MediaBizBuzz for February 25, 2008: Feeding The Media Maw: Balancing Short-Term Headlines Against Long-Term Reputation

Only in an Attention Economy could John McCain and Lindsay Lohan share the same sentence In a sense each is the opposite side of the same coin Comeback and Scandal Scandal and Comeback But they are not alone The past week is a proof that the 24 hour news cycle is manifesting Hobsonian Choices not only in coverage of politics and entertainment but also in business and technology Skeptical Let39s have a closer lookOn January 25th the editorial board of The Gray Lady endorsed John McCain enthusing quot There is a choice to be made and it is an easy onequot Yet three weeks later it carried this frontpage abovethefold headline For McCain SelfConfidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk alleging that McCain had an improper and unethical relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman Across the mediascape the response was immediate and brutal Where39s the Beef NYU Jschool professor Jay Rosen offered a nuanced critique on HuffingtonPost laying much of the blame at the feet of publisher Arthur Schulzberger Jr a singular figure hovering at the intersection of the editorial board and the Times39 reportage Rosen overlooks the possibility that Schulzberger might be a wee bit preoccupied with Harbinger Capital and Firebrand Partners stalking control of the New York Times Co39s board He does recognize however that the paper may have felt the publish or perish vibe with stories coming out later that day in both the Washington Post and The New Republicamp160 Across the ideological divide the Times still stands upright but it appears to have temporarily one hopes exchanged its currency for frissonamp160 Is it any coincidence that one of its own Adam Moss has been striving to catapult New York Magazine from a regional to a national title Square in the path of this trajectory its quotLast Sittingquot redux with barelyoutofrehab Lindsay Lohan channeling Marilyn is problematic Not the kind of transparency we mean when we talk of marketing and privacy The Battle for Yahoo continues as well Silicon Alley Insider39s Henry Blodget is convinced that a Microsoft takeover will be a disaster In tandem TechCrunch reports that NewsCorp continues to explore the possibly of creating a new media entity by combining Yahoo with its Fox Interactive Media properties principally MySpace and IGN The Times makes an astute point Microsoft should take a page from Oracle and make acquisitions out of its core competencies it should buy SAP not Yahoo But there39s an elephant in the room A massive pachyderm Click Fraud While industrywide there39s an increase of 15 Click Forensics finds that 1 in 3 clicks on Google and Yahoo39s Publisher Network are fraud That39s 26 million publishers according to the Times39 Freakonomics blog Oh yeah the recession SAI39s interviews an unnamed Google quotinsiderquot to find that the behemoth is vulnerable if not in the longterm for the next two quarters Likewise Jack Myers looks industrywide on how an economic downturn will affect the ad spend for 2008 The Oscars Best Picture Director and Actor were correctly predicted by InTradecom and the end of the Writers Strike refocuses our attention not only on programming but on emerging technology and evolving viewer behavior Our own Ed Martin makes the heretical case that TV39s inventory trumps that of the current crop of cinematic releases But is anyone watching The Wire eMarketer looks at a recent IDC study suggesting that heavy Internet users have doubled their time online at the expense of traditional TV viewing The article takes these findings with a grain of salt contrasting them with research from Forrester and USC39s Annenberg School Nielsen directly contradicts an aspect of the IDC study finding that HD viewers are glued to their plasmasamp160 In its study ANA captures the perception that marketers hold less stock in television and are eager to explore new frontiers Surely online video is benefiting from this paradigm shift Avenue ARazorfish owned by Microsoft saw its profits surge 36 last year While Google has just rolled its AdSense for Video out of beta Irwin Gotlieb the eminence gris of media planners schools BusinessWeek on his risque practice of rebate or quotvolume overridequotamp160 Last week Jack Myers hosted a Future of Media panel at The Paley Center for Media in Los Angeles exploring the paradigm shifts that are redefining audience relationship to content A video of the event will be posted later in the weekamp160 A more holistic view of the way forward is presented by the TED conference which has been exploring the intersection of technology entertainment and design since 1984 Conference sponsor Portfolio profiles TED here Jack Myers will be posting dispatches as he treks from IAB to TED during the week For the last few years the conference has been posting complete clips of its sessions MIT designer John Maeda appeared in 2007 here he discusses his Laws of Simplicity This week a twentysomething from Vermont will unveil Kluster a social network for idea collaboration he aspires to create a product within 72 hours onsite And have a look at Wikileaks which makes The Smoking Gun look anemic think Wiki for Pentagon Papers and Downing Street Memo While a federal judge just ordered its shutdown demanded by a banker in the Caymans of all places he was illversed in technology and unaware that the global whistleblower could mirror its content on any number of sitesamp160 Perhaps Wikileaks can teach the Times and New York Magazine a thing or two about integrity Takeaway Don39t confuse the ephemeral for evolution

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MediaBizBuzz for February 25, 2008: Feeding The Media Maw: Balancing Short-Term Headlines Against Long-Term Reputation

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Jerry Weinstein

"About That with Carl Mayer:" Alaina Donnellon (Episode 10: Political Spending) - By Carl Mayer

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MediaBizBuzz for February 25, 2008: Feeding The Media Maw: Balancing Short-Term Headlines Against Long-Term Reputation

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Jerry Weinstein

"About That with Carl Mayer:" Alaina Donnellon (Episode 10: Political Spending) - By Carl Mayer

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