Feral Beast: Playboy drops, shares droop

Monday, May 12, 2008

Playboy drops, shares droop

Is Playboy irrelevant in the internet age? The Hugh Hefner empire is on a losing streak, and may end up just marketing its bunny ears and other branded items instead of those famous articles for which its readers always claim they bought the venerable magazine-cum-strokebook.

Second quarter losses of $3.1m were bad news for the adult entertainment empire, now run by Hefner's daughter Christie, according to Reuters. The wide availability of free porn downloads seems to have eaten into the demographics Spreadsheet may trump centerspread, foldout or not.

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Feral Beast? Try Lemming

If the press were an animal, what kind of animal would it be? I’ve got my answer. A legion of lemmings, furry and well-intentioned, but ultimately condemned by their nature to follow each other mindlessly off a tall cliff, over the Paris Hilton peak or into the Invade Iraq crevasse. The words “feral beast” certainly wouldn’t come to mind. It’s not particularly accurate or particularly evocative. But that is how the departing British prime minister, Tony Blair, sees journalists: as malicious tormentors who have tried to tear him limb from limb.

--Gal Beckerman of the Columbia Journalism Review

“Journalism is a form of cartography,” write Tom Rosenstiel and Bill Kovach of Pew. “It creates a map for citizens to navigate society. Inflating events for sensation, neglecting others, stereotyping or being disproportionately negative all make a less reliable map.”

"Journalism is good at solving small problems or taking small bites of a big problem. It’s not good at solving big problems." Adapted from David Simon, creator of The Wire.

Retrospective : five decades of journalism as reported by CJR

Fake AP Stylebook reminds us: Unless you're doing a story on the Muppets, you are not a gonzo journalist.

"The once idealized information superhighway has become a parking lot of error, misinformation, rumor and junk." Poynter Institute, advocating a broader definition of who is a journalist.