The Daily News Gets in on the Obama/Osama Photo Mashup Meme

May 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment

For the past few years the line between so-called mainstream media and blogger media has been slowly dissapearing but I have to say this is the first time I’ve seen a major newspaper’s website jump on a viral photo mashup meme and publish so many of them.

For a minute I wasn’t sure if I was reading Reddit or the Daily News.

A couple more for reference sake of course.

This little girl can't catch a break. First she's miserable at the Royal Wedding, then she's miserable watching bin Laden get Black Opped

Call of Duty: Osama bin Laden

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After Missing the Osama bin Laden Story, AM New York Comforts Its Readers Via Tweet Promising Extended Coverage Tomorrow

May 2, 2011 By 2 Comments

Whatever you do don’t overdose on all the massive bin Laden coverage going around because, thanks to “an early deadline” AM New York couldn’t get the news of his demise in today’s edition. Don’t worry though, they’re promising an extended edition tomorrow.

I think it’s only fair to level the playing field and call for a complete media blackout until AM New York can get their extended death edition out.

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AOL Acquires Huffington Post for $315 Million Cash

February 7, 2011 By 3 Comments

Now that AOL has decided the internet’s here to stay, they’ve apparently also decided they better go ahead and start ramping back up the “OL” portion of their business.

“The reason AOL is acquiring The Huffington Post is because we are absolutely passionate, big believers in the future of the Internet, big believers in the future of content,” AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said.

The real kicker will be whether or not Armstrong and his people at AOL are planning on running HuffPo the AOL Way. Armstrong’s marching orders are being heard loud and clear throughout all of AOL’s editorial divisions.

  • By April, he wants AOL editorial to increase its stories per month from 33,000 to 55,000.
  • He wants pageviews per story to jump from 1,500 to 7,000.
  • He wants video stories to go from being 4% of all stories produced to 70%.
  • He wants the percentage of stories optimized for search engines to reach 95%.

Some of AOL’s journalists, editors, content creators aren’t all happy with the training.

“AOL is the most f—–up, bull—t company on earth,” says one, who joined AOL in what he calls, “the worst career move I’ve ever made.” Full article here

In case you’re still not clear on how exactly Armstrong is expecting those insane jumps in traffic AOL created a handy 58-page PowerPoint presentation to smooth out the rough edges for you.

The deal, which has been confirmed by Huffington herself, will make her president and editor-in-chief of the entire operation. She will be in charge of all AOL content and other properties, including Engadget, Moviefone, MapQuest and the recently acquired TechCrunch.

Apparently Arianna takes New Year’s resolutions very seriously.

When Kenny Lerer and I launched The Huffington Post on May 9, 2005, we would have been hard-pressed to imagine this moment. The Huffington Post has already been growing at a prodigious rate. But my New Year’s resolution for 2011 was to take HuffPost to the next level — not just incrementally, but exponentially. With the help of our CEO, Eric Hippeau, and our president and head of sales, Greg Coleman, we’d been able to make the site profitable. Now was the time to take leaps.

According to Kara Swisher at All Things Digital, “content for all these sites will be integrated deeply into the Huffington Post, giving it a huge new infusion of editorial material.”

More to the point, the flashy acquisition–which essentially came together in less than two weeks in January–will become the linchpin of AOL CEO Tim Armstrong’s aggressive, if risky, strategy to focus the long-troubled company as a content and advertising powerhouse.

For all you technophiles out there, yes this means that Arianna Huffinton is now effectively Michael Arrington’s boss. They should switch their publishing masthead to Two Ton Media.

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FOX News Passing Off Articles from The Onion as Real News Stories

November 26, 2010 By 3 Comments

UPDATE: Since this post was published FOX News has added “The Onion:” to the beginning of the article’s title. Still begging the question, how many FOX News readers/viewers actually know what the hell the Onion is? FOX News: If you insist on posting misleading satirical content on your site (is that an oxymoron?) then at least predicate it with “Satire:” not just “The Onion:” to try and cover your ass.
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Either someone at FOX News doesn’t understand satire, or they’re just stupid. Personally I’d like to believe that the two may not be mutually exclusive.

FOX Nation published the title and first two paragraphs, verbatim, of an article the Onion ran about a “frustrated Obama writing a 75,000 word email to the Nation at four in the morning”. The only hint at all that it’s an Onion article is a small link to the Onion pretty far down from the actual post.

What makes it worse is that FOX Nation buried the story in with a couple dozen other REAL stories (here’s a screenshot of where the story was on the homepage). So either they didn’t know the story was satire which makes them stupid, or they didn’t care it was satire and tried to pass it off as real, which makes them, at best, unethical.

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New BlackBerry Torch Makes Front Page of the Post

August 4, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Am I the only one that finds this odd? When was the last time a BlackBerry launch made the cover of any paper?

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Should Religious Affiliation Matter for Supreme Court Justices?

May 19, 2010 By 2 Comments

CNN craps all over the First Amendment

Six Catholics and three Jews walk into a bar…I said I wanted to hold nine grudges complained the man.

Can we at least pretend to give a damn about the First Amendment to the United States Constitution?

A legitimate news agency (which I realize is a stretch for CNN) shouldn’t be mired in what basically amounts to tabloid gossip about the religious beliefs of the Supreme Court justices. Why is it that the same flag waving, commie hating, gay bashing conservatives are always the ones so worried about what Jesus a politician or judge believes in?

A Supreme Court’s justice’s beliefs are personal and should have absolutely no bearing on whether or not they are qualified to hold a seat on the highest court in the country. We should be seeking out people that are wise enough, smart enough and secure enough in their beliefs to understand the importance of not allowing their own set of morals to affect their decisions.

Until we can come together as a nation of right-minded citizens and demand that our leaders have the courage to stand up to the vocal minority of religious zealots trying to shove their morals down the throats of society by any means necessary.

There’s no lower form of creature in our society currently than the spineless politicians that run on and kowtow to the religious right in order to get elected. There’s no greater threat to the success of our society than the cost of trying to enforce other people’s moral beliefs in a set of laws where punishment for even minor infractions land the guilty people in jail or prison without ever having harmed any person or their property.

Until that can happen, until we can put reason and logic ahead of arbitrary, self-righteous egoists trying to superimpose their values on society, we’re in for a long, dark journey to happiness.

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Arrington Rips Fortune and for Good Reason

May 14, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Michael Arrington may come off as pompous to some people but the truth is he really knows his shit.

Read this post for some insight why old, dead tree media is dying. Basically the summary is that Fortune asked Arrington to publish a post giving some book (which I won’t be naming here) some publicity, they even sent him some excerpts to use. Arrington obliges, posts a rave review, the excerpts he was sent and prominent links not only to Fortune’s site but to directly buy the book.

I don’t need to go into that much detail here but definitely check out this post if you want to know why print media is circling the drain. They’re all staunch walled garden publications that will do anything to not see their content, even excerpts of it, anywhere else on the web no matter how beneficial.

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Kim Kardashian Gets It

May 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment

One of the people I follow on Twitter is Kim Kardashian. Say what you want about Kim but one thing is for sure, you don’t build a business empire as successful as hers without having something very special to offer.

Earlier today Kim tweeted this:

Which cover? Follow @JasonBinn, let him know the best cover of me @KhloeKardashian @KourtneyKardash 4 VEGAS Magazine http://ning.it/9LiPrl.

That’s it, it was so simple but in that one tweet Kim showed why she’s been such a success. Having the ability to connect with your users/fan base/clients etc. is the key to success in any industry and Kim is a master at it. There was no walled garden, no funneling people back to her own website, just a simple, authentic connection.

Kim has over 3.5 million followers on Twitter. How many of them, who may otherwise never have thought of it, are going to go out and buy that magazine as soon as it hits the stands because they felt like they were part of the decision making process?

At the end of the day when can quantify and try and hash out the ROI of what we’re doing but if you can make a legitimate connection with readers/users/clients/fan base etc. you will have earned a loyal (fill-in-the-blank) for life. Let your users know they’re more than just a statistic, a page click or a possible sell, they’re more than that. That right there is what social media is about and once you can do that you’re halfway to success already.

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CNN Fails on Coverage of Historic Passing of Health Care Reform

November 7, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Yes, I know it’s only the House of Representatives and that the bill still needs to make it through Congress, but it’s an historic vote nonetheless. No other such “sweeping” health care reform has made it this far. But to devote more real estate to a woman that lost 71 pounds? Seriously, that’s just ludicrous. WTF CNN?

cnn_fail

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CBS Copywriting: So easy, a caveman could do it

November 3, 2009 By Leave a Comment

IMG_0519

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Campbell Brown Takes Rush Limbaugh to Task

February 1, 2009 By 2 Comments

A week ago I laid out my two cents on how to deal with blustery windbags like Rush Limbaugh. Fortunately, it looks like even certain members of the MSM are finally starting to take a similar stance. Now is not the time for us to let our progress be held back by self-righteous chest beaters who try desperately to serve themselves through fear and prejudice. Now is the time for change. Now is the time for progress. Now is the time to listen to yourself, not to angry, selfish, small minded people who will do or say anything, no matter how vile, to try and keep their money rolling in.

Note how angry and contorted Rush is, the man has no ability to control himself. Thankfully Campbell Brown calls him on it.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_pcSZAdhJk&feature=player_embedded

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CNN Has Officially Jumped the Shark

October 20, 2008 By Leave a Comment

It’s no secret that mainstream media has somehow managed to feed on its self-perpetuating 24-hour news cycle long enough to make itself almost completely irrevelant, but CNN has finally outdone itself this time.

Alina Cho, presumably one of the most mindless dolts in all of newscasterdom, does a piece on Palin’s appearance on Saturday Night Live and reports on it as if it’s an actual news story.  When talking about Palin’s appearance on the show and the “Tina Fey Palin Effect”, Cho actually describes the bit with Alec Baldwin saying, “even Alec Baldwin…is confused”.

I’m not sure who this Alina Cho is but she sounds more like she should be hanging out on the set of The Hills rather than trying to pass herself off as a newswoman of any sort.  I guess the upside is that watching this piece with Cho must give the very dumbest among us hope that someday, you too could read something this stupid on CNN.

Click here to watch the video.

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Innocence Lost: Media Conglomerates and the American Public

March 4, 2004 By Leave a Comment

When I wrote this article asking people to boycott Clear Channel some people responded by telling me that this wasn’t an issue of free speech at all, that it was a private company doing what they wanted and there was nothing wrong with that.

If only it were that simple. Unfortunately big business and politics has become so convoluted and incestuous that it’s impossible to tell them apart. It’s the reason why we need to work so hard to get big business lobbies out of politics.

Pulling Howard Stern off of the air wasn’t a move to “clean up the airwaves” it was a move to “clean up the airwaves of people who are outspoken against George W. Bush”. Is it a coincidence this happened right before the big battle for the Presidency begins? Could it possibly be a coincidence that it happened after Stern began getting vocal about the need to get Bush out of office? Or is it more likely that the head of Clear Channel has close ties to the Bush family and has been on the receiving end of many a legislation that has allowed them to garner even more power and wealth?

Lowery Mays, the head of Clear Channel, and his entire family, and the company itself have donated hudreds of thousands of dollars to George W Bush and the Republican party. Or is it more likely “that the content of Stern’s crude show hadn’t suddenly changed, but his stance on Bush had, gave the theory more heft. That, plus his being pulled off the air in key electoral swing states such as Florida and Pennsylvania”. Which makes more sense?

The argument that Clear Channel is a business and that it wouldn’t chance losing money for political gain is the lamest argument yet. Clear Channel stands to make more money by “making friends” in the Republican party than Howard Stern could ever make them.

This is why it’s not a private issue. This is why we need to speak out. When the government does so many favors for big business that big business changes its rules when it comes to dealing with them and vice versa, they are no longer a privately held company, they are a government controlled company that is no different than any other dictatorship in the world. The people with power and wealth in dictatorships don’t stay in power or not speak out because they are scared to do so, they don’t speak out because it is profitable not to do so. Just as it is not the leaders who go hungry, it is not the heads of corporations that can’t afford to see a doctor, they both live in their palaces (tell me the difference between a palace and a mansion) while the citizens starve, die from preventable diseases and live their life in working poverty.

Don’t try and tell me this is an issue of a privately owned company. That couldn’t be farther from the truth.

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