The Media Industry
- Thread starter texas_ex2000
- Start date
Funny story along these lines. I'm on a guy's trip to South Beach around 5 years back. We hit it hard all weekend so early Sunday we decided to recharge with IV's for round 3.
By afternoon we're pretty sauced up again watching NFL football on a patio. It was same weekend as Formula One in Austin.
I'm away from the table goofing off (left phone on table) when my born-again (very) Christian, happily married hairdresser sends a text raving about the race she's at.
Of course I never saw it, but my best friend thought "oh yeah that's great, so what are you wearing?" was the ideal response.
We met back in her wilder days so it took months and multiple awkward haircut sessions to convince her I wasn't trying to sext her up sitting next to her husband.
What are friends for? Lol
If you let a friend have access to your electronics, you're asking for trouble. About 15 years ago, I was at a friend's house and borrowed his computer to check email. (This was obviously before smart phones.) His home page was hotmail.com. For the hell of it, I decided to make a very minor change to his home page - set it to hotmale.com. You can guess what he got to see next time he opened his browser.
And of course, this was retaliation for him adding my email address to some gay "church" emailing list - which I still haven't managed to get off of. Eventually I just blocked them.
Brad Austin
2,500+ Posts
That's awesome.
I also had to go on an explain and apologize tour after the same friend accessed my Facebook on a Vegas trip. Needless to say the laptop and phone stay protected at all times these days. 
Yes, he's making America great again and Hillary was really bad. Now that I've got those obligatory concessions out of the way, this is kinda weird. I do think it's funny that he got some chick from CNN to do it though, and he must have paid her a lot, because she'll probably never work for a MSM outlet again just because she did this video.
If your career plan is to retire from MSM in 5 years anyway, why not? Don't know if that is the case but I would like to think not all media personalities are huge narcisstic ********.
I don't think they all are narcissistic ********, but I think there's enough Trump contempt in the MSM to put an end to her career for doing this. Even those who want to be fair would get shamed to no end for hiring her. Might Fox News hire her one day? Sure. She's conservative. She's well-spoken and intelligent. She's hot and not in the ditzy Tomi Lahren way. But would one of the big three networks or CNN hire her after this? I doubt it. Bottom line, I think it took guts for her to make this move, even if I think it's kinda hokey and weird.
Time magazine is in a lot of trouble. They posted a loss in the 2nd quarter and now plan on significant cost cutting. It's a very tough time for most print media but especially for those that only appeal to a liberal readership base given the amount of options already available to those customers.
Seattle Husker
10,000+ Posts
McEnaney (sp?) was named the RNC Spokesperson yesterday. She's the new Sean Spicer before he moved into the White House. From what I've see from her, she can speak somewhat eloquently while spouting complete nonsense with a straight face. If she's going to continue to do the "Team Trump" videos while working for the RNC, that will be a valuable skill.
Liberal or conservative, I just don't see how anyone makes the business model work. If you have a smart phone, tablet, or even a laptop, why would you buy a printed magazine? There just isn't much point. About the only time I'd buy a printed copy of a newspaper or magazine would be if I was getting on an airplane and wouldn't have internet access. Older subscribers and maybe some business customers are probably the only ones keeping them alive.
Ok, I didn't know she had gone to work for the RNC. Makes more sense now.
Seattle Husker
10,000+ Posts
Is anyone following the Google drama?
Google engineer pens a manifesto critical of Google's leftist ideology but more controversially lambastes their programs seeking greater gender diversity citing studies that claim biological differences is the reason for the lack of females in engineering fields.
New Gender diversity exec and many leaders in the company openly criticize the engineer (James Damore) ultimately resulting in his termination yesterday.
The alt-right now has a new instant hero while the left has a villain. I'm still educating myself on his manifesto to determine my own perspective.
Google engineer pens a manifesto critical of Google's leftist ideology but more controversially lambastes their programs seeking greater gender diversity citing studies that claim biological differences is the reason for the lack of females in engineering fields.
New Gender diversity exec and many leaders in the company openly criticize the engineer (James Damore) ultimately resulting in his termination yesterday.
The alt-right now has a new instant hero while the left has a villain. I'm still educating myself on his manifesto to determine my own perspective.
Seattle Husker
10,000+ Posts
NYT and Washington Post are seeing a resurgence in subscribers but they were early adopters of online media. Time will have to continue to make a similar transition to stay relevant and figure out how to simultaneously cut costs while addressing the quandary that a weekly news cycle doesn't work, topics change too rapidly.
Definitely a rapidly declining industry. I am looking forward to seeing how subscriber numbers settle out over time given that traditional distribution methods were such an advantage for established outlets such as the NYTs or Time magazine. I can pick and choose my media outlets on my smart phone so much easier now. I pretty much only look at the WSJ and sometime Fox News. That was definitely not the case 10 years ago.
I assume that the Times and Post have seen increases in their digital subscriptions. Hard to imagine that they're getting a big increase in print subscriptions.
Seattle Husker
10,000+ Posts
Of course, albeit they are seeing a modest increase in print subscriptions too which is a surprise. I'm sure their leaning into the hypercritical Trump movement is helping drive their subscribers on the left. Ultimately, print media is dead and broadcast television is dying.
I read that this guy's paper would have garnered an A- in a master-level class on the subject (try to find the versuon where the graphs and footnotes are included).
https://archive.is/z6xxP
Seattle Husker
10,000+ Posts
I haven't read all 10 pages but it does seem the author appear to keep the treatise as emotionless as possible. It's not a surprise that the alt-right news sources (i.e. Brietbart) are heralding Damore while the left (i.e. Salon) is using him as confirmation of inherent bias/discrimination in the tech industry.
Seattle Husker
10,000+ Posts
The McEnany hiring by the RNC when combined with the ouster of Priebus/Spicer means Trump's takeover of the Republican party is complete. He's consolidating his power and now doesn't even carry a pretense that the ideological side of the R party matters. Look not further than McEnany's interview with Breitbart. No longer does the actual solution to Obamacare matter, only that something better occur. If her MO on CNN follows to form, any criticism of Trump will be met with "but Hillary".
I35
5,000+ Posts
That something better would be complete repeal........PERIOD! That alone would instantly be 100% better that this pathetic legislation called Obamacare. It would be just a funny joke if not for it costing everyone so much more $$$, with more expected jump in cost coming soon. It is by far the worst legislation ever approved in American history. I'm not even talking about the pathetic care that is lacking with all the cost hikes.
Seattle Husker
10,000+ Posts
I35
5,000+ Posts
You might be right about it happening would be a fantasy. But right now that fantasy is the best option. No other ideas have come close to the free market results. Can it be better? Don't know. If it's anything close to socialized medicine then its a disaster from the beginning. We need to repeal it and allow the free market to work. When you come to a cliff with three sides then you go back from where you came from. You don't just jump any of the three other directions.
There is good news and bad news for the democrats. The bad news is they will never get control again with their crazy ideas. UNLESS? Yes unless the Republicans keep on not doing a damn thing would be the Dems good news.
One thing the GOP needs to remember, your voters hold you accountable unlike the sheep on the left. Eric Cantor ring a bell?
Despite there being more women going to college these days(by almost 15 points), fewer of them are electing to go the engineering route. There have been more women in college since the late 80's. This is not a systemic problem, this is women choosing their own path and other people trying dictate outcomes even though these women CLEARLY had a choice about what to major in. My wife had lots of time off to go to nursing school and even had an opportunity to get paid to learn to fly jets. She simply didn't want to do either. Too hard, too much of a commitment...I don't really know...but she just said 'no'. I think there are some women that want the same paths available as men, but mostly, they would prefer a stable career that doesn't come with a lot of stress. While we may all want that, I think women are much less likely to do "whatever it takes" to make a good living and will accept lesser positions if they also come with less stress and demands. They are more about quality of life than most men. While I don't really think there are big gender differences in aptitude, I do think there are differences in attitude. Most women still want to be wives and moms first and their careers come second.
From what I've read, the treatise was pretty emotionless and generally supported by evidence, studies, etc. I would probably agree with him on the merits. However, Google is a private company, and unless he has a contract that alters the at-will relationship, they had every right to fire him.
Best article yet (long).
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/
Boils down to matter of interest in engineering and other stem heavy fields.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/
Boils down to matter of interest in engineering and other stem heavy fields.
Seattle Husker
10,000+ Posts
After finishing reading the memo I was compelled to learn more about Damore, because the content of the memo demonstrated inexperience and heavily influenced by stereotypes taken to extremes. My initial thoughts went to my 16yr old son who has the "world figured out" with a few biased sources on the web to prove it. Sure enough, this guy graduated HS in 2007...was in college until 2013. He has 4 years of real world work experience he's relying on. To be sure, I'd wager he's never been engaged in the very programs he's critiquing. Rather, he's leaped to assumptions based on his rather limited exposure to corporate culture. It's the stereotypes he's relying on to inform his critique and why he's was fired. The memo, though well cited wreaks of someone who when searching for confirmation of their own biases/beliefs.
Stereotypes exist because there is a vein of truth in them. Damore's mistake was to take them further than necessary, to turn them into absolutes while giving the usual caveats to protect his backside by claiming "overlap".
This isn't to say that all of his insight was wrong. I work in a technology consulting company that faces this issue every day. Like every consulting company, we struggle to both hire and retain our female employees, particularly the road warriors. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see why females, even more than men, may not want to spend M-Th in a hotel, especially after starting a family. I'd agree with the author of the memo that worklife balance typically is higher valued by women than men. The rest is utter malarkey though and superficially thin observations. Many of the most ambitious people I've met in my career were women, including the first hire I made as a recruiter (started my career) who claimed they intended to be VP by age 35 and making $250k. She missed it by 1.5yrs and I hired her as a Compensation Analyst. She became a VP in IT 3 companies and 12 years later. I also know female leaders in Tech that headed off into the sunset after making their fortune.
I can't speak for Google's diversity of thought although would agree that they are left leaning by nature of the location of their founding.
"left leaning by nature and...location"
That is an interesting statement, but location may have a bit of truth (see: lemmings). Compare to left leaning by logic, or making decisions based on facts and the worldwide experience of generations of people.
That is an interesting statement, but location may have a bit of truth (see: lemmings). Compare to left leaning by logic, or making decisions based on facts and the worldwide experience of generations of people.
Maybe not:
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