Jeff Salkin, the Maryland Public Television anchor, has revived MPT's most popular show. Wall Street Week is no longer on TV, and it no longer has longtime host Louis Rukeyser. (He died a few years ago.) But it's on the Web. The idea is to be the anti-CNBC, the anti-Mad Money. "No Shouting. Just Sage Counsel From Top Investment Pros" is the motto.

There's a weekly newsletter and regular online videos reminiscent of the interviews Rukeyser used to do with his stable of experts. This is Salkin's deal -- it's not MPT. But it tries to bring the same W$W vibe that had millions turning to public television produced in Owings Mills every Friday night.

Full disclosure: Salkin has me on all the time on his Your Money & Business show on MPT. And Georgia Marudas, former deputy business editor of The Sun, works on the new W$W.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 8:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Media
        

As many of you know, The Baltimore Sun will be setting up a tollgate for online readers in the next few weeks. Childs Walker has the story here. I'm glad we're giving this a try. Producing original news is expensive. The paper doesn't make as much money from online advertising as it does from print. And spending millions to report stories that you then give away for free doesn't seem like a great business model. My friends in online media disagree vehemently, however.

As Walker notes, one difference between the Sun's digital subscription and the NYT's is in the treatment of links from blogs, Facebook, Twitter etc. The Times limits you to free reads of 20 articles a month -- but only for clicking on the Times' site. You can read unlimited online NYT pieces if you access them from blogs -- or even if you copy and paste the headline into a search engine and click on the result. The Sun, however, Walker reports, "will count links from social media and other websites as part of a user's monthly allotment of 15 views."

So Len Lazarick at MarylandReporter.com wonders, what's a new aggregation site to do? Len:

"So my first reaction is that MarylandReporter.com’s State Roundup can’t very well stop linking to the comprehensive coverage in the Sun, even if it causes readers to drive into the limit. Maybe we should also subscribe to the other publications as well, and at least let readers know about coverage elsewhere, even if it is behind a wall.

"That’s my preliminary thought about the Sun’s new subscription charge. I’d be interested to hear what our readers think about this development, and what we should do about it in the roundup."

Posted by baltimoresun.com at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Media
        

The Baltimore Brew is breaking the first rule of digital journalism, which says never go dark. You must post, post, post always to satisfy the surfing hordes who will forsake you in a second if there is no new content to amuse them. Blogs are the new radio, in which "dead air" is the biggest mistake. But the Brew is going on vacation.

No tweets from the beach. No posts from a Vermont Starbucks, presumably. Just vacation. Good for them.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 9:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Media
        

Holy cow. I hadn't heard of anybody who expected this. Rupert Murdoch is closing the News of the World in the wake of the phone hacking scandal. At most people figured he would throw a few editors to the wolves.

But Murdoch son James Murdoch is closing the paper founded in the mid-1800s, leaving the Sunday Sun to soldier on. It's true that advertisers had pulled out in response to the phone hacking revelations. But they would have returned in time if NOTW had been a solid franchise. There also was probably intense political pressure from Prime Minister David Cameron for the Murdochs to do "something." But closing the paper? Murdoch's pulling of the plug suggests that the NOTW was struggling financially. Struggling as much as Murdoch's "quality" paper, the Times? Hmmm.

But for many it may seem an appropriate end to a newspaper that seems to have run amok, with the latest revelations on hacking a dead girl's voice messages as the last straw.

UPDATE: See more complete BBC story here.

UPDATE: Elizabeth Knight of the Sydney Morning Herald identifies the real pressure point: Murdoch's desire to take full control of BSkyB:

The bigger concern would be the possibility that the British government may now try to find some way to block Murdoch from taking full control of BSkyB.

At this point the government, which has already approved the acquisition, is showing no sign of changing its mind - despite vocal calls from some inside the Conservative Party to put an end to Murdoch's power.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Media
        

Virginia Gov. McDonnell put out a suggestion box for state employees on how to save the state money. The winner:

Karen Barger of Blue Ridge, Virginia is the winner of the $2,500 grand prize in Governor McDonnell’s “30 Day Sprint” competition with this submission:

“I would like to suggest that the Commonwealth do away with advertising for jobs in the newspaper. In this day of Tweets, and internet use in general, why are we still using the newspaper to advertise for vacancies? Almost all job listings require that you fill out an application online. So why do so many agencies still pay big bucks to advertise in the newspaper? This would save thousands of dollars. Thank you for reading my suggestion.”

Karen was onto something. In fact, according to early research done by the Secretary of the Administration’s office, in the last five years over $17 million was spent by agencies of the Commonwealth on advertising positions in print media. However, data shows that 92% of Virginians now learn about state employment opportunities through other means, including online ads and listings. Karen’s idea will be studied and evaluated in the weeks ahead.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Media
        

memo from Patch.com's editorial boss

If one of your sites is producing less than 4 posts a day (and unfortunately, there are a lot of these — nearly 350) immediately talk to that editor about it.

This should not be a punitive conversation, it should be a collaborative discussion about how to improve things. (Are they spending too much time reporting and writing long articles? Are they too caught up in editing freelancers?)

Posted by Jay Hancock at 4:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Media
        

I'm grateful to Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism for launching me into newspapers in the early 1980s, but I've never felt a great attachment to the place, having been in Evanston for only a couple terms before finishing up in Medill's Washington D.C. program.

And I could never get over the fact that they were training public relations and advertising folks in the same school. PR and advertising are necessary professions, but they have very different aims from journalism. A facility with words is necessary for all three callings, but that's an insufficient common attribute IMHO to teach them from the same lectern.

Now, however, Northwestern has made it official. The Medill School of Journalism will become "The Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications," according to the Daily Northwestern.com. "

(Did they leave out an "and" in the name? Is the school concentrating too much on brand management and not enough on grammar?)

Posted by Jay Hancock at 2:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Media
        

Editors at regional papers are always trying to get reporters to localize national and global stories. If there's a flu epidemic, find the local victims. If there's a rash of alleged Toyota malfunctions in California, what about Maryland? Etc.

However sometimes localization angles assigned by editors are brainless. Contain your astonishment. At my first newspaper in Virginia, which was sometimes prone to dumb localization ideas, a newsroom joke evolved concerning a hypothetical, ne plus ultra headline in the category of vacuous attempts to make universal news locally particular: "Earthquake In Japan; No Problem Here."

Now, however, an Ohio radio station is said to have reported just that. But what about Maryland?, you're probably asking. (Shh. Sun editors might hear.)

Posted by Jay Hancock at 11:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Media
        

From CNET:

In the second quarter of 2010 paid TV subscriptions fell for the first time ever, with cable taking the biggest hit, according to the research firm SNL Kagan.

A weak U.S. economy is the main reason the firm cited for the dip in subscriptions, as more consumers look for ways to cut down on monthly expenses. Last year's digital TV conversion may have also played a role in lower growth rates with some people canceling service after promotions on new digital TV packages ran out, the firm said.

The entire paid TV industry, which includes cable, satellite, and phone companies, lost 216,000 customers in the second quarter. A year ago, the industry gained 378,000 new customers, according to SNL Kagan. Six of the eight largest U.S. cable operators reported their worst quarterly video subscriber losses.

Surely the recession has much to do with this. But, as CNET's Marguerite Reardon notes, part of what's going on is people switching to Hulu and other Net-based video services. That allows them to choose what they want to watch for free and not pay for a 400 garbage channels that they never watch. I wonder whether, in response to lost eyeballs to "over-the-top" video, cable companies will rethink their opposition to a la carte pricing. I would be happy to pay Verizon FiOS more than I pay now if more high-quality channels and networks were available and I could pick and choose among them and not have to pay for all the junk.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Media
        

This must be British invasion day on the Hancock blog. (See John Lennon post below.) Here is Sir Mick Jagger, in an interview with the BBC, on the temporariness of the recorded music bonanza (for the artists) that began in the 1970s.

But I have a take on that — people only made money out of records for a very, very small time. When The Rolling Stones started out, we didn’t make any money out of records because record companies wouldn’t pay you! They didn’t pay anyone! Then, there was a small period from 1970 to 1997, where people did get paid, and they got paid very handsomely and everyone made money. But now that period has gone. So if you look at the history of recorded music from 1900 to now, there was a 25 year period where artists did very well, but the rest of the time they didn’t.

HT Brad DeLong

Posted by Jay Hancock at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Media
        

Tribune, which owns The Baltimore Sun, has filed new plans for executive bonuses, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Tribune Co. has unveiled plans for a third round of top executive bonuses, nearly $15 million, bringing to more than $72 million the amount of pay enhancements the media company handed out while operating under bankruptcy protection.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Media
        

This is smart. One of the big things keeping newspapers from charging for online content was the fear (and reality) of being cut out of the Web conversation. The New York Times will attempt to get around this by not charging readers lighting upon an article by clinking a blog link. So the paper will get revenue from readers who want the content first-hand, who want the Times as a whole. But it'll still get the bank-shot readers that are so important for online relevance.

Here is a NYT spokesperson, via Peter Kafka:

The pay model will be designed so readers that are referred from third party sites such as blogs will be able to access that content without hitting their limit, enabling NYTimes.com to continue being a part of the open web.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Media
        

This seems wrong. Via Yahoo news comes the report that Huff Post, Vanity Fair and other media outlets are auctioning off internships. Yes, the money supports the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. But it's still adding another layer to Auction America, where everything is available at a price. Once, internships were a way for companies to give back, help bright young people launch into the real world and groom essential talent for the future. Then they became unpaid, a source of cheap labor. Now they seem as if they're morphing into yet another attempted revenue source.

Breaking into the media business is tough, with a seemingly endless supply of bright young college graduates vying for unpaid internships at elite publications. Still, there's another route to getting one's foot in the door, if you have money to burn: Win an auction!

Want to "jump-start your career in the blogosphere" by way of the Huffington Post? That'll cost $9,000. How about spending a couple weeks strolling the rarefied halls at Vanity Fair? Try $2,900. Or maybe you'd rather get some face time with Anna Wintour at Vogue? Well, you'll have to dig $42,500 out of the bottom of your Hermes Birkin bag for that one.

Perhaps to offset the appearance that only wealthy interns would get inside, each publication also created a slot that doesn't cost anything, according to the RFK Center.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 3:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: Media, Workplace
        

America's back, says Newsweek. The cover is being cited as a classic contrarian indicator, a sign that America actually is about to fall back into recession. Barry Ritholtz disagrees, saying that the magazine cover jinx works only after editors flog a trend that has been around for months or years and can't think of anything better than to wring more mileage out of it by putting it on the cover.

But economic recovery is not a trend on its last legs. It may not even be a trend. In this case, if anything, Newsweek editors are ahead of the facts, not behind them. That's a common error, too, like when the Wall Street Journal proclaimed the death of rock and roll in the 1980s. As usual I agree with the clever and subtle Ritholtz.

Read Daniel Gross's Newsweek piece here.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Media
        

The war between the Jewish Times and H.G Roebuck reminds me of another contract signed in haste, repented at leisure -- the deal to share Laurel Park slots profits between Joe De Francis and Frank Stronach. Jewish Times signed a long-term printing deal with Roebuck 20 years ago that proved to be a bad proposition. Stronach agreed to give huge potential slots profits to De Francis to get De Francis to sell him Laurel and Pimlico.

Both cases seem to have turned into games of chicken that ended up before a bankruptcy judge. Stronach delayed putting up a deposit for a slots license, probably in an attempt to get De Francis to rewrite the contract. The Jewish Times tried to get Roebuck to rewrite its printing contract, then pulled the business to a less-expensive printer. Roebuck sued and won a $362,000 judgment, which would seem to be the precipitating factor in the bankruptcy filing.

Both of these cases seem to be as much about bad blood and besting a business opponent as about a weak economy. The Jewish Times bankruptcy may shield it from having to pay the $362,000 judgment. But I would bet one thing quite confidently: The case will cost the company a heck of a lot more in lawyer fees than $362,000.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 9:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Media
        

The banks dunning Steve Geppi and the auction of his mansion suggest that the comic-book business, like other traditional media, faces kryptonite in the form of the Internet and the recession. But I can find surprisingly little recent coverage of the comic-book industry.

Geppi's wholesaler, Diamond Comic Distributors, has faced its own problems. The company "had a rocky year," according to a Publishers Weekly piece published in October -- "a move to a new warehouse in the spring coupled with a switch to a new software platform led to major problems with orders shipping improperly and lost books."

Diamond and comic publishers are trying to adapt -- putting out graphic novels and selling comics over mobile phones and other digital media. Even so, "concerns about digital caused a lot of unrest among retailers - and may again," the Oklahoman newspaper reported at a comics convention last this year. When Diamond scaled back distribution of the Classics Illustrated series last year, the president of the Classics publisher shot back in a press release: "That this is another example of a knee-jerk reaction to the tough economic environment everybody is struggling with to get through."

But publishers and stores are trying to reassure themselves that they're still relevant. "Comics are special," an industry executive told the recent ComicsPRO confab, according to Nerdage. "It's not something that can easily translate into other media." Sounds familiar.

UPDATE: Over at Read Street, Dave Rosenthal notes that the iPad is a big threat to Geppi and comic books.  

Posted by Jay Hancock at 8:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Media
        

Ryan Avent, for some reason, confuses current account deficits with fiscal deficits. This is not a mistake one wants to make blogging for a magazine called The Economist. Brad Delong, whom I admire, catches the mistake. But the response is notably un-DeLongian. Gentle, even.

"A Rare Event: The Sharp and Thoughtful Ryan Avent Gets One Wrong..." is the heading of Brad's post. If the Washington Post had made the same error, or any newspaper, all the bandwidth in Berkeley could not have handled the DeLongian scorn!

Posted by Jay Hancock at 5:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Media
        

Unbelievable. The Obama administration has approved the merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster by demanding a couple minor concessions. Ticketmaster has to sell off a unit that helps entertainment venues issue their own tickets. The company, Paciolan, will never be a big player, even with ownership by Comcast. And Ticketmaster has to license some other minor technology to Phil Anschutz.

This is bad for fans, venues and artists. And to think that Ticketmaster boss Irv Azoff and his wife were John Edwards supporters! Fortunately, Live Nation boss Michael Rapino ponied up for Obama.

UPDATE: A commenter calls our attention to this relevant information, from Billboard.biz last year. Uuugghh. I'm feelin' a little queasy.

Live Nation board member Ariel Emanuel, is a powerful Hollywood manager who is also brother of Rahm Emanuel, the White House Chief of Staff. Ariel Emanuel was also a major Hollywood fund-raiser for Obama's election campaign.

Julius Genachowski, nominated by Obama earlier this month to be the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, was on Ticketmaster's board until March 10.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 3:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Media
        

Market analyst Barry Ritholtz, who calls 'em like he sees 'em, left or right, thinks Murdoch ownership has contaminated the news pages of the Wall Street Journal.

I assumed the drunks on the OpEd page did not care about what they did to your portfolio if you drank their Kool-Aid. But they were easy to avoid –you simply avoided that page, or read it and laughed. Smart investors could easily say “Go sell crazy somewhere else –we ain’t buying.” That was possible because you knew that the business pages were sacrosanct, always run with a steel-eyed objectivity that professionals could rely upon.

That is no longer the case. The lunatics now run the asylum, and henceforth, I am moving the WSJ into the column of “Stuff to read, but not take very seriously.”

I am bereft over this. This is a major change for me, for I have loved this paper for years, even decades. I read the Times, but as someone who works in finance, I marveled at the quality and breadth of the business reportage at the Journal. Accuracy was paramount, political bias limited to the cartoon (Opinion) pages. For a long time, it was the best paper in America.

Those days are now over.

I keep seeing headlines that are blatantly political, articles that looked to be edited by a ham-fisted politburo apparatchiks, other signs that the usual outstanding journalism at the WSJ is under assault.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Media
        

Executives at the New York Times have made a radical business decision really shouldn't be so radical: They have decided (again) to ask customers to pay for a product that costs huge amounts of money and hard work to produce instead of giving it to them for free.

The New York Times announced Wednesday that it intended to charge frequent readers for access to its Web site, a step being debated across the industry that nearly every major newspaper has so far feared to take.

Starting in early 2011, visitors to NYTimes.com will get a certain number of articles free every month before being asked to pay a flat fee for unlimited access. Subscribers to the newspaper’s print edition will receive full access to the site.

Stock is down 50 cents on normal volume.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Media
        

The Hancock family ordered 50 Christmas cards this year and sent out like 35, mostly to out-of-towners. That puts us above average according to the informal research done by Agnostic at Dusk in Autumn. But we've transformed the card-sending routine from an annual thing to biennial, so an an average annual basis we're closer to the national tendency in the chart below.

There are various hypotheses for the cause of the decline. Is it email? Facebook? The recession? Or are we less religious?

Says Agnostic:

Using Lexis-Nexis, I found an estimate of 26 Christmas cards for 1990, so that the number of all holiday greeting cards would have been a bit above -- probably around the 1987 level of 29 cards across all holidays. The first big drop is visible by 1994, when the number of cards received per household was about 25% lower than in 1987. There was another drop-off starting in 2003, and during the most recent years of 2007 and 2008, the number is down about 40% from the late '80s / early '90s. This does not merely reflect the fact that there are more households now than then, which would tend to lower the ratio even if the total number of cards stayed the same. In 1987, 2.856 billion holiday greeting cards were received vs. 2.117 billion in 2007 -- a decrease in sheer volume of 736 million cards.

HT Marginal Revolution.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Media
        

Time's person of the year is Ben Bernanke. It doesn't mean much, except that a few editors figured sitting in a room decided they could try to steer history and sell magazines by putting him on the cover. But already the blogosphere is unhappy with another example of kowtowing to power by mainstream media!

And yes, in response to the Time announcement, Godwin's Law violations are already being committed across the Web.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Media
        

I missed this a few weeks ago. Michael Mandel, chief economist for Business Week and the only Ph.D economist I know of who was a full-time news reporter (NYT's Krugman does opinion, not reporting), has left the magazine. Bloomberg bought it and presumably wants to bring in lots of its own folks. But Mandel's departure deprives the magazine of a great authority who could also write lucidly (they don't always go together) on innovation, technology, productivity, statistical reporting and other important topics. Here is the new address for his blog: http://innovationandgrowth.wordpress.com./

Posted by Jay Hancock at 3:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Media
        

Gresham's Law, in monetary studies, is the tendency of bad money to drive out good. When potentates start debasing their currencies, people hoard the coins with high precious-metal content and spend the bad stuff. Coins laced with lead and copper take over the money supply.

There is a similar dynamic going on in media. As platforms proliferate, crap news is driving out legitimate news. It started when Time magazine started its "People" section. It expanded when Time turned "People" into a whole magazine. It expanded again with reality TV, Gawker, Kate Gosselin etc. Now it has reached a new high. Today's New York Times -- the sober newspaper of record, the Gray Lady! -- has published this headline and subhed on its home page:

Is Doomsday Coming? Perhaps, but Not in 2012 Scientists say not to worry about predictions based on the Mayan calendar that the world will end soon.

On the contrary. This seems to be a powerful sign that the world is indeed ending.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Media
        

In this year's General Assembly session, Del. Melony Ghee Griffith introduced a bill that would have required you, me and other Maryland taxpayers to reimburse film producers for 28 percent of their expenses incurred in Maryland. This sort of giveaway had gotten very fashionable as state politicians in dozens of states bid higher and higher to bribe producers to change shooting locations.

Michigan's taxpayers were footing 40 percent of production costs. Iowa's, 50 percent. The people who made The Curious Case of Benjamin Button swiped $27 million from the taxpayers of Louisiana. You can bet the added economic activity from that movie generated nowhere near that much in marginal tax revenue for the state. All these deals are losers for taxpayers. Fortunately the Griffith bill didn't go anywhere.

Now, reports Phil Mattera of Good Jobs First, states are realizing how stupid movie incentives are and are reducing or eliminating them:

... With states suffering runaway costs, mediocre benefits and recurring abuses, the great film tax-incentive gold rush is losing steam. Various states are eliminating, cutting back or at least debating their film subsidies. In one state, Iowa, evidence of mismanagement in the tax credit program has created a political uproar and prompted a criminal investigation.

In Iowa, says Mattera:

the state’s economic development director resigned, the head of the state film office was fired, and the tax-credit program was suspended.

In Michigan:

a state budget analyst told the state Senate Finance Committee that the incentives would never pay for themselves. Recently, Gov. Jennifer Granholm proposed scaling back the credit to help fill the state’s budget gap.

In Wisconsin:

the state Department of Commerce issued a report arguing that the credits provided little net economic benefit for the state.

In Massachusetts:

the state Department of Revenue released a report finding that only 16 percent of the wages paid by subsidized film productions went to Massachusetts residents.

UPDATE: In response to comments:

I will try to make this clear. Programs that give taxpayer money to filmmakers are not win-win. They are win-lose. Please do not confuse economic activity generated by filmmakers with taxpayer revenue generated by filmmakers. Steven Spielberg makes a new Indiana Jones movie in which Indy tries to find the fabled Lost Maryland Republican. They spent $100 million in the state.

So Comptroller Peter Franchot has to issue tax credits of $28 million, which Spielberg can resell to Black & Decker, T. Rowe Price and others with Maryland tax liability. Taxpayers have just spent $28 million. In return, let's make an assumption that ALL the $100 million spent on the film accrued to Maryland businesses and residents. (As you can see from the Massachusetts experience, this is absurd. In that state only 16 percent of the spending from subsidized films went to residents.)

To obtain a return for the state comptroller, we tax that activity. The corporate income-tax in Maryland is 8.25 percent. The top personal rate is around 9 percent if we include the piggyback. Some sales tax (6 percent) will be generated. Just to be ultra-generous, let's inflate the total assumed return to the state treasury to 15 percent -- $15 million. That's still a $13 million loss to taxpayers. Moviemakers: Win. Taxpayers: Lose.

David Noble: Amen to you. Congress needs to step in an outlaw all state-based economic development welfare.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 6:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (17)
Categories: Media
        

Gawker is not my favorite site (!), but they did a service by FOIing the obsequious email requests made by various news outlets (all the ones reproduced by Gawker are from broadcast -- surprise!) for an interview after Blagojevich got caught on tape making an idiot of himself. This example, from the Today Show, is priceless.

Want to be the first to give Governor and/or First Lady a platform to talk; interview would take place with Meredith Veira[sic] and/or Matt Lauer, who would contact the Governor or representative to go over line of questions; they stress "they are sensitive."

Posted by Jay Hancock at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Media
        

Ironic that Dunne, much of whose career involved writing about the Kennedys, died the day after Teddy Kennedy did. Interesting that none of the Dunne obits I have seen mentions his unethical hounding of Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel, who was convicted and imprisoned for the murder of Martha Moxley, which fair accounts suggest he probably didn't commit. If you want to read a compelling account of irresponsible journalism and what sounds like justice miscarried, read Bobby Kennedy Jr.'s piece in the Atlantic Monthly in 2003.

The writer Dominick Dunne, a driving force behind Michael Skakel's prosecution, continually accused the Skakel family of using its power and Kennedy connections to intimidate the Greenwich police "to protect one of their own." In 1991 Dunne wrote in Vanity Fair, "It is thought in the community and

Continue reading "The sleazy Dominick Dunne " »

Posted by Jay Hancock at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (43)
Categories: Media
        

Apparently the Brits are having a bit of trouble grokking what one British critic dubbed "the mumbled patois" of Baltimore, spoken, as the Independent puts it, by "black American drug dealers and street-wise detectives" on the TV series The Wire. So they're resorting to subtitles. But just in case the Independent provides a helpful phrasebook.

Baltimore talk Lost in translation?

*The hopper from Balmer carrying a burner

A child drug dealer from Baltimore is carrying a disposable mobile telephone used by drug dealers to stop the police monitoring their conversations.

*Crew up with corner boys for a re-up

An instruction to form a team of young men who can sell drugs on a street corner when a re-up, or a re-stock package from drugs wholesalers, arrives.

*The G pack

A wholesaler's package of 100 vials of cocaine

*He's a Yo

Police term for a corner boy.

*The civilian's carrying weight

An ordinary person who is neither a drug dealer nor an addict who has been served a custodial sentence.

*The Game

Life of a drug dealer in which the dealer accepts a distinct set of ethics in which even apparently minor transgressions may be punishable by death.

*There's been a humble

An arrest or search of a corner boy on flimsy or no evidence, intended merely to humiliate.

*Stash house

A heavily guarded property in which drugs are stored and cut.

*Those Red tops/blue tops/yellow tops are worth a lot of cheese

The colour-coded vials of cocaine (use to identify quality) are worth a lot of money.

*He's not a fiend, he's slinging

He's not a drug addict, he's selling drugs.

*Walk-around money

Petty cash used by corrupt politicians for the purposes of persuasion on election day.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (16)
Categories: Media
        

Chicago papers keep reporting that Sam Zell will soon no longer be running Tribune Co. and the papers and TV stations it owns, including The Sun. That was always a given once Tribune sought protection from creditors in bankruptcy court last year. Zell put up hardly any money in the deal to start with; he's certainly not going to be calling the shots once creditors take over the ownership. The only question is: What will the creditors do with the company? Will they try to keep it together, preserving present management's vision of a national chain in several major markets? Or will they sell it off in pieces?

Today's report in the Chicago Sun-Times contains this line suggesting the option "B" is preferred:

The creditors, including investment banks owed $8.6 billion from Zell's Tribune takeover, would stage a takeover of their own and sell off the company's newspapers and broadcast stations as they see fit.

There is no further reference to breaking up the company.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Media
        

True, I don't have a Nobel in economics. But I don't understand why Neil King's and Jonathan Weisman's phrase, "yields on different forms of credit relative to the risk," is not an OK, offhand reference to credit spreads in a newspaper story where credit spreads aren't the central topic.

Paul Krugman gets his boxers all in a bunch about it.

This paragraph is gibberish. What are “yields on different forms of credit relative to the risk”? I don’t know. I suspect that Jared Bernstein was talking about risk spreads — corporate debt versus Treasuries. You might excuse Weisman for getting this garbled — except that Weisman has specialized in reporting on economic issues.

Maybe ""how credit yields varied according to risk" would have been more precise. But geez.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Media
        

Tribune, owner of The Sun, wants a bankruptcy judge's approval to pay top managers up to $70 million in bonuses even as the company has laid off journalists and pared back its papers. The Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild (full disclosure: I'm a member) opposes the bonuses. Says the Associated Press:

Judge Kevin Carey said details about the proposed bonus plan should be provided on a limited basis to attorneys for the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, which represents 225 workers at the Tribune-owned The (Baltimore) Sun and opposes the bonuses.

The judge agreed to allow the Chicago-based company to keep under seal a compensation consultant's report underlying the bonus plan and said information to be shared by the Tribune will be restricted.

"It's going only to the Guild," Carey ruled, denying the Guild's request to share the information with other unions, including those that joined in its objection to the bonus plan. Only the Guild made a formal objection in the case; the others joined in the Guild's petition.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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If the reports are true that she was offered a $2 million salary plus $1.5 million for expenses while Simon Cowell is pulling in $30 million a year and Ryan Seacrest will get $10 million a year, she did the right thing for herself and her gender by walking away.

Goofy Paula was as much a part of Idol as the other two. The only explanation I can think of for such a pay disparity is sexism. Idol producers have proven very canny in preserving their franchise for this long. But they just blew it.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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Lloyd Grove asks on the Daily Beast: What happened to Lou Dobbs?

Just how did a respected financial-news guru turn into an immigrant-hating, birther-supporting zealot?... What a difference three decades make. In 1980, Dobbs launched his brilliant career as a whip-smart Harvard grad who practically invented television business news at the fledgling cable network CNN, founding CNNfn while winning friends and influencing people among the corporate elite...

"Lou’s a longtime friend and I admire him as a great pioneer for business and economic news, making it vital and meaningful for a new audience of television viewers,” said Paul Steiger, chief of the investigative journalism organization ProPublica and former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal. “But as he’s gone beyond business news, he’s become enamored of causes, particularly fear of foreigners and immigrants, that I don’t find to be in keeping with the high intelligence that I know he possesses.”

The answer is simple, and it's all about the economics that Dobbs is supposed to know something about. Economics is about how incentives change behavior. The incentives for Dobbs, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter etc. are to say outrageous things that attract a fringe, disaffected and not especially well-educated audience. The audience is a minority in the American polity, but it's large enough to support a very nice living for the screamers. Ratings, power and money are more than enough incentive to push stuffed shirts to pander to the fringe by saying things even they themselves probably have trouble believing are true or justified.

Of course in the meantime they surrender their dignity and any reason to command respect. But obviously for some folks that's just not as important.

There are plenty of intelligent, thoughtful conservative commentators who make good points in good faith. David Brooks. Greg Mankiw. Geroge Will. Bruce Bartlett, etc. Lou Dobbs is no longer in their company.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (24)
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Tribune Co., owner of The Sun, wants four more months to submit a reorganization plan to the bankruptcy court. No huge surprise -- debtors in bankruptcy proceedings do this all the time, if for no other reason than that management, which is often likely to be replaced after the reorganization, wants to hang on to the reins as long as possible. The Chicago Tribune reports:

Tribune has so far managed to work worked closely with its creditors toward a plan to reduce the nearly $13 billion in debt that crippled the company when the economy soured last year. Citing the complex nature of the case, Tribune said in a filing it needs more time to build consensus around a plan. It also said the outcome of the pending sale of the Chicago Cubs could have a "material impact" on the plan.

"We are making significant progress in our discussions with our various creditor constituencies," said a Tribune Co. spokesman. " Our filing today is a routine request for more time."

Posted by Jay Hancock at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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From today's column:

The woman who invented financial television doesn't live in Manhattan, doesn't own a fabulous stock portfolio and, truth to tell, never did make much money from the medium that turned Jim Cramer, Suze Orman and Louis Rukeyser into multimillionaires.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 9:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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From Lorraine Mirabella's breaking story on Sinclair Broadcast :

"Mentions of a potential equity raising and bankruptcy are clearly not in equity investors' favor, in our view," Wells Fargo said in a research report.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 4:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
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