Archives: October 2008

The 2008 election might be remembered as the first one in history that was won and lost through online video. From will.i.am‘s brilliant “Yes We Can” clip supporting Barack Obama to the Wassup 2008 vid — viewed over 3 million times in little more than a week — never have videos been so prevalent in the campaign cycle. (It is certainly the first election where a presidential candidate had a dance-off with Ellen.)

Silicon Alley Insider‘s Nicholas Carlson put together a list of the 10 video clips that altered the race, including the two mentioned above and other hits from the campaign trail.

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.

Both Senator Barack Obama and William Kristol made appearances on the Daily Show this week. Who was better?

Who Was Better On The Daily Show?
( polls)

This is the last weekend of the election cycle, the end of a very long and difficult week for print media, and also Halloween. For those of you not already scanning our job boards on an hourly basis here’s the link.

*The opening to Part 2 is after the jump.

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Jon Stewart: “I live in New York, everyone around me agrees with me.” Actually this whole spot is excellent and a good example of what Crossfire coulda, shoulda been.

Vanity Fair is excerpting Michael Wolff‘s much talked-about (much criticized by Rupe, himself) forthcoming book, The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch. Judging from the excerpt the secret world involves, perhaps not surprisingly, a whole lot of family dysfunction, except that Rupe doesn’t like that word. And anyway, everything’s relative!

Another benefit of dealing with the hapless Bancroft family was that it made him feel so much better about the dysfunction in his own family (dysfunction is a modish word that irritates him — he uses it only because his children say it so often). The Murdochs, who have had their problems, are not, he is confident, heading in the Bancrofts’ direction — not yet.

Other interesting tidbits? His eldest daughter Prue from his first marriage is the only one who doesn’t have her sights set on taking over the business, also she often talks him as though he’s her husband “irritating husband she has to beat some sense into.” The other children, meanwhile, learned through eldest son Lachlan’s missteps that it was a good idea to be at a distance, at a far remove from the old man,” making them “the Murdochs everybody who is also distant from the old man wants to get close to.”

The hallowed halls of 4 Times Square are littered with bodies, but one magazine is doing okay. Details, the eight-year-old men’s magazine, will raise its rate base 25,000 to 450,000 starting with the Jan/Feb 2009 issue. It’s an increase of around six percent, not much at all, but in this world any positive news is more than welcome.

“Details has had its strongest year ever in terms of both revenue and circulation, and readers continue to seek our unique editorial voice,” Steve DeLuca, the VP and publisher, said in a statement.

The lesson? In a struggling ad climate, go gay.

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Sanoma Corp., the fifth biggest magazine publisher in Europe and the biggest media company in the Nordic region, reported profit that were slightly down from last year’s third quarter. The company made 61.1 million euros versus 61.5 million euros last year. While revenue increased, from 719 million euros to 779 million euros, higher corporate taxes lowered profits.

Like American publishers, Sanoma is feeling the advertising slowdown. “The advertising markets in our key operating countries have reacted to the general economic uncertainty and consumer confidence has begun to decline in many areas,” the company said in a statement. “Our outlook for the remaining part of the 2008 has become somewhat weaker.”

From here.

Yesterday was one of the darkest days yet for print media, and is some cases online, too — one Conde staffer told us that during the meeting to announce the layoffs and scale backs at Men’s Vogue even Anna Wintour choked up. And there’s till no word yet on how many people are being cut from Portfolio.com or when the cuts will take place. Rumor has it they are taking their time informing staffers. It’s also unclear why the website is being scaled back so drastically since staffers were recently told that they have been “meeting their revenue goals for 2008 while the magazine has not.” And then there was this bit of forward-thinking:

According to a person who attended the meeting, one of the staff’s braver souls asked why the Web site was being punished more severely than the magazine. “He gave a sort of corporate-speak answer, and what it appeared to boil down to is, is ‘This is a magazine company,’…And it left the impression that the Web site was sacrificed to save the magazine.”

Hard to believe magazines are faltering under that sort of leadership! Meanwhile over at Men’s Vogue publisher Marc Berger is reportedly leaving the company, while editor-in-chief Jay Fielden will stay on.

Ex-Radar editor-in-chief Maer Roshan and Village Voice nightlife columnist Michael Musto

Last night, New York’s media mavens had a chance to mourn Radar at a farewell party at Chelsea lounge Citrine. Originally, the event was billed as a Halloween bash, but when the magazine suddenly folded, it turned into an impromptu funeral. Upon arriving, we spotted RadarOnline executive editor Alex Balk who’s no longer working with the site since its purchase and subsequent gutting by American Media Inc. Par for the course, Balk wouldn’t permit a picture, but he tried to appease us with a promise of a “big celebrity guest” supposedly stopping by the party later on. Radar’s last-ever cover girl Shannen Doherty did indeed make a cameo, but showed up late and left after less than five minutes, making her the only person who spent less time at the party than Balk.

More sightings and photos from the evening’s festivities, post-jump…

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