Media Curmudgeon

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January 29, 2005

The Rothschild Rule

As a professor, I sometimes give my students compare and contrast assignments—compare the similarities and contrast the differences between two concepts, people, or systems. This past week there were two front-page articles in the Wall Street Journal that would be perfect for a compare and contrast assignment, one was about Cablevision and the other about Comcast.

On Monday, January 24, a story titled “At Cablevision, Father-Son Split Looms Over the Future” by Peter Grant had sub-heads that read “Sales of Voom Satellite Assets Strains Close Relationship; Voting With the Opposition” and “A Joke Using Bumper Stickers.” But, as usual in WSJ front-page articles, in order to humanize the story, Grant focused on a single person in conflict as a metaphor for a larger issue. In this story the person was Cablevision chief executive James Dolan and the conflict was between James Dolan and his father, Cablevision founder Charles Dolan.

The facts of the story were that James Dolan lobbied and convinced Cablevision’s board of directors that a satellite television project called Voom championed by his father was a losing proposition and voted with the board and against his father to sell Voom to satellite TV operator EchoStar. The story also describes the relationship between the Dolans: “Charles and James Dolan have long had a complicated relationship, stemming in part from their different personalities and management styles, people familiar with the company say. Charles Dolan is known for being diplomatic and soft-spoken. His son, combative and volatile, is more of a street fighter. Former employees say that they have seen James Dolan dressing down even senior Cablevision executives in front of others.”

The story goes on to reveal that James, the youngest of three Dolan brothers, has made some mistakes as Cablevision’s chief executive, including buying electronic retailer The Wiz, buying the wrong set-top boxes, fighting with the Yankees’ YES cable network, and fighting NY Mayor Bloomberg over a dispute about a new Manhattan west side football stadium for the Jets.

The NY newspaper sports pages have been less diplomatic than the Wall Street journal about James’s horrible mismanagement of Madison Square and its Rangers and Knicks sports teams, but even the sports writers, who need Dolan’s cooperation to report on stories about the Knicks and Rangers, couldn’t lay it out like it really is: James Dolan is a spoiled, dumb prick who couldn’t get arrested if he wasn’t born with a silver coaxial cable coming out his mouth.

Compare and contrast James Dolan to the chief executive (same title) Brian Roberts of Comcast Corp., America’s number-one cable operator. Brian Roberts is also the son of the founder of the company he runs has proven to be a brilliant strategist and manager that has made few mistakes as he quietly runs the huge Comcast Corp... In a January 27 front-page Wall Street Journal article by Martin Peers and Peter Grant (yes, the same Peter Grant who wrote the Cablevision story), titled “Comcast, TV Program Owners Clash Over Video-on-Demand” had sub-head that read “Cable Company Can’t Obtain Prime-Time Hit Shows; Fox, Others Say: Pay Up” and “Mr. Roberts Give a Demo.”
The article indicates that Roberts has allowed his cable chief, Steve Burke, to run that division. James Dolan, by contrast, is a notorious micro-manager and nit-picker who gets into the weeds on all decisions, which is probably why he screws so many of them up. In the meantime, Brian Roberts is thoughtfully selling his idea of video on demand (VOD) to top executives of other large entertainment content providers such as Time Warner’s Don Logan and Jeff Bewkes and Viacom’s Tom Freston by inviting them down to his Philadelphia office for a demonstration of VOD. Roberts is selling and persuading while Dolan confronts, fights, and bullies.

Also, Comcast is not charging extra for the time-shifting, viewer-convenience flexibility of VOD while Cablevision is charging a variety of confusing fees. An executive at Cablevision is quoted in the WSJ story as saying about its VOD pricing, “Getting the right model is an art and it’s not done yet.” Which translated means, “We have no idea what we’re doing, but while we figure it out, we’ll soak our customers” – Dolan’s invisible hand in pot it would seem.

Cablevision founder Charles Dolan should have taken a lesson from another family dynasty—the Rothschilds. The fabulously wealthy and powerful Rothschilds have been Europe’s premiere bankers for centuries. They are known for practicing the “Rothschild Rule,” which states that only the smartest children will be allowed to join the family business; the less-than-bright others will be lavishly supported with mansions, polo ponies, yachts, and whatever they want on the irrevocable promise that they never go near the family business. The Roberts family must have known about the Rothschild Rule; the Dolan family didn’t.

Posted by Charles Warner at 04:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Print |

January 23, 2005

Eisner and Katzenberg

In its January 10 issue, BusinessWeek names "The Best Managers...And The Worst" in its cover story. The venerable business magazine plays this naming game annually, but I found it especially ironic this year.

Fourth on the list was not a single manager, like all of the other listed managers , but a trio of "managers:" Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen of DreamWorks SKG. Their key accomplishments were: ">>In the spring, the computer animated Shrek 2 set a record with a gross of $436.7 million. >>Had one of the year's hottest IPOs, pulling in $812 million. Stock zoomed by 45% the following month."

The annual BusinessWeek ranking of the best and worst managers of American companies has nothing to do with how nice or gentle or empowering they are, the evaluations are based stictly on financial performance of the companies they manage. Nevertheless, I found it ironic that Katzenberg was high on the list while his erstwhile nemesis, Michael Eisner was a similar number four on the list of worst managers.

Remember, Katzenberg quit in a huff when Eisner didn't promote him to be president of Walt Disney Co. (he had been head of the animation division and had produced a lot of hits). Instead, Eisner hired his pal Michael Ovitz who he fired after about a year on the job and to whom he gave an outrageous $140 million severance package (the exact amount is in dispute, but $140 million is bad and close enough). Eisner is being sued by Disney stockholders over the Ovitz severance package in an embarrassing trial that makes both Eisner and Ovitz look like sleazy liars.

Katzenberg also sued Disney and Eisner over his inadequate severance package and won. Can you imagine Eisner skimping on Katzenberg who made Disney millions with boffo animated hits but squandering stockholders' money on Ovitz, who had never made a movie or run a theme park? I think Eisner should have been higher on the BusinessWeek list of worst managers in the country.

Also, can you imagine how sweet it must have been for Katzenberg to read that issue of BusinessWeek? In the picture of the three DreamWorks moguls, Katzenberg has the biggest smile by far. We understand, Jeffrey. Smile away.

He's also probably smiling because Eisner has finally been forced by angry stockholders and a board of directors that is no longer under his thumb to name a replacement as CEO when he retires in 2006. Although he hasn't done so yet, it is obvious to all that he intends to name Robert Iger as his heir. Why would this make Katzenberg smile? Because Iger is a suit. In the BusinessWeek story on Eisner, one industry expert says about the pending crowning of Iger that it "shows how weak a bench Eisner had." Hardly a ringing endorsement.

I wouldn't put it past the egomaniacal Eisner to name Iger his successor because he knows Iger isn't that good and will fail, thus making Eisner look good in comparison. At least I sense that's the way Eisner thinks. Isn't it sick? So keep smiling, Jeffrey.

Posted by Charles Warner at 02:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Print |

Neil Derrough - Imus Addict

Neil Derrough is a past-president of the CBS Television Stations Division and before that VP, general manager, of WCBS-TV in New York. He now lives in La Jolla, CA, with his wife, ex-CBS News correspondent Sharron Lovejoy, and their two daughters.

All right I’ll admit it, I’m an Imus addict. My time in New York allowed me to follow Imus's career and I always wondered if he could make it on television. A question I answered by not offering him a job at the time.

And now here I am, over 20 years later, living on the left coast and finding myself using my cable DVR to substitute Imus for the all of the other morning TV fare. I think his cast of characters, access to timely newsmakers, and unique ability to get so much from his guests prompts me to choose Imus. Also, he and I share a number of things, such as a respect for the late Jerry Nachman, a similar vintage, and being a news junkie. I could go on, but I think you get the point that I like him.

But in spite of m affinity, my Imus addiction becomes complicated. I can’t just be a loyal viewer of his MSNBC morning coverage because I find myself practicing my craft of “broadcaster.” I wonder when an independent, intelligent, bruising wit becomes merely self-indulgent. Sure, the Rickles-like humor has certain appeal. Many people enjoy seeing someone get a good shot, particularly if it strikes close to someone else’s bone. It’s knowing the limits between just rude behavior and hard-edged exchange that is critical and what a viewer (or listener) will tolerate. Imus has made a career out of dealing with this delicate balance. Being the iconoclast, the cynic, and the leveler of anyone who dares cross his path, is who he is.

What’s my concern? As I see it, Imus feels that he's out of reach of anyone getting in his face. Sure, there are practical professional guidelines he must follow, but they are mostly routine considerations. He conveys that no one can really hold him accountable, that he’s beyond that. That if “they” don’t like it, so be it. Again, part of his charm.

The problem is, I've never known talented people who can survive at the level they want to with that attitude. They leave the air decrying their critics, bosses, and finally the audience as out of touch. But ultimately they are done in because the significant impact and value they once had is diminished or even lost. All because they felt they were out of reach.

Now, what can Imus do so I can keep my peculiar viewing habit?

I would tell Imus if he worked for me to realize that his words really mean something. That he can’t get away with being mean spirited forever. Guests will take it for a while and so will the audience, but sooner or later a mean spirit is not entertaining or funny. People like a performer because they perceive he or she has a good heart. Imus's caustic, irreverent on-air persona does not cover up an inherent nastiness. I would tell Imus, "I think you know when you get too close to the edge. If you won’t listen to anyone else, use your ample survival skills and listen to yourself. I think you know how to solve my concerns."

Posted by Charles Warner at 01:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Print |

January 22, 2005

Vlogging Conference

My young pal, Jim Spencer, and I are attending a video blogging conference at NYU (it started as a project at the New School) and I'm old enough to be everyone's father. Therefore, there is not only a generation gap but also a technology gap--the technology gap is even bigger than the age gap.

But I'm getting the gist of the conference--that video blogging is the wave of the future. I'm interested in learning how to put videos on this blog and my Web site and I need to know the technology.

Why do I want video on my sites? Primarily as a device to keep people's attention a little longer. A one- or two-minute video that emphasizes, reinforces, or adds emotion to a point that I make--like captioned pictures in a newspaper--and can keep people interested a little longer and make mpoints more dramatic.

I see a video on a blog as an enhancement, not the main content. Blogs are to be read primarily, I think. They need to be easy to post and timely, but most of all thoughtful. I believe blogging has taken off as a source of information is because television is so vacuous. TV reminds me of the current commercial for a beer in which a sorrowful guy says in a panic, "I can't taste my beer!" His beer has lost its taste, its depth. Same with television.

Blogs provide perspective--multidimensional perspectives in fact--and ideas and original thinking and opinions. In The New York Times it's hard to tell what the opinion of the writer of a story is. We didn't know when we read Judy Miller's story about the WMDs that her editor, Howell Raines at the time, was trying to support a war in Iraq. You know where a blogger is coming from--no hidden agendas.

So videos will add a new dimension to blogging. For example, if a local television station does a video package in a newscast of a protest that looks like a lot of people showed up at city halll, a video blogger could have a video of the same protest that shows only a few people bunched together in an otherwise empty street, thus debunking the TV story.

I'm looking forward to learning more.

Posted by Charles Warner at 09:16 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack | Print |

Shirley Moretti at January 29, 2005 12:52 PM writes:

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Charles Warner at January 26, 2005 03:19 PM writes:

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Brendan Watson at January 25, 2005 06:00 PM writes:

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Charles Warner at January 22, 2005 11:19 AM writes:

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Neil Derrough at January 22, 2005 11:08 AM writes:

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January 20, 2005

Mediacurmudgeon Was Wrong

Mediacurmudgeon was wrong on several counts. First, I was wrong when I blogged last year that neither Air American Radio nor Al Franken, its big-name mid-day talk host, would last after the election. Second, it looks like I was wrong that Time Warner would sell AOL and that Microsoft would buy it.

I'm glad I was wrong about Air America Radio. The Wall Street Journal had a story today by Julia Angwin and Sarah McBride titled "Radio's Bush-Bashing Air America Is Back in Fighting Form." The two reporters wrote that the liberal radio network has added stations in Wadhington, DC, Detroit, Cincinannati, and soon in Los Angeles. Even more surprising Air America Radio "...has garnered the support of radio-industry giant Clear Channel Communications, Inc....(and) has signed a three-year contract with its top stars, Al Franken and Randi Rhodes, and raised an additional $19 million from private investors."

The WSJ story reports that Air America "is the fourth most popular radio station, with almost 200,000 weekly Web listeners, according to Webcast Metrics" and that Randi Rhodes is doing reasonably well in the ratings against WABC's (New York) Sean Hannity in the afternoon.

The fact that Clear Channel is supporing Air America will give the network real legitimacy and credibility and is surprising because the Texas-based Clear Channel has been known to snuggle up to Bush and threw Dixie Chicks' records off their Country Music stations when one of the the group's members criticized Bush's Iraq war. But Clear Channel is more interested in money than politics and sees Air America Radio as a money maker, which it will need to replace lost revenue from Howard Stern, who it threw off of six of its stations last year and in the face of slow overall radio growth.

It also looks like I was wrong about Time Warner selling AOL. I think the window has passed to sell AOL for anyting near what it is worth. But the behemoth media conglomerate seems to be so elephantine that it takes years for it to take just a step. This week it got rid of three executives in Time Warner Cable, paring down that division probably three years too late. And this week AOL announced that it was going to expand its capabilities in Web search. Wow...but it's only doing it five years too late.

Also, Yahoo this week announced it was doing a deal with Verizon to give Verizon broadband customers the option of having Yahoo as their default interface and portal--a similar deal that Yahoo made with SBC last year. AOL is five years behind Yahoo. Wasn't that supposed to be the whole idea behind the AOL and Time Warner merger--the synergy between AOL and Time Warner Cable, giving AOL broadband distribution? Why didn't AOL become Time Warner Cable's broadband interface instead of Road Runner? Because the conglomerate couldn't make a decision, that's why--too much internecine warfare between non-cooperative silos within the organization. It looks like the internal wars are still waging--no one talking to anyone in other divisions and CEO Richard Parsons not able to make quick decisions.

What about Microsoft being the buyer of AOL? Instead, Microsoft sold its online magazine, Salon, to the Washington Post--it's been a seller, not a buyer. So is this an indication that Microsoft is losing interest in MSN and the Web? Last spring and fall MSN was in the hunt for publicity and all over the trade press, but it has been strangely silent lately. I suspect that Gates and Ballmer's attention is being diverted from MSN and the Web toward its new entertainment initiatives--dowloading video, etc.

So I'll admit it, my prognosticating ability is not very good--I have a cloudy crystal ball. Maybe I should start guessing, as Mike Wheeler suggests in a comment on my last blog, who is going to replace Dan Rather--a tag team of Jon Stewart and Katie Couric, for example. Or maybe I should guess when Time Warner is going to sell AOL or when it will make its next big decision--two or three years from now?

Posted by Charles Warner at 06:49 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Print |

Eddie Goldman at January 21, 2005 01:29 AM writes:

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January 19, 2005

Moonves Confirms CBS News As Entertainment

At his press conference yesterday at the 2005 Winter Television Critics Association tour, Les Moonves, CEO of CBS News, when grilled by reporters about the future of CBS News and the new anchorperson of the "CBS Nightly News," said: "It's very possible it might not be the voice-of-God-single-anchor that has been in existence for so many years. It might be time to change it up and do something different."

"One of the things we're looking at is how do we make it younger, more relevant, something that younger people can relate to as opposed to that guy preaching from the mountaintop," Moonves continued. "We're dealing with that very issue about making it younger and attracting new viewers."

The swtich of CBS News from a journalistic, news presentation to an entertainment presentation is now confirmed. Not that I'm unhappy to see the creeky, cheecky Rather go--who cares? But it is sad to see CBS contemplating inserting a version of "Entertainment Tonight" into the "Evening News" time slot. It will be just another reason to listen to NPR or watch C-Span, and the chances of CBS, or any network, attracting a younger audience for news are as good as mine getting a date with Jennifer Aniston.

Posted by Charles Warner at 09:38 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Print |

Mediacurmudgeon at January 20, 2005 01:07 PM writes:

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mike wheeler at January 19, 2005 10:31 PM writes:

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January 17, 2005

CBS Doesn't Get It

A story in The New York Times today, January 17, titled "CBS News Draws Ire of Bloggers" should have been titled "CBS News Doesn't Get It."

The NYT story reads: "The handling of documents appears to have tripped up CBS News again, and once more bloggers have provided instant--and biting--criticism of the incident." The source of the criticism is CBS's decision to alter the posting of the report of the independent panel that investigated Dan Rather and "60 Minutes Wednesday's" airing of false documents about Bush's National Guard record.

CBS News posted the full report on its Web site the day it was released. I know because I went there from a link on Romanesko. I looked over the report and saved the link. I went back to the link I saved today after I read the Times story, and, sure enough, I couldn't open the damaging report.

According to the Times story, CBS News's law firm hired to handle the inquiry, Kilpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham, apparently advised CBS to change the encryption on the report so that it couldn't be copied because "an enterprising ne'er-do-well could copy the text into a new document and begin circulating a faked version of the report," according to the Times story.

How stupid and paranoid can CBS be? First, it's clear that CBS News and its law firm have no concept of what the blogsphere is about--they don't get it. CBS News, like most MSM (main-stream media), is arrogant about bloggers, which was clear when it dismissed out of hand the bloggers who outed Rather's fake documents. Its attitude clearly was that bloggers weren't journalists and Rather and the "60 Minutes" producers were. Now three producers have resigned and one was fired because the bloggers were right.

Why is CBS News so worried about a blogger faking its report? It's called projection in psychology. It works like this: An habitual criminal--let's say a pickpocket--believes that everyone will steal from him. CBS News, who faked documents believes everone will fake its documents--it figures.

The stupid thing about the CBS decision to encrypt the document is that it waited too long to do it. Many people downloaded it and, of course, are making it available on many Web sites, such as Rathergate.com. And why would anyone who wanted to make CBS look bad doctor the report, it's destructive enough without being doctored.

CBS News continutes to show its arrogance and head-in-the-sand stupidity--the same wonderful qualities that brought you the flawed report in the first place. CBS News hasn't learned a thing from this whole Rathergate affair--the journalists at CBS News don't get it, which is why Les Moonves went after Katie Couric.

Posted by Charles Warner at 02:51 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Print |

Rod Stanton at January 21, 2005 05:50 AM writes:

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January 16, 2005

The Wall Street Journal and the Bloggers Got the Story Wrong

There has been an uproar in the blogsphere about the January 15 story in The Wall Street Journal titled, "Dean Campaign Made Payments To Two Bloggers" by William Bulkeley and James Bandler and assisted by Jeanne Cummings (you'll see why I included Cummings's name later on). But both The Wall Street Journal and the bloggers who were upset about the WSJ story got the story wrong.

In the first place, reporters Bulkeley and Bandler apparently not only got the facts in the story wrong but also blew them out of proportion. The story was about two bloggers, Daily Kos, an extremely popular liberal blog written by Markos Moulitsas, and MyDD, another liberal blog written by Jerome Armstrong and Chris Bowers, who, the WSJ story claimed, were paid as consultants by Howard Dean's presidential campaign so "they would say positive things about the former governor's campaign in their online journals, according to a former high-profile Dean aide."

The high-profile Dean aide turned out to be Laura Gross, who, in a reply to the WSJ story on Daily Kos, completely debunked Bulkeley and Bandler's story. She wrote about reporter Cummings calling her and asking about Moulitsas and Armstong's connection with the Dean campaign. Gross said she told Cummings that both were hired for small amounts of money to do technical consulting (they recommended Movable Type, the same software that I use in this blog, for the Dean blog) and that Moulitsas posted a notice on his blog that he had been hired as a technical consultant by Dean. Armstong stopped blogging while he breifly worked for Dean.

Gross writes about her phone conversation with Cummings: "By the end of the conversation she had confirmed what she thought--that there was no news, that this was what she called a 'dead story'--and she said that she didn't think there would be any article at all, much less one that mentioned Dean."

After the inaccurate WSJ story appeared, Gross writes that Cummings "called me back at 10:30 a.m.--and actually apologized for the article (written by two colleagues). She said that she wouldn't work with those reporters in the same capacity again, would only give them on-the-record quotes and assured me that she had notified her editors."

Even before Gross's rebuttal hit Daily Kos, other reputable bloggers were defending Moulitsas and Armstrong and their blogs, writing that they did nothing wrong, nothing unethical. Jeff Jarvis, who writes the intelligent and highly readable blog, BuzzMachine
, about the media, defended the two in an entry titled "Media on Media" (check it out on the link to BuzzMachine). Of course Kos defended himself and went on the attack, accusing the WSJ reporters of lies and inaccuries, including not knowing that his last name is Moulitsas, not Zuniga (he's El Salvadorian), which they would have known if they had been hip to the blogsphere or had read The New York Times Magazine September 26 cover story about blogging.

But I think Jarvis, who I admire a great deal, and other bloggers who are defending Kos and Armstrong got the story wrong. I don't think the story is that Kos and Armstrong did nothing wrong, the story is that The Wall Street Journal is running an article trying to implicate liberal bloggers in a desperate attempt to say that "liberals are on the take, too" in order to deflect attention away from the real ethical scandal involving the conservative pundit Armstrong Williams taking $240,000 under the table from the Bush administration to plug its "No Child Left Behind" education policy.

According to a post on MyDD, by John Byrne, RAW STORY Editor, "The chief editorial writer at the Wall Street Journal, the paper which disparaged two progressive blogs over accepting money from Howard Dean's campaign, serves on President Bush's fellowship board with Armstrong Williams, RAW STORY has learned. He is also being hired as chief speechwriter for the Bush Administration."

I subscribe to The Wall Street Journal and read it most days. I think it is one of the best newspapers in the country--extremely well written, well edited, and insightful. In many ways, especially, in its writing, I think it's better than The New York Times. I don't like the WSJ's right-wing editorial policy and, therefore, rarely read the editorials; however, I have felt that the reporting is generally fair, balanced, reasonably accurate, and does not reflect, as a rule, a conservative or a liberal bias--that is until now.

Last November 23 the WSJ had a story about the retirement of Barney Calame, its Deputy Managing Editor, titled "Often the Go-To Person For Company Insiders Isn't Known Outside" and referred to Barney as the paper's go-to person on ethical issues and its conscience. Too bad Barney wasn't around for the blogging story.

I didn't come up with the idea of the WJS blogging story not being the right one out of the blue, it came to me while I read a magnificent new book by Nick Kotz titled Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Laws That Changed America.

In the increcibly well-researched book, Kotz relates how J. Edgar Hoover, who was a horrible racist, in the summer of 1964 had a deputy director at the FBI try to plant a story with journalists concerning King's alleged Communist ties and his extra-marital affairs to try to discredit the powerful, Nobel-Peace-Prize winning civil rights leader.

Most responsible journalists rejected the story, but Ben Bradlee, before he was the editor of the Washington Post, was chief of the Newsweek's Washington bureau and he not only rejected the story but also realized that it was not about King but about the FBI trying to descredit King. Bradlee told president Johnson's attorney general, Nicholas Katzenbach, about the efforts, but, unfortunately, to no avail. Johnson wouldn't stop Hoover.

Newspapers like the Atlanta Constitution and the Los Angeles Times, among others, rejected the FBI's smear story realizing that it had nothing to do with with the civil rights movement and the stories of non-violent demonstrations for voting rights in the South. Bloggers should realize that stories and blogs about Kos and Armstrong being consultants to Dean have nothing to do with blogging, that they are just desperate attempts by conservative to take the heat off of one of their own unprincipled favorites--Armstrong Williams.

Posted by Charles Warner at 09:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Print |

January 15, 2005

100 Best Companies to Work For--Not Big Media

FORTUNE's anuual "100 Best Companies to Work For" issue came out this week and once again no large media companies appeared on the list. However, for the first time five small- and mid-size media companies did appear on the top-100 list.

The FORTUNE article was written by Robert Levering and Milton Moskowitz, who wrote the original book titled The 100 Best Companies to Work For In America in 1984. In that original edition of the book, Time Inc. was to only media company to be included in the original list of 100. In subsequent years since then, media companies have been significantly absent, and no large media companies other than Time, Inc. in the original book and The New York Times Co. (#93 in 2003) and America Online (#51 in 2000) have ever appeared on the list.

On this year's list of the 100 Best Companies to Work for, three media companies and two media-related company appear on the list: Discovery Communications, Emmis Communications, John Wiley & Sons, Valassis, and Arbitron--Discovery and Emmis for the first time, Arbitron for the second time (#52 in 2002), and Valassis, which has made the list every year since 1998.

Discovery Communications and Emmis Communications ranked #25 and #27 on the mid-sized companies list (#67 and #74 on the complete list), Arbitron and John Wiley & Sons ranked number 24 and 28 on the small companies list (#60 and #95 on the complete list), and Valassis ranked #29 on the the small companies list (#100 on the complete list). Here's what FORTUNE said about the five companies:

DISCOVERY COMMUNICATIONS: "At this parent of cable network the Discovery Channel, more than half the executives are women, including CEO Judith Hale. The company makes it easy on new mothers and fathers: They receive three weeks' paid time off."

EMMIS COMMUNICATIONS: "In 2001 this chain of magazines and radio and TV stations cut pay 10% (offset by a 10% stock award). So why do folks like it here? They cite great communication from the CEO, who travels around doing employee Q&As."

JOHN WILEY & SONS: "When this publisher moved from Manhattan in 2002, it asked employees what perks they wanted—and followed through by providing a pristine river location, on-site exercise room, café, and free shuttle service."

ARBITRON: "At this radio market research firm, workers recognize one another for a job well done with $100 American Express gift cards (there's no restriction on how many you can bestow). Last year nearly 300 employees received $50,000 worth."

VALASSIS: "Each year managers at this publisher of newspaper inserts and coupons take a job-skills inventory to identify candidates for growth opportunities. The company often creates new positions to accommodate special talents."

In the eight years that FORTUNE has featured the 100 Best Companies list, media companies other than Valassis have appeared in four of the lists, with four in the 2005 list being the most. However, you have to take the 100-Best list with a grain of salt and put it in context.

For example, The New York Times Co. made the 2003 list (covering the year 2002) as a result of its winning a record number of Pulitzer Prizes for its 9/11 coverage and before the Jason Blair scandal hit. Arbitron has appeared on the list twice--in 2005 and 2002. American Online got on the 2000 list more than likely because the stock was at an all-time high and employees' options made janitors millionaires on paper before the merger with Time Warner when everything tanked. In the 2001 list, Enron was #22 and was #24 in 2000. Wall-Mart Stores appeared on the 2002, 2001, and 1999 lists.

I have my suspicions about the validity of the lists because of the way surveys are conducted. FORTUNE claims that about 1,000 companies are contacted and only about a third (356) complete the "exhaustive survey process." The 57-question survey from Levering and Moskowtiz's company goes to a minimum of 350 randomly selected employees from each company and two-thirds of the total score for the list comes from these employee responses. The remaining one-third of the score comes from Levering and Moskowitz's "evaluation of each company's demographic makeup, pay and benefits programs, and the like. We score companies in four areas: credibility, respect, fairness, and pride/camaraderie."

Therefore, if a company doesn't want to participate, it doesn't make the list. I suspect that several media companies that I know are good places to work, such as A.H. Belo, don't particpate. And companies that aren't such great places to work do particpate and "suggest" that employees say nice things in the survey.

Nevertheless, because large media companies have been consistently so rare on the 100-Best list over the years, I think it is safe to assume that they are not great places to work. Too many of them (Time Warner, Viacom, News Corp., NBC-Universal, Disney, etc.) have vastly overpaid, egocentric, narcissistic, headline-hungry executives who believe they come first, not their employees. The supply of people who want to work in the media far exceeds the demand, so pay and benefits at or near the bottom are typically awful.

In FORTUNE's Hall of Fame list of 22 companies that have appeared on the list since 1998, types of companies that are perceived to be low paying businesses are in the Hall of Fame. Wegmans Food Markets (#1 this year), Whole Foods Market, and Publix Super Markets are in the grocery business. Nordstrom is in the retail business, J.M. Smucker is in the food business, and Marriott International and Four Seasons Hotels are in the hotel and food-service business. These businesses are not as glitzy as the media and there are not scads of people eager to take jobs in them, so they have to be nice to people --something most large media companies have no idea how to do.

What's the lesson here? If you want to work in the media and want to work for a company that will treat you well, don't work for a large media company--work for a small- or medium-sized one that appears on the FORTUNE 100-Best list. Of course, if you work for Valassis, a perennial on the list, you'll have to live in Livonia, Michigan.

Posted by Charles Warner at 02:31 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Print |

Matt at January 20, 2005 12:48 PM writes:

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Infinity to Sell Stations

The January 14 edition of The Wall Street Journal had a story titled "Viacom Names New CEO of Infinity" which indicated that Infinity Broadcasting, Viacom's radio division, was "preparing to unload as many as one-third of its 183 radio stations..."

The article by Joe Flint, Dennis Berman, and Sarah McBride quoted the newly named CEO of Infinity, Joel Hollandar, as saying, "We're certainly looking to grow in the top 20 markets, while at the same time decreasing our presence in small markets."

Selling smaller market radio stations and increasing its presence in larger markets sounds like a sound strategy for Infinity, but I think the strategy is aimed more at Wall Street than at running a profitable radio business. Infinity's moves in the past, certainly under Mel Karmazin, were more about selling Wall Street analysts and investors that Viacom was "fixing" the problems at Infinity than about programming and selling advertising on its radio stations.

At Viacom, because Sumner Redstone and his family own so much of the company's stock, every move that Viacom makes is about getting the stock price up, or, in the case of the recent rathergate scandal, of keeping it from going down further. By announcing that Infinity is buying and selling stations, Viacom hopes that Wall Street will reverse or limit its recent downgrading of its stock.

Also, by buying, selling, or trading stations, it will be difficult to compare Infinity's year-to-year income results, thus giving it an excuse for lower earnings. Restructuring such as this is done by many major companies (AT&T, for one) to mask poor performance, especially after Howard Stern's defection to Sirius Satellite Radio at the end of this year.

Posted by Charles Warner at 01:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Print |

CBS News: "Over There"

In The New York Times, January 14 story by Bill Carter with the headline "Future of '60 Minutes Wednesday' in Doubt" Les Moonves, the chairman of CBS, is quoted as saying that Dan Rather was expected to continue his career with CBS on the Wednesday edition of "60 Minutes" "providing the show continues."

The article's next paragraph reads: "The program is guaranteed to be on the air through May, when the current television season ends, Mr. Moonves said, but 'they are not exactly tearing it up in the ratings over there.'"

By Moonves positioning CBS News and "60 Minutes" as "over there" he is clearly and purposely distancing himself from CBS News. Moonves is an ex-actor who came up through the entertainment side of the television business. He's a brilliant entertainment programmer who led the CBS television network to a clear win in the ratings this season with hits such as the various versions of "CSI," but which he can't enjoy, or more important in his mind, can't get full credit for because of the embarrassing Rathergate scandal and subsequent investigative report that is grabbing the wrong kind of headlines.

No wonder Moonves casts doubt on the continuation of the Wednesday edition of "60 Minutes" or calls CBS News "over there"--he can't even bring himself to utter the word "news"--because all it produces is scandal, low ratings, and creaking demographics that diminish CBS's 18-49 ratings success.

Also, Moonves has apparently taken charge of finding a replacement for the aging, wooden anchorman, Rather, who has lost all semblance of credibility. The Times story reports: "One representative of a prominent news anchor from a different network said the Mr. Moonves had made some overtures to several big names at other networks, among them Katie Couric...but she is under contract for 18 months..."

You can count on the ex-actor and entertainment whiz, Moonves, to try to inject a splash of show biz into the "CBS Evening News" by hiring a woman who is not journalist (because good journalists such as Ted Koppel don't get ratings in the desired 18-49 demos). My guess is that if Moonves can't find a relatively young, giddy female to take over Rather's spot, he'll cancel not only "60 Minutes Wednesday" but also the evening news. (Paul Zahn and Deborah Norville are probably too serious for Moonves.)

"Pinwheels" Edward R. Murrow, Fred Friendly, and William S. Paley must all be spinning in their graves and the spectre of an ex-actor making decisions about the lead on-the-air face of CBS News and Moonves's comments must be driving morale at CBS lower than whale shit.

Posted by Charles Warner at 12:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Print |

January 14, 2005

What CBS Should Do, By Neil Derrough

Neil Derrough is a past-president of the CBS Television Stations Division and was Andrew Heyward's boss when Derrough was VP, general manager of WCBS-TV and Heyward was the producer of WCBS-TV's 6:00 pm newscast. Derrough has long been an admirer and supporter of Heyward, so I know how difficult it must have been for him to come to the conclusions he has in his comments below.

The situation at CBS continues to confound me. The CBS management response to the report they commissioned to clear up the 60-Minute Dan Rather piece is a disaster. If the purpose was to keep the outrage at a fever pitch CBS has succeeded. The CBS management response guarantees that this issue will not go away. Maybe that’s the way they want it. Maybe they want to pretend that things are the way they used to be. That the audience will accept whatever they say. But the debate will now continue and deplete whatever journalistic reputation CBS News has left.

What should the CBS senior management have done? They should have announced that Dan Rather is retiring immediately. Thank him for his numerous accomplishments, wish him well, and get him off the air.

The most important step that must take place if CBS News is ever to be taken seriously again is to fire Andrew Heyward. Is it too late after all the things that CBS has said defending Heyward? Maybe. But if CBS really wants to save CBS News they must take steps to take charge to save a sinking ship. There are many ways that the words can be shaped to explain this action. I’ll leave that up to CBS as they come to their senses.

Only then can CBS admit that this situation got out of control. They must make it clear that they are determined to do what has to be done to start to rebuild the CBS News reputation. From a practical standpoint CBS has nothing to lose. Let’s face it, Rather is done. Taking him off the air immediately provides the only prospect of showing the audience that they understand the deep trouble they are in. As for Heyward, he was in charge and should be held responsible.

All this should not sound extreme. It will just show that CBS management is beginning to “get it.”

Posted by Charles Warner at 10:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Print |

January 11, 2005

Rathergate Post-Mortem

I used to do some consulting for local television station news departments. One of the things I told news directors was to stop calling meetings after newscasts "postmortems" because the term had a negative conotation--you hold postmortems after something dies. You don't want participants to think their newscast died. I said to put a positive frame on the meetings and call them debriefings and to make sure that the good things that happened in the newscast were stressed first and then to discuss errors if there were any--accentuate the positives so people would look forward to the meetings rather than dread them.

I thought of this advice when I read the story in The New York Times this morning titled "Post-Mortem of a Flawed Broadcast" and the subhead "CBS News Rocked by Discredited Report on President's Military Record" and said to myself, "Postmortem is a good word for the report filed by ex-US Attorney General Richard Thornburgh and ex-CEO of the Associated Press, Louis Boccardi because something did die--CBS News's credibility." And it also seems that Dan Rather's ratings have been dying, too, since the nototious "60 Minutes" program segment hosted by the tired and aging anchorman.

CBS News president Andrew Heyward kept his job after the report was issued but three senior-level people were "asked to resign" and the segment producer, Mary Mapes, was "fired." Please tell me what is the difference between "asked to resign" and "fired?" The only thing I can think of is if you resign you can't collect unemployment and you can if you're fired. Maybe CBS asked the three to resign because it is a cost-saving effort so they wouldn't have to pay its share of unemployment. Sounds like CBS, but it certainly doesn't save face for anyone.

The announcement of the Mapes firing came on the same day as the trial of the Abu Ghraib torturer, Army Spec. Charles Graner, was going on in Fort Hood, TX. It's ironic that Rather, Heyward, Rumsfeld, and Gonzales go free while the lowest people on the respective totem poles are being blamed, punished, or put on trial.

So CBS News is doing the same thing that the White House, whose leader it apparently couldn't wait to criticize, is doing--protecting its president and passing down the crap. Thus it was ever so in politics and in the MSM (main-stream media, which Jay Rosen of the Press Think blog calls the legacy media).

Posted by Charles Warner at 11:37 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Print |

Dana Harmon at January 12, 2005 11:29 AM writes:

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The NY Times Helps Itself

On Monday, January 10, my issue of BusinessWeek arrived in the mail with a cover story titled "The Future of the New York Times," a subhead that read "Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. has his hands full: Weaker earnings. A changing media world. Political pressure. A scandal's lingering aftermath. He also has an ambitious business plan."

In Anthony Bianco's inside cover story, Arthur comes off pretty well, considering the Jason Blair scandal, having to fire his hand-picked editor, Howell Raines, and a slumping stock price. In the article, Bianco writes:

THE TIMES HAS MANY FEWER READERS outside of New York City than do the two largest national newspapers -- USA Today and The Wall Street Journal -- both of which have circulations far in excess of 2 million. 'Those two papers tend to be a more cost-effective buy than the Times just because their circulation across the country is so much larger,' says Jeff Piper, vice-president and general manager of Carat Press, a big media buyer. Even in the New York region, where the Times reaches only 14% of all adult readers, the paper's circulation is too diffuse to allow for effective targeting by ZIP Code -- a technique that has enriched many other metro dailies with revenue from inserts."

On Tuesday morning, January 11, I received my copy of The New York Times. The lead story in the Business Day section was headlined "Your Daily Paper, Courtesy of a Sponsor," by Jacques Steinberg and Tom Torok, and had a subhead that read, ""Publishers Increasingly Count Unsolicited Deliveries as Sales." The gist of the lengthy article was that a large percentage of many major newspapers' circulation is delivered by third parties (some circulation is even sponsored by marketers such as American Furniture Warehouse in Denver). A graph showed ten newspapers ranked according to "Third-Party Sales as Percentage of Total Circulation." Ranked number one was USA Today (18%) and ranked third was The Wall Street Journal (8.4%).

The subtle, unstated, but obvious message of the article to anyone who is familiar with newspaper circulation trends and statistics (especially to buyers of newspaper advertising)is that the daily circulation of The New York Times (1,170,000 according to BusinessWeek) was worth more than the daily circulation of its two biggest national competitors: USA Today (2,635,412) and The Wall Street Journal (2,101,017) because it had much lower third-party circulation and free circultion than the other papers.

The Tuesday article also dissed free newspapers and included a quote from an executive of a large newspaper advertising-placement company (Newspaper Services of America) who said, "Third-party distribution is not targeted at the most attractive prospect."

I'm sure that the research for the Times story had taken weeks, but Sulzberger also knew that the BusinessWeek story was coming out weeks before it arrived in homes and on newstands. I find it too much of a coincidence that the two stories appeared in the same week for it to be unplanned. BusinessWeek points out that USA Today and The Wall Street Journal are more efficient buys and a Times story disses the two papers' circulation as too third-party--disses in a very professional, well-researched, subtle manner, but diminishes its competitiors' circulation nevertheless.

It's also interesting that the Times story degraded free, third-party circulation a week after it paid $16.5 million for a 49 percent interest in the free Metro Boston daily newspaper that will compete with its own Boston Globe, which the January 11 Times story listed as ranking number eight in third-party circulation with 4.4%.

So it appears like someone on high is saying, make the core brand, the Times, look good no matter what. And that's the problem I see in the January 11 Times story about third-party newspaper circulation-- it appears to be self-serving on the same week that the leading business weekly magazine questions its growth strategy and flat daily circulation. It smells fishy.

Posted by Charles Warner at 05:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Print |

January 07, 2005

Computerized Creativity

In the January 3, 2005, issue of Advertising Age, the lead story by Jack Neff was headlined "P&G Programs Computer to Rate Creativity" with a sub-headline of "Evaluates Non-Roster Shops."

Neff writes, "Proctor & Gamble Co. has put in place a computerized system that uses advertising awards--including a measure of awards per client dollar spent--to rate the creative output of its agencies and others. It's the latest of several steps by the once-staid marketer to improve creativity of its ads, and could be used to determine brand assignments."

Is this scary or what? Can a computer program determine if a commercail is creative? Television commercials are all about eliciting an emotional response from viewers, about connecting consumers emotionally to a product--often with humor. Even the supercomputer Hal in Kubrik's classic 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey" didn't have emotions and it certainly didn't have a sense of humor--couldn't laugh. Maybe P&G has magically discovered a computer program that can laugh and cry, but I doubt it.

Also, by basing its definition of creativity on how many awards a commercial receives, P&G inadvertantly is not encouragng creativity, but is, in fact, supressing it. One of the leading researchers in the area of creativity is Teresa M. Amabile, a professor at the Harvard Business School. In two books (The Social Psychology of Creativity, 1983, and Creativity in Context, 1996) Amabile reports on several experiments on creativity that show that rewards and competition are two things that tend to diminish creative output.

In one typical experiment, children were randomly assigned to two groups and sent to rooms full of art supplies--crayons, finger paints, construction paper, scissors, glue, etc. One group was told to go in the room and have fun creating art. The other group was told they were to create art for an art contest and that winners would recerive a big supply of candy. Experts judged the results and the group that wasn't promised a reward and didn't feel the pressure to compete for a prize or an award created the most creative art.

Study after study using a similar format with children and adults and using painting and poetry came to the same conclusion--that rewards and competition diminish creative output because people try to second guess what they think judges will like and, thus, fail to think outside the box and be truly creative.

P&G might have good intentions in trying to computerize creativity based on awards, but the software will merely evaluate the best of a stifled group of commercials. Also, because P&G is the world's biggest advertiser, ad agencies will more than likely go to extreme measures to win P&G TV commercial business, which might well introduce corruption into the commercial awards process.

As Hal would say, the process dosen't compute.

Posted by Charles Warner at 11:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Print |

January 05, 2005

Bellwether Deals

Several deals last year and this week potend more of the same in 2005.

Viacom bought KVOR-TV, its CBS-affiliated television station in Sacramento, from the Sinclair Broadcasting Group for $285 million. The purchase gives Viacom two stations in Sacramento (UPN affiliate KMAX is the other station) and increases its national reach closer to the 35 percent allowed by the FCC.

The sale was announced December 3 of last year after Sinclair had been under a lot of criticism for running an anti-Kerry documentary in prime time on most of its television stations before the November election. Many national advertisers weren't thrilled with Sinclair partisan approach and cancelled some advertising. This week Staples announced it was pulling its advertising from the Sinclair stations-- it looks like Sinclair sold KVOR-TV just in time.

But the most interesting thing about the sale was that it is just one more example of big media getting bigger and probably signaling that the FCC will try again, now that Bush has been re-elected, to raise the local television station ownership limit--probably to 40 percent of US homes reached--in the coming year. Remember that Sumner Redstone, Viacom's cranky, rich chief executive, announced before the election that even though he was a life-long Democrat that we was going to vote for Bush because it was "good for Viacom." And raising the ownership cap would be good for Viacom, so it looks like Viacom anticipated the cap being raised when it bought the Sacramento TV station.

Dow Jones & Company, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, bought the Web site CBS MarketWatch in November of last year for $519 million. This deal was interesting for a couple of reasons. First, who would have thought five years ago that a Web site would be worth almost twice as much as a major-market television station? Second, Dow Jones outbid Viacom, which owned 22.4 percent of CBS MarketWatch because it was one of the sites original backers (and, thus, its name), The New York Times Company, and Yahoo. Dow Jones must have wanted CBS MarketWatch pretty badly to pay over half a billion dollars. It did so because its strategy is to expand its Web presence and traffic and combine advertising sales with its Wall Street Journal Web site, which is subscription based.

In other words, Dow Jones figured it was more profitable in the long run to buy Web traffic than to try to expand and grow the Wall Street Journal site--probably a good decision.

The Washington Post Company had the same idea when it bought the online magazine or Websize, Slate.com, from Microsoft last week. Slate has excellent content and some of the best, most quoted writers in cyberspace, but Slate.com wasn't growing substantially or delivering a lot of incremental traffic to Microsoft's MSN or MSNBC (partner with NBC). The Post gains traffic and several great writers and Microsoft gets out of a business it doesn't understand.

Buying Slate.com was a good deal for The Washington Post Company, but what did it mean for Microsoft? Could it be that Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer have decided to get out of the Web content business? Perhaps they will sell MSNBC, the best of the online news Web sites and shut down MSN.com. MSN isn't growing like it once did now that people are switching to broadband--they don't need an ISP, as AOL has discovered to its horror. So Microsoft has to get big if it wants to stay in the Web content and advertising sales game. That means it has to either buy AOL, which I suggested some time ago, or get out of the game entirely and sell MSN. I wouldn't be at all suprised to see it do the latter.

Time Inc., a division of Time Warner, this week agreed to acquire Essence Communications Partners, the publisher of Essence magazine. Time Inc., therefore, also decided to buy growth and circulation.

And, finally, The New York Times Company this week paid $16.5 million for a 49 percent stake in Metro Boston, a free daily newspaper targeted to young commuters and with a daily circulation of about 300,000. Metro Boston is similar to AM New York Metro New York, and the Washington Post's Express, free tabloid papers that feature short articles and more celebrity news to attract readers in their 20s and 30s. The NY Times Company also owns The Boston Globe which has a circulation of 452,000.

So The NYTimes Company, too, is buying growth, but in doing so, it is, like the Wall Street Journal, Time, and the Washington Post admitting defeat in trying to grow one ore more of its brands. All of these media are coming to the realization that they can't be all things to all people, especially Web-savvy younger people, and that they have to diversify, which, of course, further fragments and segments audiences.

But all of these moves toward consolidatiom of media ownership and fragmentation of audience is driven by one overidding goal--selling advertising effectively and efficiently. Putting several media under one sales roof accomplishes this goal and we will see a lot more of this type of consolidation for advertising sales purposes in 2005.

Posted by Charles Warner at 10:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Print |

January 03, 2005

Major Media Slow on Relief

Many major media Web sites were slow on linking to sites where people could donate money to help the relief effort for victims of the horrible South Asia tsunami.

For several days after the tsunami hit South Asia, I checked the Web to see what sites helped people donate to a relief fund. Some of the first were Amazon.com, eBay.com, and Apple.com. Amazon.com had a prominent link to the Red Cross at the top of its home page. eBay.com had a small link on the top of its home page that read "Tsunami Disaster Relief." Apple.com had the largest, most prominent link on its home page--to the Red Cross (large) and to other sites, including UNESCO, with smaller buttons at the bottom of the page. Yahoo had a small banner near the top of its home page, under the Search banner and titled "Tsunami Aid" with the Red Cross, Unicef, AmericaCares, and Oxfam listed.

AOL had nothing on its welcome screen for five days, and then, before that (and not in the first few days) a link for donating money was only to be found on the AOL News site and then not in a prominent position.

Kudos to Apple, Amazon.com, eBay.com, and Yahoo for reacting quickly and putting relief links in a prominent position (especially Apple). Shame on AOL for reacting slowly and inadequately.

I also checked two other news sites, in addition to AOL's, to see how they covered the disaster and relief efforts. The two most popular pure Internet news sites are CNN.com and MSNBC.com. As of today, 1/3/2005, neither site had a link to disaster relief sites, which I believe raises a question of journalistic practice. Should a news Web site encourage people to donate money to a worthy cause, in this case the tsunami disaster relief?

Obviously the editors of CNN and MSNBC thought the answer was "no." The editorial decision makers at these two sites must have felt that putting any links that would encourage people to donate money to the tsunami disaster would somehow compromise their editorial integrity, credibility, and supposed objectivity.

I don't agree. I think news sites should encourage people to give to a tsunami relief fund and link to sites were they can do so. Both CNN.com and MSNBC.com carried stories today about movie actress Sandra Bullock giving $1 million to a relief fund. Both sites carried the story about President Bush appointing his father and Bill Clinton to head a nation-wide effort to encourage people to give private donations. What would have been so wrong about having a link near these stories to relief fund Web sites?

Apple, Amazon.com, eBay, and Yahoo (and many other popular Web sites, I'm sure) gained public support and good will by responding quickly and giving help to people who wanted to give help to the victims of the horrendeous disaster. CNN, MSNBC, and other news sites that didn't help people give seemed cold and unresponsive.

I wouldn't want a newspaper or a reliable news Web site to encourage giving to just any "worthy cause," because the definition of a worthy cause or relief might mean different things to different people. I'm sure many people thought giving money to John Kerry to try to defeat George Bush was a very worthy cause. However, I believe the news media is ducking its humanitarian responsibility by not using its power to inform people how they can help victims of such an enormous natural disaster as the tsunami. By deciding that they don't encouraging giving to worthy causes as a matter of policy, the news media takes the easy way out and avoids making difficult decisions about which causes or relief efforts to support. This kind of thinking is a coward's way out, and a greedy coward at that.

I guess that CNN.com wanted to remain objective and impartial about disaster relief, but it didn't mind being non-objective and partial to its Time Warner-owned siblings, Time and Business 2.0 magazines, which were displayed and linked to at the bottom of its home page--partial to its business family, but impartial and uncaring about the families and victims of the tsunami.

If the news media and its editors want people to like them better, they had better show more heart, more caring, and more humanity--like Apple and Sandra Bullock did.

Furthermore, I encourage anyone who reads this entry to please give as much as you can to aid the victims of the tsunami. I gave to the Red Cross, and here's the link.

Posted by Charles Warner at 09:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Print |