Yesterday, the front page of the Los Angeles Times featured the start of a four-part series on a quarter-century marriage between a well-regarded lawyer and an Aryan Brotherhood inmate (link). Today, I read that newspaper advertising revenue has seen a stunning drop of 18% in Q3 compared to the same period in 2007 (link). So how are these two things related and what’s a newspaper to do?
I have to confess that I did read the article, and it was an interesting read - I’m glad I read it. But, I like print newspapers, and I want them to survive. And despite their appeal, long-form articles like this just don’t belong in a daily newspaper anymore.
The decline in advertising revenue isn’t a result of this kind of reporting, but these narratives should be one of the first casualties as newspapers look to cut costs. A friend of mine, familiar with such matters, recently told me that veteran L.A. Times reporters used to refer to their paper as the “velvet coffin”, because if you navigated the structure correctly, you could end up writing just a handful of plum stories for ~$200,000 a year and spend most of the year researching and writing books. You’d have an unusually cushy job that you’d want to keep until you died (a little exaggeration never killed anyone, no pun intended).
That was all well and fine in less austere times, but with the newspaper industry losing billions in ad revenue, only the lean will survive. These types of articles (including a recent one about a post-war LAPD gang squad) are routinely based on months of research and, in the case of the gangland story, 100+ interviews. While vastly informative, there are better vehicles for this reporting - like magazines and books.
My thought here is that in order to survive, newspapers will increasingly face challenging and unpleasant business choices. The adage of “cut once, and cut deep” is one that is oft considered by executives facing the unfortunate prospect of layoffs, but I think it also applies here. I’d rather see newspapers make dramatic changes one time and immediately - with an eye towards future sustainability - than witness the print newspaper undergo a slow death by a thousand cuts.
There are scores of changes that publishers will need to consider, and the elimination of the long-form, multi-part narrative is just one small recommendation (maybe pennies in the pot… but you need to start somewhere). By no means am I an expert on such matters, but I do know business basics, and I know that no business will last long when expenditures exceed income.
With future advertising losses expected to continue, now is the time for newspapers to explore new ways of remaining viable. I’d like to see print survive … who’s up for the challenge of ensuring that it does?
I invented this recipe tonight, with some inspiration from something I saw in my brother’s kitchen a month ago. Anyway, I liked it so I’m sharing here:
1 cup quinoa
1 can tri-bean blend (red kidney, pinto, black beans)
12 cherub tomatoes, halved
6 celery ribs
1/4 cup jalapeno slices
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon garlic
Half of a lime
A little parsley
Salt and pepper
Fully cook quinoa in covered sauce pan. Heat beans (drain when finished heating). Heat olive oil in a pan, cut up celery and add to pan. Cook for 5-10 minutes on medium heat. Add tomatoes and garlic. Cook for a few more minutes, stirring occasionally. Add beans, then mix the quinoa in. Squeeze half of lime over mix, add parsley, jalapenos, salt and pepper. Allow to cool, then serve. Serves 4, or 3 hungry people.
While Lieberman certainly has been unfaithful to his party, now is no time to strip the Senator of his helm at the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Understandably, Reid wants to punish Lieberman and reward a party loyalist with the coveted position, but Reid would do well to remember that one party domination never lasts long. If the Democrats wish to lead and govern with an eye towards the future, now is no time to shrink the size of the Democratic tent.
Barack Obama ran and won on a message of inclusion and unity. Punishing Lieberman now would run contrary to this laudable goal and only do more harm than good for the Democratic Party.
Tonight we ordered a pizza pie at Dominos.com … where you can also vote for the president on the pizza tracker (click to enlarge):
As you can see, out of about 9,000 pizza eaters, 57% went to Obama, 37% McCain, and 7% Other. The most popular oven baked sandwich was the Philly Cheese Steak with 35% of the vote.
I think that settles it: May history never forget that Barack Obama won the 2008 Presidential Election, and a lot of people were eating cheese steaks at the time.
This is yet another right-wing slam piece by the conservative Michael Malone - of course he’s going to say the media is biased, that’s his own bias. He’s a man looking for a boogey man. It’s human nature to do this, and I myself have been guilty of this too many times to count.
But the truth is that the McCain campaign has literally run one of the worst campaigns in modern memory (worse even than Kerry’s dismal ‘04 performance). As it happens, Obama’s campaign is going well. Imposing a fake balance on this reality would be inaccurate reporting. (For more on this, you should check out a recent article at Politico).
Barack Obama has been thoroughly vetted for the past 20 months, and any omission certainly is not related to the ideological leanings of the press. The good reporters out there always want to dig up a bombshell, regardless of who gets hit. That’s just self-interest, because they get the acclaim and book deal that comes with it (think: Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, and “All The King’s Men”). Other journalists may be lazier than that, but their ideological leanings haven’t played a major role in the press’s coverage of this election.
Malone wants Obama’s drug dealer. Is that all he can come up with? Seriously? I don’t remember ever hearing about W’s cocaine dealer. As for Bill Ayers - he has in fact recently spoken with the press, albeit hasn’t said much. And I don’t know why Rezko isn’t speaking, but I doubt it is because the “media is liberal.” I’m sure it has more to do with his legal problems and self-interest.
Joe the plumber? He has become something akin to what Cindy Sheehan is on the left. A private citizen turned public political activist, who will probably take advantage of all this and make a run for office himself. The press will shine the spotlight on you when this happens. Did the media overreach? Of course they did, but then again… it is the McCain campaign who opted to use Joe the Plumber for political gain.
The irony in all this is that the far left also likes to make the “corporate” media out to be the boogey man. I’d like to think that when both the left and the right are angry with the media, they must be doing something right.
The truth is, of course there will be subtle biases one way or another, and the press may fail at times to be the guardians they are tasked with being - they are just humans after all. But for the McCain campaign to blame their downward spiral on the press… is to search desperately for a scapegoat, when all they really need to do is look in the mirror.
A friend and I were talking this morning and he mentioned that if you use the RealClearPolitics electoral map calculator, things don’t look so great for John McCain. In fact, it looks nearly impossible for John McCain to win the 2008 Presidential election, barring a serious Obama misstep in the next few days. This reminds me of Jonathan Alter’s prophetic Newsweek article way back on March 4th (Hillary’s Math Problem) discussing how Hillary Clinton could win the next 16 states and still lose the primary.
Well things look just as dire for John McCain. Today is one week out, and here is where the electoral map stands in terms of average polling numbers:
Source: RealClearPolitics.com (10/28/2008)
Changing every single toss up state to McCain AND giving him Ohio and Virginia (both leaning Obama) would still yield a 273-265 Obama victory:
Source: RealClearPolitics.com (10/28/2008)
John McCain has been known to pull rabbits out of his hat before, but this would have to be his fattest rabbit yet. Of course, we’ll have to wait and see how this all pans out on Election Day, but in light of the above math (and the gamblers over at the Iowa Electronics Markets currently betting an over 86% chance of an Obama win), I’d say that come January, America will be getting a fair dose of Hope and Change.
I was getting 500 errors after an installation. After surfing some forums I learned that the permissions should be the following (magento/ being your root Magento folder). For some reason, they weren’t necessarily correct by default:
777
magento/var/.htaccess
magento/app/etc
magento/var
all the directories under magento/media
755
magento/
magento/install.php
magento/index.php
644
all other files
Hope this helps anyone who may have been in the same situation.
Randy Pausch died today. He became famous over the past year after delivering his inspirational last lecture about “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams” at Carnegie Mellon shortly after learning that he had pancreatic cancer and only months to live. My thoughts are with his family and friends.
Donations can be made to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, 2141 Rosecrans Ave., Suite 7000, El Segundo, CA 90245, or to Carnegie Mellon’s Randy Pausch Memorial Fund (www.cmu.edu/giving/pausch).
If you have happen to have a list of ASINs and you want the product images from Amazon, it’s a lot easier than I expected to grab them. Their consistent naming structure makes it easy to put together a list of URLs to their Amazon’s product images of different sizes.
All images are available at http://images.amazon.com/images/P/
Then, you tack on your ASIN, in this case, we’ll use B0018QUCL2 (the excellent Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World), a “.01″ to designate the US country code, and one of these final suffixes:
Once you get your list together, throw it into wget, and in minutes you’ll have the images you need for every single ASIN. For bonus fun, to add a “30% off” (or any percentage) badge to an image, append “_PE30″ to the URL, right after the “.01.” http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0018QUCL2.01._PE99_SL500_.jpg
I recently wrote an article for Website Magazine that will be published in the August issue. The article covers deal negotiation with Internet ad networks and affiliate programs, maximizing your site’s earning potential, and how to conduct the legwork to put you in good positioning for a higher revenue share from your ad provider.
The article will be out in a few weeks, so head over to their site now for a free subscription.
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