Bloggasm

I was amazed by the beautiful, detailed photography work that went into this month’s The Atlantic. They ran a photo of John McCain and it’s just incredibly cool what they were able to do with his skin.

It turns out afterwards, however, the photographer who was hired to do that shoot then took those pictures, altered them, and then placed them on her website. This has resulted in the magazine’s editor having to issue an apology to the McCain campaign.

Now there’s no doubt that what this woman did was unprofessional. But it also makes me wonder about the relationship between a freelancer and a publisher; should The Atlantic have to apologize on her behalf?

Can we have an awards ceremony specifically for Best Craigslist Ads?

Sigh. I knew I should have stayed in advertising.

So really, I was assigned a story for a (non-smut) mag to watch and rate two people having sex. None of my friends will do it–and I don’t think I’d want to see that anyway–so here I am, trolling Craigslist’s casual encounters with the hopes of finding a normal, heterosexual couple who would be willing to get it on in front of me.

The couple will be completely anonymous in the story (unless they WANT to be ID’d/photographed), and I will not be participating nor doing this to get my rocks off. After all, I am a professional journalist…who isn’t paid nearly enough.

Ideally, you and your partner will be somewhat new to boffing each other and not total exhibitionists, although at this point, I’ll take what I can get. Also, I’m looking to set this up for Monday or Tuesday night, if possible. And I WILL expect to meet somewhere in public first, so I can rule out whether you’re the kind of people who might want to chain me up in your rape room and anally violate me with my tape recorder. (Please don’t be.)

So wanna screw in front of a reporter? Holler.

From an actual profile of actress Julianne Moore:

As Moore swirls a bit of her sunny-side-up yolks, the yellow combines with the richness of the light on her mass of auburn curls and reminds me of the colors so favored by artist Vincent van Gogh. As in his landscapes, there is an earthy yet ethereal quality to Moore.

Is there a magazine version of the Razzies?

In all the news coverage over the controversial New Yorker cover depicting the Obamas as terrorist extremists, I haven’t seen many mentions of other works by Barry Blitt, the artist of that cover. Two of his covers last year — which I’m posting below — were among the best the magazine has featured in years.

This first one had every political cartoonist in America smacking his head, saying, “Why didn’t I think of that?” I’m not even a political cartoonist and that’s what went through my head. It’s easy to guess from seeing it what the two major news stories it’s referencing were:

And here’s another one that really blew me away:

Not long ago I noted that Conde Nast, a magazine publisher, is vastly expanding its online presence — they recently acquired some travel blogs with hints that more acquisitions were soon to follow.

Today we learn that they just bought the popular technology site Ars Technica.

“The site will become part of Wired Digital (which in turn is under CondéNet, run by Sarah Chubb),” reports TechCrunch. “Wired Digital assets include Wired.com and Reddit (acquired in 2006).”

Arrington’s sources tell him that the buying price is somewhere around $25 million, the same it paid for Wired.com back in 2006 when it brought both the Wired site and magazine under the same roof.

It looks as if the magazine company, which already publishes venerable magazines like Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, is securing its place as an online juggernaut.

Though there have been countless news stories on the decline of newspaper advertising revenues and the impending doom of the industry, magazine ad sales have remained mostly steady. It seemed for awhile that they would be able to ward off any major competition from the web. Also, magazines often focus on niche topics — and therefore, niche advertising markets — making it much harder to track general trends in the industry.

But now we have word that the decreases in offline record sales are reverberating to music magazine revenues. “Ad pages for the three biggest music magazines slid 26% in the first quarter,” says Crain’s New York. “Jann Wenner’s Rolling Stone, the category’s iconic publication, saw a 33% drop, according to just-released numbers from Publishers Information Bureau.”

Because music listeners are now purchasing songs online, advertisers are migrating to the web. This makes sense for them, really, because online music offers an advantage over print magazines — impulse buys. If I see an album advertisement in a magazine, I have to have the impetus to leave my house or go to my computer to purchase the song. If I see an advertisement online, in a few click-throughs I can not only sample a song but then quickly follow up with a purchase.

So I was hoping to have a new feature article published by today but unfortunately I wasn’t able to finish it last night. So it looks like it won’t be posted until Monday. In the meantime, here are some media-related links for your amusement.

1. Ever wonder what domain names Google has purchased? It’s always interesting to get hold of one of these lists because sometimes it gives you some insight into future plans for an online company. Well, now we have such a list. I shudder to think what kind of product Google Poo will be.

2. Popular science fiction writer John Scalzi posted a short story online about a week ago and based it on a Radiohead-like honor system for payment. At the end of the week, he posted how much money has been donated. It comes out to about 5.9 cents per word, which isn’t a bad rate for short fiction.

3. Media Shift has an interview with a creator of the Smoking Gun. What’s interesting is the site pulls in so many readers with only three staff members and a very simple Web 1.0 mindset. They’re only just now considering adding blogs to the site.

4. Conde Naste, which mainly focuses on magazine publications, is vastly expanding its online presence. They recently acquired some travel blogs and reportedly are poised to buy up more blogs in the future.