Hot on the heels of AP saying it will go after news aggregators: A country radio station in Tennessee, WTNQ-FM, received a cease-and-desist letter warning from an A.P. vice president of affiliate relations for posting videos from the A.P.'s official Youtube channel on its Website. You cannot make this stuff up. You cannot make this stuff up. Forget for a moment that WTNQ is itself an A.P. … [Read more...]

While the recession might be hard on some publishers, the romance novel genre is booming, reports the NYT. Harlequin Enterprises, the queen of the romance world, reported that fourth-quarter earnings were up 32 percent over the same period a year earlier, and Donna Hayes, Harlequin's chief executive, said that sales in the first quarter of this year remained very strong. While sales of adult … [Read more...]

The new $1.5 billion Yankee Stadium is lavish in every way: Each locker is equipped with a computer that will deliver scheduling and practice notes as well as an Internet connection. Players will enjoy a chef to cook them breakfast along with world-class whirlpools and training equipment.  Not least of all the ticket prices:Premium Legends Suites seats, those closest to home plate, were … [Read more...]

Lots of arts organizations have blogs on their websites. Most aren't very good, and they're difficult to maintain well. There are many out-of-work critics. And less and less arts coverage in local press. So why not critics-in-residence? Yeah independence. But let's suspend for a moment the idea that criticism's highest calling is simply to inform consumer choice. If instead the idea is to promote … [Read more...]

"We always tried to design each new protocol to be both useful in its own right and a building block available to others. We did not think of protocols as finished products, and we deliberately exposed the internal architecture to make it easy for others to gain a foothold. This was the antithesis of the attitude of the old telephone networks, which actively discouraged any additions or uses they … [Read more...]

I gotta admit - sometimes it's days between times that I check my voice mail. I resent how cumbersome vm is. Way more cumbersome than texting or email. When it was introduced in the early 1980s, voice mail was hailed as a miracle invention -- a boon to office productivity and a godsend to busy households. Hollywood screenwriters incorporated it into plotlines: Distraught heroine comes home, sees … [Read more...]

The hottest show on cable news right now is Glenn Beck's program, which debuted on Fox News a few months ago. If you haven't seen Stephen Colbert's send-up of him, check this out: The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30cThe 10.31 Projectcomedycentral.comColbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical HumorNASA Name Contest Beck is a hysteric, but he's getting huge ratings. He's actually beating every … [Read more...]

AP says it will "take action" against web aggregators that don't pay fees for linking to AP stories. Taking aim at the way news is spread across the Internet, The Associated Press said on Monday that it will demand that Web sites obtain permission to use the work of The A.P. or its member newspapers, and share revenue with the news organizations, and that it will take legal action those that do … [Read more...]

Cleveland Magazine has the details about how the Cleveland Plain Dealer took longtime music critic Donald Rosenberg off the Cleveland Orchestra beat. Rosenberg is now suing the orchestra and the newspaper, saying that he was unfairly muzzled. The portrait is of a critic who cares deeply about his job and how he covered the orchestra, an orchestra that grew increasingly unhappy with Rosenberg's … [Read more...]

A dreadful story coming out of the Phoenix Symphony. And I hear the orchestra is asking for major salary concessions from the musicians.  … [Read more...]

Back in January I finally canceled my subscription to the daily newspaper. Tough (and symbolic) thing to do. I've always subscribed to the local paper. My paper had become thinner and thinner as the stories I used to buy it for drained away with cuts in space and staff. Many of the stories were now being written by interns.I'm an online guy, and I get most of my news online. Still, it seemed … [Read more...]

The latest newspaper to teeter to the edge of existence is the Chicago Sun-Times, which has just filed for bankruptcy, joining a half dozen other major papers: The company has one significant creditor -- the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS has said Sun-Times Media Group owes up to $608 million in back taxes and penalties from past business practices by its former controlling owner, Conrad Black, … [Read more...]

Today we're happy to launch Dalouge Smith's new blog on arts advocacy. It's called Dog Days. Dalouge runs the San Diego Youth Symphony, and we met last summer in Chicago while I was writing a story on new thinking in how to run orchestras. Why a blog on arts advocacy? There's an awful lot of talking about the state of the arts, about the survival of the arts, and about the place of the arts in the … [Read more...]

Where are all those laid off journalists going? Why to TV of course... … [Read more...]

Interactivity has been redefined in the past few years. Newspapers used to think they were interactive because they ran letters to the editor. Rarely did they respond to the letters (unless those letters demanded a correction), but "hearing from the readers" became a mantra for the focus-group-driven news organization.Arts organizations have also prided themselves for being interactive. Applause, … [Read more...]