video If President Obama's goal this week was to alienate and anger just about everyone then it would seem he has succeeded. Last night's late-breaking news that the president would announce a three year spending freeze on most domestic programs during tomorrow's State of the Union has met with angry responses on the left -- Obama is the new Hoover! Which is quite a long drop from the other Depression-era president he routinely drew comparisons to last year. (more...)

useful Despite the billions spent since 2001 on intelligence and counterterrorism programs, sophisticated airport scanners and elaborate watch lists, it was something simpler that averted disaster on a Christmas Day flight to Detroit: alert and courageous passengers and crew members. -- New York Times, Dec 26, 2009. (more...)

Scary And now playing the role of Big Brother: Facebook. With a lot of help from you. On the off chance you may have missed the news in the last few days, Facebook has rolled out new, controversial privacy settings that appear to be aimed at getting users to make as much information about themselves available to as many people possible. Why is Facebook so keen on getting you to share all your favorite TV shows, and drunken party pics, and your entire list of friends and interests? Advertising baby. Facebook is a goldmine of data and the more they can provide the more they can charge. (more...)

Photos! Anyone who works in media these days — especially online — knows that it can be an all-consuming lifestyle, caught up in the immediacy of the 24-7 news cycle and very much given to being swept up by the wildly fluctuating highs and lows of the moment. That's why it's so nice to step back and enjoy an evening with friends and colleagues, and remember why you like your job in the first place. Last night's party at the Plaza, sponsored by Mediaite's partner Bing, was a night for just that, as our founder Dan Abrams and his father, the esteemed First Amendment lawyer Floyd, along with his lovely wife Efrat, welcomed a convivial array of guests from across the mediasphere to a really fun gathering to celebrate the growth of Mediaite. (more...)

the traffic game If you want to write an article that gets the people talking, one good way is to just start classifying women in random groups, related to age and hot sexxx. Hot sexxxy cheetah ladies cannot resist this delicious media bait!...The headline of this story should be, "I Really Hope Many People Get Very Vocally Mad About This Story, And Talk About Sexism, Because Then It Would Be Funny How Seriously They Took This Story." -- Gawker's Hamilton Nolan responds to Spencer Morgan's piece in today's New York Observer. (more...)

Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm just sensitive because last year, NYO writer Spencer Morgan featured me in a piece about how awesome it was for a 36-year-old guy to nail 23-year-old girls, until he realized that when it was time to be responsible and settle down he needed a boring old 36 year old....who was so boring that she drove him back to 23 year olds. Or maybe it's that Morgan wrote that piece for a series called "Men of Manhattan," which celebrated one-half of the population of city full of vibrant, successful, interesting people. There was no corresponding column. Or maybe it's that I'm turning 37 next week and am already getting tired of the "cougar" comments. I already know that I should be fearful and scared I'll never find a husband — I read that in the Observer, too. Or maybe it's that I can't read a New York Observer piece about dating and mating and sex in New York City that does not make me want to PUNCH A FREAKING WALL. (more...)

video Happy Anniversary Great Recession. A year ago today Lehman Bros. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and sent the economy into a tailspin the country is still struggling to cope with, and which will likely be the defining challenge of Obama's first term despite the recent focus on health care. For those of us who before this past year paid little attention to the business world it's been an education to say the least. For those who toil in the business world and cover it, it has often resulted in the sort of national exposure normally reserved for actors and sports figures (both notorious and celebrated!). With all that in mind, here's a look at the top ten highlights from the Great Recession: Year One. (more...)

Yesterday, bloggers Peter Feld and John Carney had a heated back-and-forth about health care on their various Tumblrs. Among other points, they debated death panels, the relevance of police tasering to the discussion, and just how good the U.S. Postal Service is.
(more...)

Yesterday another high-profile New York Times columnist bid the paper adieu. Just this past January Bill Kristol departed his Monday slot after a year of almost non-stop criticism, and yesterday the paper fired Sunday business columnist Ben Stein. Stein's firing, it should be noted, was not the result of unsatisfactory content (in the NYT's mind at least!), but because the paper felt he had violated its ethics rules by appearing in FreeScore.com commercials. The result however is the same: some of the most valuable real estate in media has just been freed up! (more...)

Here's a trick, for those of you flying on those quaint old-fashioned airlines that still don't have wifi: Make sure your Tweetdeck is locked and loaded with all sorts of juice before you get on a plane, and then spend the next hour or so catching up with the 140-character brilliance of those you follow. That's what I did this morning as I flew back home from Toronto (and boy are my arms tired! Wa-wa) - and as I found myself making mental notes to retweet a few when on the ground, I thought, why not a group retweet? Otherwise known as randomly collected and curated series of tweets that'll do nicely for a blog post, thanks. You'll never get at all the good stuff in your (or my!) Twitter feed, but at least I can give these gems a second chance. What is John Carney's brilliant idea to save journalism? Where can you ogle a young Johnny Depp? What TV does Jenny 8. Lee recommend? Why do Ford Models think Bill Clinton is Bubba-licious? How can you learn more about the NASA's new ION space engine? The answer to those questions and many you didn't know you had lie below, in this first installment of The Best Of My Tweetdeck, which just became a recurring feature. You're welcome. (more...)

In an article in this week's Time titled "Business Journalism: A Vanishing Necessity?" Belinda Luscombe uses the recent demise of Portfolio and the current financial struggles of BusinessWeek as some sort of measure that business journalism itself is under threat (more...)

It's not often that somebody dying makes me feel young. But the death of Walter Cronkite has inspired me with an overwhelming feeling of youthfulness. You see, I really know next to nothing about Walter Cronkite.  He means nothing at all to me. Hearing that he's dead was like a looking at a well-painted apartment wall. You get the feeling that a good job might have been done but that's the limit of the emotional or intellectual reaction. (more...)

So! Maybe you've been seeing the stories on the front page of the New York Times this week heralding the news that just ten months after the economy fell out from underneath us, thanks in part to the unchecked greed of Wall Street, Goldman Sachs made a huge profit last quarter. A profit so big that its employees are getting million dollar bonuses! (That part is explained here). I've made no secret in the past that numbers are not my strong point, and as such have turned, as I have also done in the past, to Clusterstock's John Carney to help explain what was going on. Here's a portion of our chat: (more...)