Jon Fine

Another Media Reporter Packs His Bags: Timesman Arango Headed to Iraq

Peter Kafka in Media on September 23, 2009 at 1:26 pm PT

Doesn’t anyone want to cover the media beat anymore? First, BusinessWeek’s super-sourced Jon Fine departs for a six-month globe-hopping sabbatical. Now the New York Times’s Tim Arango is leaving town as well: Instead of writing about moguls and mergers, he’ll be reporting from Iraq.

BusinessWeek Explains Why BusinessWeek Is for Sale: It’s a Money Pit

Peter Kafka in Media on July 24, 2009 at 5:44 am PT

Earlier this year, a top BusinessWeek editor assured me that McGraw-Hill wouldn’t part with the publication–because even if it was losing money it was still a trophy asset for the publisher. But perhaps my source didn’t comprehend how much money his employer was actually losing.

Michael Wolff Has Been Trash-Talking the Internet Since 1998–See the Video!

Kara Swisher in News on December 2, 2008 at 2:39 am PT

Ah, Michael Wolff! Always throwing stink bombs and making deliciously wackadoo declarations about the Internet. In a recent dinner interview the author had with BusinessWeek’s media columnist Jon Fine this week, Wolff slaps around News Corp. social network MySpace, with a series of his trash-buckling phrases, some of which are true and some a bit more of a stretch. But it’s par for the course for Wolff, as you can see here in an appearance with BoomTown on the “Charlie Rose” show a decade ago. “It’s craziness, it’s loco, it makes no sense,” said Wolff about the Internet, circa July 27, 1998. And later: “I think the myth of the Internet is that it is going to come into everybody’s home.”