Best of luck to the members of WGAon their new contract. It had been two½ years since the last contract expired.
My guess is that when the threatened picket line shut down the CBS debate, management started negotiating in good faith.
I, for one, would like to thank the WGA for stopping a debate moderated by Katie Couric, arguably the most useless big media name ever.
Murrow is spinning in his grave.
I was certain that, if there were a winner in the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray wars, it would be HD-DVD. ( here, here, here, here, here, and here)
It’s a cheaper tech, and it’s not controlled by Sony.
Well, the New York Times is now reporting that
NBC Universal and Paramount are seriously considering a switch to Blu-Ray.
I’m not wrong yet, but it seems likely that I will be in the next 12-18 months.
Then again, the end of the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray wars has always seemed to be 12-18 months away.
Paul Krugman has an rather interesting insight into the New Hampshire primary results, specifically he gives us this picture of the Intrade price for “Clinton wins the Democratic nomination” bidding:
These investors in this market, you know the one that is supposed to predict the future, got it completely wrong. In fact, as time went on more and more of them got it wring (the bar graphs are at the bottom). Dr. Krugman notes, “There’s no hint that the market saw either Iowa or New Hampshire coming, or knew anything beyond the bloviations of the talking heads.”
That is the little picture, but there is a bigger picture, and that is that markets are not some sort of magically predictive tool. They are simply a sort of group guessing game.
One of the arguments for the increasing use of arbitrage is that by creating derivatives, like futures market, help the economy, because of their ability to predict future market swings.
The answer is that they don’t. What more, as can be seen on an almost weekly basis, these instruments contribute to price swings, and make commodities more active, by adding another layer of profit taking on the way to market, though, to be fair, they employ no-account Harvard MBAs.
There are cases where futures markets are essential. Without the ability to buy rubber for delivery at a later date, for example, bidding on OEM tires for a car manufacturer would be risky and more expensive, but now we have entities like stock futures, which are unnecessary, make the market more volatile, and encourage speculation at the expense of investing.
He’s a real mixed bag. He blew the whistle on some egregious CIA abuses, but he also outed a lot of agents and caused long term damage to the US intelligence apparatus.
Matthew Yglesias makes a very good point, while Americans complain about various minor personal peccadillos of our politicians, “French President Nicholas Sarkozy got divorced early in his term, is dating a supermodel and his son’s writing songs for radical French rappers”.
His thesis is that not only our concerns small minded, but that our politicians have pretty dull lives.
I agree.
The thing that surprises me is that it’s that this is a Maureen Dowd Op/ED, and I’m not referring to her as a miserable excuse of a human being.
When I walked into the office Monday, people were clustering around a computer to watch what they thought they would never see: Hillary Clinton with the unmistakable look of tears in her eyes.
A woman gazing at the screen was grimacing, saying it was bad. Three guys watched it over and over, drawn to the “humanized” Hillary. One reporter who covers security issues cringed. “We are at war,” he said. “Is this how she’ll talk to Kim Jong-il?”
Another reporter joked: “That crying really seemed genuine. I’ll bet she spent hours thinking about it beforehand.” He added dryly: “Crying doesn’t usually work in campaigns. Only in relationships.”
Though let me say, that MoDo does not come across as any great testimony to humanity in this article either.
Atrios calls them, “…all broken. Complete monsters”, and I’m inclined to agree.
I’m beginning to think that we should abolish Journalism schools, and go back to the old way, paperboy to copy boy to cub reporter to reporter, because the products of Journalism schools seemed to have missed “Humanity 101”.
Of course, these days, I’m not sure how you do the “copy boy” bit.
Let me just offer Ramesh Ponnuru, and the rest of my “friends” at the National Review a hearty:
Ha Ha!!!
BTW, with the exception of Jonah Goldberg, you folks was robbed. Bill Kriston can’t write, can’t think, and can’t get the facts straight. If the NY Times wanted a another reactionary in its OP/ED page, they could have selected someone better, though I find his first column so laughable, it amused me.
Like I’ve said before, I’m not classy. I’ve nearly broken 40 posts using the “schadenfreude” tag.
His proposals are pretty common sense, but they would improve coverage a lot:
Then there’s the additional problem that the longer a reporter spends with a campaign, the more likely they’ll develop either a kind of contempt for the candidate and the campaign or a strange version of stockholm syndrome. Clearly this was the case during 2000 and 2004 when the dislike for both Gore and Kerry was palpable. This might be natural and human, but it breeds awful journalism.
Finally, we have the perenial complaint that the coverage focuses on the horse-race and the theater of the campaign and not on the issues. But I don’t really think that’s the fault of reporters. First, they have to file constantly on short deadlines. So even if Obama releases a tax plan one day, and you write a piece about that, that’s still only a one-day story. What do you write about the next day? Why, Obama sniping with Hillary or somesuch. Second of all, consider the imbalance in expertise between a campaign and those who cover it. When Obama releases a tax plan, it’s a product of a team of policy experts, who know the terrain inside and out. But the reporter who has to file the deadline piece about it doesn’t have any expertise on tax policy. So how could their coverage be anything but shallow?
His proposals:
The only thing that I would add is that, particularly for papers like the LA Times, WaPo, and Times, who can pick and choose their talent, don’t hire innumerate reporters.
I don’t care if you are covering politics, or architecture, or fashion, if you cannot read a balance sheet, you have no business being a reporter.
We are not talking differential equations, or even calculus, we are talking Algebra that should have been mastered in high school.
Well, I made predictions on the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray wars (see here, here, here, here, and here).
Generally, I’ve either bet against Sony, which is generally a safe bet, or against both, the theory that online distribution will render both formats redundant.
Given my previous record, perhaps you want to buy stock in Sony, because Warner Brothers just dropped HD-DVD as a format. They had been using both.
He’s right, of course. What surprises me is that Über wanker Fred Hyatt actually published it. If there is an editorial page that has more consistently and dishonestly supported Bush and His Evil Minions™, I’m at a loss to find them, and I’m including the WSJ editorial page in that.
I will do something very, very, rash.
The Club for Growth types hate him, because he supports campaign finance reform, the religious right hates him, because he called Falwell and Robertson out on being corrupt assholes.
Seriously, is there anyone in the Republican party who actually likes this guy?
Crooks and liars has the video of Robert Kuttner on CSPAN’s “Book TV”:
What was so striking about that book [Greenspan’s The Age of Turbulence], was that half of it is a screed against the need for government regulation—you know, free markets are self-regulating—government doesn’t need to mess with free markets. They’ll correct themselves. And the other half of it is Greenspan’s memoir about all of the times he used the Federal Reserve to bail out failed bets by free markets. Now, how can you have it both ways? Well, if you rule the roost, you can have it any way you want. Fine. But there’s a hypocrisy and there’s a lack of intellectual consistency. Either free markets regulate themselves and the government really shouldn’t do anything—yes, Alan, the Fed is part of the government—or, if you think the markets run the risk of going haywire, you have a duty to regulate on the front end and not just bail them out on the back end. So, I think citizens can raise hell about this and elect people who believe in a managed form of capitalism rather than a predatory form of capitalism.
Yes, Jay Carney intends it to be a joke, but he ‘s really dead serious.
It really is all about them, at for them, so they love McCain because he is accessible, and because he gave them lots of free booze in 2000.
Another reason to dislike the caucuses: we can’t spend the whole day of the vote calling and emailing and texting each other to find out the latest (deeply flawed) exit poll numbers. Instead, we have to sit around and wait until Iowans finish their dinners and trudge to their local church basement or middle school gymnasium, where, after milling around for a while, they’ll declare their presidential preference. We won’t have any results until something like 9 pm EST for the Republicans, 10 or 11 pm for the Democrats. And then the results we do get will be accurate! I mean, where’s the fun in that?
The thing is, he thinks that he’s making a funny, but this is what they really think.
Yep, the “Dean” who has been calling liberals dirty f%$#ing hippies since the 1970s at least, is now saying that Iowa does not really mean anything.
I agree with Matthew Yglesias’s assesment, the media is trying to make Iowa irrelevant because they don’t want Edwards to win.
So, after less than a year, Wal-Mart is abandoning its digital download service.
Its basic features were:
To quote ars technica:
The message here is very clear: draconian DRM and unrealistic pricing are turning consumers away from legitimate retail channels and giving them a big incentive to adopt underground file sharing.
It looks like the New York Times will be offering Bill Kristol a columnist gig for the next year.
It seems to be rather more limited than usual, with only 1 column a week, normally it’s 2, and only a year long contract.
While not as egregious a case as Jonah Goldberg*, Bill Kristol is the beneficiary of “Conservative Affirmative Action”, much as is the brothers Kagan, who all seem to dance from position to position based on little more than who their parents were.
Nepotism is a problem because you end up with idiot sons managing things that they have no business managing. You can refer to Andrew Sullivan’s post about John Podhoretz becoming editor of Commentary if you want it in the short form with lots of snark.
I’m not a fan of Mr. Sullivan, but when he’s on, he can be amusing.
*Seriously, I’m embarrassed by this guy because we share the same nationality†, I know his mom is a “person of note” in the community, but you need to find someone with more of a flair for original thought, like Jayson Blair of Stephen Glass.
†Carrot Top fills me with the same feelings too.
Of course, given their track record recently, I have put them in my investment bank dead pool because of their missteps on the credit crisis, but they have issued a report explicitly stating that the writers demands would have a negligible impact on the industry (Original is sub reqd, excerpt is from Hollywood United):
“From Wall Street’s perspective, we estimate the impact of accepting the [writers’] proposal is largely negligible,” Bear Stearns wrote in a report last week.
The firm estimates that the $120 million figure would carry an average impact of less than 1% on annual earnings per share for the media companies. That does not factor in any concessions by the writers’ side (the WGA), where the principal issue is a desire for a piece of ad dollars from new-media distribution.
The potentially small financial impact suggests that studios (Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers) are more concerned about setting a precedent in new-media revenue sharing. However, Bear Stearns wrote that the writers’ forecast for that market “strikes us as fairly aggressive.” The firm hinted that studios are looking to the future. They are concerned that a favorable settlement would embolden directors and actors in their coming renegotiations.
From the reports that I’ve read, it appears that the chief negotiator is the same guy who suckered the writers on DVDs many years back, and he’s operating on his own need for legacy, and some of the studios, particularly those heavily into TV production, are not happy with him.
In real estate, we have new home sales at a 12 year low, and we have the phenomenon returning of people just walking out on their homes. The pertinent quote is, “Lewis’ comments came as a new expression – “jingle mail” – referring to the growing trend where Americans mail the keys to their homes to the lenders before vacating, entered the US lexicon.”
With all the news, the financial press is finally noticing that maybe, just maybe, those predictions of a quick rebound are a bunch of bullsh@$.
All in all, this is not surprising. News gathering is paid for by ad revenue, sales and subscriptions really only pay for ink and paper, not the words and pictures made with the ink and paper. Given the huge role that real estate pays in ad revenues, it’s unavoidable that the news media, notwithstanding the “Chinese Walls” will be the biggest boosters of real estate this side of Remax.
And in the department of the blindingly obvious, the Journal has an article saying that thecomplex financial instruments have magnified the credit crunch.
Well, duh. As much as people want to talk about innovation and the free market, much of that innovation has a seamy side.
The first man to rob a train was an innovator, and in financial markets we have a long (over 200 years just in the US) tradition of both fraud, and complex activities to benefit one entities, and transfer the downside of these activities to another.
At some point, society has to say that certain activities, like dope dealing and unsafe financial practices, are simply too damaging to society and they must be regulated.
So will Craig Ferguson’s show, which is also produced by Letterman’s sartorially named production company.
The details of the deal have not yet been released, but this should create a significant advantage for both Letterman and Ferguson, not just because they will have writers, those monologues typically take a dozen writers to hammer out, but because there are a lot of guests who won’t cross a picket line, and with World Wide Pants productions, they are not.
As to whether this will lead to Letterman taking back the ratings lead from Leno, only time will tell.
As for me, I may watch Letterman, but I won’t be watching Stewart or Colbert, who will be airing shows without a deal with writers.
John Scalzi, in his blog post, Why We’re All Going to Hell, Part 54,302, makes the point that should be made: When the press covers someone giving away billions of dollars to the hungry, sick, and infirm, and the big story for the media is, “What does this mean for his narcissistic no-talent grand daughter?*“, we are all going to hell, particularly the wankers in the media who have decided to cover it this .
I might further argue that we are already in hell.
*Early in the brief 7 ½ month history of this blog, I made a promise not to mention She Who Must Not Be Named, which was expanded a while back to They Who Must Not Be Named. Therefore, I will not mention her name, or their names, unless they run for office.