Bloggasm

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.

Because that’s the only explanation that I can think of for why The Atlantic has a cover story on Britney Spears.

Look at the cover below, it doesn’t even look like The Atlantic, but rather one of the tabloid magazines you find in a grocery store. The publishers at that magazine must be really desperate:

Here are some media-related links for your amusement:

1. A gay porn company has been exposed in an HIV scandal, resulting in several DVDs being taken off the market.

2. Apparently The New Yorker is on a hiring binge, welcoming in two new writers: Ariel Levy and Kelefa Sanneh. Since that’s my dream job, I’m definitely jealous.

3. If there was an award for melodramatic blog posts, this one would get it. Will a Gawker media blog cause a string of suicides? Not likely, though he does make some good points.

4. This article isn’t about media or journalism, but should be read as an example of what excellent new journalism is.

5. Why it would be stupid for a media company to try and buy up an A-list blog.

Here are some media-related links for your amusement:

1. The American Journalism Review wonders how many journalists use Wikipedia as a source, and whether it’s becoming acceptable.

2. Poor people use Yahoo. Educated people use Google.

3. NYT Makes Comma Error Inside Semicolon Article. The irony!!

4. “Sometimes I read old articles from the National Review and I think, where did that spirit of frank, open racism go?”

5. The background story on how and why the New York Times published its silly hit piece on John McCain yesterday.