Here is a very funny piece from cable television comedy show, “The Colbert Report,” about a reporter from Georgia.

It’s hard to explain why it’s so funny, but it is a perfect send-up of the reporting process. The story: “Man Says It’s Too Hot to Fish.”

As Colbert intones: “Newspapers are part of America’s past, like buggy-whip makers and the middle class, but they still perform an important function.”

Enjoy:

The Huffington Post Media Group, AOL’s fast-moving content unit, is launching a celebrity site called HuffPost Celebrity today, as well as another called HuffPost Culture.

HuffPost Celebrity, which ate AOL’s former celeb-focused site PopEater, is described as “an insider-y look at entertainment and celebrity, with the latest news, original reporting and scoops from our team of reporters.”

While the Huffington Post has always had a huge dollop of celebrity news and blogs, it puts the much more focused site into a very crowded arena online, with competitors such as Yahoo’s omg!, Time Warner’s People magazine Web site, as well as AOL-owned TMZ.com.

That means a major focus on the news site’s mix of short and juicy items, blogs of the famous (and infamous) and lots and lot of videos and photos.

And, indeed, the new site, which can be viewed here, has that. The main feature now is a big photo with the title, “PHOTOS: Gaga Arrives Down Under” and blogs by Jon Favreau and Tracey Ullman and slide shows of “Kardashian Bikini Show & Tell” and “Child Stars That Avoided ‘The Curse.’”

The move is another of a series of them in an aggressive expansion of AOL’s content offerings under its chief, Arianna Huffington (pictured right), who now has the money and staff she has obviously long wanted to blow her online media empire out.

And it is clearly yet another sign of the reliance AOL now has on the media group’s platform, since it bought the Huffington Post for $315 million in January.

She recently launched a U.K. edition of the site, for example, and has pushed out a number of new categories as the HuffPost has subsumed all of AOL’s previous content efforts.

Here’s the official press release on the latest launches:

AOL HUFFINGTON POST MEDIA GROUP ANNOUNCES LAUNCH OF TWO SITES: HUFFPOST CELEBRITY AND HUFFPOST CULTURE

Entertainment News Site Goes Live Today, Arts Destination on Wednesday;

Both With HuffPost’s Real-Time News and Opinion, and Leading Edge User Engagement

“HuffPost Celebrity Network” Syndication Feed Launches Today

New York, NY (July 11, 2011) — The AOL Huffington Post Media Group, a leading source of news, opinion, entertainment, community and digital information, announces today the launch of two destination sites: HuffPost Celebrity (huffingtonpost.com/celebrity), a lively mix of real-time entertainment news, opinion and gossip, and HuffPost Culture (huffingtonpost.com/culture), covering a wide span of the arts, from theatre and film to music and dance. HuffPost Celebrity goes live today and HuffPost Culture launches Wednesday.

Both sites offer The Huffington Post’s unique combination of real-time news and opinion, and a passionate and engaged community powered by the latest social engagement tools. HuffPost Celebrity also features a syndication platform offering the latest entertainment news and blog posts to partner sites. HuffPost Celebrity is edited by Katy Hall, Managing Editor of Entertainment of AOL Huffington Post Media Group; HuffPost Culture is edited by Gazelle Emami, Culture Editor of AOL Huffington Post Media Group; and both sites are being overseen by John Montorio, Editorial Director, Entertainment, Culture & Lifestyle of AOL Huffington Post Media Group. Arianna Huffington, President and Editor-in-Chief of AOL Huffington Post Media Group, made the announcement.

“We’ve always offered a take on celebrity and culture that is a fun, high/low mix that reflects our users’ diverse range of interests and desire for comprehensive entertainment news delivered in real-time. Creating these two new destination sites will allow us to both expand and deepen our coverage,” said Arianna Huffington. “Our goal is to give our readers everything from buzzy items to thought-provoking opinion pieces delivered with a style and a voice that’s uniquely HuffPost. We want to inform and entertain, while engaging our community around these subjects and serving as a starting point for compelling ‘digital watercooler’ conversations.”

HuffPost Celebrity is an insider-y look at entertainment and celebrity, with the latest news, original reporting and scoops from our team of reporters. The site is accessible, fresh, and filled with the kinds of stories our readers love to share. HuffPost Celebrity encourages users to engage with stories and features the most up-to-the-minute photos, videos, slide shows, and blog posts from industry executives to celebrities, all weighing in in real-time. Among the talent that has blogged on The Huffington Post are Alec Baldwin, Scarlett Johansson, George Clooney, Madonna, Ryan Reynolds, Larry David, Bill Maher, Rob Lowe, Russell Simmons, Natalie Portman and more.

HuffPost Culture will complement our entertainment coverage, delivering a one-stop-shop for all that’s happening in the performing arts, visual and broadcast arts, including dance, opera, music, architecture, film, TV, photography and more. The site will have visually arresting images of performances and art pieces with HuffPost’s singular style of coverage, including original reporting, artist profiles, reviews, interactive infographics, sneak peeks, slide shows, videos and more. HuffPost Culture will be a forum for discussion of arts and culture, and serves as a guide for users wanting to stay abreast of cultural news and events.

The site will offer a number of ongoing features meant to explore the arts from all angles. For example, as part of a “Strange Bedfellows” series — following unexpected collaborations between artists — HuffPost Culture will offer an exclusive video collaboration between David Lynch and the band Interpol; “On Our Radar” will highlight emerging talent; and profiles of artists include an “Architects in America” series. HuffPost Culture will feature exclusive playlists from musicians and DJs, starting off with a summer playlist from Chromeo. The weekly “Culture Forecast” will serve as a handy guide to what’s happening in arts and culture. At launch, HuffPost Culture will offer different best-of-the-year-so-far picks, from music to art exhibitions. In addition, HuffPost Culture will present curated content from AOL sites such as Moviefone and HuffPost Celebrity, as well as the best arts coverage from around the web.

The launch of the HuffPost Celebrity Network today offers media partners syndicated, constantly updating entertainment content available for use across a wide variety of platforms. Participating partners include SFGate, Tribune’s Zap2It, and Russell Simmons’ Global Grind. “HuffPost Celebrity demonstrates our ability to combine compelling content with a platform centered around user engagement, while our new feed, the HuffPost Celebrity Network, shows how we can most effectively leverage our unique assets,” said Kerry Trainor, Senior Vice President/General Manager, AOL Entertainment. “We make it turnkey for our partners to offer their users the highest quality entertainment news, whether it’s for the latest tablet or a long-standing website. We want to offer a vibrant distribution feed that reaches a wide audience for our content, while enabling our partners to engage their users around it as well –- it’s a classic win-win.”

Yesterday, AOL’s Huffington Post Media Group got into hot water after the top editor at its Moviefone unit sent a memo to freelancers it was in the midst of firing, offering them an opportunity to “contribute as part of our non-paid blogger system.”

Today, that exec–Moviefone Editor-in-Chief Patricia Chui–was fired by the company, which is in the midst of drastically rejiggering its stable of writers.

Many of those were freelance bloggers under contract to AOL, who are now getting the boot in favor of reallocating staff back to largely paid journalists.

Thus came the controversial email from Chui, which read, in part:

“We will, indeed, be moving away from a freelancer model and toward one relying on full-time staffers. Sometime soon-–this week, I believe–-many of you will be receiving an email informing you that your services as a freelancer will no longer be required. You will be invited to contribute as part of our non-paid blogger system; and though I know that for many of you this will not be an option financially, I strongly encourage you to consider it if you/d like to keep writing for us, because we value all of your voices and input.”

Oh dear. Really, oh dear, especially since the Huffington Post has had its own share of controversies over not paying some bloggers (although it never quite ever offered up a doozie that this letter was).

Sources said Chui was terminated by John Montorio, the HuffPo Media Group’s culture, entertainment and lifestyle editor. Arianna Huffiington is head of all content at AOL, which recently paid $315 million to buy the Huffington Post.

Since she took over, Huffington has tried to stress a return to journalism over more algorithmic content creation. The unloading of its freelance writers was part of that effort.

Thus, Chui’s missteps did not help matters.

But it was not the first time recently that she had made an ill-advised editorial judgment.

Sources said the firing is also due to an incident several weeks ago, in which Chui appeared to defend a marketing employee who sent an email to TechCrunch writer Alexia Tsotsis, asking her to soften a review of “Source Code” due to studio relationship considerations.

AOL bought TechCrunch, a well-known tech news site, last fall. At the time, its CEO Tim Armstrong promised editorial independence and no meddling over advertising concerns.

Instead of taking this minion to task, on Moviefone’s own blog Chui said, in part:

“The reality of our situation is that, as a movies site, we work with movie studios every day, and it is in our best interests to stay on good terms with them. Staying on good terms with studios means that we will relay information if asked. It does not mean that we would ever force a writer or an editor to edit their work for the sake of a studio–or anyone else.”

Even with the last line, it is not exactly a profile in courage, because it was clear violation of the traditional separation of church and state in force at most media organizations.

Typically, editors are supposed to come down on any such communication. That has certainly been my experience in journalism over the years at the Washington Post and Dow Jones–including during its News Corp. ownership. In fact, I have often been shielded from such requests to pass such complaints onto me and only found out much later of advertiser discomfort about my reporting.

At the time, TechCrunch quite clearly called for Chui’s firing and that happened today.

Here is Chui’s full memo to freelancers, as well as the one about TechCrunch, neither of which were apparently cleared with higher-ups:

From: Chui, Patricia
Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2011 11:26 AM
To: MoviefoneWriters
Subject: Moviefone/Cinematical–Status of Writers

Dear Moviefone/Cinematical Writers,

I know there’s been a lot of uncertainty regarding the future of freelancers and your status as a writer for the site. I personally apologize for the lack of communication, but I’ll tell you what I can.

We will, indeed, be moving away from a freelancer model and toward one relying on full-time staffers. Sometime soon–this week, I believe–many of you will be receiving an email informing you that your services as a freelancer will no longer be required. You will be invited to contribute as part of our non-paid blogger system; and though I know that for many of you this will not be an option financially, I strongly encourage you to consider it if you’d like to keep writing for us, because we value all of your voices and input.

Some of you have indicated interest in applying for full-time writer and editor positions, and the status of those positions are also part of discussions that are ongoing right now. I cannot at this point, however, tell you how many positions there are, or what the exact nature of those positions will be.

Despite the move toward a full-time staff vs. freelancer model, I’m told that there will be room for “exceptions”–for example, in the cases of writers who specialize in certain subjects. Again, what these exceptions are for Moviefone, and what the budget for them would be, is still being discussed.

As for Cinematical, the resignation of Erik Davis is certainly a loss. But I am continuing to have conversations with the editorial leadership here, and I am hopeful that we will still be able to maintain the Cinematical brand and voice going forward. Again, I will share with you any pertinent information as I have it.

In the meantime, those of you who already have assignments, please do continue to work on them unless you hear otherwise. If you’re uncertain of the status of your assignment, check with me. It may take me a while to get back to you, so please be patient–but I will respond.

I am sorry that I don’t have more specific details to give you, but I promise that I’ll keep you as well-informed as I possibly can. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have questions or concerns.

Best,

patricia

By now you may have read the recent post in TechCrunch regarding that site’s SXSW coverage of the film “Source Code.” A representative from Moviefone, who set up the interview with Summit Entertainment, received some feedback from the studio and passed it along to TechCrunch (our sister site here at AOL). That email has now caused something of a Internet kerfuffle.

Here is the email–reprinted in the post–that was sent to the TechCrunch writer.

Hey Alexia,

Hope you’re having a good time at SxSW and that it’s not been too crazy busy for you!

First wanted to thank you for covering Source Code/attending the party, etc. But also wanted to raise a concern that Summit had about the piece that ran. They felt it was a little snarky and wondered if any of the snark can be toned down? I wasn’t able to view the video interviews but I think their issue is just with some of the text. Let me know if you’re able to take another look at it and make any edits. I know of course that TechCrunch has its own voice and editorial standards, so if you have good reasons not to change anything that’s fine, I just need to get back to Summit with some sort of information. Let me know.

Thanks!

TechCrunch’s issue with Moviefone is that by sending this email, we, in their words, “asked us to change our post. It’s not just sad, it’s wrong.”

I wanted to take this opportunity to clarify a few things.

1) The person who wrote that email was not acting in an editorial capacity. That person’s job is to act as an intermediary between the studios and editorial–not to dictate content, nor to weigh in on the content of Moviefone or any other AOL site. In fact, the presence of a person with that role is just one means we have of ensuring editorial integrity on Moviefone.

2) This is important: We never told TechCrunch to change the post in any way. A publicist at Summit reached out asking if we could convey the studio’s feedback to TechCrunch. We did so. If the editors had responded that they declined to edit the post–which, naturally, is entirely their call–we simply would have conveyed that information back to Summit.

The reality of our situation is that, as a movies site, we work with movie studios every day, and it is in our best interests to stay on good terms with them. Staying on good terms with studios means that we will relay information if asked. It does not mean that we would ever force a writer or an editor to edit their work for the sake of a studio–or anyone else.

We take editorial integrity seriously at Moviefone, and it’s painful to be depicted as a pawn of the studios when that is emphatically not the case. You may think it unseemly for a studio to request changes in an article; that’s certainly your right. But the accusation of pandering on our part or crossing an editorial line is, to my mind, completely unfair, and I would hope that a reasonable reader would be able to recognize the situation for what it is–overblown and unwarranted.

Patricia Chui
Editor-in-Chief, Moviefone

The culmination of the deal–which has already been approved by regulators–is set to be announced by the New York-based company this morning, only one month after it was struck.

And–in a clear sign of the shift in its focus toward a more editorially driven direction under the now-official content head Arianna Huffington (pictured here)–sources said the closing will be accompanied by the announcement of the hiring of a half-dozen journalists to AOL’s new Huffington Post Media Group unit.

Among the new reporters are some more high-profile grabs from other media giants, including The Daily’s Jon Ward. He has been the Washington bureau chief for New Corp.’s high-profile online newspaper, which only recently launched.

Also set to join AOL is Yahoo’s senior media writer Michael Calderone.

Interestingly, along with more experienced editorial staff, sources said the announcement will also include new hires via the Huffington Post’s Jefferson Program for Young Journalists.

Sources said the new hires are only the beginning of a series of them, as the impact of the leadership of Huffington becomes clearer.

Along with the news and opinion site, the well-known media personality is now in charge of all of AOL’s varied content properties, including its locally aimed Patch.

Huffington, with obviously strong support from AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, has been talking a lot in a plethora of interviews since the deal was announced a few weeks ago about the importance of creating a new media organization focused on original reporting.

In a way, AOL is now competing with big news sites such as those on Yahoo, as well as smaller niche content and also mainstream entities.

Even before the deal was struck with AOL, the Huffington Post had been heading down that path of pulling in mainstream journalists. Last year, it hired former New York Times economics writer Peter Goodman and former Newsweek columnist Howard Fineman, among others.

The formula? Adding the strong journalism reputation of these reporters to the eclectic mix of socializing, blogging, celebritizing and aggressive aggregating that the site has used to garner huge amounts of traffic in recent years.

As I had previously written, the AOL Way–the same for a strategy document about content on the site–is now the Arianna Way.

Here are Huffington and Armstrong talking about such issues in in an exclusive video interview BoomTown did with them just before they announced the deal on Super Bowl Sunday about a month ago:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110307/aol-deal-closes-today-as-more-high-profile-huffington-post-journalism-hires-signal-new-direction/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110117/steve-jobs-asked-for-privacy-and-he-deserves-it-this-time/ http://allthingsd.com/20110117/steve-jobs-asked-for-privacy-and-he-deserves-it-this-time/#comments Mon, 17 Jan 2011 15:32:54 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=39638

There had indeed been rumors about Steve Jobs’s health, after he didn’t show up at the Apple iPhone launch on Verizon Wireless in New York last week, as was expected.

And then they flared again, when the event to show off News Corp.’s new Apple iPad-only newspaper, the Daily, was postponed due to issues related to its subscription system.

This pair of non-Jobs events had caused a low-grade rumble in Silicon Valley that perhaps tech’s most iconic, gifted and charismatic CEO could be sick again.

In fact, I got a dozen calls last week from people asking me if I knew if anything was wrong, which I did not.

And while the tech echo chamber usually puts two and two together and comes up with three, this time all that gossip turned out to be quite correct.

Jobs is once again ill enough to have to take time off from his leadership role, which he called a “medical leave of absence” in an email to his staff released today.

So now, once again, the intense debate will begin about exactly what is happening with Jobs’s health, how much Apple should reveal and how much it will likely not, and how that is so very awful, because the people deserve to know.

In fact, we–the media and Wall Street and Apple users–already know plenty enough, which is: Jobs has had a persistent and very serious illness he has been fighting successfully for many years now.

But his outlook, from the moment he found out about his particular form of pancreatic cancer, has never been really good.

More to the point, his ability to bounce back several times has been both heartening and more than a little miraculous.

But, remember this: Both times he has taken time off for health reasons, Jobs has come back with fierce and game-changing innovation.

The iPhone came out after his first big bout with his illness, the iPad after the second.

Today, it’s happened a third time and I suspect much of what will be written about his diagnosis will be sheer speculation and only a little bit will be accurate reporting.

I am guessing this time too that Jobs will be as tight-lipped as ever about what he’s going through, which could be a wide range of medical issues, some more serious than others.

And that, I think, should be what everyone should let him do, because the public Steve Jobs has given his large audience more than enough since he got back after the last time he was sick.

Today, he said in the email: “I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can. In the meantime, my family and I would deeply appreciate respect for our privacy.”

I, for one, think he deserves exactly that and much more.

But, if you can’t get enough of him, until he hopefully recovers, will you settle for this tremendous onstage interview he gave to Walt Mossberg and me last year at the eighth D: All Things Digital conference?

It is vintage Jobs, as you will see:

PREVIOUSLY

• Apple Shares Down Nearly 8 Percent in Frankfurt on News of Jobs’s Medical Leave
• Citing Health, Steve Jobs Steps Away From Apple, Again
• Apple Opposes Proposal on CEO Succession Planning
• Deutsche Bank Joins the Running of the Apple Bulls
• Jobs: “I’m Vertical, Back at Apple and Loving Every Day of It”
• Apple Investors Are Wusses
• When Steve Jobs Said “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish,” He Did Not Mean This Foolish
• AAPL Sauce
• Apple’s Steve Jobs: “I Have Decided to Take a Medical Leave of Absence”
• The Entire Letter: Steve Jobs Explains His Health Problem: “Hormone Imbalance”–Predicts Recovery by Spring and Will Stay On as CEO
• Ain’t Nobody’s Business If Jobs Is or Isn’t

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110117/steve-jobs-asked-for-privacy-and-he-deserves-it-this-time/feed/ 19 http://allthingsd.com/20101213/yahoo-layoffs-of-650-to-700-employees-set-for-tomorrow/ http://allthingsd.com/20101213/yahoo-layoffs-of-650-to-700-employees-set-for-tomorrow/#comments Tue, 14 Dec 2010 00:49:56 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=38492

It matters a great deal to the unfortunate employees at Yahoo who are being laid off this week for the reporting on the subject to be accurate and to entail some serious effort.

(It’s bad enough to lose a well-paying job in this still-tough economy, but to lose one over the holidays requires quite a lot more than incorrectly quoting a tweet off Twitter without checking first.)

And so here’s the deal, as BoomTown has previously reported, about what’s happening with Yahoo layoffs, set for tomorrow morning:

Yahoo will lay off about 650 to 700 employees.

Those layoffs will come largely from its product division, headed by Blake Irving, although there could be firings in other parts of Yahoo.

The layoffs are mostly in the U.S. units of Yahoo.

Those let go will be notified tomorrow and will likely have to leave Yahoo facilities immediately. Company sources said the action will be completed by early afternoon, Pacific time.

It’s definitely bad timing for Yahoo, given it is less than two weeks until Christmas, but cost-cutting at the company seems unavoidable as it seeks to improve revenue and spur growth.

Still, it is another sad day in Sunnyvale, Calif., where the iconic Internet giant is headquartered.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101213/yahoo-layoffs-of-650-to-700-employees-set-for-tomorrow/feed/ 5 http://allthingsd.com/20101108/welcome-to-networkeffect/ http://allthingsd.com/20101108/welcome-to-networkeffect/#comments Mon, 08 Nov 2010 08:06:03 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=8 Hi there, I’m Liz Gannes.

You may know me from my writings at GigaOM, where I covered topics like the social Web and online video for the last four years. If this is your first time reading me, I hope you’ll find my writing, reporting and analysis worth sticking around for.

My beat at All Things Digital is All Things Social, and you’ll be able to find my stories under the heading NetworkEffect, named after the idea that a community of users makes a service valuable for everyone who joins.

On the social Web, network effects help us improve the lives of our friends, family and neighbors, when we sign up for the same Web services and share our lives and experiences; they also factor in the power of critical mass to create new businesses from scratch. In the six years I’ve been a tech reporter, companies I’ve watched being born–such as Facebook, Twitter and Google-owned YouTube–have come to be major parts of people’s lives around the world. And I think that’s pretty awesome.

Of course, not everyone agrees. Example du jour: In this month’s New York Review of Books, the author Zadie Smith (whose novels I like very much) applied her considerable forces of perception to Facebook and the implications of its creation myth. Smith’s credentials to analyze Facebook are: She was a fellow at Harvard University when it was founded, she spent only two months trying the service before leaving it, she’s a full nine years older than Mark Zuckerberg (ancient!), and she calls herself a “private person.”

In her piece, Smith charged that Facebook encourages highly superficial, low-effort communication that threatens to replace actual relationships and experiences. She cited Jaron Lanier to assert that computers cannot represent actual human relationships, and, further, that the limitations of a tool can shape what its users think is possible.

So, basically, Facebook is devaluing the way we relate to each other.

Smith thinks her problems with Facebook come back to the site being created by Zuckerberg as an immature college sophomore who desperately wanted to be liked. “If the aim is to be liked by more and more people, whatever is unusual about a person gets flattened out,” she wrote. “[T]o Zuckerberg sharing your choices with everybody (and doing what they do) is being somebody.”

If we really wanted to write to these faraway people, or see them, we would. What we actually want to do is the bare minimum, just like any nineteen-year-old college boy who’d rather be doing something else, or nothing.

Smith noted in the piece that she doesn’t actively use Facebook herself, but she looked up some of Zuckerberg’s recent public comments and keenly observes that the Facebook CEO “uses the word ‘connect’ as believers use the word ‘Jesus,’ as if it were sacred in and of itself.”

Personally, I see my relationships extended and improved on Facebook, whether it’s knowing what my extended family is up to on a daily basis, or the great conversations I’ve had in the past few days about Death Valley, after I posted an album of pictures from my between-jobs road trip to the desert last week.

Still, I don’t often find visiting Facebook to be deeply satisfying either. But, whereas Smith sees reasons to run away screaming, I see an opportunity to better address some of the parts she finds lacking.

The real story here?

It’s about the capability of the social Web to improve so it better serves and extends our real-world relationships. It’s about the fact that these sites and apps are created by people whose versions of the world are expressed in them. It’s about the potential to communicate with people you don’t know, to cultivate and reward passionate fans and to learn the dark art of self-promotion. It’s about the wide-open opportunity to improve on and compete with Facebook, which is still really far away from delivering on its potential to improve the lives of the half-billion people who already use it regularly and the many more who don’t. Simply put, there’s a lot more to be done.

And that’s what I want to write about.

(P.S. As detailed in my ethics statement, which I will keep updated, my husband is a part-time employee at Facebook. His work is not a part of my reporting, and I obviously find the company fascinating and will not shy away from writing about it–both the good parts and the bad ones. )

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101108/welcome-to-networkeffect/feed/ 13 http://allthingsd.com/20101014/meet-the-yahoo-board-something-old-something-new-but-will-they-do-something/ http://allthingsd.com/20101014/meet-the-yahoo-board-something-old-something-new-but-will-they-do-something/#comments Thu, 14 Oct 2010 16:00:49 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=35099

With all the noisy swirl around Yahoo of late–from its executive turmoil to its flat growth to its dashed partnerships in Asia to its brash CEO–its board has been unusually quiet of late.

Comatose, some might say.

In fact, many do say exactly that, pointing to the trauma of their disastrous performance when they fended off a hostile takeover attempt by Microsoft (MSFT) for above $30 a share as the cause.

Since then, the stock price of Yahoo (YHOO) has been mired in the low teens.

That is, until yesterday, when even more rumors of new plots emerged in the media, with private equity firms, media companies, Web rivals, big shareholders, Wall Street and others all machinating about trying to grab all or some of the Internet giant.

Now, it will be interesting to see if its directors will shake themselves out of their typical comfort zone of inactivity to actually do their job.

Which, as former GE (GE) star exec Jack Welch–in a recent smackdown of a spate of controversial moves by the Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) board–said in a recent interview, is to “pick the CEO, help them shape strategy, make them feel good about themselves, and, if the CEO isn’t doing a good job, to ‘get them the hell out of there.’”

According to sources close to the situation, the Yahoo directors are in a quandary, even as they are on the receiving end of a flood of suggestions and demands from big investors, ranging from merging with AOL (AOL) to aligning with News Corp. (NWS) to selling off the company’s lucrative Asian assets to replacing CEO Carol Bartz.

You get the idea.

But that might not happen as quickly as some want. Sources said that while the eight-person board has some strong personalities on it, there is no one who has emerged as a powerful leader, aside from Bartz.

Yahoo has recently tried to attract two execs who might be able to go toe-to-toe with her–OpenTable (OPEN) CEO Jeff Jordan and Akamai (AKAM) President David Kenny–but was turned down by both.

Neither apparently wanted the headache of dealing with Yahoo’s struggles.

The same goes for some on Yahoo’s board.

Said one person who had spoken to a few board members recently: “Each of them tells me, ‘I’m only one person and I can’t act alone.’”

Indeed not, which is why you have a board. Stone soup, people!

In any case, it is high time to put the spotlight on the Yahoo directors, which I have done in the past in other crisis moments.

Here’s a rundown, with their photos from Yahoo’s shareholder Web site, along with some BoomTown analysis:

Carol Bartz, CEO:

We all know her, the tough-talking longtime Silicon Valley software exec who was brought in to clean up Dodge in the wake of the rocky tenure of former CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang. She is under pressure here for not doing that well enough, of course, despite a very, very big compensation package.

Still, with an aggressive personality and a wimpish board, she might be able to stave off any challenges to her power.

Roy Bostock, Chairman:

The longtime airline board member and advertising exec has been at the top of the Yahoo board since 2008 and on it since 2003.

Which is why I called for his resignation after Yang and former Yahoo President Sue Decker gracefully stepped down, after their management was called into question.

Bostock was right there with them, making all those decisions, which turned out to be disastrous in hindsight. Still, he does not seem to be much for the honorably-falling-on-your-sword thing.

In fact, sources said he has been making the rounds of investors recently trying to gauge the mood. Memo to Roy: It’s bad.

Eric Hippeau

Now the CEO of the Huffington Post, the longtime Web investor and publisher has a lot of online experience and should be one of the leaders on the Yahoo board. Hippeau has certainly been a director long enough to be one–since 1996, as an early investor in the company.

He’s also known as a super-nice guy in Internet circles, which means he is no head-smacker. Too bad.

One idea floated to me by an investor: Yahoo could buy the upstart online media darling and install him as CEO. Pretty please, because the entrance of the fab stylings of Arianna Huffington into this mess would send me into the stratosphere of reporting nirvana.

Vyomesh Joshi

Also a very endearing dude, the top HP exec was one of those on the short list for CEO of the tech giant recently. He runs its gigantically profitable printing and imaging business.

He’s been a Yahoo director since 2005 and should be a key decision maker, since he is an experienced operator. He’s not been, unfortunately.

Arthur Kern

Also a lifer, also having been on the Yahoo board since 1996, the investor and radio exec has also worked in marketing at Digitas.

Among the board members, he seems to be the quietest of the bunch, so I am not sure what to say about him except that he has very white teeth.

Gary Wilson

Another investor–in private equity, he has been on the board of airline companies (what is with this plane stuff on the Yahoo board?), as well as a top financial exec at Disney (DIS) and Marriott (MAR).

Again, a nice résumé, and he should be a leader. He was definitely more involved in the Microsoft situation than others.

Since then? Meh.

Sue James

The accountant. Retired from Ernst & Young. Used to work for Bartz, as lead partner for audit work for Autodesk (ADSK). Joined the Yahoo board early this year.

Probably just figuring out that this whole thing might not be adding up.

Patti Hart

Also new, since June. Worked in the digital video business, and is now the CEO of a “global provider of electronic game equipment and systems products.”

Say what?

Okay, I will go with it, as I am liking that Bartz has brought on two women to the board, which has mostly been stacked full with men.

Brad Smith

The president and CEO of Intuit (INTU), the financial management software powerhouse, also joined in June. This guy should be able to shake the trees, right?

But he is probably still trying to learn everyone’s name. Brad, not to put too much pressure, but everyone is counting on you.

Jerry Yang

Last, but certainly not least, the man who is ultimately the power player here.

The Internet pioneer and industry legend checked out of Yahoo for a bit after he stepped down in early 2009–time to tee off!

But many sources said he has been back at Yahoo for a while–glad-handing advertisers, meeting with entrepreneurs, sussing out trends, piping up in strategy meetings and doing the behind-the-scenes thing that he does so well.

Reports vary on how much he likes Bartz–he expresses support for her to some, but seems to have soured on her to others.

Who knows with the endearingly prickly Yang, whom I have been covering for a dog’s age and who should return my emails once in a while, like in old times when I stalked him.

Dinner is optional, but I will pay this time (see video below of our last semi-enjoyable meal).

Still, here is what I know for sure: Yahoo is Yang’s creation and legacy, and he’s the one who has to make sure that it survives and thrives.

For all the uncertainty surrounding Yahoo once again, that much is true.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101014/meet-the-yahoo-board-something-old-something-new-but-will-they-do-something/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20101008/in-defense-of-standards-ethic-and-honest-financial-reporting-at-hewlett-packard/ http://allthingsd.com/20101008/in-defense-of-standards-ethic-and-honest-financial-reporting-at-hewlett-packard/#comments Fri, 08 Oct 2010 23:22:29 +0000 Ben Horowitz http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=30872

“I’m not afraid
To take a stand”
—Eminem

Disclaimer: my business partner, Marc Andreessen, is on the board of directors of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ). I note that I have no inside information, and this blog post is based purely on published material. In 2007, I sold Opsware, the company that I founded and ran to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6B. I worked at Hewlett-Packard from 2007 to 2008 as an executive in the software business.

Recently, my old company Hewlett-Packard has been in the news–and not in a good way. I’ve been watching the coverage from the sidelines up to this point, but felt increasingly compelled to join the conversation and share my point of view. So here goes.

After firing their CEO, Mark Hurd, the HP board has been accused of everything from incompetence to being prudes. The criticism comes from credible, important journalists and bloggers such as Joe Nocera from the New York Times (NYT), prominent economics blogger Felix Salmon, and former GE (GE) CEO Jack Welch. In addition, HP competitor Larry Ellison lambasted the board and even went so far as to hire Mark Hurd to be President of Oracle (ORCL).

So why in the world did the HP board fire such a high performing CEO? Don’t they care about profits and shareholder value? Aren’t those the most important things? Who cares about his personal shenanigans? Did Mark and his marketing contractor even have sex?

While I am pretty sure that there is much more going on behind the scenes than has been broadly reported, as there often is, let’s look at what has been reported:

* Mark Hurd falsified expense reports.

* The false expense reports are related to a contractor named Jodie Fisher, a former softcore porn movie actress and Playboy model with no relevant marketing experience, who HP was paying up to $5,000 per marketing event.

* At the time of his departure from HP, Hurd issued a public statement saying that he’d violated HP’s Standards of Business Conduct:

“As the investigation progressed, I realized there were instances in which I did not live up to the standards and principles of trust, respect and integrity that I have espoused at HP and which have guided me throughout my career. After a number of discussions with members of the board, I will move aside and the board will search for new leadership. This is a painful decision for me to make after five years at HP, but I believe it would be difficult for me to continue as an effective leader at HP and I believe this is the only decision the board and I could make at this time. I want to stress that this in no way reflects on the operating performance or financial integrity of HP.”

Let’s start with the issue of falsifying expense reports. This factor has been largely dismissed in the press with characterizations like this from Joe Nocera of the New York Times:

“When pressed, H.P. said that Mr. Hurd had fudged some expense reports.”

Nocera goes on to argue that there must have been an alternate motivation to dismiss Hurd, because clearly no CEO would be fired simply for “fudging” an expense report.

When I first read of the expense report issue, my reaction was the opposite of Nocera’s. If the Chief Executive Officer of a public company falsifies any official financial statement, he must be fired. In my mind, this is non-negotiable. We are not talking about a low-level employee tossing an extra receipt into his expense report. We are talking about a public company CEO who is paid tens of millions of dollars a year and is responsible for the integrity of the company’s financial statements fraudulently reporting his own expenses. Why is this a problem?

Every person who invests in Hewlett-Packard does so on the basis of HP’s financial statements. Every pension fund, every retiree, every charitable organization, every employee who joins and is compensated via stock options. When they do so, they trust that the statements are true and that the numbers are accurate. The person they trust to ensure accuracy is the CEO.

If the Chief Executive is willing to compromise the integrity of the company’s financials for any reason, then it is impossible to trust any statement. Every day, there are many potential reasons to falsify financial statements. Here are four examples:

* If you miss the quarter, shareholders will lose money.

* If revenues aren’t high enough, you’ll be forced to lay-off hard working, valued employees.

* If you grow slower than a competitor, you may jeopardize your job.

* A shareholder that you’ve been having an illicit affair with doesn’t want the stock price to go down and threatens to tell your wife.

If a CEO is prone to compromise for any reason, he will have every reason. This time it was his expense report. Next time will it be a marginal accrued liability? A deal that came in at 12:01 am on the last day of the quarter? This is a slippery slope that a public board simply cannot tolerate.

What reason was so powerful that it caused Mark Hurd to break his ethical standard, falsify an official financial statement, mislead the board, and ultimately be fired? It seems that this was done to cover up a “close personal relationship” with a woman named Jodie Fisher, who later accused him of sexual harassment, then subsequently withdrew her claim after Hurd personally paid Fisher a large sum of money.

Who is Jodie Fisher? According to press reports, Fisher is a former Playboy model, reality show contestant, and softcore porn movie actress with no work history relevant to her job with HP. She was hired by Hewlett-Packard and paid up to $5,000 per meeting to meet with Fortune 50 CEOs.

The mainstream press has reported these facts as mundane, ordinary, and hardly worth concern. I disagree. HP employs over 300,000 people. Every single one of HP’s employees is keenly interested in the qualities, skill sets, and behaviors that HP values most. Financial compensation and access to the CEO are the most important ways that HP communicates what it values to its employees. Jodie Fisher had more access to the CEO and was paid more than 99.9% of HP’s workforce, despite having no traditional qualifications.

It’s important to note that this was not Hurd paying for his personal extracurricular activity out of his own pocket. This was the Hewlett-Packard Corporation paying a softcore porn movie star with no relevant work experience more than it pays Harvard graduates with 20 years of industry experience. This was the company spitting in the face of the people who worked hard and sacrificed every day to help the company win in the market. It was completely and categorically unacceptable.

Finally, Hurd admitted in a press release to violating the company’s standards of ethics and integrity. So what? Why do companies have standards and ethics anyway? Shouldn’t they just be concerned with profits? Do we want choir boys or shareholder value?

There are many who take the view that business is singular in purpose–to increase shareholder value. They further take the position that constraining that purpose in any way is inefficient and counterproductive. The mainstream press seems to have broadly adopted this position in its attacks on HP. The Wall Street Journal Op Ed page even complained that businesses were being held to an unfair standard when compared to politicians.

I do not subscribe to this view. Running our companies with no moral or ethical standards is bad for society, bad for the country, and ultimately leads to criminal behavior.

Companies should not merely be thought of as money generating machines. Business can represent human society at its best. A business is a group of people working together to deliver value to the world and improve people’s lives. When done ethically, business quite literally changes the world for the better. However, if the dark side of human motivation is not mitigated with standards and ethics, business can destroy.

We saw this unfold at Enron, a company that was, in its time, celebrated for its impressive profits. Underneath the profits was a culture designed from the ground up to completely ignore any ethical standard including a dazzling display of ethically questionable sexual activity among its executives. These activities, such as promoting secretaries to executive positions in exchange for sexual favors, parallel Hurd’s behavior with Jodie Fisher. In Enron’s case, the bad behavior bled over into first line employees who conspired to create blackouts in California in the name of profits and in the absence of ethics. Ultimately, Enron imploded in a swirl of criminal behavior that bankrupted the company, but not before destroying tens of thousands of peoples’ life savings and damaging millions of innocent victims. After the fact, the press bemoaned the culture that lead to the destruction. However, the same reporters instantly forgot the cause as they cavalierly dismissed Hurd’s ethical breach.

In closing, I point out the impressive courage of the HP board of directors to ignore popular opinion and do the right thing. It is not an easy thing to fire a popular, highly successful CEO. It’s even more difficult when you know that you will be roundly criticized for tolerating that same CEO’s failure to develop internal successors. Despite those factors, Hewlett-Packard’s board of directors stood tall and protected the company, its shareholders and all of us from a dark and destructive journey. As a member of the business community and as a citizen, I am extremely proud of and grateful for their actions.

Ben Horowitz is co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz. He co-founded Loudcloud, later renamed Opsware Inc., in 1999 and served as CEO of the company before it was acquired in 2007 by Hewlett-Packard. He was most recently vice president and general manager of Hewlett-Packard’s Business Technology Organization Unit.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101008/in-defense-of-standards-ethic-and-honest-financial-reporting-at-hewlett-packard/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100604/d8-video-does-serious-journalism-have-to-be-a-charity-case/ http://allthingsd.com/20100604/d8-video-does-serious-journalism-have-to-be-a-charity-case/#comments Fri, 04 Jun 2010 13:46:13 +0000 Peter Kafka http://d8.allthingsd.com/?p=1996 Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt runs away from the concept of journalism. ProPublica’s Paul Steiger embraces it. But he says says he can’t figure out how to provide serious, in-depth reporting without help from foundations and wealthy donors–just like clinics, and orchestras and art museums.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100604/d8-video-does-serious-journalism-have-to-be-a-charity-case/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20100318/president-clinton-talks-about-his-internet-legacy-btw-hes-an-iphone-dude-while-the-gops-41-is-a-blackberry-teen/ http://allthingsd.com/20100318/president-clinton-talks-about-his-internet-legacy-btw-hes-an-iphone-dude-while-the-gops-41-is-a-blackberry-teen/#comments Thu, 18 Mar 2010 07:38:51 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=25716

Here is a video I did of former President Bill Clinton talking at an event related to the 25th anniversary of the first .com domain registration.

Clinton gave a keynote speech first–which was, inexplicably, about health-care legislation and global warming.

But after Clinton was done, he sat down with VeriSign (VRSN) CEO Mark McLaughlin to talk about a range of Web-related topics, in a very amusing interview exchange.

They included what devices he uses, broadband access and the dire state of traditional media.

Clinton talked about what sites–largely political–he likes. He mentioned Politico, Daily Beast and the Huffington Post for their analysis and outlook, as well as far-right ones, to keep track of his opposition.

Interestingly, he did not mention the Washington Post (WPO) or the New York Times (NYT) online, although he said their deep reporting was valuable.

Still, Clinton noted, “It’s almost impossible, given the economics of the modern world for newspapers to continue.”

And the 42nd President of the United States is an Apple (AAPL) fanboy, naming his iPhone as his fave gadget (although he said he also has a BlackBerry).

Clinton joked that his predecessor, No. 41, former President George H.W. Bush, is a maniac user of the Research in Motion (RIMM) BlackBerry, likening him to a teenager.

Also, no Kindle from Amazon (AMZN), since Clinton said he still likes books.

Here’s the video (sorry about his shiny watch, but you can hear him!):

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100318/president-clinton-talks-about-his-internet-legacy-btw-hes-an-iphone-dude-while-the-gops-41-is-a-blackberry-teen/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20100218/yahoo-ceo-carol-bartz-interviews-boomtown-about-all-things-digital-plus-lady-gaga-the-entire-honking-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20100218/yahoo-ceo-carol-bartz-interviews-boomtown-about-all-things-digital-plus-lady-gaga-the-entire-honking-video/#comments Thu, 18 Feb 2010 09:46:50 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=24550

Last week, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz interviewed me in front of more than 600 Yahoos gathered at the company’s Silicon Valley HQ.

I was appearing as the first in a new speaker series, “Yahoo From the ‘Outside In,’” for employees at the Internet giant, due to my intense reporting about the company.

Bartz, as you will see in the entire video below, proved to be a decent interviewer and got me chatting away like some crazy digital mynah bird. Topics ran the gamut from who my sources are to what I would do if I ran Yahoo (YHOO) to whether this Facebook thing has legs.

Also, we covered Google (GOOG), Apple (AAPL), AOL (AOL), Twitter, Microsoft (MSFT) and–my favorite!–the most innovative of all, Lady Gaga.

Here’s the whole interview of nearly 35 minutes, courtesy of Yahoo, excluding questions from employees, who queried me about the sometimes snarky tone in my posts and the impact of my personal relationship with a Google exec (see my copious disclosure here):

And here’s Gaga’s amazingly bizarre–but terrific–“Bad Romance” music video, which is how I sometimes think of my relationship with Yahoo:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100218/yahoo-ceo-carol-bartz-interviews-boomtown-about-all-things-digital-plus-lady-gaga-the-entire-honking-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091030/businessweeks-future-is-cloudy-but-better-than-it-could-have-been-the-grim-non-bloomberg-scenario/ http://allthingsd.com/20091030/businessweeks-future-is-cloudy-but-better-than-it-could-have-been-the-grim-non-bloomberg-scenario/#comments Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:12:05 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=12603 BusinessWeek employees are waiting to hear if they’ll have jobs once Bloomberg takes over the publication, and I’m told that staffers expect to hear their fate shortly after Thanksgiving. “Either you’ll get an offer or you won’t,” is the conventional wisdom among the 400 staffers, an employee tells me.

That has to be unnerving, but I can at least offer a little bit of comfort: The worst-case scenario the employees would be facing had they been purchased by private equity firm ZelnickMedia, which was also bidding for the publication.

The short version: Almost everybody gets fired.

Here’s the longer version of the plan, provided to me by a person familiar with ZelnickMedia’s bid. It sounds like a plausible idea for a PE group that specializes in turning around distressed assets–and a chilling one for anybody who draws a paycheck at BusinessWeek:

• Wind down BusinessWeek’s print business “as profitably as possible”–the company would have to honor existing subscriptions and could still sell ads in the magazine. But the focus would be on building up BusinessWeek’s Web site, which has a decent-sized footprint, though not a huge one.
• Dump almost all of the company’s newsgathering staff and outsource most of that work to Thomson Reuters (TRI).
• Employ a small handful of editorial employees–perhaps 20, down from the 200-plus who are there now. Some of them would run a Huffington Post-style aggregation site that produces no original content, and some more expensive hires would produce a smattering of high-quality reporting and writing designed to burnish/sustain the BusinessWeek brand. “Just to give it uniqueness and sizzle,” my source tells me.
• Dump most of the existing business side, as well, but overhaul and bulk up the sales force.

The insult-to-injury kicker: Under ZelnickMedia’s proposal, the buyer wouldn’t pay a dime for the publication it intended to rebuild. Instead, McGraw-Hill would pay the fund to take the publication off its hands. If that sounds implausible, consider that McGraw-Hill just announced that it will save up to $25 million next year by not owning the title.

Given the above terms, it’s easy enough to see why McGraw-Hill ended up going with Bloomberg. For starters, the winning bidder actually paid cash for the magazine, and McGraw-Hill will end up netting a $5.9 million gain, after taxes, on the deal.

Also important: McGraw-Hill won’t have to anguish as it watches one of its flagship properties get dismantled.

So what will happen to BusinessWeek now that Bloomberg owns it? Nothing nearly so drastic, at least in the short term. For now, Bloomberg is talking about bulking up the title, not shredding it, so that’s a good sign for both employees and readers.

Alas, Bloomberg can’t take on all of the magazine employees looking for jobs, and that pool is only going to get bigger.

Forbes slashed deep into its staff this week, and next week Time Warner’s (TWX) Time Inc. will lay out some of its layoff goals. I’ve heard Time Inc. employees refer to layoff plans as “tree-trimming” or “surgical,” but I think the trimming will feel much blunter to the folks who lose their jobs. The publisher’s cost-cutting plans include hundreds of layoffs–something likely similar to the cuts the publisher went through last year, I’m told.

The New York Post’s Keith Kelly reports today that Time’s News and Finance unit, which includes Time, Fortune and Sports Illustrated, will be particularly hard hit, and I’ve confirmed that myself.

UPDATE: No surprise here: BusinessWeek President Keith Fox is stepping down. Mild surprise: He’s staying on at McGraw-Hill. Here’s his memo:

When we announced that McGraw-Hill was exploring strategic options for BusinessWeek, I promised to communicate with you as openly and often as I could. In this spirit, I wanted each of you to know that I will be remaining with McGraw-Hill after the deal with Bloomberg is closed. I will continue to play a role in the integration post-close and plan to take on a new role at McGraw-Hill in 2010.

During this process, our collective goal was to find the best buyer for BusinessWeek. I am proud that I played a role in ensuring that BusinessWeek has a new home at Bloomberg, where it will thrive under the leadership of Norman Pearlstine. I am committed to the transition and helping in any way that I can.

It’s been a privilege to be the President of BusinessWeek. I thank Terry McGraw for his confidence and trust in me and Glenn Goldberg for his support, direction, clarity, and sense of humor. I’ve also been a member of an amazing team which has navigated the transformation of the media environment with agility, focus, passion, and integrity.

The team–Steve Adler, Jessica Sibley, Tania Secor, Linda Brennan, Roger Neal, and Carl Fischer–is the best in the industry. Like BusinessWeek, they have bright futures ahead of them. I will miss the daily interaction, but I am wiser (and a little grayer) because of their collaborative spirit and desire to make BusinessWeek the global leader in business that it is today.

I also have a special thanks to Patricia Hipplewith, my assistant, who juggled my calendar, protected me from solicitors, and kept me on schedule and well fed! She is the personification of commitment and integrity.

I am humbled by BusinessWeek’s 80-year history. Thank you for allowing me to play a small part in it.

Keith

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091030/businessweeks-future-is-cloudy-but-better-than-it-could-have-been-the-grim-non-bloomberg-scenario/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091004/the-new-yorker-takes-on-hollywood-power-blogger-nikki-finke/ http://allthingsd.com/20091004/the-new-yorker-takes-on-hollywood-power-blogger-nikki-finke/#comments Sun, 04 Oct 2009 20:39:45 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=11700

A treat for those of you who love reading about Hollywood’s inner workings: About 7,800 words in this week’s New Yorker dedicated to power blogger Nikki Finke and those who fear her and/or read her. Which pretty much includes everyone in Hollywood.

It’s a classic New Yorker profile, which means it’s thorough and a great read, though there’s not much in the way of news there. Writer Tad Friend mentions Jay Penske’s purchase of Finke’s services in passing, and there’s no update of Penske’s and Finke’s plans to expand the site.

For the record, in late June, Finke said she’d have a New York correspondent hired within three months; four weeks ago, Penske told me said correspondent was going to be signed within two weeks.

What’s the status now? “Not ready to comment right now,” Finke says via email. I’ve also asked Penske for an update.

Back to the story. There’s a lot of inside baseball about the symbiosis between the studios and the people who write about them, and some smart reporting about the tradecraft of reporting and how it has been altered by the rise of blogging.

I also detected at least a whiff of allusion to Janet Malcolm’s famous description of journalism, published in the New Yorker two decades ago:

Finke’s code is the Hollywood code. She is for hard work, big box-office, stars who remain loyal to their agents and publicists, and the little guy–until, that is, the big guy chats her up. Then she’s for that big guy until some other big guy calls to stick it to the first big guy. And this, too, is the Hollywood code: relationships are paramount but provisional. One executive observes that people who heed Finke’s call to snark about their competitors shouldn’t get too comfortable: “The idea is, The lion won’t eat me if I throw it another Christian. It works for a day, but you’re going back to the Colosseum soon.”

The bond between journalists and their sources is always complex–you’re friends with benefits, without being friends–but its contingent nature is particularly apparent in Hollywood. Finke’s sources can hear in her voice when she sounds low or unwell, and will ask if she needs anything. She’s grateful for the solicitude, but determined to maintain the barrier between her and those she calls “these people.” “A veterinarian treats animals–he’s not an animal,” she says.

What does Finke think? Glad you asked. She has an entire post dedicated to it, of course.

The gist:

As I expected, it’s an amusing caricature, only occasionally true but hardly insightful. Still, I’m relieved that The New Yorker didn’t lay a glove on me. I found Tad Friend, who covers Hollywood from Brooklyn, easy to manipulate, as was David Remnick [the magazine's Pulitzer Prize-winning editor in chief] , whom I enjoyed bitchslapping throughout but especially during the very slipshod factchecking process.

No comment from Friend or the New Yorker’s PR staff, which sent me a copy of the article this afternoon.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091004/the-new-yorker-takes-on-hollywood-power-blogger-nikki-finke/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090518/meet-maureen-dowds-favorite-writer-talking-points-memos-josh-marshall/ http://allthingsd.com/20090518/meet-maureen-dowds-favorite-writer-talking-points-memos-josh-marshall/#comments Mon, 18 May 2009 14:05:56 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=7461 Today’s life lesson: Procrastination does pay off!

A few weeks ago I sat down with Josh Marshall, the journalist/entrepreneur behind Talking Points Memo, and had a great chat about news, new media and the business of running a self-funded Web site. But my notes and video have sat on my hard drive since then, for no other reason than I never got around to publishing them.

Thank you, Maureen Dowd, for the kick in the pants I needed: Over the weekend, the New York Times (NYT) columnist has given Marshall a huge, if unintended, endorsement by borrowing his work and then getting caught.

After an initial attempt by Dowd to explain away the similarity between her work and his, the Times is now running a correction on Dowd’s Sunday column, noting that she “failed to attribute a paragraph” to Marshall.

You’ll read plenty more about this on the Web over the next few days, if you’re inclined. But it would be a shame if that’s the only thing you know about Marshall’s site, which is an interesting hybrid of politically focused reporting, commentary, and aggregation/blogging.

And I do mean a mix: If you just glimpse quickly at his site, you might think it’s the same grouping of links and headlines that you can find anywhere else on the Web. But Marshall was a real reporter prior to starting the site and his 12-person staff does real reporting. Its best work, to date, was uncovering the Bush administration’s U.S. Attorneys scandal in 2007, which led to prestigious Polk Award in 2008.

Just as interesting: It’s a profitable business that has never taken outside investment and until recently, has made almost all of its money by relying on ad networks. The most effective ad network, says Marshall: Google’s AdSense. See! Google (GOOG) really does support content!

More recently, Marshall has hired Yahoo (YHOO) vet Diane Rinaldo to serve as the company’s first real ad rep, trying to translate the site’s one million (give or take) monthly unique readers into more significant revenue. That’s alleged to be a real challenge since advertisers are supposedly loath to touch political content. But then again, start-up blogs aren’t supposed to do real journalism–or act as unattributed contributors to the country’s most prestigious newspaper.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090518/meet-maureen-dowds-favorite-writer-talking-points-memos-josh-marshall/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090408/trueslant-tests-another-model-of-web-journalism/ http://allthingsd.com/20090408/trueslant-tests-another-model-of-web-journalism/#comments Thu, 09 Apr 2009 01:08:03 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090408/trueslant-tests-another-model-of-web-journalism/ As newspapers, magazines and TV stations face dire economic challenges, and journalism moves increasingly online, debates are raging about how best to preserve quality news and commentary while still making money.

There’s lots of experimentation with different approaches. Many journalists, old and new, are operating as stand-alone bloggers, but finding it hard to make a living. Web advertising has weakened with the economy, and often can’t cover the costs of expensive reporting. A couple of respected traditional publications have successfully attracted large numbers of paid subscribers online, but many others who have tried have failed.

Meanwhile, advertisers also are scrambling to figure out the best way to sell their products online, in a manner that both attracts potential customers and blends in well with the content and style of news sites. And publishers are trying to capture the conversation and sense of community that permeate services like Facebook and Twitter.

This week, a new Web news site is entering the fray, with a novel approach to journalistic entrepreneurship, new forms of advertising, and an effort to blend journalism and social networking.

The site, called True/Slant, at trueslant.com, is opening its doors via an odd preliminary status it calls an “open alpha.” This means it’s rough around the edges, and not yet taking in revenue, but hopes to attract enough participation to hone its design and operation.

True/Slant is run by a former news executive at America Online who worked at a variety of publications, including The Wall Street Journal. It covers a wide range of topics, such as politics, culture, sports, business, health, science and food.

It is launching with 65 journalists, or “knowledge experts,” assigned to specific topics. Each of these contributors gets a page to house their journalism and, it is hoped, an active social network of followers who will regularly discuss the articles they read there. Each page also will feature headlines of stories elsewhere on the Web selected by the contributors. These “headline grabs” link back to the originating outside site.

The initial group of contributors includes current or former writers for publications such as the Financial Times, Rolling Stone, the New York Times, Time magazine and the Boston Globe.

Readers can go directly to the page of their favorite contributor, but the site’s home page will knit together popular content and contributors, and each reader will be able to track multiple topics and contributors through a streaming feed called “I’m following.”

True/Slant will run regular Web ads throughout. But, in a highly unusual move, the site plans to offer advertisers their own entire pages where they can run blogs and try to attract a network of followers. These will have the same design and features of the journalists’ pages, but will be labeled as ad content.

The journalists are paid a small amount, but the plan is to turn them into minipublishers under the True/Slant umbrella. They will be offered a share of the advertising and sponsorship revenues their individual pages generate and, in some cases, equity in True/Slant, which is backed by venture capital.

These contributors are allowed to keep writing elsewhere, either online or in traditional media, and even to promote these outside efforts on True/Slant. But they are expected to post original commentary and analysis to True/Slant. They also are allowed to arrange for their own advertising or sponsorships, in addition to what True/Slant can sell, and even, in some cases, to add other authors to their pages.

In another unusual move, the contributors also are required to actively engage with readers on the site. They must post a minimum number of comments in reader discussions about their articles and curate the comments, giving prominence to the most interesting. They are even expected to comment on each other’s posts.

This required engagement is an attempt to capture some of the excitement of a social network, and it ties in directly with a contributor’s success. On the home page, and elsewhere throughout the site, True/Slant promotes not only the most popular contributors, but also the most active ones. High rankings in these categories can lead to higher traffic on each contributor’s page, and, indirectly, to higher income.

Readers who are active commenters can also gain prominence on the site, especially if those comments are popular or called out for special attention. A front-page panel will highlight the most active commenters, and the most called-out comments.

The layout of the site is clean and handsome, a decent effort to meld a news site and a social network. One layout flaw the company hopes to fix: There’s no easy way to find a list of all topics, only those it considers hot at any moment.

It’s way too early to know if True/Slant will succeed. For one thing, it is still dependent on advertising, not subscriptions. And ethical questions could arise, because the site’s operators don’t edit or preapprove the content, and the model of blended journalism and advertising could prove problematic.

But it’s another example of how the Web is changing traditional media, and might be worth a look.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090408/trueslant-tests-another-model-of-web-journalism/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090106/macworld-iwork-09/ http://allthingsd.com/20090106/macworld-iwork-09/#comments Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:54:11 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=10690 Number two on Phil Schiller’s list of three announcements: iWork ’09. The next iteration of Keynote, Apple’s presentation application, offers some new object transition features: object zoom, a swing transition (Schiller demos it with a Bush-to-Obama slide that gets a laugh from the audience). There are also some new text transitions and chart animations. Finally, Apple’s offering a Keynote Remote application. It’s an iPhone app, of course. Cost: 99 cents.

Pages, Apple’s word processing application, is also getting a bit of an update. Pages ’09 offers a full-screen view for the easily distracted writer, dynamic outlining, mail merge with Numbers–Apple’s spreadsheet program–and 40 new templates. Not the most exciting stuff, here, but decent additions nonetheless.

In Numbers, Apple (AAPL) has added some new categorization features–Table Categories, and, answering user requests, some 250 new formulas and functions. New charts, trend lines and other advance reporting options as well.

iWork is also migrating from the desktop to the cloud–in a sense. Via iWork.com, users can easily upload documents and share them with collaborators. Docs are viewable online. They can be downloaded. And collaborators can comment on them online. iWork.com is cross-platform (Mac and PC) and cross-browser. The online suite looks very much like the Mac-based suite.

iWork will run you $79, $49 if you purchase a new Mac. “This is the beginning of a new service,” Schiller noted, adding that it’s a beta and launches today, solo and as part of a $169 box set that includes iLife and Leopard.

MacWorld 2009 Keynote Photos

• A list of the key features in the new 17" MacBook Pro.
• Phil in front of the MacBook and the 15" MacBook Pro
• Phil lists a series of quotes from journalists, including AllThingsD.com’s very own Walt Mossberg.
• Walt Mossberg’s quote about the new MacBook.
• 17" MacBook Pro
• Phil Schiller announcing the new 17" MacBook Pro.
• For design professionals, there’s a new Anti-Glare Option for the new 17" MacBook Pro.
• Inviting others to work on an iWork document.
• The iWork.com documents look just like iWork, but in a web browser.
• 2009-01-06_1008-55_6351.jpg
• 2009-01-06_1009-13_6352.jpg
• Pricing plans for iLife, iWork, and Mac OS X Leopard.

View photos at SmugMug

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090106/macworld-iwork-09/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080918/atd-hires-peter-kafka-to-pen-a-new-media-and-advertising-blog-from-new-york/ http://allthingsd.com/20080918/atd-hires-peter-kafka-to-pen-a-new-media-and-advertising-blog-from-new-york/#comments Thu, 18 Sep 2008 07:11:58 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=3966

Although we did not raid the offices of Silicon Alley Insider and “steal” Peter Kafka, as the fanciful SAI kingpin Henry Blodget alleges–had it been a raid, BoomTown would have properly hog-tied Blodget so he could not make such spurious allegations!–it is true that SAI’s current managing editor (pictured here) will be coming to work for us at AllThingD.com soon.

Indeed, Walt Mossberg and I, as well as the rest of the ATD team, are thrilled that Peter is coming onboard at the end of October. He will write a daily still-unnamed new media blog from New York City.

Walt and I have long wanted to bring in someone located on the East Coast and away from the echo chamber that Silicon Valley can be, because we both feel the ongoing digital revolution is taking place over a number of key industries all over this country and the world.

Peter was our first choice and has been on my must-read list since I began this blog. He is sharp, witty, confident and has the kind of reporting and writing chops that we think are key to giving readers high-quality, standards-based content they can trust.

With extensive connections across the media, advertising, entertainment and tech sectors, Peter will be doing original reporting, getting scoops, doing interviews, making videos and providing much needed and clear-headed analysis that he is so well known for.

Peter has worked at SAI since mid-2007. The first hire at the start-up tech business analysis site, he has focused on enterprise and beat reporting, as well as breaking news.

Previously, he spent 10 years as a reporter and editor at Forbes and Forbes.com covering media and technology. There he launched two tech columns, coordinated the video staff and represented Forbes on industry panels and in TV appearances for CNN, BBC and CNBC.

Peter was also a staff reporter with City Business in Minneapolis and a staff writer for the Minnesota Real Estate Journal in Bloomington from 1993 to 1997. Earlier, he was a stringer with the Milwaukee Journal and the Milwaukee Sentinel in Madison, Wis.

He holds a bachelor of arts from the University of Wisconsin and resides in Brooklyn, NY.

More importantly, Peter is a newly-minted father, which should give him more practice in prolonged sleep deprivation needed for his blogging.

He will begin at ATD on Oct. 27.

Along with Walt and me, Peter joins senior news editor John Paczkowski, author of the rocking Digital Daily column, who formerly wrote the award-winning blog, “Good Morning Silicon Valley” at the San Jose Mercury News, and Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Boehret, who writes the most excellent weekly Mossberg Solution column.

We hope you are as thrilled as we are that Peter is coming soon to the ATD site.

(And if you want a little taste of Peter’s work, here’s a post he did yesterday on an appearance by Time Warner’s Jeff Bewkes at the Goldman Sachs media conference and another on Rupert Murdoch of News Corp. [News Corp. is the owner of Dow Jones and of this Web site].)

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