GAWKER: We Have Our Head Up Our Asses When It Comes To Superbowl Ads PROWL PUBLIC RELATIONS: We Just Have Our Head Up Our Asses
BUZZ KILL: Now Can We Have A Grown-Up Conversation About Marijuana? Of Course, NOT!
NEWS OF THE WORLD: This is the astonishing picture which could destroy the career of the greatest competitor in Olympic history. In our exclusive photo Michael Phelps, who won a record EIGHT gold medals for swimming at the Beijing games last summer, draws from a bong. The glass pipes are generally used to smoke cannabis. And after sporting chiefs announced laws which mean four-year bans for drug-taking, Phelps’ dreams of adding to his overall 14 gold medal tally at the 2012 games in London could already be OVER. Those dreams seemed the last thing on his mind when he puffed […]
THE REVOLUTION WILL BE COMMERCIALIZED: Q&A With NYT’s Consumed Columnist Rob Walker
BY ELIZABETH FLYNN Rob Walker wants you to think before you sink your money into another superficial purchase. Walker — who writes the Consumed column for the New York Times Sunday Magazine, and author of Buying In, a highly-readable dissection of the dark art of branding — began his career focusing on advertising and media campaigns in 2000, writing the Moneybox column and other contributions for the online magazine Slate. Through his research into corporate strategies to incite a buying frenzy in consumers, he started asking some questions: If consumers had become, as many studies proclaimed “hyperaware” and “immune” to […]
WEEKEND UPDATE: The Good News Flower Hour
The Good News Flower Hour #7 The latest edition of our five-minute week-in-review, wherein I’m a flower that reads the news. This is by far the best one yet. Hats off to our partners in crime at Collateral News and Woodshop Films.
Inky/DN Seeking $10 Million Bailout From State
NEWSBUSTERS: We all wondered if it would happen. NB readers said it would very soon. NB author Tom Blumer even predicted this would be the year for it. Now the largest newspaper in Philadelphia is requesting a bailout. In a perfectly ironic fashion it took a lawsuit for the public to learn that the Philadelphia Inquirer is seeking $10 million dollars from the state of Pennsylvania. The bailout request was revealed after the school filed suit against the paper for a series of articles questioning the school’s use of government funds.Now, according to an interview between the Philadelphia Bulletin and […]
PAPERBOY: ‘We’re All Polar Bears Now’ Edition
BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]
INJUSTICE DEPARTMENT: Was The Spitzer Probe The Ultimate Fed Take Down Of A Dem Whistleblower?
GLOBAL RESEARCH: Let us now consider the financial crisis and the panic bailout. No one should think that the crisis was unforeseen. Back in February Eliot Spitzer, in one of his last acts as governor of New York, warned about the impending crisis created by predatory lending, and reveled that the Bush Administration was blocking state efforts to deal with it. His extraordinary warning, in the Washington Post, is worth quoting at some length: Several years ago, state attorneys general and others involved in consumer protection began to notice a marked increase in a range of predatory lending practices […]
AMEN: Sunlight Is The Best Disinfectant
LOS ANGELES TIMES: In October 2001, the Bush administration took an administrative action that would prove sadly symptomatic of its rule. John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, issued a memorandum warning against casual release of information to the public under the Freedom of Information Act. Such releases, Ashcroft said, should be made “only after full and deliberate consideration of the institutional, commercial and personal privacy interests that could be implicated.” In case anyone missed the point, Ashcroft added that any bureaucrat who said no to such a request could “be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions […]
WEEKEND UPDATE: The Good News Flower Hour
The Good News Flower Hour #6 All the news that fits — in a five minute week-in-review read by a cartoon flower that sounds…wait for it…JUST LIKE ME. Enjoy.
Q&A: This American Life Host Ira Glass
BY JONATHAN VALANIA For nearly half a century television has had to bear the “barren wasteland” rap. But even a cursory, static-smeared twist of the radio dial reveals a largely fallow garden. Corporate consolidation and play-it-safe programmers have conspired to increase the emphasis on the obvious, the ordinary and the lowest common denominator. It doesn’t have to be like this. “When correctly harnessed, radio can be as emotional, as funny and as satisfying as the best motion pictures and television shows,” says Ira Glass, host of public radio’s This American Life. “But sadly, few radio programmers even shoot for that.” […]
PAPERBOY: ‘All Science Is Local’ Edition
BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]
WEEKEND UPDATE: The Good News Flower Hour
The Good News Flower Hour #5 After a holiday hiatus, The Good News Flower Hour returns with all the news of the week that fits — in a five minute cartoon narrated by a flower that sounds JUST LIKE ME! You’re welcome.
PAPERBOY: ‘The Passion Of The Nutter’ Edition
BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]