Category Archives: Media

Journalists at Conferences

Posted on May 1, 2008 by Felix

Mark Thoma gets a taste of what it’s like to be a journalist at a conference: Because I’m a blogger, they gave me a press pass. That’s kind of cool I guess, or so I thought at first, but it … Continue reading →

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Quote of the Day: Frictionlessness

Posted on April 30, 2008 by Felix

Eric Feng of Hulu, on the digital innovation panel: Media is an impulse business. It’s foolish to expect that the user is going to climb mountains and cross hurdles to get to that content. This is very broadly applicable. Clearly … Continue reading →

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What the Internet Doesn’t Transform

Posted on April 30, 2008 by Felix

The PR panel in some ways encapsulated the weird nexus between corporate America and internet-era technology which has characterized a large part of the Milken Conference. Monday it was newspapers, Tuesday it was music, Wednesday it was PR: in each … Continue reading →

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The State of the Music Industry

Posted on April 29, 2008 by Felix

The music panel featured Andy Lack, the chairman of Sony BMG, who somehow contrived to be reasonably upbeat about the recorded-music industry. It was his misfortune to be sat next to Quincy Jones, who lost no time in bursting his … Continue reading →

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Regional Newspapers are Doomed

Posted on April 28, 2008 by Felix

The panel on the future of print media was really rather depressing, and not necessarily because the panelists were downbeat. The panel comprised four late-middle-aged business guys. They’re all reasonably bullish on how newspaper companies can transform themselves into web-era … Continue reading →

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When the WSJ Competes with the NYT

Posted on April 28, 2008 by Felix

David Carr’s column on the WSJ today is excellent: when he describes the behavior of the WSJ’s editors before and since Murdoch’s takeover as "a pattern of rolling complicity," he really couldn’t put it any better. But he goes further … Continue reading →

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Reporting on Stock Moves

Posted on April 25, 2008 by Felix

Many thanks to Colin Barr, who joined in the conversation after I called him out for his reporting on Merrill yesterday. My problem was with Barr saying that "shares of Merrill Lynch rose 8% after CEO John Thain said he … Continue reading →

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Why the NYT Shouldn’t Attack the WSJ

Posted on April 24, 2008 by Felix

Barry Ritholtz thinks that as the WSJ becomes newsier and more like the NYT, the NYT should beef up its business coverage and try "to go after the Journal’s audience" of executives who expense their subscriptions. I don’t think this … Continue reading →

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Murdoch in Welcomed-by-the-Union Shocker

Posted on April 23, 2008 by Felix

This might be a first: has an acquisition by Rupert Murdoch ever before been welcomed by a newspaper’s unions? “We’d appreciate anybody coming in here that has a newspaper background, that knows New York, whether it’s Zuckerman or Murdoch or … Continue reading →

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Murdoch Returns to his Mass-Market Roots

Posted on April 22, 2008 by Felix

Rupert Murdoch seems to be quietly nearing a deal to buy Newsday from Sam Zell for about $580 million. That’s almost exactly the same amount of money as he spent on buying MySpace – an investment which Gillian Wee weirdly … Continue reading →

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Why Bloomberg Won’t Buy the New York Times

Posted on April 21, 2008 by Felix

Newsweek and the NY Post are today resuscitating one of the perennial rumors in medialand: that Mike Bloomberg will somehow end up buying the New York Times. If the Sulzberger family was amenable – and that’s a big if – … Continue reading →

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Welch Gets It: Don’t Criticize Your Successor

Posted on April 17, 2008 by Felix

Good on Jack Welch for his loud and public mea culpa both on this morning’s CNBC and in Business Week, after he screwed up big time on CNBC yesterday. His criticism of his successor was pretty harsh, but his backtracking … Continue reading →

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WSJ.com Gets its Redesign

Posted on April 16, 2008 by Felix

Rafat Ali reports today that after spending "millions" on a redesign, the all-new WSJ.com will launch "in the next few weeks", with a simple aim: "to drive more traffic in a bigger way". At the margin, resdesigns can and do … Continue reading →

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WSJ and FT Buck the Newspaper Trend

Posted on April 11, 2008 by Felix

These are desperate times for the newspaper industry, and they’re not much better in the world of finance. So it’s interesting to see Jeff Bercovici and Jon Fine lauding impressive growth at the WSJ and the FT respectively. Is this … Continue reading →

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Most People Will Never Understand What Happened to Bear Stearns

Posted on April 1, 2008 by Felix

I’m catching up on a lot of material from the past week and a half or so, most of which is a little stale by now. But Deborah Solomon’s NYT interview with former Treasury secretary Paul O’Neill is still very … Continue reading →

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The Perils of Forecasting

Posted on March 17, 2008 by Felix

Jim Cramer is the new Michael Fish.

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Google: Not Buying the New York Times

Posted on March 14, 2008 by Felix

Russ Mitchell has a must-read interview with Eric Schmidt in the April issue of Portfolio. It gets off to a cracking start, with Schmidt saying that a combined Yahoo-Microsoft would have "certain applications–like instant messaging and email–that could be used … Continue reading →

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Off-Target Reporting

Posted on March 13, 2008 by Felix

A lot of people are very worried about credit card debt right now: there’s a feeling that it might be the next shoe to drop, now that people can’t use home equity to pay off their plastic. So you can … Continue reading →

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Why Bonds are Unloved by the Media

Posted on March 12, 2008 by Felix

Dear John Thain pleads with the financial media to stop with the stock-market obsession, already: The S&P 500 represents about $13 trillion (slightly lower, as of this posting). The bond market, though, is over $27 trillion dollars (a statistic from … Continue reading →

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The WSJ’s New Magazine: An Obvious Money-Spinner

Posted on March 7, 2008 by Felix

Irin Carmon today gets some hard facts about the WSJ’s new glossy magazine. WSJ.’s circulation of 800,000 will be targeted to the 15 largest metro markets, including subscribers with a median household income of $300,000 (15 percent higher than the … Continue reading →

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Zubin Jelveh, Pacesetter

Posted on March 5, 2008 by Felix

February 25: Portfolio’s Zubin Jelveh publishes a definitive article about NYU’s David Yermack and his research into CEOs’ gifts to their family foundations. March 5: The WSJ and NYT write copycat pieces. Maybe they thought that if they waited for … Continue reading →

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Magazine Website Datapoint of the Day

Posted on March 3, 2008 by Felix

I knew that magazines, as a rule, don’t get it when it comes to the web. But I didn’t realise it was this bad: Fewer than 10% even draw as many people online, where their content is free, as they … Continue reading →

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When Numbers are Hard to Read

Posted on February 27, 2008 by Felix

One of the more annoying quirks of New Yorker house style is this kind of thing: A few weeks ago, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released its figures for 2007. They showed that Americans had collectively amassed ten trillion one … Continue reading →

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Why the Web won’t Kill Television

Posted on February 26, 2008 by Felix

Print media were the first victims of the World Wide Web – something which makes sense, given its text-heavy nature. Now that video is increasingly important to the Web, will television be next to implode? I don’t think so. Sophia … Continue reading →

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Credit: The Bandwidth-and-Hamsters Analogy

Posted on February 22, 2008 by Felix

I’m not entirely sure what to make of Yvette Kantrow’s column today. On the one hand, I’m the only person she’s remotely nice about (I’ve "done a decent job," she says) in her review of the way the credit crunch … Continue reading →

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