Archives: November 2006

So asks the “first Asian supermodel” Anna Bayle, displaying a bunch of covers — from Glamour, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue — with illustrations instead of real live humans. But she’s really wondering why it’s now all actresses and celebrities, and no longer models, who grace the covers of the high-end women’s glossies. Her theory, in short:

“When one group gets more powerful than the other, then the balance of things change. Every other group will react to this movement and there will be changes. I think, when a model starts earning more than fashion editors … it’s a problem. When a model becomes more important and gets more press than the designer showing…it’s a problem. So what is the state of fashion shows now? — Very young girls with developing personalities showing $80,000 garments. ‘Walking zombies’ is the phrase I always hear. I believe the fashion world is refusing to give that power to the models right now because the models (and their agents) have abused their celebrity.”

Where have all the models gone? (Anna Bayle blog)

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.

Google’s methods, revealed! (Via Map Room.)

Microsoft celebrated its new operating system Vista by visiting the Nasdaq headquaters in New York. According to the article, the system will make “Windows machines more secure, powerful and graphically dynamic.” It will be availible to the general public on January 30th. Bill Gates will own the entire planet by late-February.

In another computer story, One Laptop Per Child will begin producing its $150 laptops in mid-2007. The original goal was $100, but the Minesweeper people held out for more money.

Both 30 Rock and Studio 60 survived through the midseason cancellation fest despite dissapointing ratings. 3 lbs., however, did not. Well, there’s a shock.

According to a memo to staff, a new group has been established at publisher Dow Jones to cover breaking business news for the Newswires, Online Journal, and often for the company’s print publications. The move signals a big shift at the company: by putting all of the spot news coverage under one umbrella, the company will ensure that multiple stories aren’t being written about the same news, and will free up time for reporters and editors at the Wall Street Journal to write longer, more analytical pieces. The full release:

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• Keith Kelly: Tries to divine information from the seating chart at the Condé Nast Christmas luncheon. [NYP]
• New York Times Web site: To become “everyone’s A section?’” [Governing]
• HuffPo: Adds a political editor, will produce reported
  pieces. [NYT]

• New Reader’s Digest CEO: A family Affair? [AdAge]
• Missing The ‘Good Old Days’ of the Village Voice‘s ‘Pazz and Jop’ Issue? Evidently someone is.
  [NYT]

It’s all a bunch of teens and tweens and maybe twenty-somethings uploading and downloading and forwarding YouTube all over, right? That’s a “misconception” writes Jack Myers in his Media Buzz email newsletter today, quoting a still unreleased eMarketer study:

“Until now we’ve been operating under the misconception that YouTube’s audience looks like Lonelygirl15. Just as the teen dream was unmasked as an actress performing in a scripted, if clever, work of fiction, eMarketer’s just published study, Internet Video: Advertising Experiments and Exploding Content, reveals that 55 percent of YouTube’s U.S. audience falls within the 35 to 64 age range, not exactly Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen. Even more surprising is that these viewers are affluent; 61.5 percent banked over $60,000 per annum. While this is bait for advertisers who are slowly shifting their ad dollars from broadcast to the Internet, it’s bad news for television, which has seen this age demo running for the exits.”

(Image from Communication at CDC)

So, why was On the Media in Turkey? Because show co-host Bob Garfield had another reason to go. Here’s his answer:

“Because Zimbabwe was booked solid.

“Har har. Actually, in my capacity as an ad critic for Advertising Age, I go around the world giving speeches — lately about the collapse of the old media/marketing model before the Brave New World is built out. (I call it “The Chaos Scenario.”) Over 20 years, I’ve done 80% of my on-location NPR reporting (100s of pieces from, like, 25 countries) while on Ad Age business. This trip I was in Oslo, then Istanbul. Freedom of speech in Norway isn’t a big issue, so I decided to focus on Article 301.”

Article 301, of course, being … oh, yes, the part of the Turkish penal code which criminalizes “insulting Turkishness” and is often used to prosecute writers and journalists.

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WARNING: Video contains explicit oatmeal consumption that is not suitable for those with sensitive stomachs (NSFTWSS)

Because we don’t discriminate against spit-up from those under the age of two, we bring you this clip of the ‘bistro’s first media baby going to town on some oatmeal while shielded in style by her mediabistro.com bib. She goes by Lily Simone Hibbard, and proud parents Elena Vega and Justin Hibbard were introduced back in June 2000 by mediabistro.com CEO Laurel Touby at the company’s first-ever San Francisco party.

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Loose rock journo-turned holy roller conservative blogger Dawn Eden submits to an interview with Radar. She lays bare the truth behind bagging musicians, while writer Peter Hyman strives to keep the beat:

Did you sleep mainly with drummers or guitarists?
The thing about drummers is that they are easier than guitarists. There is less competition for them, and they are easier to please and not used to the attention.

I used to play drums. What’s the difference between celibacy and chastity?
Celibacy is static. It’s a state of grace, where nothing penetrates you.

On the Media this week couldn’t resist the post-Thanksgiving pun, when Bob Garfield (do we have to call him co-host every week?) went slightly outside the usual Mideast sphere for a visit to Turkey, where he revealed that the press still isn’t completely free — though things are better.

Ana Marie Cox (still funny for us to hear the Wonkette referred to as Time.com) expounded on the nuance behind the election headlines: some of the Dems elected were conservative, and the all-important “swing voters weren’t thinking so much about the Iraq war; they were thinking about wanting a change for a lot of different reasons,” like corruption (which you already know if you paid attention).

And a couple of reruns, one on the create-a-pundit industry of media coaches by John Solomon, and a another from New Yorker Jay Rosen, speaking about “legacy media … saddled with an outdated or heavy infrastructure in an age when to be nimbler and lighter might be a lot better.”