The Best Media Writing of the Week: Poop, Pandas, Dead Cats and Jon Friedman (Yes, Jon Friedman)

The literary critic Harold Bloom once said the measure of a work’s immortality is whether it bears re-reading. If we believe that, then generations to come will be puzzling over Adam Rifkin’s “Pandas and Lobsters: Why Google Cannot Build Social Applications.” Granted, one reason I had to read it three times is because I have […]

In Talking About State-Supported Media, The Form Can’t Be Separated From the Funding

It says a lot about how bad things are that in today’s Wall Street Journal Columbia University President Lee Bollinger tried to make a case for a government funding in news media. His specious logic rests on the fact that Americans — “ironically,” in a misuse of the word — already consume state-supported news in […]

Traffic Alone is Not a Business: Reddit-Conde Nast Edition

It’s easy to hate on deals of the Conde Nast-Reddit variety. When a big traditional publisher snaps up a website with no clear strategy in mind — or at least no strategy made public — it begs more questions than it answers. What does an old-line company who excels at matching blue-chip advertisers with its […]

Visualizing ESPN’s Coverage of LeBron’s Decision and the Hometown Reaction

Here’s a word cloud based on transcripts from ESPN’s LeBron James leg-humping. It visualizes both Jim Gray’s interview and the follow-ups. And here’s a visualization of more than 200 comments left in reaction to Decision on Cleveland.com. It shows relationships between words commonly linked by “and” in the thread. Note particularly the frequent combination of […]

The Squid and the Fail: What’s Wrong ‘The Social Network”s Trailer

I’m necessarily fascinated by Facebook. I adore the movies of David Fincher. I can tolerate Aaron Sorkin’s schtickiness. Jesse Eisenberg did young neurotic well in “The Squid and the Whale.” So why am I not excited about “The Social Network,” the forthcoming fil-um about the shady-to-the-max early days of the social network? Probably because the […]

A Sign That Online Video News Is Dying — And That’s Not Necessarily a Bad Thing

In May and June, the Oriella PR Network surveyed 770 journalists in 15 nations. They were asked some touchy-feely questions, like whether they’re happy and satisfied (shockingly, yes, for the most part), and a bunch of questions that get to what the work of journalism is becoming in this chaotic time. The trend that leaped […]

The Newest Trend in Spotting Innovation: Contests

The timeworn entrepreneurial model of fund it, build it, sell it is getting turned on its ear. In recent months, we’ve seen a rash of big companies more usually known as acquirers dip into the entrepreneurial process at an earlier stage and in very public ways. One of the most popular ways of doing this […]

Customer Service Invades Cannes with Best Buy’s Twelpforce

Every year the ad industry descends on Cannes, in the south of France, to hand out a few trophy cases of work for the best efforts of the year. In typical French fashion, the ad festival’s relationship with the real day-to-day business of marketing is flirting at best. That June week is a time for […]

The Best Media Writing of the Week: Jack Shafer, Nicholas Carr, Jezebel

Slate’s Jack Shafer asks what I often wonder: Why do people like Stanley McChrystal submit to profiles like the one in Rolling Stone that cost him his job? For most players, there is no real reason to submit to an in-depth profile such as the one that Gen. Stanley McChrystal did for Rolling Stone, a […]

What Viacom Should Learn from YouTube’s Copyright Win

There was never much doubt that Viacom’s $1 billion copyright-infringement lawsuit against YouTube would fail. Most legal and media observers predicted a result not unlike the one handed down today by a federal judge who granted summary judgment for the Google-owned video-sharing site. Basically the judge said copyright-protected clips uploaded by YouTube users are protected […]