The Sternberg Effect
Blog
Sometimes you need to zoom in to see what's happening
It’s only Tuesday. Well, the last 24 hours have been quite the ride for the media industry and media watchers. (I will not write about Jeffrey Toobin allegedly masturbating in front of his colleagues on Zoom.) On the morning that the Department of Justice formally sued Google for having an illegal monopoly over search and … Continue reading
How conservative media plays the refs
A scrubbed byline and allegations of throttled traffic are the most recent examples. Over the course of my career, there was only one time I took my name off a story. It was a pure marketing play for the publication I was working for, some kind of bullshit award that management wanted to push out … Continue reading
The state of newsroom recruiting
How the media recruiting process is shifting like the rest of the media business. It’s been six months since I was on the receiving end of a pink slip. While not the greatest thing to be laid off in the midst of a pandemic, if that didn’t happen, I wouldn’t have started this newsletter and … Continue reading
NBC News's no good, very bad week continues
Trump town hall fallout and MSNBC anchor’s dalliance with sponcon NBC News can’t seem to dig out of its hole fast enough. Yesterday, the media world aimed its ire at the Peacock network for agreeing to air a town hall with President Trump at exactly the same time ABC News is airing a town hall … Continue reading
It's October, which means for the media it's 2016 again.
It’s also only Wednesday. I logged onto Twitter this morning (I know, always my first mistake of the day) and saw two media stories trending: NBC News hosting a town hall with President Trump and the New York Post running a story about a presidential candidate’s emails. Welcome to October 2016. Again. In 2016, I … Continue reading
Media conglomerates do the reorg dance
Fighting COVID and Netflix forces their hands. The two biggest changes the media conglomerates have had to face in recent years—Disney, Comcast, ATT, ViacomCBS—have been Netflix and the coronavirus. While the science world has been predicting a spillover pandemic for quite some time, media companies aren’t typically concerned about buttressing their businesses for a global … Continue reading
Unpacking the media's chase of a narrative
Or, why we’re talking about a hypothetical when the world is on fire amidst a pandemic. The last couple of weeks have shown the political press hasn’t lost its ability to either manufacture a story or bite into a political party’s talking points. You’ve probably been hearing a lot about “court packing,” where the Democrats … Continue reading
Is LinkedIn Ready for the Age of Disinformation?
Users say they’re also getting censored Apologies for not putting out an edition yesterday. I wound up biting off more than I could chew and figured I’d rather not send anything than send a filler edition to clog your inbox. Hopefully it was worth the wait. We’ll see. ************************************************************************************************************* (Ima (Image via Al Drogo/New York … Continue reading
What happens when Quartz shatters?
Its owners look to sell the digital darling. How did it get here. Eight years ago, when I was a media reporter, I spent a day at the Quartz office, tucked away on Spring Street in lower Manhattan. I sat down with then-editor in chief Kevin Delaney and a whole slew of Quartz writers and … Continue reading
Does digital advertising work?
Maybe not the best question to ask. If you plug in “does digital advertising work” into Google, you get 2.73 billion hits (if you add quotes you get 17,200). Industry folks have been asking this question since 1994, when Wired (then called HotWired.com) ran the first display ad (for AT&T and reported a 44 percent … Continue reading
The Trump propaganda machine running at full steam
Oh what a tangled web we weave. So the weekend continued where Friday left off, a president in the hospital and his propaganda machine working overtime. We saw photos and videos released from the White House doctored; we saw the president’s doctor perhaps disclose a cover up while the president’s chief of staff spoke anonymously … Continue reading
What a decade the last 24 hours have been
Brace yourself for a terrible three months Since yesterday’s newsletter, the following has happened: Bloomberg reports that presidential advisor Hope Hicks tests positive for coronavirus; Secret recording of Melania Trump saying she couldn’t care less about children being ripped from their families; New Yorker story on Kimberly Guilfoyle’s departure from Fox News because of sexual … Continue reading
Q4 kicks off with some anxiety
Hello darkness, my old friend. A new month, a new quarter, same dread that hovers over us. Bleak? Perhaps. But I can’t help shake the feeling that we’re at an inflection point. Yes, there’s an election in 30 some odd days that might look like help is on the way, but an election will not … Continue reading
Pay attention to the telecoms
The pendulum continues to swing towards consolidation. Yesterday, the New York Post reported that Verizon, just 5 years after spending $4.4 billion on AOL/Yahoo, is looking to sell HuffPost, which AOL bought for $315 million. And apparently it’s not getting any bites. The NYPost writes: Verizon has pitched the property to prospective buyers including Thrillist-owner … Continue reading
Newsletters: What's old is new again
But it’s not as easy as media reporting plays it out to be Hello, and good to see ya! Welcome to the 104th edition of The Media Nut, a media newsletter about the various legs of the media stool—brands, publishers, agencies, tech—and a hub for the media community to discuss what actually makes the business … Continue reading
Unnecessary Journalism Phrases
- How about “lifeless body” when describing a dead person? Here’s a good (bad)...
- bobbymacReports: A growing number of stories with a growing number
- Alliterative Journalism Phrases
- Apologies on the lack of posts
- While not necessarily an unnecessary journalism phrase, friend...
- 50. Old Man Winter - 11/7/11
- Push The Envelope Submitted by unretrecissement and her...
- 49. A.M. in the Morning/P.M. in the Afternoon/Evening, at Night - 11/3/11
- 48. Emergency Situation - 11/2/11
- 47. Roll(ed)(ing) in his/her grave - 10/31/11
