It would be great if there was something Americans could learn from this recession: maybe a moral about how unlimited greed of a few ends in poverty for everyone, or maybe just a couple sadder but wiser families that now put frugality and food above living in a house they can't afford.
Or maybe, what everyone needs to be taking away from this economic crisis is that it's an even better time to start throwing your money in the toilet and purchasing lottery tickets! Or taking off of work for a couple weeks to compete in a reality television show that offers a big buyout! Unrealistic expectations of huge, undeserved financial reward is not a new concept, but seems particularly telling now, where companies are trading in their traditional prizes of new cars (which are basically worthless now, right?) in lieu of cold, hard cash to entice consumers to their products.
Of course, it's not supposed to be all about the money that encourages people to participate. It's a learning experience!
CONTINUED »
The price to print newspapers may finally be going down, after a tremendous uphill spike that has contributed in part to the recent shutterings and layoffs in the industry.
"In the last couple of weeks, very quietly, the newsprint companies are making clear that they are not going to raise rates next year," one of the newspaper executives said. "It's going to save millions upon millions of dollars for the newspaper companies."
Newsprint producers also said they would cancel several price increases that were announced for the fourth quarter of this year, an executive from another newspaper company said.
Well, that's good news right? But can the price cut save an industry that runs on ad dollars, when there are no ads to be sold?
CONTINUED »
The 25-year old hacker who created the Wikiscanner, a program that lets you see which companies are changing Wikipedia entries by cross-checking IP addresses, is certainly one suave motherfucker. He's managed to charm his way into Virginia Heffernan's column (which, to be fair, isn't that hard to accomplish) and has girls "hanging off of him" while he drinks White Russians at parties and discusses the Singularity.
Which just begs the questions: when did nerds become the new jocks?
CONTINUED »
Japan officially declared itself in a recession. On the plus side, the dollar-to-yen ration can only improve. On the minus side, that leaves the bank of Rio De Janeiro the only safe place to be hoarding your money anymore.
Disgraced NY governor Eliot Spitzer makes his return to the public stage not with a bang, but with a whimper: trying to teach government officials the meaning of Christmas free market capitalism.
Fun exercise? See how many statements about governmental officials and the American people you can apply to Spitzer's situation with the expensive Ashley Dupre.
See our favorites, after the jump.
Because we are just on a roll with these graphs today, check out the one of Google Trends comparing Gossip Girl's searches to that of Google searches regarding the economy.
But okay, fine, Gossip Girl is a fixed term, while economy can be searched for under many different titles. Like "bailout" for instance or "Morgan Stanley" or "holy shit we're doomed."
Sorry, Internet. I took statistics 101. You can't fool me with your fuzzy math!
Everyone loves a good investimigative journalism, especially when it deals with those highfalutin bank jerks that stole all our money and made the economy go all frowny-face, and then get their golden parachutes and jump out of their solid gold helicopters and land in a secret resort in the Caribbean with all the bailout money. Those guys are the worst.
But sometimes a station gets a little over-eager in their coverage, as was maybe the case when ABC reported on the AIG conference in Phoenix that cost $350,000 and included nice amenities and such.
How did ABC get the story wrong? Well, they didn't realize AIG needed expensive retreats to keep their image up.
CONTINUED »
So all those meetings Mayor 4 Life Bloomberg was planning to help the city's flailing media industry? Mike's going to pay for them with the jobs of city workers… since he is cutting approximately 3,000 of them today.
“We do take these measures with a heavy heart,” the mayor said, adding, “We’re committed to keeping New Yorkers working, but we also have to keep the city’s finances in order.”
The mayor also promised that we weren't all going to get taxed back into the 70s, and there wouldn't be "deep cuts" in police, fire, and education spending. Um, except the police headcount is going to be cut by 1,000, and police classes are getting canceled.
But at least now we can figure out what to do with our booming blog industry!
After the jump, the list of what is getting axed.
CONTINUED »
"The former chief risk officer at investment bank Bear Stearns, which nearly collapsed in March, is now a senior official of the Federal Reserve division that supervises U.S. banks."
-NYT
Hey pal, why so glum? Just lost your big beautiful investment job at one of the nation's top holding houses? Not to worry, it looks like Lehman Brothers is hiring! That's right: $1.4 billion dollars is being put aside for accountants, lawyers, and other finance professionals to help untie the dirty, sundered accounts of the firm's steaming shitpile. So the newest economic bubble can actually be the cleaning up of wreckage from the last one. Hooray, everyone is saved.
So glad that bailout money is being put to good use?
Remember back in August, when the biggest problem was trying to figure out who the nominees were going to pick as their running mates? Before all the stocks tanked and the banks failed and the phrase "worst _____ in American history" started getting thrown around a lot?
Yeah, good times.
Well, just because September was a shitshow, and October's been nothing but the fallout from that (Newspapers! Gone! Magazines! Kaput! Carsclothesfood! Everything is not great!), we can now look forward into November, what with election coming up in four days and all. No more postings of 3rd quarter losses: Now they'll be fourth quarter projections!
CONTINUED »
Now this is truly bizarre: While it makes sense that publisher Condé Nast would cut down the frequency of Portfolio and take their necessary 5% of flesh out of the magazine, why is Portfolio.com being "severely scaled back" when common sense (and trend reports) would say it's the only part of the operation that still has a chance to become lucrative?
Sure, cuts are being made everywhere, but going from a staff of 12 to a staff of 3 (or so says the rumor mill) is not letting go five percent, it's trimming 75% of the online workforce.
CONTINUED »
Look, nobody here is claiming to be a math genius, but what sense does it make to take a magazine that publishes monthly, and then trim it down by only two issues a year? Which is what Condé Nast, in their recent upheaval today, has decided to do with Portfolio, their business mag that lately hasn't been keeping very good track of business. So now Portfolio will be published 10 months out of the year, so they can continue "readjusting for the economic times.” Gosh, by their October cover, you'd figure the economy was doing just fine.
So what happens to those two other issues? They've been given to Men's Vogue, which recently lost all of their other publishing dates.
It's like March of the Penguins, but about humans! God, you could listen to this man's voice for a couple hours on a long car trip and end up three hours off of I-95 on a little dirt road and end up back in Americatown, USA. Goddammit.
Like Rachel Maddow said, "He had me at the waving wheat."
It's not enough these days just to have a lot of viewers or readers or subscribers to your YouTube channel or what have you. At least, not if you are Jim Cramer. The Mad Money host isn't catching a break this year, and right now it's his website The Street that's posting the big losses, despite an increase in web traffic.
See, even when shit is bad for the economy, people will watch CNBC. In fact, they'll watch it more. Even when Jim Cramer is wrong in his predictions for stocks, like his massive blunder with Bear Stearns and Wachovia, he still makes bank over his competitors at FBN.
But online, that's a different story. And now Cramer is forced to take the reigns at his own online enterprise (gasp!) or risk losing it all together when the ad sales floor drops from under him.
CONTINUED »
JOSSIP IN-DEPTH — We pay a lot of lip service here to the idea that magazines and newspapers are a dying breed these days. But how can you not? It's no longer just a conceptual exercise, like "Oh, when the Internet really takes off and everyone buys a Kindle there will be no more need for paper journalism."
Since the stock markets have tanked, and as the automotive industry began stalling thanks to rising fuel prices and less discretionary income, meaning fewer big ad deals from GM and Chrysler, which means fewer ads in mags, yada yada yada, it's become increasingly apparent the push toward the future of magazines and papers wasn't going to be a technological development, but a financial one.
And no, it's not been great so far. Ad sales are down, overall readership is down, layoffs are up, and in some cases, publications are straight up folding. So goodbye, New York Sun, Radar, CosmoGIRL!, and 02138! Meanwhile, online news aggregators are popping up (Daily Beast!) and flourishing (Huffington Post!).
Nowadays, you'll have better luck starting a blog about the magazine industry's implosion than you would have trying to start up a title in today's climate.
So what are the glossies that are currently in danger? Here's our own suicide watch, and what drove these mags to the brink of extinction (besides the obvious lack of tasty ad dollars):
CONTINUED »
Sorry for all the bummers so early on this dreary day, but Jann Wenner just fired seven people off his Rolling Stone's staff, which might not seem like a lot but definitely does not reflect a positive change in business, despite Wenner's decision to (literally) downsize his magazine's format.
This cut is still less than 2% of the company's 400 full-time employees, but with ad sales dropping 14% this quarter Wenner might have to put down the knife and pick up the chainsaw if he ever plans on pruning his company enough to avoid a total fold.
David Carr wants you to be worried about what will happen after November 4th. Not because of anything as obvious and tacky as the election, gawd no, but because after the final vote is tallied and the last pregnant chad is disputed, who will buy up all the local advertising?
See, Barack Obama has spent an unheard of $250 mill on ads this campaign, and now that the race is coming to a close, he's basically just giving away the money to the stations in the form of those 30-minute ads coming up. And while these ads are taking up air-time, they effectively push other ads, like car commercials, bank commercials, etc, out of the line-up.
Which you know, is great when none of those client can afford to pay for time anymore. But what happens when the money train grounds to a halt?
If you live in Manhattan, co-ops are a little different then the one's you had back in college, where all the hippies hung out. Apartment co-ops in New York often mean tough scrutiny by fellow members of the housing board (i.e. your potential neighbors) before you're even given the key to the building. It's like college admissions: except even daddy's money won't guarantee you a spot on the waiting list.
Just ask Lou Reed: just because he's a famous aging rock star doesn't mean that he's on good terms with his neighbors over at his penthouse digs overlooking the West Side highway. In fact, they invariably complain about the Velvet Underground's slew of personal assistants and their all-access pass to the otherwise lock-and-key building.
Sound fun? Slap a $60 million price tag on that baby, and you have the most exclusive digs in New York City's history. Available (not to you) for a limited time only.
CONTINUED »
Ex-chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, made comments today alluding to his total lack of foresight when it came to current economic implosion. Addressing a Congressional panel today of the House Oversight Committee, Greenspan warned that things might get worse before they get better re: foreclosure and the roller-coaster Dow.
Well thanks, Alan. Could you have managed to use that incredible vision when you actually could have helped? Like raising interest rates or something?
CONTINUED »
Editorial Director
