New site, The Footnotes of MadMen, gives the details of the verisimilitude. Wonder what’s up with The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife (the Japanese painting with the woman and the octopus) or London Fog advertising? No doubt, in the future, we will see a VH1 brand extension to Pop-Up Madmen.
This story (thanks @cameronreed) ) claims that iTunes has made a score in grabbing Mad Men from Canadian broadcasters. My view is that this merely demonstrates how there is no such thing as Canadian broadcasting, only a sort of legal piracy.
1 The idea that Canadian networks will commission original, quality programming is, of course, laughable.
2 According to a rough look at StatsCan by me, there are 11m households in Canada and 14m cable subscribers.
Five key reasons why newspapers are failing
Bill Wyman has written a 9,000 word magnum opus on how the mainstream newspapers have blown it. It’s an excellent read but his summation deserves to be highlighted.
1) Go hyper local; devote all resources, from reporting to front-page space, to local news. No one cares what the Pittsburgh Post-Dispatch has to say about Iraq.
2) Redesign the websites to present users with a single coherent stream of news stories and blog entries. Create simple filters to allow them to tailor the site to their preferences.
3) Tell the union you won’t be touching salaries, but that all work rules are being suspended, including seniority rights. Tell all reporters that they’re expected to post news if word of it reaches them in what used to be thought of as “after hours.”
4) Get out of the mindset of “nice” coverage. Tell the reporters to find the “talker” stories in town—development battles, corrupt pols, anything with a consumer bent. Monitor web traffic to find out what people are interested in. If a particular issue jumps, flood the zone. Make each paper the center of every local debate, no matter how trivial, and make finding and creating those debates the operation’s prime job.
5) Create chain-wide coverage of all areas where it can be done. It’s sad, but it means laying off a lot more film critics and dozens of other duplicated positions. For such positions, do this. Hire two people to cover the beat for the chain. Make them into sparring partners, arguing about each new TV show, movie, CD, traveling Broadway show, concert tour etc. Get out of the business of being promotional. Give your readers sharply argued opinions, something fun to read they can’t get anywhere else.
6) Create local listings second to none. Create them from the users’ point of view. Don’t use abbreviations. Overwhelm users with insider information that only locals know; where to park, where to sit, when to go, etc. Get rid of all the site navigation levels no one cares about. Put the information people want front and center.
7) Devote as much manpower as possible to creating must-read local news blogs. Tell the bloggers to work the phones and IMs, finding out about every personnel change, every office move, any tidbit. Support and cite local bloggers in the same areas. Yell at staff members if they are consistently being scooped by (unpaid) competitors.
8) Create and maintain a wiki designed ultimately to function as an encyclopedia for the town, from neighborhoods and politicians to every retail establishment. Let it become the ultimate guide to the area. Like Wikipedia, it will inevitably contain information that is controversial. Cover the controversies with alacrity.
9) Serve the community. Don’t publish crap. Tell folks stuff they might not want to hear. Grow a pair.
It’s not easy running a film mag in Iran when your stories are censored and the movies themselves are restricted from distribution.
The advertising life of John Hughes
Before He Became a Film Legend, John Hughes Was an Adman
The Smoking Gun reveals the amazing story of Pranknet, a Windsor, Ontario-led group that would phone fast-food restaurants, convince the staff that they were about to be burned by an invisible gas and must strip naked and urinate on each other to neutralise it.
Catwalk Queen, Kiss and Make Up, Bag Lady, Shoewawa, Crafty Crafty, Dollymix, Trashionista, Shiny Gloss, Star Trip and Nollie, the fashion blogs of now-in-administration Shiny Media, have been snapped up by Shiny’s orginal backers, Bright Station
Mike Sacks wrote the new book And Here’s the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers On Their Craft. Except he had 25 conversations. It’s too bad that this one with Roz Chast, one of herself’s favourite cartoonists, met the chop. She’s great.
Shortlist, the weekly free men’s mag, is launching its counterpart for women, Stylist, in September. So, that’ll be Stylist on Wednesdays, Shortlist on Thursdays, and Sport and Friday. That only leaves two days of opportunity left.
The UK edition of Esquire is using hardcover book binding for its September number. Unless you are a subscriber or live outside the Great Wen, then you will get the regular version.