Straight Talk PR .com

The Bottom Drops Out of Newspaper Circulation

A disturbingly impressive graphic depiction of circulation among America's largest newspapers from the past two decades. Via Steve Rubel's Lifestream, at which you can read comments. More comments -- and an explanation of why USA Today is missing -- at The Awl, whence this graphic originated. 

While I mourn the loss of newspapers, I welcome the range of communication tools that the lack of newspaper hegemony is introducing into culture.

A Wonderful Photo, A Thousand Words and More

I absolutely love this photo. It appears with an article in Thursday's New York Times on nice homes in unfortunate locations. This home in rural Connecticut is in a great location, exception for the 7:30 a.m. daily freight!
(Photo by Jennifer May for the NYT)

New Yorker Cover by iPhone 'Brushes' App Yet Another New Frontier for Publications

We used to mock the idea of painting by numbers.

But when an artist can paint a cover for one of the nation's premier magazines using a telephone handset, well, painting by numbers seems high tech. Even knowing the handset is a smartphone, and an iPhone at that, doesn't make the notion seem any less fantastic.

It also seems crass, but somehow the execution isn't. As explained in a New Yorker blog post, this week's cover was created by artist Jorge Columbo in an iPhone application called "Brushes."

I am surprised by the elegance, evocativeness, and artistry of the outcome.

Query: Looking for Archive of Front-Page Headlines

A friend is looking for a website that displays major news stories (or just headlines) from any day in the recent past. Surprisingly, I'm finding it hard to locate anything that does what I want. I liked the New York Times' front-page archive at its online store. But I found it hard to display the date I wanted. Newseum looked like it had a good archive. Alas, not searchable. Matthew Somerville of Dracos in the U.K., is putting together an archive of the BBC News home page. But it doesn't seem to have enough horsepower vis-a-vis depth of archives yet. But to solve my friend's need, it holds the most promise of anything I found this afternoon. Suppose I wanted to see the headlines from, oh, Sunday, November 18, 2007? Where should I go to find what was in the news that day? (I suspect the answer to this is going to be obvious and sort of a V-8 moment for me.)

LIFE Photo Archives on Google

Anyone who is of a certain age will get a thrill from the announcement that Google and Time Inc. are making photographs from Life Magazine's photo archive available on the web. This includes photos never published. But only photos owned by Time Inc. PaidContent.org reports on the economics of the Time-Google deal.

Chicago Tribune hesitant on Saturday morning re: Biden. Is it still that "Dewey Beats Truman" thing?

Was the Chicago Tribune feeling tentative for some reason, compared to the snappier Chicago Sun-Times? Is the Tribune still acting out over that "Dewey Beats Truman" thing from 1948? Wasn't that 60 years ago? These are the news racks at one of the entrances to Rush University Medical Center this afternoon.

Telltale Signal that Social Networking has Become Mainstream

Online social networking was the subject of two articles in Wednesday's Chicago Tribune. That has to be a clear signal that the entire concept is going mainstream.

1. The business section sported a feature with inventive artwork about the use of social networking by charities to raise funds from young people. The feature by Wailin Wong was headlined, "How non-profits are using social networking to raise money and awareness: Charities see potential in tapping young Web users to promote their causes online."

2. In the lifestyle section, called "Tempo," columnist Steve Johnson's piece was headlined, "All praises to social networks." Johnson writes Tempo's "Hypertext" column on using the web.

It's Okay. U.S. Steel Didn't Expect an Invite to Al Gore's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

Today is the day former U.S. Vice President Al Gore accepts the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, for his work to alert the world to the dangers of global warming.

Yesterday, the Chicago Tribune carried a report about three heavy-duty polluters on Chicago's doorstep in Northwest Indiana -- and on the shores of Lake Michigan, too. The three facilities are U.S. Steel Gary Works, Mittal Steel USA Indiana Harbor West (East Chicago), and BP Products North America Whiting.

Two of the companies took the not-entirely-welcome-but-documented environmental reporting by the newspaper in stride. But the third company seems to have a wee victim complex, seeing the Tribune as a persecutor, to wit:

In response to questions, BP and Mittal said they have steadily reduced pollution from their facilities. U.S. Steel spokesman John Armstrong sent a one-sentence e-mail declining comment and accusing the Tribune of "malicious misreporting and journalistic terrorism."

You know, "denial" is a river in Egypt, and all that jazz.

(cross-posted to Those "I" States)

Who's on First? Some Copy Editor at the Trib, that's Who

Best headline of the week:

"It can snow in Chicago? Who knew?"

That was the main headline on the Chicago Tribune's coverage of the first of two less-than-blockbuster snowstorms this week.

There ya go.

Chicago's Sun-Times and Tribune Show Their Stripes This Sunday

You've got to hand it to competition. Chicago's two dailies today showed why in rollng out their Sunday best. The newly redesigned Sun-Times tabloid and the nationally under-appreciated Tribune reached to their strengths in their main news sections.

It helps that there's no compelling spot-news story that competed successfully for the front page of either paper, forcing both to show their hands in enterprise copy.

The Sun-Times gave us this front-page grabber: "The party's over, Jerry / You owe $29,627! / Chicago's top parking violators / Sun-Times special report." The package is about the 20 top parking offenders, who combined owe the city in excess of $700,000. Could there be a mlre local local local topic for the Sun-Times, whose neew motto, in speaking of Chicago, implores "Let's get into it."

Meanwhile, the Tribune covered this hemisphere literally from top to bottom. The front page feature package was on BP oil's big infrastructure challenges. The story and photos come from Trib staffers who traveled to Deadhorse, Alaska, to cover a visit to the Prudhoe Bay oil operations by Robert Malone, BP's top executive in North America. About the only place in Alaska further north than Deadhorse is Barrow. (And the newspaper's staff has visited there, too, recently.)

Meanwhile, to the opposite tip of the Americas, not far from Cape Horn, another Tribune reporter was in place to profile the city of Ushuaia, Argentina. Billing itself as the End of the World, Ushuaia's 55,000 residents are building a booming tourist trade as a center for adventure travel including embarkations for the relatively short trip to Antartica.

Lest you think the broadsheet forgets its origins, I should note that the front page also includes profiles of a South Side charter school and the excitement of a Mexican soccer star taking up residence here to play for the Chicago Fire pro soccer team. And the BP story notes that BP is big here because it purchased Chicago-based Amoco in 1999, and because problems at BP's huge refinery in Whiting, Ind., are lerading directly to Illinois having the nation's highest gasoline prices.

Home is never far away to any newspaper.