Category Archives: Media

Crisis: The Book

Leon Neyfakh reports that Joe Nocera and Bethany McLean are putting together a proposal for what Nocera calls "a book for the ages" on the financial crisis. And they’re not the only journalists writing a book on this subject: Neyfakh … Continue reading

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Why the Blogosphere has Turned on Paulson

What has happened to the vibrant heterogeneity of views and voices in the blogosphere? Among finance and economics blogs, I can’t think of a single one which thought that the short-selling ban was a good idea, and I also can’t … Continue reading

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Can Pundits Help?

I like Floyd Norris when he’s angry. Lehman did not measure up because its chief executive, Richard S. Fuld Jr., simply was not reckless enough as he ran Lehman into the ground. Had he had the foresight to make a … Continue reading

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Breakingviews in the New York Times

Everybody knows that newspapering is a business in desperate straits right now. So why is that financial opinion columns seem to be proliferating? Historically, there was just one, in the FT: Lex. As of next week, Lex alumni will be … Continue reading

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Lehman: The Media Meltdown

What’s happened to Reuters? The sober just-the-facts newswire seems to have let the chaos at Lehman brothers go to its head. This morning Reuters ran an entire story sourced on nothing but a rumor (which turned out to be false) … Continue reading

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Photo of the Day

Taken outside Lehman headquarters this morning:

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News Datapoint of the Day

Right now, the top story at news.google.com is "Fannie, Freddie Credit-Default Swaps May Be Settled", from Bloomberg News. I’m not sure what it means when credit default swaps are the top story in the world, but I think it’s safe … Continue reading

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Interns and Signalling

It’s not an irony, it’s simple causality: the New York Sun treats its interns so atrociously because it could fail at any minute. The Sun’s memo to interns is worth reading. It seems to dwell on the hardships of the … Continue reading

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Diluting the WSJ

In a presidential campaign, candidates triangulate towards the center. The Democrat knows he has his party’s hard-core supporters in the bag; the Republican likewise. So both tend to take those hard-core supporters for granted and chase after other voters. According … Continue reading

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Joe Nocera, Blogger

This is why newspapers should want all their columnists to blog. Joe Nocera: Although Lehman has been the number one rated equity research shop (again, according to Institutional Investor), that just shows how flawed such ratings are. Everybody on Wall … Continue reading

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Blurb Whore of the Day

Rachel Donadio had an entertaining essay in Sunday’s NYT Book Review on blurbing. It’s a fine art, she says: "Blurb too often, or include too many blurbs on your book, and you might get called a blurb whore." Well. I … Continue reading

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When Op-Ed Pages Turn Neutral

The Christian Science Monitor has a classic example of "Opinions on Shape of Earth Differ" syndrome. It runs a first-rate op-ed by Mark Lange on the invidious and predatory behavior of credit-card companies. It then, however, neutralizes Lange’s piece by … Continue reading

Posted in Media, personal finance | 4 Comments

Web Features: Don’t be too Ambitious

The NYT has the news, this morning: BusinessWeek is adding a feature to its website at the end of September. This is clearly meant to be a big deal: it’s the product of "two years of quiet development," we’re told, … Continue reading

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The Curious Thomson Reuters Share-Price Arbitrage

Does anybody out there still believe in the efficient markets hypothesis? If so, I disprove it thus. Thomson Reuters is listed both in the UK and in the US. As CEO Tom Glocer says, "a share in one place is … Continue reading

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Carl Icahn: Hitting His Stride

It famously took four months for Carl Icahn to even start blogging, after announcing the launch of the Icahn Report in February. So the fact that he now seems to be getting into his stride after only two months is … Continue reading

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Four Billion

The NYT brings out the big numbers for its Olympic coverage today: At 8 p.m. on the eighth day of the eighth month in the year 2008 — eight being a lucky number in China — the world looked toward … Continue reading

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The WSJ’s Broken Subscriptions System

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp today announced a 57% rise in annual profits, to $5.38 billion. Please, Mr Murdoch, spend a tiny, tiny amount of that money on fixing the Wall Street Journal’s horrendously broken subscriptions system. I’m spending the summer … Continue reading

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Record Label Valuation Datapoint of the Day

May 2007: Terra Firma buys EMI at a valuation of $6.3 billion. August 2008: Sony buys out Bertelsmann, its partner in the Sony BMG joint venture, at a post-deal valuation of $1.8 billion.

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Bloomberg Datapoint of the Day

Back in 1985, investment-banking powerhouse Merrill Lynch bought a 30% stake in Bloomberg LP for $30 million. A few years later, Bloomberg bought back a 10% stake for $200 million, leaving Merrill with 20% — which it’s now selling, again … Continue reading

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The Future of News: Collaboration

Yesterday, Dealbreaker’s John Carney told me that for the past couple of months his daily Wall Street Journal has been delivered with a free copy of the New York Sun. That kind of bundling makes a lot of sense for … Continue reading

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Bloomberg Buying Bloomberg?

Blind trusts are popular with politicians: the idea is that the politician in question can’t have any conflicts of interest with respect to his investments if he doesn’t know what his investments are. As a result, you’re not going to … Continue reading

Posted in banking, Media, Politics | 1 Comment

Bad Ideas at the WSJ, Customization Edition

Jon Fine had a long chat with WSJ editor Robert Thomson, and got some interesting statements out of him: Also coming: extensive customizing tools for readers to find, through search, much more Dow Jones content. (In Thomson’s groan-worthy formulation, "In … Continue reading

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The WSJ’s Last-Man-Standing Play

Nat Ives talks to WSJ publisher Les Hinton, who explains the paper’s move into general news. Is it driven by Rupert Murdoch’s desire to compete head-on with the the NYT? Quite possibly, yes. But Hinton’s on-the-record justification also makes sense: … Continue reading

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Good Old News

Clive Crook on Walt Mossberg: I never miss his column, even though I cannot remember a single occasion when it told me something I didn’t already know. (There must have been some; they just don’t spring to mind.) Do not … Continue reading

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WSJ.com Will Go Free, Eventually

Congratulations to wsj.com for posting impressive growth in both pageviews and unique visitors over the past year. Don’t pay too much attention to the numbers quoted: they’re "based on the company’s internal traffic numbers," and therefore not much use in … Continue reading

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