The buzzword is “revenue” as in “paid content” as in “finding a new way to separate readers from money.
With the New York Times planning to create a “frequent reader program” that will charge those who read the paper’s content online, other newspapers are joining in the feeding frenzy.
Good idea?
Good question.
Wow. Britney Spears can’t even catnap without it becoming a national story.
Reports The Associated Press:
Britney Spears finally appears to be acting like a new mom. The pop princess, who recently made headlines for a rash of less-than-motherly hard partying, fell asleep in a Las Vegas nightclub early Monday shortly after leading the New Year’s Eve countdown, her manager said.
“By about one o’clock, she was just done, so we took her out,” Spears’ manager, Larry Rudolph, told The Associated Press Monday. “She was not drunk. She was just tired and falling asleep.”
Wonder if she was wearing underwear?
The Washington, DC Area Film Critics Association picked United 93 as their choice for best film of the year.
No, this is not a joke.
Widespread reaction to Howard Stern’s first days on Sirius sat radio:
From Howard Reich at the Chicago Tribune:
The words tumbled out in a torrent–vulgar descriptions of body parts, bodily functions and the kinkiest sexual practices.
The speakers seemed to revel in the telling, reiterating the blue
phrases like a mantra, then laughing uproariously at each repetition.
But was it funny? Was it supposed to be?
Each listener who tuned in Monday morning to Howard Stern’s debut on
Sirius Satellite Radio answered those questions individually, for humor
remains as subjective as any other art form.
Yet to those who
work in comedy, Stern–and those who follow him into the anything-goes
realm of satellite radio–faces a steep artistic challenge. For if
anyone on satellite can say anything, will audiences be amused by
streams of profanity for long?
“My experience is that unless
you keep some kind of taboo, you lose the force of any kind of
language,” said Bernard Sahlins, co-founder of Chicago’s long-standing
comedy troupe Second City, interviewed before Stern’s satellite debut.
“If the language becomes generally broadcast, approved, misused, it becomes meaningless.
“It has neither mystery nor effectiveness,” Sahlins said.
The new Howard Stern satellite radio show began Monday with all the expected hoopla.
He
put to rest rumors that he married his longtime girlfriend, model Beth
Ostrosky — in a comment complete with a federally banned expletive.
“I
am not married. It’s a nice feeling that we get along great. We’re very
happy and I don’t want to (expletive) it up,” said Stern, who is
finally free of government decency laws on Sirius Satellite Radio Inc.
(Channel 100).
Stern has promised everything from stripper poles
to live sex on his new show. Yet he maintained his show was more about
ideas. Cursing, he said, would be part of the natural progression of
speech.
“I feel this is a culmination of dreams for me,” Stern said in an on-air news conference. “The only limit is our mind,” he said.
My take:
I’ve
never found Stern funny. He’s the obnoxious kid from school who
delights in yelling dirty words to shock people, a buffoon who
substitutes obscenity for humor and then claims it’s all about free
speech.
It ain’t. Richard Pryor was both obscene and funny. Stern
is just obscene. There’s a difference and Sirius radio, in a
to-the-death fight with the much larger XM-radio network, is gambling
that it can attract more listeners by putting Stern on the air and
letting him shout “fuck” to his heart’s content.
With luck, their attempt will fail miserably.
David E. Rosenbaum, a longtime editor and reporter in the Washington Rosenbaum, Doctors had operated on Rosenbaum on Saturday to relieve pressure on his brain. D.C. “David was one of the most accomplished journalists of his generation in Washington,” Taubman said last night. “He Rosenbaum
bureau of the New York Times, died yesterday after being beaten and
robbed Friday night near his home in upper Northwest Washington.
63, died at 7:10 p.m. at Howard University Hospital, where he was
treated for a head injury suffered during the attack on Gramercy Street
NW, said Philip Taubman, chief of the Times’s Washington bureau.
police were canvassing the neighborhood yesterday for clues in the
attack, which occurred in a quiet section between Connecticut and
Wisconsin avenues. No arrests had been made.
could do anything, and he did so many things brilliantly,” Taubman
said. “He was an all-time great, versatile reporter who could tackle
any subject” and wrote about the most abstruse matters, particularly in
financial areas, with “remarkable lucidity, speed” and sophistication.
joined the Washington bureau in 1968 and, with the exception of three
years as an editor in New York, had spent his entire Times career
there. He retired late last month but was to continue contributing to
the Times.