The Menu

Imagine for a moment you're in a prison cell. You're facing 20 years behind steel bars for killing someone with your car (or, whatever). You have little connection to the outside world and every day is a struggle to maintain your sanity, life. From the masochistic prison system including guards and wardens and inmates to the knowledge that when you get out (if you get you) nothing will be how you left it, especially your life.

You've done wrong; maybe you admit it, maybe you don't. But you have thoughts about all of this, and other things, but can't confide in anyone here. Your regular psychiatric visits seem cold and thoughtless. If only you could write to someone outside who would just read your thoughts. Even if nothing comes of it, to have someone read them and maybe help you clarify them, turn them into something useful. Wouldn't that be something? PEN America makes that happen, supporting inmates with a coaching program aimed at improving the writing skills of America's incarcerated. Today we interview Jackson Taylor, who has helped this program reach the nations many millions of forgotten inmates since the late 80s.

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Crying tears of sorrow over its inability to sustain itself, and the careers of the professionals who used to make it sing and hum and over-indulge in holiday cookies and 'nog.

It cries and cries and cries, meanwhile someone at the top, somewhere is still rich and employed. Don't worry actual people, we'll stay poor with you. We're just kidding, everyone who works at AgencySpy is worth at least $4 million. Seriously, we're rich bastards over here.

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Today's guest on the Morning Media Menu was Peter Ginna, publisher and editorial director at Bloomsbury Press. The discussion centered on the needs of publishers these days, who are running on diminished time, staff and funds.

The problem is that the industry is short of marketing strategy, and people to implement it. Ginna recommends newcomers pay special attention to developing social media and marketing skills, no matter what their specialty.

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Alain Sylvain is the managing director of Redscout. He's done strategy for Mother New York and stays at SS&K, Martin and in the jewelery business, which is just a fun fact. Today he gave us a break down of the planning side of advertising and the details about SPUR, a video-interview series hosted by PSFK and Redscout that hopes to dive into the planning world by interviewing luminaries, rebels and newbies.

A planner's job is to being smarts into the mix, says Sylvain. Insight mining; micro thinking and macro execution; putting a match to the wood pile — all are phrases that come to mind when discussing this role. How it fits into the overall business is another thing. "Planning is best practiced outside advertising," said Sylvain. "Steve Jobs is actually a really good planner," he remarked, noting Jobs' understanding of the consumer market and branding as traits belonging to a planner.

Which isn't to say that the traditional creative side doesn't do that. But Sylvain agrees that in some cases, creatives are there to execute a plan thought up by a planner. Or planners. Think of it like architecture (that's our analogy) — a planner may determine the scope and draw up designs, and the creatives make it happen.

Some shops don't operate this way, but since the early 90s, the job has gained importance. SPUR's goal is to dig into it and do an informal audit of what's been happening — and with the trend-peepers at PSFK (a planner's resource) behind it, you'll want to watch. At least once.

SPUR launches today at PSFK.com/SPUR. The 5-video series will include interviews from the likes of Paul Woolmington, a founder of Naked Communications; Domenico Vitale of People, Ideas & Culture; John Gerzema, CIO of Y&R; Devika Bulchandani, CSO at McCann Erickson and many others.

Click continued for the full list of interviewees.

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Paul Malmont is a twice published author and Copy Director at R/GA in New York. In his spare time, he and his wife have developed a program that gets books in the hands of troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, their wives stationed in far-away bases and soon will do the same for the children. Operation Warrior Library, or OWL, is the Malmonts' way of supporting our volunteer army without paying credence to one political ideal or another. "We just want to give them a few hours of escapism," said Malmont, who launched the program with the help of an Army Colonel.

Initially the Colonel asked for a signed copy of Malmont's latest book, The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril, and soon after that the became clear: send reading materials across enemy lines to soldiers who would otherwise have to buy them. To accomplish that goal, the Malmonts enlisted (heh) the aid of other authors, and publishers too. To date, some 2,000 books have been donated, giving soldiers a much needed break from their daily chores.

Image by James M. Graham.

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Dynamic duo Jason Boog and Matt Van Hoven, they of GalleyCat and AgencySpy fame respectively, touched on a few pertinent literary/journo issues that hit close to home.

After comparing Halloween costumes (or lack thereof), the boys discussed among other things the Wall Street Journal shuttering its Boston bureau, Walmart's book-pricing battle with Amazon and Target, WPP's earnings report and New York magazine's expansion of online TV coverage.

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Today we interviewed Jürgen Fauth, a German ex-pat who hopes to save the literary short story through his site, Fictionaut. What's it boil down to? The Atlantic, when it had a vibrant short story section, sans everything but the short stories. You may not think this is important, but pay attention because parsing out content like this is something you should be aware of.

As advertising becomes ever-niche-ier, it'll be your jobs (media planners) to know where to be. And you, creatives, will need to understand the pains of people whose works are relegated to such faraway spaces on the Web. Your next client's audience may be tucked away in the coed-naked-underwater-basketweaving (which sounds awesome) club of New Brisbane, so pay attention to this trend. When you enter the space, you'll need to be even more savvy than back when you could get by with a few "Where the Wild Things Are" references.

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Today on the Morning Media Menu, we pondered the news that Sarah Palin has already received at least $1.25 million advance for her memoir.

In addition to that tidy sum, we also discussed the day's other big headlines: NY Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.'s Titanic metaphors, Politico's local news battle with The Washington Post, and disgraced reporter Jayson Blair's upcoming visit to a journalism school.

Dave Daley publishes FiveChapters.com, a literary short story site that manages to undercut staid publications like the Atlantic, GQ and other mainstream mags that used to house many more short pieces than they do currently. Daley's site is free and he does it in his spare time — and in a single year you can read 52 short stories without worrying about which ab workout to pick or who is kicking Christopher Hitchens' ass over in Morocco.

At about the 12 minute mark of today's show, we began to discuss whether or not we should feel bad for an industry (including every business that uses advertising to earn moneys) that got fat on print, broadcast and those media for failing to innovate. Of course everyone knows someone who lost a job due to this ineptitude, no question about feelings there. But for the brands at large who simply didn't evolve, should we shed a tear or usher in the new and successful while quietly seeking out "senior housing" for the former? If Darwin was right, we probably shouldn't care at all.

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Advertising people should skip forward to 10:38 and listen to the portion of the show about a woman in England who set up a theme dinner, in her home, that showcased all things Harry Potter. Attendees pay for their meal, which apparently takes Ms. Marmite Love (pseudonym) four days to prepare, and that caused the Warner Bros. legal team to get their undies in a bunch and force the woman to cancel the dinner.

Ms. Lover, unfettered by the pressure, simply changed the name of her little gathering (which she claims earns her very little money, and includes things like talking pictures) to "Generic Wizard Night".

We'll skip the "this is why brands are stupid" nonsense and go right to "ugh."

More on that story here.