MEDIA: INTERNET KILLED THE TV NEWS STAR

“We’re all pretty convinced that news doesn’t break on TV anymore,” said Eric Bader, senior VP-managing director of digital connections at MediaVest. “Almost everybody across pretty much every economic and age demographic learns of breaking news online, increasingly on mobile.” And where the viewers go, so do the ad dollars. Since 2003, CNN’s cable revenue has dropped 11%, from $424.2 million to $378.5 million in 2006, while digital revenue has nearly doubled, from $34.8 million to $71.4 million, according to TNS Media Intelligence. Mr. Walton wants to make sure that if the audience is tuning out on cable, it’s tuning in […]

SMELLS LIKE JOURNALISM: Inky’s Sam Wood Ends When Strippers Attack Piece With Sneaker Zinger

Giberson accused two dancers of stealing a pair of sneakers from her locker over the weekend, Saymon said. The argument grew heated. Giberson [NOT pictured] drew a folding knife. As her companion, Jennie Santos, 23, grappled with the dancers, Giberson slashed repeatedly at their shoulders, backs, buttocks and thighs, Saymon said. Leaving the dancers bleeding in the dressing room, Giberson and Santos fled and drove home to Collingswood. Shortly after, they were arrested by Collingswood police, Saymon said. The dancers were rushed to Cooper University Hospital, where they were treated for deep cuts. The sneakers have not been found. INQUIRER: In […]

SATULLO: Regrets? Too Few To Mention, Except…

A big one: endorsing Jim McGreevey over Christine Whitman in 1997. I was deputy then, and supported Whitman, but I lost that discussion. Jim McGreevey. Good Lord. We should have come out strongly against stand-alone casinos in Pennsylvania. Slots at racetracks seemed a plausible, limited gambit to raise needed money for schools, but we should have seen that, in corrupt and secretive Harrisburg, casinos would metastasize. We should have come out sooner against the Iraq invasion. INQUIRER: Oh, NOW You Tell Me

BOOK REVIEW: Internet Killed The Mass Media Star

The Golden Age of mass culture didn’t end just because the Internet let people do their own thing. It ended because people looked at the low — and steadily declining — quality of mass-marketed television, radio, news, films, and music and concluded that they could do better. And they are often right, not necessarily because the amateur productions are so terrific (though sometimes they are), but because the big media productions are so often dreadful. Like U.S. car companies in the 1970s, the television networks, movie and record studios, newspapers, and radio stations grew comfortable in their protected positions, and […]

THE WINNER: “Now, let’s get that Brazilian started.”

Congratulations Mike Guggino You Are Going To See Lee Scratch Perry! Enjoy! The City of Philadelphia’s photo archive contains over 2 million images that date back as far as the late 1800s, i.e. the last time a Republican won in this town. In all seriousness, this is an INCREDIBLE visual record of the city’s evolution and a relatively new web site, PhillyHistory.org, is making it available for online consumption and purchase. To date, some 27,000 images have been digitally scanned, at a rate of roughly 2,000 images a month. So, if you’ve been wondering why the line at Kinko’s is […]

HOT DOC: Inky Editorial Page Ed. Steps Down

Colleagues — In Sunday’s Currents section, the attached column announces my decision to step down as editorial page editor of the paper. I’ll be taking on a new role as a twice-weekly columnist and director of civic engagement, running the Citizen Voices program. I also plan to challenge Dick Polman for the title of Wordiest Blogger on Philly.com. Brian Tierney plans to look at internal and external candidates; I’ll leave the job formally when my replacement is named and settles in, but my hope in the coming weeks is to turn more and more of the decision-making over to the board’s […]

Tierney To Bid On Dow Jones — If There Is Bidding

The company that owns The Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News and Philly.com, has expressed interest in joining with outside partners to buy Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of the storied Wall Street Journal. “If there was a formalized bidding process, it would be our intention to participate,” Brian Tierney, chief executive of the company, Philadelphia Media Holdings said this evening. “We would participate as Philadelphia Media Holdings along with other investors. We wouldn’t do it it alone.” Dow Jones has been the object of a $5 billion takeover bid from media baron Rupert Murdoch. Dow Jones has been under siege […]

THE NEW PANIC: Reading Between The Lines Of JFK Terror Plot Indictment

At a certain point, something will go wrong. You may have trouble recruiting other people to collaborate with your very own terrorist, who is, as you yourself know, just an ordinary guy in a really bad mood. Or, alternatively, the terrorist cell you have carefully cobbled together may malfunction and fail to move forward — probably as a result of sheer incompetence or of simply not having been genuinely serious about the acts of terrorism you were urging it to commit. At this point, you may worry that the FBI is going to realize that there isn’t much of a terrorist […]

Cover Wars: Whose Artfag Kung-Fu Is Stronger?

In the future we will all live on the Internet, where, abetted by the micro miracles of nanotechnology, we will build vast hive-like colonies within the circuitry of microchips, convert ourselves into JPEGs and climb inside the New Frontier. It will be just like Tron, but with Kraftwerk doing the soundtrack. There will be no need for cars or oil or the wars that come with them, we’ll just attach ourselves to an email and type in the addy to wherever we wanna go; for vast distances, instead of flying, we will simply upload and download ourselves. And, most importantly, […]

REPORT: Global Warming Goes Downtheshore

The Shore: Inundated Boardwalks and Receding Beaches –North Wildwood could be turned into an island, separated from Wildwood Crest by shallow flooding from across New Jersey Avenue. –Cape May Beach would face accelerated erosion, and on average, Shore beaches could retreat inland between 50 and 150 meters. Camden: Water Supply at Risk –Camden could find increasing levels of salt water in its drinking water, since global warming-induced sea-level rise would push the salt front higher up the Delaware River. If the salt front reaches the Camden area, the city may have to shut its water supply wells and find an alternate […]