Category Archives: Media

Why All Consumer Magazines Should be Free Online

The Christopher Leinberger article in the Atlantic which I plugged at the beginning of last week is finally online. I moaned about such delays this morning, and got an email asking why exactly they’re so bad. I replied that Choire … Continue reading

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Magazines Still Don’t Get the Web

“We don’t hire editors anymore,” says Meredith publishing president Jack Griffin. “We hire content strategists.” As someone who gloried briefly as an official Content Strategist myself, I had to smile: it’s one of those titles which anybody with an iota … Continue reading

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News Corp’s Cutest Board Member

"I’m not just some idiotic girl in piggytails yodeling," says Natalie Bancroft in an interview for the March issue of Portfolio, who was photographed by João Canziani. "I’m working my little butt off." The daughter of Joyce Bancroft, a Dutch-Brazilian … Continue reading

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Why Personalized Advertising Means a Free WSJ.com

Esther Dyson has a thought-provoking op-ed in the WSJ today, which really ought to be read by the paper’s new owner, Rupert Murdoch. "The Coming Ad Revolution" is the headline, and a close reader of the piece will immediately understand … Continue reading

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Why I Still Think WSJ.com Will be Free

I’ve said repeatedly on this site that Rupert Murdoch should and will make WSJ.com free. So how am I feeling now that he seems to have said precisely the opposite in Davos? Not quite as wrong as you might think, … Continue reading

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Why Paying for Web Usage Might Make Sense

Time Warner is dipping its toe, ever so gingerly, into charging for data downloaded rather than bandwidth. Kevin Maney explains why this makes sense for them: they’re competing, on the video-content front, with online providers. But that doesn’t necessarily mean … Continue reading

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CNBC-Related Stock Moves, Part 2

Interested in buying stock in Converted Organics? Too late. The Peanut Gallery has the intraday chart: Today, another stock I have been following was mentioned on CNBC, (COIN: 12.40 +42.53%). Look at the chart and see if you can tell … Continue reading

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Why WSJ.com Will Go Free

Last week, Henry Blodget made a good point about WSJ.com going free: The first indication that you WSJ holdouts may not suddenly get your free lunch is this: Murdoch’s owned the thing for several weeks now and it hasn’t yet … Continue reading

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Capital Injections at Citi and Merrill: The Shorter Version

The WSJ’s massive front-page story this morning, headlined "Citigroup, Merrill Seek More Foreign Capital", is an important one. But you might well not have time to read the entire 2,365-word article, so let me summarize it for you. Here’s the … Continue reading

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The Power of Market Capitalization

What is the correlation between a company’s size, as measured by market capitalization, and its power? I’m not sure how one would measure power, but I don’t think that market cap is a good proxy for it. ADM is worth … Continue reading

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The Power of Round Numbers

On Wednesday, Richard Arens decided to celebrate the new year by having a bit of fun. He’s a "local" who trades for his own account on the floor of the Nymex, and he bought exactly one crude oil contract at … Continue reading

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The Economics of Tom Wolfe

Tom Wolfe has left the publisher where he spent his entire career, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, and decamped to Little, Brown instead. Why? Money, of course: People involved in the negotiations said on Wednesday that Mr. Wolfe’s advance for the … Continue reading

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How a Free WSJ.com can Beat Yahoo Finance

PaidContent’s Joseph Wiesenthal has found a research note from Bear Stearns analyst Spencer Wang which is bearish on the revenue prospects for a free WSJ.com, compared to the amount it currently generates in subscriptions. Bloggers love to fisk Wall Street … Continue reading

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Pearson Sells a Paper

The good news is that Pearson has finally, officially, sold off a financial newspaper it really had no business owning in the first place. The bad news is that it hasn’t sold the FT; it’s merely sold Les Echos, in … Continue reading

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The Economics of TV Advertising

Holly Sanders has found a TV paradox: as ratings fall, ad rates rise. Specifically, ad rates in both the fourth quarter and the first quarter are running 18% above their previous-year levels, even as ratings are 14% lower than they … Continue reading

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The Economics of Sports Writing

If you know many print journalists, you’ll know they love nothing more than complaining about how underpaid they are and how word rates for freelancers haven’t risen for half a century. So it’s mildly encouraging for all of us that … Continue reading

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In Praise of Kevin Martin

Very few people have anything nice to say about the FCC’s Kevin Martin. The WSJ’s Amy Schatz has a rollicking overview of all the different constituencies he’s managed to piss off since taking over in 2005 – the latest are … Continue reading

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The WSJ Still Has Editorial Independence

Rupert Murdoch has installed his hand-picked man, Robert Thomson, as the boss of WSJ editor Marcus Brauchli. That doesn’t violate the letter of the agreement Murdoch made to preserve the WSJ’s independence: Thomson is nominally the WSJ’s publisher, and Brauchli … Continue reading

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Evelyn Davis and Rich Zannino: Frenemies Forever!

Kenneth Li was at the shareholder meeting where Dow Jones lost its independence and got sold to News Corp. To nobody’s surprise, shareholder activist Evelyn Davis was there too, and decided to turn the event into a pop quiz for … Continue reading

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WSJ.com Having Difficulties Correcting Stories

This is a cock-up, not a conspiracy: it speaks to the WSJ having a crap website, and not to any conscious attempt to downplay its mistakes. But if you do a search for Susan Pulliam’s erroneous front-page article on Merrill … Continue reading

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How Blogs are Changing Business Journalism for the Better

Herb Greenberg is asked: Q: How do you see online business journalism changing in the next 10 to 20 years? A: More blurring of the line between what is and what isn’t real journalism. People whose backgrounds and biases haven’t … Continue reading

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The SF Chronicle’s Atrocious Mortgage Conspiracy Theorizing

The San Francisco Chronicle published on Sunday a grossly irresponsible opinion piece from one Sean Olender, headlined "Interest rate ‘freeze’ – the real story is fraud". I would dearly like to hold someone at the Chronicle to account for printing … Continue reading

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The “Bailout” Artists: A Roster of Shame

I clearly spend too much time reading blogs, because I stupidly thought it was only right-leaning bloggers who would be so thoughtless as to refer to the mortgage-freeze plan as a bailout. Tinbox, however, notes that in fact it’s the … Continue reading

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Cost Inflation in Hollywood

Tyler Cowen has high praise for the FT’s coverage of the Hollywood writers’ strike, and for this passage in particular: While broadcasters have more rights, they also have to fund production, which is increasingly expensive. The cost of a one-hour … Continue reading

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Happy Daniel Davies Day!

Brad DeLong has declared today to be Daniel Davies Day (dcubed, I guess), and the most entertaining celebration thereof is happening over in the comments section of Marginal Revolution, where Tyler Cowen attacks Davies’s attack on Milton Friedman. Cowen’s commenters … Continue reading

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