Must-View: Traditional vs Digital Journalism
A must-view from the Monaco Media Forum: Arianna Huffington from Huffington Post debating with Axel Spring AG CEO Mathias Dopfner, who runs one of the largest newspaper publishing companies in Europe. A very sophisticated debate on traditional publishing versus internet/aggregated or citizen journalism; plus, Arianna’s key quote on “traditional media versus digital media: ADD versus OCD.”
Future of Journalism, Huffington on Ads and Non-Profits
Via Gerd Leonard’s brilliant Media Futurist: Arianna Huffington talking to the House Committee about the Future of Journalism. Basic points: there’s no “way back” machine, tax subsidies and bailouts are like “putting [one's] finger in a dike to stop the flow of innovation.” I.e., not going to happen. Her two thoughts on saving journalistic media: online advertising and investigative journalism increasingly done (aka “rescued”) by non-profit foundations.
Arianna Huffington: New(s) Media Harbinger
As the ‘Rocky Mountain’ presses around the nation – i.e., every print newspaper and magazine – struggle to survive and fend off shutting down their presses, Arianna Huffington’s “HuffPo” bet looks more and more like the innovative news (and new) media play. With relatively resilient traffic – even after a political win in the last national elections (which could have been a political precipice in terms of traffic) – Huffington looks to be the news aggregation model to beat or partner with these days. While she is an elegant chief evangelist for HuffPo, her time as a “New Medici” to really crow is now. Read more >>
The Blogfire of the Vanities
If Sherman McCoy (think Tom Hanks in the disastrous feature) was a “Master of the Universe” – who would that “Master” be in the blog world? Would it be a Nick Denton, Arianna Huffington, Michael Arrington, Om Malik, Henry Blodget or another? While The Bonfire of the Vanities was a bestseller for its generation, a “Blogfire” could be interpreted as the next generation – or “New Medici” – of innovative publishers who challenge mainstream media newspapers, magazines, tabloids and even television market share. Read more >>
Reelist.com: Oscar Night
A swell of interest in this year’s Oscars with a lot of predictable winners. A spirited Independent Spirit Awards yesterday with a few surprise winners (Penelope Cruz, Tom McCarthy for The Visitor, and The Wrestler as best feature, among others). And to top it off, a river of new blogs with more penetration into Hollywood studio behavior.
Here’s a few we’ll be watching tonight via RSS and comparing to tomorrow’s trade coverage:
- The Wrap: Sharon Waxman’s new Hollywood, trade-scrimmager.
- The Daily Beast: Tina Brown’s tabloid-take on politics and media. Read more >>
What’s the “Thread Count” of Your Friend Count?
I had coffee with a longtime investor colleague who threw a nice metaphor in my direction: “thread count” as it related to the depth of your friendships. As we all initiate, accept or add new digital relationships into our lives (yes, I did get ‘social’ with LinkedIn back in its early years with 1,500 linkedins; more recently with ~650 Facebook friends), how do we measure the relative quality of the quantity of friends we connect to? Do we connect to add relative quality value to our own persona, or is it done merely to create a personal, i.e., quantitative, fan club of sorts? Read more >>