Steak-umm is frying minds and taking names on Twitter. Not everyone is impressed, but I am. media literacy in the internet age is incredibly difficult to develop. you have to navigate special interest groups, trolls, ads, conspiracies, fake accounts, satire, sensationalism, and beyond, in order to find credible source material and relevant experts buried under the mess — Steak-umm (@steak_umm) April 20, …
When Readers Provide Direct Financial Support, Writers Rejoice
"The function of the press in society is to inform, but its role in society is to make money." - A. J. Liebling Howard Saltz is Knight Innovator-in-Residence in the journalism faculty at Florida International University in Miami. The professor and journalism practitioner thinks it is a serious mistake for newspapers to drop their paywalls in response to COVID-19, or for any other reason. Here's a section of …
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Newsflash: Print Ads Now Guaranteed to Work (Not An April Fool’s Joke)
If you work in media, marketing, or advertising, it's time to innovate and there is no time to waste. That's the message from several directions today, and now we are beginning to see real-world results, as companies adapt to the new constrictions. Sarah Jerde at Adweek reports that The Wall Street Journal and Barron’s Group are now offering clients an additional incentive to advertise in their print pages. …
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Many Media Companies Now Reeling from Sudden Loss of Advertising Revenue
Earlier this year, when the Oracle of Omaha said that newspapers are toast, he wasn't kidding. “They’re going to disappear,” the Oracle said. He didn't know that COVID-9 was about to make a bad situation much worse, but he did know that the industry was hanging by the thinnest of threads. In the United States, we have lost almost 1,800 papers since 2004, including more than 60 dailies and 1,700 weeklies. Today, …
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Alt-Weeklies Are Sinking Quickly to the Bottom of the Dead Newspapers Pile
Alternative weeklies--our city's free arts and entertainment newspapers--are facing untenable marketplace conditions today. The papers rely on advertising revenue from bars, restaurants, movie theaters, and retail stores. Given that all of the above are temporarily closed for business, there is next to no ad revenue coming in the door today. Joshua Benton at NeimanLab paints the situation like …
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Mid-Day Danger: The Worst Commercials on TV
I want to explore one of the secret dangers of working from home, a real and present danger that no one talks about. The danger is exposure to bad TV, bad commercials, in particular. If you watch cable news in the middle of the workday, even for a short time during lunch, you're screwed. Apparently, the viewers are older than the hills and/or out of work. What we know for sure is the commercials that are meant to …
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No Newspapers Means Diminished “Real Estate” for Brand Advertising
Question for you..how many print ads did you make this year? Holy crap, that many! To make and run print ads that help build brands, we need healthy newspapers and magazines. But newspapers are slip slidin' away at an alarming rate. Over the last 15 years, newspapers have lost $35 billion in ad revenue and nearly half of their staff. Over 2,000 newspapers have shut down across the country, local newspapers and …
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The Official Newspaper of The State of What’s Next
"The world looks to California to answer the hard questions, for redemption, to introduce the unfamiliar, to be resilient, because California bounces back, holds us accountable, values who we are, remains vigilant, defies those in our way, and stands for community." No, it's not a travel and tourism ad, or a political ad. It's an ad to drive newspaper subscriptions. …
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When Your Truth Isn’t My Truth, Fact-Based Narratives To Support Brands Suffer
If you have high blood pressure or a propensity to weep for the nation, DO NOT turn on your TV today. If you do turn on the TV, the chance that you will be overwhelmed in an avalanche of state-sponsored lies is much too high. Instead, let's hear from a man who knows a lot about state-sponsored lies, former chess champion of the world, Garry Kasparov. Kasparov grew up in a totalitarian state, where the news was …
The Glorification of Personalization in Marcom Is Persistent But Misguided
Since 2014, the Association of National Advertisers has surveyed its mostly client-side members to identify the marketing word of the year. This year the winning nomenclature is “Personalization.” Other top choices in the ANA 2019 Marketing Word of the Year voting: “equality and inclusion,” “data,” and “in-house.” "Personalization is what customers expect," one participant in the survey said. "Every current and …
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