December 9, 2009
While Facebook surges past 300 million users, MySpace has lost more than half its previous share of the social-networking market, and it continues to bleed about $100 million a year. And it’s all happened since being bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (Fox News, Wall Street Journal, etc.). As this comprehensive article in the Financial Times tells the saga, “An acquisition that had initially covered Murdoch in glory and offered so much promise was becoming an embarrassment to the News Corp chairman and a liability for his company.” Local fallout from the collapse of MySpace can be found in the office component at Playa Vista where MySpace leases office space that it cannot use and has been unable to sublease. By June of 2010, MySpace’s Playa Vista rent will hit $2 million per year. One thing nobody can deny MySpace, however: It’s still the best site to hear music and learn about new music artists. And that’s the direction it has now chosen, after giving up competing with Facebook.
October 12, 2009
Last week, golf legend and internationally renowned golf course designer Arnold Palmer visited Rolling Hills Country Club to discuss his proposed new 18-hole golf course. (He also explained the origin of the Arnold Palmer drink.) While golf club members and public officials met with Arnie at a brief, private gathering, Roddan Paolucci public relations worked with the club and Palmer’s team to coordinate a few, select meetings with the media. This resulted in coverage that included KCBS’ Sports Central with Jim Hill, a column by Bill Dwyre of the Los Angeles Times, an article in the South Bay Daily Breeze by Josh Grossberg, as well as a photo essay in the same publication (by Sean Hiller), as well as coverage in the Palos Verdes Peninsula News.
In his interview with Jim Hill, Palmer predicted that the proposed new course will be “beautiful,” and will make Rolling Hills Country Club “one of the outstanding clubs in the L.A. area.”
August 10, 2009
Associated Press, the world’s largest news wire service, recently announced it would try to crack down on websites using its stories for content unless they pay for them. Like many industries – from music business to the porn business - free online content is devastating the news business, with large aggregator sites like Huffington Post linking to stories from around the world, including AP stories to which they didn’t subscribe. AP plans to use digital rights management (DRM, which the film and music industry also employ) to track down the culprits. But AP’s main rival is doing the opposite: Chris Ahearn, President, Media, at Thomson Reuters, is embracing what he calls “the link economy.” Jabbing at AP Chairman William Dean Singleton, Ahearn wrote in his blog last week, “Please feel free to link to our stories – it adds value to all producers of content. Let’s stop whining and start having real conversations across Read More
July 2, 2009
The Agency Spy site (from Media Bistro) picks up yet another story of (alleged) employee abuse by trendy clothier Abercrombie & Fitch. The store hires “hot people to mope around their ear-drum-destroying stores to ‘fold clothes’ (read: look sexy).” You’ve seen them: they stand there in tight t-shirts and low-slung jeans like sexy mannequins. So why was a young, attractive woman with a prosthetic arm banished to the stock room? She is suing Abercrombie, contending that the store felt her plastic arm violated its “Look Policy.” Look hot, but don’t have an imperfection. It’s not the first employee discrimination suit against Abercrombie. A 2004 complaint alleged minorities were discriminated against for not adhering to the company’s look.
June 19, 2009
James Rainy, media reporter for Los Angeles Times, tears into the L.A. Weekly in his latest column. He says departing Editor Laurie Ochoa (wife of the Weekly’s Pulitzer Prize-winning food writer Jonathan Gold… who is known to eat maple glazed bacon doughnuts) was more or less pushed out by the Weekly’s News Editor Jill Stewart. (As he put it, Ochoa “ceded control of news to Stewart.”) Rainy claims that reporting at the longtime alternative paper had degenerated into slanted stories that score political points through innuendo and shadowy unnamed sources. Rainy makes his claim using shadowy unnamed sources. There may be other errors in his logic. First, Read More
June 2, 2009
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is dating yet another Los Angeles television reporter. Hizzoner and KTLA-TV Channel 5 reporter Lu Parker, a former Miss U.S.A., were seen being affectionate with each other over the weekend at a Larchmont bookstore. The romance was confirmed by NBC Channel 4 L.A. news and the Los Angeles Times. The news comes two years after Villaraigosa’s extramarital affair with another local newscastress – Telemundo KVEA-TV Channel 52 reporter and anchor Mirthala Salinas – led to the breakup of his 20-year marriage. “Now that we’re aware of the relationship, she will no longer be covering local politics,” KTLA-TV news director Jason Ball, told the Times. “I have the utmost faith in Lu Parker’s abilities.”
May 19, 2009
As magazines become less profitable do they become more precious? The latest non-traditionally formatted periodicals are as much art object as publication. Freestyle is printed on ink but on circular pages, with each issue housed in a Frisbee. La Lata (Can in Spanish) has its contents sealed in a can… sometimes a paint can, sometimes a pop-top container, sometimes the kind that needs a can opener. La Mas Bella (The Most Beautiful) has published 30 editions, each one different: a man’s wallet full of stuff, a box of games, a bag of vinyl records, etc. T-Post sends its 2,500 subscribers a new T-shirt, each with a “true story” printed on the inside. Perhaps the most extravagant is Read More
May 15, 2009
Publishers of Interview magazine will soon launch – in the depths of the recession, no less – a magazine, Modern. The quarterly will be devoted to design, “from aesthetics to market conditions, emphasizing information important for any serious collector, as well as material appealing to any fan of design,” the publisher said. With an $8.00 cover price and an initial 50,000 circulation, Modern will be mailed to subscribers of Antiques and Art in America-in select regions, according to a report in Folio.
May 2, 2009
…Look at who most benefitted from it. That’s the well-supported argument of former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Simon Johnson in the new Atlantic. In particular, look at the power-elite bankers and hedge funds – the oligarchy – who still run the show in D.C. and Wall Street.
“The oligarchy and the government policies that aided it did not alone cause the financial crisis that exploded last year. Many other factors contributed, including excessive Read More
May 1, 2009
The flailing publishing industry is throwing some nasty curveballs. And it’s no longer just niche magazines and peripheral newsrooms staff being affected by cutbacks and budget shortfalls. As The Wall Street Journal discussed in April, sports journalists have become the most recent victims of this economic downturn. In a tell-tale sign of the times, the Los Angeles Daily News on April 30 laid off Dodgers beat-writer Tony Jackson, leaving the nation’s second-largest market with just one dedicated baseball reporter. Read More
