, Thomas Friedman's mustache wax ain't free.

It's not just this latest "PUNCH IN 'FACE BOOK,'" as the Post eloquently puts it. The media has been warning us of internet dangers forever!

• Myspace: Log on and have your children raped.
• Facebook is filling up with creepy old people (who are probably rapists).
• Also Facebook will ruin your engagement.
• Flickr: A place where baby rapists look at pictures of your babies and masturbate to them.
• The government uses bloggers to hide its role in the Kennedy assassination.
• Nasty internet comments in England could cost you eleventy billion dollars.
• And dangerous hackers are hacking your email and looking for pictures of your children, which is why we should all be thrown in jail.

On one hand, the story is clearly marked as a sponsored item, so it's not deceptive. On the other hand, all the rest of the story's presentation, and its placement on the site, is identical to that of a normal Radaronline.com feature.

On the third hand, we here at Gawker run "sponsored" blog posts from time to time, which are (clearly marked) ads that go up with our other posts (but aren't usually written by staff writers). The same tactic is also practiced by print media, and raises grumbles sometimes when items are too similar to standard editorial stories. But as long as there's disclosure, it's generally recognized as a matter of taste more than ethics.

On the fourth hand, we now have a post about Radar's blog, and Radar's blog currently has a post up about Gawker! In this way, the whole blog world is one big clusterfuck of editorial cross-promotion, even when it's coincidental (and sometimes catty!). In the end readers will decide how much the ads on any site affect the credibility they give to it. If they get the feeling your site is shilling too relentlessly, you lose.

Is model-loving billionaire Ron Burkle's role in funding Radar worth mentioning here? Probably not.

Mariotti and Tribune "talked about television, about the Internet, about the newspaper,'' he said. Mariotti said that discussions about working for Tribune Co.'s Chicago Tribune newspaper became a stumbling block. "The Sun-Times' lawyer threatened me with a lawsuit in 64-point type. Things sort of stalled,'' he added.

Gosh, that is big type. Let's recap: Mariotti, one of the most reviled sports columnists in America by fans, colleagues, and athletes alike, suddenly and without warning quits an outrageously lucrative newspaper job—one of the rarest commodities in all the media. Because he saw people at the Olympics "writing for web sites" and figured he should, too. Does he then start a web site? No, he goes to his former employer's biggest rival begging for, essentially, the same job he just quit.

Could you squeeze one more appalling quote into this story in order to cement your idiocy for us, Jay?

"It's not your father's Tribune,'' Mariotti said, speaking about new management in the wake of Tribune Co.'s deal late last year to go private under a deal led by Sam Zell. "I enjoyed dealing with them. I think they have a great future.''

Jay Mariotti: as savvy about the newspaper business as he is about sports.

[Chicago Tribune]

Not long after getting an infusion of capital in 2006, it was revealed that Heavy was inflating its traffic numbers by buying pop-up ads featuring Heavy content on other sites, and counting them as visits. Which is not something any advertiser wants to hear:

The concern over pop-up content goes beyond traffic numbers. Many advertisers pay premium prices to reach readers of certain Web sites. Through pop-ups, these advertisers may find their orders are being fulfilled with low-cost page views that users never requested and may never have seen.

Instead of being satisfied with what it was—a reasonably popular humor site—Heavy promised hypergrowth in order to attract investment dollars. The problem is, they've never had enough extra content to support the growth they wanted. Hence the pop-ups.

We also hear Heavy co-founder Simon Asaad tried to sell the site to Break.com, but the deal never went through.

So if even the "Heavy Men's Network" can't gin up enough extra traffic to satisfy those investors (and it would need some fantastic new plan to do it), Heavy—minus its best salesmen—could be on the way down.

[More details on Heavy's decline at Valleywag]

Just back from Beijing, where he covered the Olympics, Mariotti said in a phone interview that he decided to quit after it became clear while in China that sports journalism had become "entirely a Web site business. There were not many newspapers there." He added that most of the journalists covering the Games were "there writing for Web sites."

Is it just me, or do you get the sense that Jay Mariotti is not entirely clear what a "web site" is? Nevertheless, he's decided to resign "after signing a well-publicized three-year contract extension in June." His own paper's editor apparently found out about Mariotti's resignation when an outside reporter emailed him for a quote. Think he's kind of a dick? Hate on, haters. All you're doing is making him more famous.

[Tribune; Everything you need to know about Jay Mariotti, at Deadspin]

Italy wanted to build a website to market the nation to prospective tourists. The cost so far: $66 million over five years. And it doesn't even exist yet!

Among the problems: Too many cooks in the kitchen ("Several government ministries — in two administrations — and each of Italy's 20 regions were involved in creating the portal"), a product that went live in 2007 full of embarrassing errors, databases that weren't compatible with each other, and a logo purchased for $150,000 that was eventually discarded for sucking too much. A consultant tells the WSJ that the government could have had an agency complete the entire project by now for around 2% of what's been spent.

Try Blogspot.com, yo.

[WSJ]

• Google: WebsiteOutlook value: $1.2 billion. Market cap: $153 billion.
• Daily Candy: WebsiteOutlook value: $112,000. Just sold for $125 million.
• Amazon.com: WebsiteOutlook value: $75 million. Market cap: $33 billion.
• Ebay: WebsiteOutlook value: $134 million. Market cap: $33 billion.
• Mediabistro: WebsiteOutlook value: $459,000. Sold for $23 million. Then again, [joke].

[via Mental Floss]

[via Copyranter]

FreeCreditReport.com is run by Experian, and it actually signs you up for a $14.95 per month fee when it gives you your report. Making this even worse is the fact that we're all legally entitled to a free credit report from the company every year, via AnnualCreditReport.com. But Experian's site is incredibly successful, because we are all suckers for a catchy ad tune.

“It absolutely is the free credit report,” [an Experian exec] said. “It’s not the one by the government, which is why we put the link on our front page of the landing site, and it is a free report. It’s really a test drive for people to understand what’s in that report because a report can be very complex.”

One key step to understanding your credit report: knowing where those mysterious $14.95 per month charges are coming from. Three of the company's ads are in the clip below.

[NYT]

When Weinstein first made his "significant" investment, A Small World was touted as the place where the rich and powerful would meet online, "friendster for people who self-identify as being dually-based in two large cities with modern Western economies, an abundance of 8-figure real estate and a luxury resort or two."

With the Weinstein Co. on such unstable ground, Harvey sure would have loved to have the insurance of a successful ASW. Just imagine, a site with Facebook's popularity but the demographic profile of the WSJ. It would be a gold mine! Alas,much like Denise Rich, megayachts, and parties in St. Tropez with Naomi Campbell, ASW was overhyped. An illustrative look at how the game-changing site (that's too exclusive for you) has been performing:

The Time piece is livelier that the Journal's, but guess what shows up in it: that's right, all the exact same facts! 4chan was started by a 15-year-old kid. It is dirty. Memes. LOLCats. Big audience, small money. Porny! Hard to sell ads! But "moot," the founder of the site, does have the right idea, PR-wise:

He wouldn't be above cashing out for the right price, which is $580 million, which is what Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. paid for MySpace in 2005. "I try to work Murdoch into any interview I give," he says. "Rupert Murdoch? moot@4chan.org."

My shirt right now is as wrinkly as Rupert Murdoch. Meme!

[WSJ, Time]

When the Post went to get their preferred domain name, PostPolitics.com, they found out that it was already owned—by Politico. So the Post had to pay Politico $20,000 to get the name back.

That moment was probably the closest that John Harris has ever come to exclaiming "Boo-ya, bitches."

[Washington CP via The Slog]

A tipster tells us that in the past two weeks, three Elle.com employees have given notice: beauty editor Rachael Nichol, designer Alexandra Gershman, and senior editor Tracy Lomrantz. Discontent is at an all time high. Hachette higher-ups reportedly keep running the site by trial and error, to the exasperation of longtime staffers.

We'll continue to watch. Disgruntled employees can always email us.

Half of the celebrities in the story, like Jay-Z and Puffy, demand that companies give them partial ownership and allow them to design products, and other requests that seem excessive. You can't blame them for asking, though. More nilla celebrities, however, seem way too nice to play this game well:

“It’s flattering that companies think of you and they want to work with you,” [Ellen DeGeneres] says, adding that she is working with American Express because she liked earlier ads the company did with Jerry Seinfeld.

Ha, sure! And what do you say, borderline Grey's Anatomy star Patrick Dempsey?

“I wear my cologne all of the time,” says Mr. Dempsey, whose fragrance will be introduced by Avon Products in November. “This is a whole different experience and a real education for me, and it has been something that I’ve been involved with every step of the way.”

Hopefully these celebrities are just lying, rather than actually being that naive. The story notes that people don't actually trust celebrities, but they buy their products anyhow. The reason? YOUR INSATIABLE APPETITE:

First has been the emergence of Web sites and magazines that chronicle the mundane, daily activities of stars on a 24/7 basis. A voracious public eager to peek at Hollywood celebrities shopping for shoes and buying coffee wanted, in turn, to buy those shoes and drink that coffee themselves.

There's also plenty of info on Rihanna's umbrella endorsements! But the most honest paragraph in the whole story is this one:

“The reality is people want a piece of something they can’t be,” says Eli Portnoy, a branding strategist. “They live vicariously through the products and services that those celebrities are tied to. Years from now, our descendants may look at us and say, ‘God, these were the most gullible people who ever lived.’ “

[NYT]

Listicles

Putting things into list format really seems to draw in readers. Nobody knows why this is true.

Creating coherent characters

Julia Allison is the prototypical protoceleb, but you can do this with anybody who's worthy of further examination. The photo of CNBC.com managing editor Allen Wastler on his traffic article shows him gripping a cigar between his teeth. Worthy of a follow up piece? Maybe! But probably not. You have to pick people who are actually interesting somehow.

Diggable Stuff

Digg will drive thousands and thousands of people to your little story. Is this post Diggable? I don't know, why don't you go Digg it! Then you will feel like you were part of something, because we are all on the same team. Gawker video maven Richard Blakeley is very good at this. If you pay him money he'll tell you how to do it.

Sex

Things You Can't Control

This can work against traffic, as in the case of CNBC.com and Tiger Woods. But it can also work in one's favor—usually in the case of death and disaster. A sad fact of news.

Good, Intelligent Content

Quality often does rise to the top, believe it or not!

Cute!

Now forward this list to all your friends!

[pic via WSJ]

[For a less harsh appraisal, earlier]

"There's more of a need for this magazine than ever, given the explosion in the number of TV channels," said Debra Birnbaum, a TV Guide editor who was promoted to editor in chief on Tuesday.

[STIFLED LAUGHTER]

The new TV Guide editor, Ms. Birnbaum, 37, has been a top editor of TV Guide, the celebrity magazine Life & Style and Inside TV, a short-lived spinoff of TV Guide. She said her mission was to continue TV Guide's transition to being an entertainment magazine and a critical filter for viewers overwhelmed by choices. And she said she wanted to include Web sites like YouTube.

Yes: because when savvy online users want to know what to watch on YouTube, they turn to TV Guide's print version. Not to TVGuide.com, which will be owned by another company.

Interested buyers contact Macrovision now!

You go to the site. Do you like boys or girls? Click one. Dramatic music swells up. A film starts: a beautiful woman, bathing in the ocean, with, it must be said, a rather revealing outfit. She strides towards you. She wants your gum! You place it in her mouth, and she is happy:

She moves towards you. What's this—she wants to see your webcam? You turn it on. Now you're supposed to kiss her!

The site freezes; its dirty little electronic self is waiting for evidence from your webcam that you are actually leaning in and kissing the screen! That's when I turned it off. I don't like Mentos that much. But please, feel free to try it and report back. I think this may be asking a bit much of even the most bored breath mint aficionados.

Visitors are able to determine their personal flavor profiles with the help of a five-question quiz, and they can request free samples before committing to a purchase.

"We want to make people understand that if you tried one [blend] and you didn't like it, it wasn't the right blend for you," said Ms. Pinero. "That doesn't mean the whole brand isn't right for you."

My flavor profile is Breakfast Blend!

Plus there's barista art (!!!), like this:

Turns out that Mosley's kink was not necessarily pathological, because it doesn't technically fall into any of the American Psychiatric Associations eight major categories of paraphilia. Furthermore, "Like biker gear, SS outfits can heighten the sense of a "top/bottom" power differential, which, to some, is highly arousing." Interesting!

Then they talk about the literary history of sadomasochism, the current theories of psychoanalysts on the subject, and how it all connects to Jean Jacques Rousseau.

Or you can just go to Jalopnik and watch the tape, you dirty, uneducated swine.

Well, I do recall Nicole saying to me in the distant past that she always felt she wasn't well endowed and she wished she were. But seeing is believing, and here is a photograph taken back in 2006 where I seem about to lift and toss this beautiful star into the air. No, seriously, take a glance at it. Does this look like a girl who needed breast surgery? No, this is Nicole all natural as the good Lord made her at the Vanity Fair party Oscar night.

I admire a fine belle poitrine as much as anyone, but I can't stand these added-on half grapefruits that look as unnatural as can be. I have known Nicole for a long time now and her natural assets were quite good enough to start with.

She then goes on to congratulate her good friend Nicole on her charity work. Befriending old gossip columnists is hazardous for celebrities, obviously.

Added bonus: Liz Smith's description of Mediabistro:

My friend Dominick Dunne has given an interview to the website mediabistro.com which usually covers who's who and who's eating at the popular Manhattan restaurant, Michael's.

[pic via Liz Smith herself!]

Josh has taken his employment fate into his own hands by setting up a website—with a tasteful, manic yin-and-yang symbol wallpaper—touting himself as the answer to your company's [something] needs. He can offer you direct marketing experience; copywriting experience; and "Brand marketing experience that got a lot more kids to get fat from drinking Nesquik... which they bought at Target." Sign us up!

Josh uses an arcane advertising technique known as "exaggeration" to help his points stick in the head of you, his potential employer. "BREAKING NEWS: World-Famous Marketing Genius Josh Millrod Is Finally Available For Hire," he writes. The concealed witticism: Millrod is not, in fact, world famous (yet).

"I'm not quite as insane as this site might suggest... I promise," writes Josh. Cool!

Let's run down his resume: He's worked on campaigns for everyone from gangster rappers to Fortune 500 companies. And he's held five different jobs in the past year! That's the type of broad-based experience you want from a marketing genius/ 2006 graduate of Indiana University in Bloomington.

In conclusion, you are a foolish and incompetent businessman if you don't contact Josh Millrod with a job offer at once. And ladies, he "loves to read, hang out in coffee shops and watch zombie movies." So why don't you contact him, as well?

Let us know how it goes, Josh!

[UPDATE: Josh writes in to tell us that he put up this site as "a joke for some friends" and adds that "I'm really not a complete dickhead and it sucks to see people talk about me like I am." I believe him.]

Liberty Mutual runs a website called ResponsibilityProject.com. It has a blog, videos, and other content promoting "responsibility," but it's fundamentally an interactive branding exercise tied to one of the company's ads.

Yesterday, a blogger at the Tribble Agency noticed that Liberty Mutual had bought Google Adwords related to Tilley to promote a story called "Death By Blog" that they're running on the Responsibility Project. That story, by ex-journalist Kathy McManus, attempts to position the Tilley-blog controversy as an "ethical" question, since some of the mean bloggers had posted mean remarks about Tilley "seemingly with no reason other than the chance to snipe at a big boss."

Another, more pertinent ethical question could be, "Is it right for a huge corporation, which has no legitimate claim on Tilley's life, image, or legacy, to buy ads based on the man's death in order to sell insurance?"

The consensus: no it's not, jerks. Ad industry bloggers who caught wind of the plan have called it everything from "wrong" to "irresponsible" to "insane," and AdScam referred to the company as, uh, "fucking douchenozzles." To make it worse, the company reportedly even bought the keywords "AdScam" and "Agency Spy"—the two blogs most closely tied to the criticisms of Tilley before his death.

It's obvious even to us that this is poorly conceived and tasteless. It appears that Liberty Mutual has pulled its keyword ads now (confirmation?), but this never should have happened in the first place. It would make a good case for the crappy "Responsibility Project."

[via Adverganza, AdScam, Adfreak]

"The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness...." Romans 1:18.

For those Bible readers that say Revelation is the scariest book in the Bible, check Romans out. It is one of the books I read the most and that verse is the one I try to always remember. If you read on, you would read it goes on to say God's wonders have been demonstrated in plain view since the beginning of time so men, we, are without excuse. I personally get so tired of that statement, "game recognizes game" because it's so true and it doesn't comfort me. That statement offers me no solace for the simple fact that it only serves as a catalyst to perturb me in an area I'd much rather ignore. The truth is "Game" does recognize game and "Game" does all it can to suppress, ignore or utterly decimate it.

Quick...

I love that word. Decimate. You know where it comes from? It's Latin from "deci" meaning "ten" and "mate" meaning kill. If Caesar's army, men or what have you would lose a battle, fight or all in all mess up, he would order something passed gangster. He'd order 10 men from his army bound and gagged in public view and, you guessed it, slaughtered. Just to get his point across to the rest that he wasn't in business for tolerance of failure. All these little Latin barbs I know are thanks to Latin classes I had while growing up in Catholic school. Actually made the English portion of the SAT a turkey shoot.

[pic via WSJ]

"MyStarbucksIdea.com was clearly inspired by my site, which was created nearly four years ago to move barista/customer conversations to the web," Romenesko said in an e-mail Wednesday.

"My site will continue to thrive because it's an authentic reflection of how customers and employees feel about the company. MyStarbucksIdea.com, on the other hand, is clearly a corporate propaganda site," he said. [Seattle Times]

Motherfuckin right, Romenesko! He's like the Shepard Fairey of Starbucks bloggers. A serious fight could be brewing, and we, for one, are more than ready to see a pay-per-view boxing match between Jim Romenesko and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz—possibly in a steel cage, or a vat of pudding.

Can there be a peaceful resolution? One commenter on Starbucks Gossip suggests a possible path to settlement:

and what is the big deal? Stop being morons - get your own coffee company then you can complain. Why be a bunch of white trash losers and complain about things that have nothing do with you - and start something just to hear yourselves speak. Get a life.

Posted by: Gooooogirl | Mar 20, 2008 7:32:19 PM