FRIDAY'S LINKS: Google Tests Video Ads, Tribune in Trouble, Prosecutors Link BALCO's Conte to Grand Jury Leaks

By: E&P Staff In today's edition, Google tests ads for online video, an analysis of Chandler/Tribune behind the scenes man Thomas Unterman, and a convention of obituary writers.


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Note Brings it all Back to High School
Washington Monthly: "No doubt [The Note's] incestuous and over-the-top backslapping is meant to be taken somewhat tongue-in-cheek. (The Note does boast a sense of humor.) But after a while, the compliments--the egregious stroking of the press--become so pervasive that readers suspect The Note actually believes the press valentines, that New York Times columnist John Tierney is "successful and dashing," that his colleague Adam Nagourney is a "poet/historian," that former U.S. News & World Report's Roger Simon flashes "brilliance, ?lan, and grace," that the work of Time's Mike Allen is "indescribably delicious," that Newsday's Glenn Thrush is "super savvy and smart," and that "Time's [former managing editor] Jim Kelly is more powerful than all but 23 United States Senators."


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Loophole Wizard Is Key to Chandler-Tribune Rift
Los Angeles Times: Thomas Unterman, a wizard at crafting highly complicated corporate transactions that stymied the Internal Revenue Service. has become perhaps the most important behind-the-scenes figure in the current battle over the future of Tribune Co., which acquired Times Mirror in 2000. As Tribune's second-largest shareholder, the Chandlers have called for a breakup or sale of the company after a bitter conflict with management over some of the financial structures Unterman originally put in place as a Tribune executive.


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Tribune in Trouble
Economist: It is hard to dismiss the Chandlers' complaints. As their letter says, ?One of the core strategies underlying the merger with Times-Mirror was the synergistic growth opportunities of cross-ownership.? In simpler English, Tribune's newspapers and TV stations would share editorial content, offer joint packages to advertisers and, with papers and TV stations in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, reach 80% of the population. The reality is that readers, viewers and advertisers have found other attractions, notably the internet.


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MySpace Urged to Limit Children's Access
Wall Street Journal: MySpace.com, the social-networking Web site owned by News Corp., came under pressure yesterday to take further steps to limit children's access to the site. At a conference on Internet safety, the attorneys general from two states challenged assertions by a MySpace executive who argued that there was no way for the Web site to verify the ages of people signing up for membership. Children under age 14 aren't supposed to join MySpace, while children ages 14 and 15 are given extra levels of protection on the site. But many lie about their ages and -- like most Web sites -- MySpace makes no attempt to verify the ages of those who register.


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The Uses and Abuses of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
The Nation: "[A] fundamental contradiction -- some might say criminal negligence -- did make its way into some of the coverage of the Administration's capture and killing of Zarqawi, but almost always as a sidebar or an aside to the less complicated story of good triumphing over evil," writes Eric Alterman. "A special place in pundit purgatory might be reserved for armchair warriors Christopher Hitchens and William Kristol, who took the opportunity to attempt to score a rhetorical victory over the war's opponents."


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Google Is Testing Ads for Video Service
New York Times: the search engine company, said yesterday that it had started testing advertisements on its video site, matching a capability long offered by other major Internet sites. Until now, Google Video had offered programmers -- as varied as Hollywood studios and backyard camcorder fans -- the opportunity to make their work available free or for a fee. In Google's test, videos from a small number of providers who had initially charged fees for downloads will be offered free with advertising. These include Mr. Magoo cartoons and episodes of "The Charlie Rose Show."


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Prosecutors Link BALCO's Conte to Grand Jury Leaks
SF Chronicle: Federal prosecutors say Victor Conte, founder of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, gave a Chronicle reporter information about the proceedings of a grand jury that was investigating BALCO for supplying performance-enhancing drugs to star athletes. The government's assertions, contained in portions of a federal court filing on Wednesday that were meant to be sealed from public view, stop short of accusing Conte of being the source of grand jury transcripts of testimony by Barry Bonds and other athletes reported in Chronicle articles and in a book by Chronicle reporters.


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Huffington Dis-Invites Blogger for Bad Comments
Huffington Post: Arianna Huffington says her blog disabled Peter Rost's password because of "His refusal to act as part of our online community." She goes on to explain the commenting system, and defends a member of her staff who was charged with anonymously dissing Rost in the comments section.


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Death Is the Story of Their Lives
USA Today: "There are obit websites (obitpage.com), obit clubs (Friends of Obits in Atlanta), obit blogs (obituaryforum.blogspot.com), even obit-writing classes, so you can write your own before you go," writes Craig Wilson. "If that's not enough, a new magazine, appropriately titled Obit (obitmag.org), is expected to launch in January, and Marilyn Johnson's The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries received rave reviews this spring. Ghoulish, you say? Not at all. A weekend convention of obit writes was a mixture of scholarly discussion (analyzing a variety of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi obits) and comedy act (a search for the best obit headline, real or imagined)."


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Finding Billionaire to Buy 'LA Times' May Be Tall Order
LA Times: "The Tribune board includes three disgruntled representatives of the Chandler family that once owned The Times, and they think the Tribune survival strategy of buying back stock and slashing $200 million more out of the budget is a loser," writes Steve Lopez. "Since the Chandlers owe Los Angeles for selling off the paper to out-of-towners (can anyone imagine a New York Times owned by someone in Chicago?), they ought to be lining up a local buyer and arguing that the Tribune company can make a fortune by selling The Times. Will this be easy? No, and it won't be cheap either, but we need the Chandlers and the local big shots to spark an investor revolt."