Posts from ‘December, 2006’

It’s New Year’s Day in Japan, where I am today. Happy 2007 to all. (Photo by mjzitek; published under a Creative Commons license)

Tom Stites, a former newspaper editor and a deep thinker about the journalism craft, gave a speech last summer that won plenty of well-deserved attention. In that talk — which we guest-posted here, entitled “Is media performance democracy’s critical issue?” — he posed a key question about our future. Now he’s back with an essay […]

What will happen in American journalism in 2007? Here, in the multiple-choice format borrowed from (and with grateful apologies to) columnist William Safire, are my own best guesses. Answers are at the bottom. (Note: “All” or “None” are valid choices.) 1. The biggest network-news shock will occur when: A. A major broadcast network kills its […]

Tom Evslin explains how the alleged “concessions” by AT&T to get approval of its BellSouth buyout are a sham: at&t’s IPTV is exempted from the neutrality provision. It is the TV “pipes” that at&t CEO Ed Whitacre thinks are his. Trouble is, there are no separate pipes on an IP network. at&t has left itself […]

Star Tribune: Star Tribune’s sale turns several new pages. The Star Tribune’s new chairman is a Wall Street investor who says he’s driven by public service. Chris Harte is also a resident of Texas and Maine and a former newspaper executive who’ll be advising an investment group that has never owned a daily newspaper. Oh, […]

Washington Post: Google Set To Expand Newspaper Ad Program. But to hear newspaper executives and analysts tell it, the outlook is more cautious. They said Google has brought in new advertisers, such as small companies outside their distribution areas looking to build more awareness for their products. But Google’s online ad technology is so new […]

Wall Street Journal: McClatchy’s Minneapolis Sale Aids Web Efforts. One of the biggest believers in the newspaper field sold its largest paper yesterday, as McClatchy Co. agreed to sell the Minneapolis Star Tribune to private-equity firm Avista Capital Partners for $530 million. The price is less than half of what McClatchy paid for the paper […]

Whatever our faith or belief, let’s all work toward a better world. Happy holidays. (Note: The picture is from Vermont, just outside of Montpelier.)

A business-oriented website all but accused the editor of Men’s Health magazine, in a blog posting on Yahoo, of inserting an advertising plug into his copy. Oh, there was a disclaimer of sorts — maybe the blog writer “really loves the product,” suggested Dan Zoll in his posting — but the rest of the piece […]

NY Times: Saturday Night Live – Special Treat in a Box. Given the subject matter, it was little surprise that NBC bleeped a recurring word in the chorus 16 times. But soon after the broadcast concluded at 1 a.m. Sunday, viewers who’d seen the bit on TV (and others who had just heard about it) […]