By: E&P Staff
In today's edition, AOL is restating profits going back as far as six years, a Washington Post reporter is rebuked by top editor Len Downie for speculative comments he made about Israel's Lebanon withdrawal, and Jack Shafer says the press has nothing to be ashamed of in its coverage of the JonBenet Ramsey story.***
No JonBenet Apologies NecessaryJack Shafer in Slate: [Thursday morning found] at least four press-hounds baying their apologies to the Ramseys on behalf of their colleagues or society at large. They beg the family's forgiveness for having ever suspected them of killing JonBenet. If you're down on your knees for me, gentlemen, please stand up. We have nothing to apologize for. The riotous coverage of the endless murder investigation won't be recorded as journalism's finest hour, but the story deserved the punishing scrutiny the press gave it.
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AOL Adds Another $584 Million to Restatements of Ad SalesNew York Times: While AOL has based its new strategy on increasing advertising revenue, the ghosts of the old AOL continue to reduce sales it put on its books years ago. Time Warner yesterday restated another $584 million related to revenue booked by its AOL division shortly after the two companies? 2000 merger, bringing to more than $1.26 billion the total sales that AOL booked improperly over several years.
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Washington Post Editor Rebukes His Reporter for Television Comments on IsraelNew York Sun: The executive editor of the Washington Post, Leonard Downie Jr., has rebuked one of his Pulitzer-Prize winning reporters for suggesting on television that Israel was purposely leaving Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon "because as long as they're being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations." The action came as [former NYC Mayor Ed] Koch and the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America pressed the Post on the issue. The reporter in question, Thomas Ricks, is the author of a new book, "Fiasco," sharply critical of the Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq.
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Click to DownloadEconomist: The point [that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos] is making today is that nothing has changed: the pioneer of online retailing is still having to place big bets on the future, cutting into profit margins and unnerving some investors. Having established the internet as somewhere to buy things, Amazon is again spending heavily on development in anticipation of consumers wanting to download music, video and books instead of having them delivered in the post. Amazon is highly secretive about its plans, but the online industry expects it soon to launch a service for downloading films and television shows.
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Politicos Beware: You Live in YouTube's WorldChristian Science Monitor: We've always known the power of video, but now everybody in the world with a cellphone or a small high-res camera and broadband" can get in the act, says Michael Cornfield, an expert on the Internet and politics who teaches at George Washington University. "YouTube is the last link in the system, which is, now 'I can go find it.'" For several years, political advisers have been instructing their clients to Google themselves and check their Wikipedia entries. "Now the third station of the cross is you've got to YouTube yourself," says Mr. Cornfield. "You have to know just what you look like and how many people are hitting on and redistributing your video."
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Google's Two-Year IPO AnniversaryBambi Francisco in Marketwatch: Today, Google's market valuation is $115 billion, up $94 billion in two years. EBay's market cap stands at $36 billion while Yahoo's at $39 billion. In June 2004, Google had 34.5% of the search market share, according to comScore Networks. In June 2006, Google had 44.7%. Two years ago, Google had 2,292 employees and raised $1.6 billion in its IPO. Today that amount raised is, oh, just a little less than 20% of the roughly $9.8 billion the search giant has in the bank. Google now has 7,900 employees.
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Ebert's Recovery Could Take MonthsLos Angeles Times Blog Channel Island: Film critic Roger Ebert suffered another health setback earlier this month, but friends and coworkers of the "Ebert & Roeper" co-host remain guardedly optimistic about his condition. Ebert, who has been hospitalized in Chicago since June, underwent his third surgery in as many months on Aug. 6. He was treated for a recurrence of salivary cancer in June; the following month, surgeons repaired a burst blood vessel.
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'Denver Post' Breaking News on the Web FirstWestword: More people than ever are reading material from the Post and other dailies across the country. But because a growing percentage are doing so online -- where ad revenues are still rather puny -- instead of subscribing to physical products, profits are falling, layoffs are becoming commonplace, and plenty of insiders are spending time complaining about the unfairness of it all instead of trying to figure out how to survive the historic transition now under way.
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