My old pals at The Motley Fool are at it again - taking my absolute favorite business hobby horse - reporters who call every appreciating asset class a bubble - and beating it further to death. Their April 1 story includes all the staples of the genre, an obscure analyst who is trying to make a name for himself with an outlandish call, the rush to the internet, obscure charts you won't read, a branded index that explains the problem, apocalyptic third-party quotes and more! Also, as someone who reads Zero Hedge every day, this one was perfect: You'd better... Continue reading

This blog frequently mocks business reporters for announcing crisises that have no victims, such as the non-scourge of people's homes being targeted for burglary based on their social media updates. My rule is that you need at least one or two victims before you can report a problem like that or you're just making stuff up (probably at the behest of a consultant looking to use the media to build a service line). That long introduction is to an admirably compact article by Steve Hargreaves of CNNMoney.com who reported today on risks to U.S. infrastructure from hacker attacks. He opens... Continue reading

In general, I resent gimicky, holiday-driven opportunistic pitches because they almost always lead to vapid, content-free journalism. That said, when they work, they are awesome and such is the case with this TIME story by Brad Tuttle on a couple of retail sites pitching anti-romance on Valentines day. At the specialty resale sites NeverLikedItAnyway and ExBoyfriendJewelry, sellers are encouraged not only to get rid of gifts from their ex-lovers, but also to explain what went wrong with the relationship. “You MUST share your story,” the rules at ExBoyfriendJewelry stipulate. “We want to keep things fun and cathartic so get it... Continue reading

I don't usually blog articles that aren't by journalists but Brad Hoover, CEO Grammarly, had a guest post on Fortune.com this afternoon that was so true - and something I've been guilty of- that I am forced to act. The article is about why the word "try" is poison to managers and why it should be banished from our vocabulary. If you contact a company and request action on an issue, hearing "I'll try" isn't going to alleviate your frustration; as a matter of fact, it's more likely to exacerbate the problem. Likewise, when I hear employees say they will... Continue reading

James Dao of The New York Times reports today that Wal-Mart intends to offer a job to any veteran who wants one for at least two years up to a total of 100,000 positions. I blog this story not because it's particularly groundbreaking journalism - its certainly well written and all but is basically announcement coverage - but because it shows what you can get away with if you have more money than Croesus. In a statement, the first lady, Michelle Obama, who has led a campaign by the White House to encourage businesses to hire veterans, called the Wal-Mart... Continue reading

Susanna Kim of ABC News pens an instant classic today that only goes in the SRTN entertainment file because it didn't happen to me. In the two years that Dobson has lived in his one-story home with his wife, five people--all missing their Sprint cell phones--have come knocking on his door, demanding that he return their handsets. If a GPS tracker for your lost cell phone leads you to Dobson's home, you'll find a sign outside his door in North Las Vegas, Nev., that reads, "No lost cell phones!! This location gives a false 'phone locator' position due to a... Continue reading

Dan Fisher, Forbes' legal reporter, doesn't break a lot of new ground in his take-down today of the "mortgage fraud" settlement announced yesterday but he does repeat a central fact of the story that can't be repeated often enough: The outcome shouldn’t come as a surprise. After I wrote a piece critical of the parallel mortgage settlement with state attorneys general last year,comparing it to the deeply flawed tobacco settlement, I was barraged with comments from critics accusing me of downplaying foreclosure fraud. I responded with one simple question: Has there been a single case in the past five years... Continue reading

A long-term interest of this blog has been the transition from old to new media and cord cutting. The first interest is professional as it affects what tactics and activity are most effective at supporting client goals. The second is personal because I hate how much I pay my local cable provider. David Carr of The New York Times today delivers a typically insightful column on why the dinosaurs of old media are still performing better than their upstart digital competitors. Why? One word - content. The worries about insurgent threats from tech-oriented players like Netflix, Amazon and Apple turned... Continue reading

David Wessel published a column in The Wall Street Journal reporting that 47% of Aetna's employees work from home. I have a complicated history with that issue. In the 1990s and 2000s, I was the office grump on that issue. There was nothing I hated more than a snowy day. I would get up at 4:30 a.m. so I could shovel out, change and make the white-knuckle drive to work at 15 mph. I would then arrive at work on time to a parade of calls from people who reported to me declaring a work-at-home day because of the snow.... Continue reading

David Carr of The New York Times continues to be the most consistently interesting business news columnist covering the media industry - finding ways to make topics that should be inside news-industry baseball broadly interesting, such as today's column on the subject of quote checks. He writes on how more sources are demanding to see their quotes prior to publication and how more journalists are giving in. I've seen this a lot recently myself and even though I'm on the PR side, I generally don't like it. Why? Carr neatly gets at the truth of the situation in this paragraph.... Continue reading

I've always admired Craig's Lists' corporate communciations because of their inability to feel shame or be knocked off message. They communicate authentically and directly and don't seem to care who it upsets. The result: thousands of users and a profitable company. Nick Bilton of The New York Times, however, has finally found a reason to hate the company: it is blocked third-party applications that users have created to make the site more user-friendly. There may be part of the answer in this tale. Eric DeMenthon, a 27-year-old programmer, was one of the users overwhelmed by the site. In 2008 he... Continue reading

We continue to bow to Google's PR team for finding ways to keep positive stories from the increasingly complicated company in the news. Today, they targeted Ian Austen of The New York Times with a pitch about how Google Street Views came to a small inuit village, complete with an awesome picture of a tricyle version of their picture-taking cars. All that would suggest that Google Street View has limited value there. But a pitch to Google from an Inuit man brought a tricycle fitted with Google’s camera system to the streets of Cambridge Bay on Monday as part of... Continue reading

Les Christie, CNNMoney's excellent real estate reporter, today reports that we have reached the real estate media equinox, the time when it stops being a problem that housing prices are falling starts being a problem that housing prices are rising. It just got a little harder for most Americans to buy a home, according to an industry survey. Nearly 74% of the new and existing homes sold in the three months ended June 30 were affordable to families who earn the national median income of $65,000, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and Wells Fargo. To Christie's... Continue reading

SeanReadsTheNews doesn't often feature contributed columns as we mostly stick to reporting by professional journalists, but Seth Goldman, CEO of Honest Tea, whose bottle size falls .9 oz. over Mayor Bloomberg's new legal limit, had such an inspired piece on today's Wall Street Journal editorial page, we're making an exception. What to do if you are a soft drink maker who picked the size of your standard bottle based on what your shipper had in stock when you launched and suddenly find that the Mayor of New York City has made your product illegal? If you're PR team is on... Continue reading

Brad Tuttle of TIME's Moneyland blog today covers an urgent issue facing the American middle class - how do we deal with so much stuff all the time? My personal friends are familiar with my personal Stuff Abatement Program, in which my wife and I are categorically searching our house for stuff we don't need to dispose of and evaluating all ongoing purchases against the odds that whatever is bought will ever be on a shelf unused. My hope is that when we eventually move out, our possessions will fit in the trunk of our car. The UCLA survey that... Continue reading

Virginia Postrel post-"Substance of Style" career has been much more focused on style and glamour than her earlier writings on public policy. Today, she indulges in a long, well-researched column on what shoes say about their wearers that combines her usual interest in style with solid information about culture and economics. The reason to love her unique voice is just that - only one journalist working today would come up with anything close to this: Whether Jimmy Choos, Pumas or Toms, shoes let us stand out as individuals while fitting into similarly shod social groups. The complex relationship between the... Continue reading

Jeff Haden of Inc. Magazine today published an absolute classic "as-told-to" story of an IT person with a dark side as part of a series on really bad firing stories. Basically, he admitted in front a co-worker that he'd cracked a government database and illegally downloaded a bunch of classified information, which led to his firing. What made it most interesting, however, is the heights to which managers will go to protect valuable but flawed assets. First, the HR Director called a meeting between my accuser and my immediate boss, which resulted in an order to terminate me immediately. My... Continue reading

To the Celebrating Audio Theater - Old & New Community, On Thursday night, July 5, the Steering Committee of Celebrating Audio Theater - Old & New met to decide whether or not to proceed with our October convention. As you know, we had set July 1 as our deadline to... Continue reading

Hey everyone, we just wanted to remind everyone that it's only one month to the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention, scheduled for August 9-11 in Hunt Valley, Maryland, another great event for fans of pop culture history. They have a stellar line-up of guests and great programming for old time radio fans... Continue reading

It's rare these days that I stumble across a news article based on a truly ingenious pitch but that was the case today with Claire Suddath's BusinessWeek article on the Waldorf Astoria announcing an amnesty to get back stuff stolen from their hotel. The PR team working for Waldorf did a great evaluation of their story and figured out that of the five Ws, their "who" was the most appealing part. Then they announce an "amnesty" that may or may not get back some old dishes and towels - and there is no way for the media to cover it... Continue reading

It's been a while since we did a "Next Bubble" post and almost as long since we linked Josh Brown, the Reformed Broker, who we've been a big fan of since before he became such a phenomenon. Today, he reports on how to spot a bubble: if Josh Brown gets invited to an investor class's big annual party, it's a bubble. He offers proof. And the real estate bubble, who could've seen that coming? I don't know, but for some reason I was invited to the Tischman Speyer annual summertime bacchanal in 2006, an event at which all of Rockefeller... Continue reading

Several years ago, I arranged for my parents to be featured on a CNN-fn segment on "how to sell your house," which they were doing at the time. CNN sent a camera crew out to old 28 Mohegan Rd. to produce the segment. They wanted to shoot video of my Dad fixing something to use as part of "sprucing it up," section of the segment and they wouldn't let him fake anything. He offered to take apart and put back together a bookshelf for them, for example, but their ethical rules wouldn't allow it. That's a long pre-amble to a... Continue reading

Nick Bilton of The New York Times devotes the Bits Blog today to the dilemma of flight attendants when confronted with smart wrist watches, wi-fi enabled eyeglasses and other fashion- and technology-forward accessories. There’s the Pebble. It’s the new computerized watch that displays data pulled in from an iPhone or Android phone. An Apple iPod Nano, covered by the rules, is already being used as a watch. A number of sensors like the Nike Fuelband and Jawbone Up that track your daily activity are worn on the wrist and send out signals. He goes on to quote the head of... Continue reading

We've added another great voice to the first Celebrating Audio Theater - Old & New convention - Michael C. Gwynne. Gwynne is a character actor, drummer and raconteur who has been a fan favorite at The Friends of Old Time Radio Convention for years. He is known not only for... Continue reading

Dennis Berman of The Wall Street Journal today recalls the history of legendary song-writing community Tin Pan Alley in order to splash cold water on the Applications Development explosion referred to as "Tin Pan Valley." More than a century from the birth of the modern music industry—which coalesced around a few Manhattan blocks known as Tin Pan Alley—a new generation of entrepreneurs has become entranced by the possibilities of software apps. Consumers have downloaded 30 billion iPhone and iPad apps to date, and Apple Inc. AAPL -0.69% alone has already paid out $5 billion to these developers. It's all growing... Continue reading