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Sci Fi channel got slapped in 2004 when it publicized a supposed rift with film director M. Night Shyamalan over an un-authorized biography when in reality no biography existed, nor did the rift. Both were fictionally created by marketers.

In December 2006, Sony got itself in similar hot water when it created a fake fan website to support its PSP game platform.

Marketers have learned there is a fine line to walk between maintaining the trust of their customers and promoting their products with newly emerging online techniques.   In the Internet publishing world, an online world where everyone has a voice, where anyone can be an author, or a journalist, a videographer or otherwise, credibility is sometimes assumed before its earned but its ongoing maintenance is essential. 

Over the past few days the value systems of the developing blogosphere and Web 2.0 world have been thrown again in the spotlight as Internet Ad publisher Federated Media and some of its higher profile publishing clients from Tech Crunch to GigaOm  have been drawn into a heated  debate over related issues. (Though, this time, unlike with Sony or Sci Fi channel, its been the appearance of impropriety, and not any actual wrong doing, that’s raised discussion Click to Read More

The commercial race to digitize the World’s libraries has, for the most part, been a two horse race with Microsoft and Google battling to sign up the worlds libraries and gain the rights to archive and index their rare, obscure or out of print titles.

Yesterday, in what seems like a natural fit, online retailer Amazon (which started famously as an online book store) joined the race.   In partnership with high-speed scanning company Kirtas Technologies (the same company that has helped Microsoft), Amazon will begin to archive rare titles from public and university libraries special collections.   

Unlike Google and Microsoft, which are largely focusing on making the literary content available freely, Amazon will use the archives it creates to offer reproductions for sale.

The project will be administered through Amazon’s print-on-demand publishing service BookSurge which specializes in printing and selling out of print titles. Amazon bought BookSurge in 2005.

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Microsoft and Google have been racing to digitize the books of the world.  Over the past year, the battle of dueling press releases has seesawed back and forth as each has announced new agreements to digitize and index vast libraries.

The nature of the two companies efforts are different, with Microsoft scanning copyrighted material only if rights–holders opt in to the service and Google’s project scanning everything it can gain access to but only providing limited summaries and background for copyright materials the rights holders haven’t authorized full disclosure of.

The latest two announcements have belonged to Google.  Click to Read More

In a move hinting that Amazon may be interested in offering more than just music at its soon to be launched online music store, Amazon has acquired the nations largest independent audio-book publisher Brilliance Audio.  The terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

Brilliance, which was founded in the 1980s and is based in Michigan, publishes audio titles from best selling authors ranging from Deeprak Chopra to Ken Follett. Brilliance releases twelve to fifteen audio-books a month in MP3 format on CD or for digital downloads.  Amazon currently offers about 100k audio-book titles, approximately one thousand of which come from Brilliance.

In acquiring Brilliance, Amazon will be in a position to leverage its publishing relationships (as well as its own in- house efforts) to expand the availability of the audio book format to a much larger range of titles. Click to Read More

The humorist Erma Bombeck once said “You hear a lot of dialogue on the death of the American family. Families aren’t dying. They’re merging into big conglomerates.”

Looking at some of the biggest corporate acquisitions completed (or in the works) so far this year –, and the power of a few families in those transactions (especially those holding alternate classes of  shares with special voting rights ) – her sentiment may have been more accurate than she intended.

First there was Tribune Co., the countries 3rd largest newspaper company.    It sold to Sam Zell but only after the Chandler family, whose trusts controlled more than 20% of the stock, initiated a strategic review and pushed for its sale.

Now there are two more multi billion dollar sales in discussion, or on the grapevine, where a single family will play a major role:

1.  The Offer:

Today, the Wall Street Journal reported News Corp (Fox, MySpace etc) made a friendly offer of approximately $5billion to acquire Dow Jones, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, Barrons, MarketWatch and owner of  other financial-information services.  The offer constituted a 67% premium over market value (the stock jumped more than 50% to $56.20 a share. 

The deal, even at a premium, could be a valuable addition to News Corps product portfolio. Based on 2006 revenue, the addition would increase News Corp. newspaper and magazine revenue by a $1b/yr  to over $6b (approximately 20% gain).  The Marketwatch property would also provide another news channel to be added to the new MySpace news offerings.  Given the troubled state of the publishing industry, one has to believe that Rupert Murdoch and his team at News Corp see significant value both in combining Dow Jones business news with Fox TV news properties, and also in the online components of the deal (both those already online, and those that could be).

The Family behind the Scenes:  

The Bancroft family holds 24.7% of the outstanding shares of Dow Jones. The voting rights of those shares give them control 64.2% of the company.  So far, the family has rebuffed the offer.  That may be because they aren’t’ interested in selling but that is unlikely. Since 1986 the family has reduced it’s holdings by more than 50%.   More likely is the theory that the rejection is gamesmanship to further drive the price. Click to Read More

Yesterday marked the last day of the print publication of Life Magazine.   The weekly photographic-centric magazine, which for decades refused to die, three times trying to re-invent itself to suit the times (1972, 1978 and 2004),  finally lost its battle with New Media.   It will live on in some form online.

In the early days of modern media when Print  was king, Radio an upcoming prince, and Television just a fledginling beacon, the image-centric, photograph-laden, magazine became an icon. 

Life Magazine was born in the great depression, the name bought from another publication by Time publisher Henry Luce for $92,000.  Life’s  first issue was launched November 23, 1936 and sold for a mere 10cents.  It was the first magazine of its era, of any era,  to give as much emphasis  to photojournalism as to print.  A small sample from  the long list of the notable names who contributed to the magazine and saw their work published on its pages and covers includes Norman Rockwell, Ernest Hemingway,  Mary Ellen Mark, Robert Capa, Gordon Parks, and Alfred Eisenstaedt.

Over the decades Life published some of the most memorable images of the 20th century.; from the conflicts and struggles of war times, to the lifestyles of celebrities, to the achievements and failures of nations.  JFK, Vietnam, Korea, the Civil Rights movement, Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, landing on the moon.  

Photojournalism will forever owe the magazine a debt of gratitude for its influence and support in shaping their industry.   Perhaps the greatest demonstration of this influence dates back to 1944.  Robert Capa, one of the most famed war photographers of all time, landed on the beaches of Normandy for D-Day, side by side with the soldiers of the first wave  shooting images for Life and sending them home.  Capa was the only photographer there.  (In 1954, when Capa was killed by a landmine in Vietnam, he was again working for Life.) 

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In  a conference call yesterday, Yahoo and the so called “Newspaper Consortium,” which was formed in November, and  includes more than 250 newspapers across 44 states including the holdings of large publishers like McClatchy and Media News, announced an expansion of their advertising joint venture. (Notably absent from the Consortium are Gannet and Tribune (the two heavyweights). They have been reported to be developing their own Ad Network. McClatchy was going to be part of that effort but switched course to work with Yahoo)

Initially the papers represented in the Consortium and Yahoo worked together in a partnership for job related advertising with Yahoo’s Hot-Jobs property.  Now, in a second part of what has been described as a three part deal, the two will focus on broader, and more lucrative, joint advertising.

Under the terms of the deal, both Yahoo and the papers Click to Read More