"If ridiculous looking numbers don't signal a top to an overheated market, ridiculous sounding words do. And when, in this case, there are ridiculous numbers attached to ridiculous words — in other words we hit a double play of idiocy and right in a headline –well, without further ado I bring to you this beauty from Tuesday's Business Week Web site: Oil Hits $129, Heads for $130
"Where to start? With the automatic, implicit assumption that we will go up before down? Perhaps.
"Or the notion that you need a journalist to help you think out the fact that $130 comes after $129." [TheStreet]
Here's a video clip of a SXSW interview with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, hosted by Business Week tech columnist Sarah Lacy … that's been panned by every geek with a Tumblr account.
Audience members, it appears, did not appreciate Lacy's interjections with her own anecdotes, her inability to form a question, and her general fawning over her interview subject.
After the interview, which drew outbursts from the audience, Lacy explained what the hell went down. Hint: She blames attendees for causing such a commotion that SXSW will never get high-profile guests again! CONTINUED »
We once knew a married couple whose license plate was their combined name. At one point, the wife wanted to get rid of the vanity plate for “no reason.” Ten months later, this couple divorced.
And so it was with BusinesssWeek. The business magazine that best known to us as neither Forbes nor Fortune has made a human resource switch-up, wherein 20 people will be reassigned as contract workers with Kelly Services, instead of getting their pay check from McGraw-Hill. Even though nothing has changed, effectively these people have full time positions at BusinessWeek through a temp agency.
And much like dumping a guy is easier without a shared vanity license plate, so is firing people who are under contract with temp firm. Just saying, it doesn’t look good.
Ignore the Vows section in the New York Times. Forget about Time's weird eagerness to play matchmaker. Soon, eHarmony.com and match.com will be like the print paper, a service for the sentimental.
That’s what Business Week predicts anyway. For pedophiles and romantics alike, Facebook and MySpace are becoming the preferred way to meet people online. The reason is simple. On jdate.com, the intentions, pleasing your mother, are too explicit. On Facebook, “you can play it cool.”
Yeah, nothing says “cool” like a poking the entire Ole Miss cheerleading squad.
Jon Fine is like the guy you felt obligated to invite to your party, and once he gets there, all he does is bitch about the drink selection.
In an article that might have been relevant a year ago, Business Week media writer Jon Fine complains about Facebook. It’s not that Facebook could destroy career opportunities for college students who post pictures of themselves doing bong hits or that the social networking site has become more of an office distraction than porn. Instead, the site is too popular. Everyone from his “ex-band mates” to his pals at News Corp. are on it, and he doesn’t want them knowing about each other.
This makes me sound like a character in a John Hughes movie getting all angsty over the high school cafeteria seating chart, I suppose, but no one can deny that the world of work is the high school cafeteria all over again.
Along with missing the point of Facebook, Jon missed the point of The Breakfast Club. The jock, the freak, the brain, the beauty and the rebel were all BFF at the end.
Two Goldman Sach employees pled guilty to insider trading yesterday. Part of their scheme involved paying a third party to work in the printing plants for Business Week.
The pair invested in at least 20 different stocks from the “Inside Wall Street” column before it ran. The Goldman Sachs duo netted $6.7 million through that and other schemes.
Authorities suspected something was up when the investors were actually making money off of the market.
• Comedy Central bites most generous hand. A Viacom vs. Google turf war? [NYT]
• 60 Minutes hope new flashy colors will attract younger audiences. [TVSquad]
• Cosmo may have its 50 eligible bachelors (half gay), but we're far more interested in the FICO scores of BusinessWeek's Top 50 Entrepreneuers. [BW]
• Despite an order of three more scripts, Studio 60 looks to be the next on NBC's chopping block. How 30 Rock flew under the radar is anyone's guess. [Fox 411]
• Those NBC Universal cuts, point by point. [Variety]
• Katie Couric disclosed she donated money to Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's disease charity so nobody could bring it up later to bash her for keeping a secret. [Public Eye]
• Demi Moore provocateur and photog Steve Sands files suit against the NYPD for stripping him of his press credentials. A public service, indeed. [Radar]
• Business Week leaker pleads guilty to leaking stock names before the issue went to press. Elsewhere, Vanity Fair sleeps soundly knowing if it can protect Suri Cruise's photos, it can keep any secret. [Bloomberg]
• It took just two hours for a jury to demand Source co-founders Raymond (Benzino) Scott and David Mays pay out $14.5 million to former editor Kimberly Osorio, who claimed sexual harassment and defamation. Calling women "bitches" at the office, it turns out, is frowned upon. [NYDN]
• If it's easier to stomach, feel free to call Katie Couric's performance on the CBS Evening News a "disappointment" rather than a "disaster." [Newsday]
• Time Inc.'s fired fleet might be interested to know its execs are still flying high. [Memo Pad]
• Nobody wants Time Inc.'s stable of 18 crappy magazines. Not even Rodale. [NYP]
• Even at PBS, it's better to tow the line than raise a stink. [PBS]
We are going to go out on a limb here and say that this was not one of Adam Moss' suggestions to BusinessWeek.
From Romenesko:
"There will be a reduction of 12 employees across administration, editorial and editorial production in order to enhance BusinessWeek’s long-term prospects and adapt to a changing marketplace."
That's just about all the details we have, except that among the departed are art director Malcolm Frouman and national correspondent and former BW managing editor Mark Morrison.
BusinessWeek lays off 12 "to enhance long-term prospects" [Romenesko]
In preparation for the launch of Portfolio (which is, what, two years in the making?) BusinessWeek has called in a few top editors to give their input on the mag. Executive editors at ESPN, Gary Belsky and Neil Fine, along with Adam Moss from New York, came in to critique the pub. BusinessWeek is launching a redesign (we can't imagine why) and wanted the input of successful, non-competeing, mags.
The men provided a host of suggestions; for example, insiders said Moss preferred shorter stories (à la New York's "Intelligencer" section), and preferred more conceptual covers, such as the ones The Economist often produces.
Moss also, likely, encouraged the magazine to include as many photos of Julianne Moore and lots and lots of lists.
All The Help It Can Get [Stephanie D. Smiht, WWD]
Because Jared Paul Stern has been hogging all the scandal spotlight this week, we would like to shed light on some of the other people who have been f'ing up lately. On a slow week, this would light up our lives, but today, due to excessive baby dropping and column killing, it merely becomes (insert word of the week) gossip fodder.
First, there is the big controversy over ESPN's new TV program featuring Berry Bonds. The show, Bond on Bonds, will follow the sporty side of the San Francisco Giant's player's life — and should ESPN decide to go the way of paying Bonds for his participation in the show, all sportscaster hell is going to break loose.
Something about how ESPN is a news channel, and they shouldn't be paying the people they report on? But, nobody really cares when Fox News covers Paula Abdul's drug issues, so … we don't really get why it's a big deal here. Then again, we don't really do sports coverage.
Then we have this bizarre, yet very well hidden scandal involving Business Week magazine. Yesterday "the Feds" arrested two Wall Street guys along with a mole at a Business Week's print shop. The three twenty-somethings were running an insider trading scam, in which they attempted to use exotic dancers to extract confidential merger information from top bankers. The goal was to use that info, along with insider knowledge from Meryl Lynch, to pilfer the markets. (It gets better.)
They then attempted to buy stocks based on tips from stolen prepublication copies of Business Week's "Inside Wall Street" column. This scandal was pretty good, too — they even had strippers!
And, though it does involve Jared Paul Stern, this last scandal takes a look at the New York Times coverage of high-profile events. Did they jump on the case too soon and start throwing around false accusations without taking the time to look at both sides of the story? Um, we shouldn't really have to ask this question … a gossip columnist was doing most of the "reporting."
ESPN's 'Bonds' Program Doesn't Taint the Network [Joe Flint, Wall Street Journal]
Sleazy? Yes. Criminal? Probably not. [Harvey Silvergate, The Phoenix News]
MOLES WHACKED [Janet Whitman, New York Post]
Business Week's John Riley's examination of CNBC flub Donny Deutsch is so entertaining, it's worth examining line by line. Normally we don't do this because, for one, we're practically first-grade ESL-ers and two, it's a shitload of reading and writing.
But in the interest of holding onto your Anna Nicole Smith attention span before Labor Day weekend strolls in, we're subjecting ourselves to the agony on your behalf.
What JR says: Donny Deutsch is a big guy.
What JR means: Donny Deutsch couldn't get any more bloated if he were Roseanne's twin going through menopause.
Not so much by stature, but it’s his personality.
There's a reason why "Deutsch" sounds so much like "douche."
The camera likes him. Witness his daily TV program on CNBC.
If you can find it. Because, if you look at the ratings, nobody else can.
He fills up a room, which is why he has long impressed his clients at Deutsch Advertising.
See above, about the ratings? I'm blatantly lying here.
Now, Donny has tried to get some of this oversized personality into a book, “Often Wrong, Never in Doubt," Collins 2005.
His book may only be 270-something pages, but it's so inflated with his ego that you'll have to check it on the plane.
Okay, that's where the funny ends (i.e. the lede) and the actual Bronx cheering of his book begins — well, except for the "whether created by men, women or monkees" line. As if you needed to be told, that's where we stop reading. And like most things about and by Donny, we're going to assume that's a smartpants decision.
Editorial Director
