Author (#1)January 2004 Archives

Business 2.0: The 101 Dumbest Moments in Business -- 2004 edition

Edmunds.com: Journalist works undercover selling cars. Learns some of the tactics to encourage people to buy or feel that they're getting a good deal. At the same time, sales people are caught in a struggle between sales managers and customers. Knowledgable is buyers best defense.

From CBS MarketWatch: Value Line projects the Dow will finish 2004 at 9,400 -- about 1,200 points lower than where it is now.

Articles says Value Line is being too cautious. ValueLine turned negative on the stock market in December, because the P/E ratio is historically high and earnings are not expected to grow that fast over the next five years.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer began dayparting today, says Brian Chin, in his seattlepi.com Buzzworthy blog.

Dayparting is when the site dramatically changes during the day to appeal to different audiences. Newspapers are attracted to dayparting to counter their traffic pattern of heavy use in the morning and then falling off the rest of the day. News has strong draw in the morning. Entertainment and shopping sites draw better in the afternoon and evening. Here's Seattle P-I's daypart schedule.

Fark, for example, has heavy traffic after 4 p.m. when people have finished their work for the day, but it's not time to leave yet.

Dayparting is a new concept to newspaper web sites. It's ancient history for TV networks. The TV guys, says it's further proof that newspaper sites will be more like TV in the future.

Mad cow disease bodes well for bison biz -- Denver Business Journal

The heck with proposals; women are buying their own diamonds -- Cincinnati Business Courier

After years of losing ground from media such as TV and subscribers, newspapers are being identified as the last mass media. Short article in Editor & Publisher doesn't say whether this means newspaper publishers will sleep better now.

Last week a Pew Report survey found only 31 percent of people surveyed learn about candidates and their campaigns from newspapers. Newspaper's share fell to fourth behind local TV news (42%), cable news network (38%), and nightly network news (35%). Nightly network news and newspapers had drops of 10 percent and 9 points, respectively, from the 2000 survey.

Cable news network gained 4 points from the 2000 survey. Internet gained 4 points to 13% while Web sites of news organizations accounted for 11% among those surveyed. The category Web sites of news organizations was not in the 2000 survey.

I prefer RSS and aggregators (bloglines for me) than a browser for checking in on bloggers and news sites that I like. But I'm going to give Furl a chance.

Here's why: Furl is a new web browsing tool that lets you save and organize thousands of useful web pages (you know, the ones you want to save for future reference but then can never find again) in a personal "web page filing cabinet".

Here are two sites for bargains: Free After Rebate and Discount Watcher. Both have RSS feeds. Discount Watcher's feed can become large quickly, though.

Here's one from Reuters that makes me glad I wasn't there: "A hiking magazine apologized on Thursday after it published a route plan that would have sent walkers striding into thin air off the north face of Britain's largest mountain, Ben Nevis."

Andy Kessler wrote a book, "Wall Street Meal: My Narrow Escape From the Stock Market Grinder," about his days as a Wall Street analysts, but publishers rejected it because they could not get it to market for 21 months and feared the topic would be cold then.

Kessler decided to self-publish even though he was told it is not a way to publish successfully. He has his book published in less than two months.

Then he started marketing it. Using his contacts and Amazon, he creates buzz for the book. Eventually major booksellers are calling him and he recently sold paperback publishing rights to a major publisher. His recounting of taking the initiative and not accepting conventional wisdom are in the Wall Street Journal.

BBC article says we'll take better photographs with digital cameras since it's easy to discard the ones we don't like.

From MSNBC: Why polls have to be random to be valid and what margin of error means.

Washington Post looks at the political contributions made by journalists including some well-known celebrity journalists. This story raises difficult questions for news organizations and its watchers. Many news organizations strongly discourage editorial staff from making contributions, particularly if they cover those areas, but they may not actually prohibit it.

The NY Times, for example, only last year began prohibiting newsroom employees from contributing to political parties and campaigns. People on editorial staffs often want to make contributions to feel like they're doing something instead of standing on the sidelines.

Another journalism ethics decision came last week when CNBC barred news staff and managers and their spouses and dependents from owning individual stocks and corporate bonds. Part-time employees, such as James Cramer, were excluded from the new rules. Enforcing the rule on spouses may generate friction, either in the family or in the newsroom.

Two from NY Times: As Consumers Revolt, a Rush to Block Pop-Up Online Ads and Television Commercials Come to the Web.

A researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology has found that over almost 30 years the amount of sunlight reaching earth has declined more than 10 percent, according to this article from the The Guardian (U.K.). No explanation on why this has happened or whether it is a cyclical event. Even though scientists had noticed it for awhile, no believed it. They thought the instruments were off.

A couple of recent email studies found that 40% of valid email is not being received by recipients and that Tuesday is the heaviest day businesses to send email.

The recipient study, published in InformationWeek was from a test of 10,000 persons who had asked to participate in the study. The biggest reason the email doesn't go through are poor attempts by email administrators to block spam.

Bizjournals sends lots of email, which has been requested, and we constantly have to explain to customers that it was probably their own email administrator that blocked our email. Since the block is often done without any explanation by their IT department, customers are reluctant initially to believe us.

EmailLabs in its first Delivery Trends Report found that Tuesday is the busiest day for companies to send email (25.4%) followed by Wednesday (23.3%). Tip on both items was Lockergnome's Technology News.

From NY Times -- Subaru is changing the design of its Outback sedan which will let it qualify as a truck for fuel standards.

The changes sound cosmetic, such as raising the bottom clearance height less than two inches. But the difference in fuel milage standards for light trucks is lower, 21.2 miles a gallon, than for cars, 27.5 miles a gallon.

The main issue is how much longer the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation will continue to use outdated rules defining cars and trucks. Many of the rules go back to the late '70s, before mini-vans and SUVs, which are also classified as trucks.

After the success of landing the new Boeing 7E7 jet, business leaders in the state of Washington are now pitching for a NASCAR race track in the western part of the state, according to Puget Sound Business Journal. I don't know if you can buy Goody's headache powders or a Moonpie in Seattle, but it would be great to see a car sponsored by Starbucks.

As the ban on the dietary supplement Ephedra nears, people are stocking up, according to the Phoenix Business Journal. In most states Ephedra will no longer be sold after March 1. Retailers in California, Illinois and New York are already prohibited from selling Ephedra products.

The Business Review in Albany published this list of self-improvement books recommended by Kenneth Rawley who is director and marketing for a hospital in the area.

The recommendations aren't the latest published books but books such as "The Road Less Traveled" by M. Scott Peck's and "The Power of Now" by Eckhardt Tolle.

Highlight: "Over the years, I have consistently sought out books to further my personal quest to learn how I can better manage my feelings so I can enjoy my life more. I rely on a core group of what I consider the very best books on emotional issues. These books can help anyone handle emotional challenges and live enriched lives."

EBay has become an economic indicator. USA Today recently reported that the overall economy may be cooling because of the items such as Gucci, BMWs and Prada have fallen in Ebay search requests to less luxury items such as Ford and gold (viewed as a hedge against bad economic news). EBay is also a good indicator of what's hot, such as WiFi home equipment which has seen big growth on EBay.

EBay has also become a way for entrepreneurs to launch their business, but it's not magic bullet. Hawaii Business has a story about entrepreneurs using eBay to sell everything from Hawaiian shirts and Tiki statues. It is interesting that some sellers found that higher prices on eBay meant higher sales. Price becomes a proxy for quality.

Atlanta Business Chronicle covers lawsuits by BellSouth against public service commissions in the states it provides local telephone service to cut regulation over pricing broadband services. BellSouth wants to keep its broadband pricing bundled with other telephone services, which the PSC vetoed. BellSouth says that if it has to split the bundle, it will raise broadband access prices until it recovers its costs.

Variety reports on the "challenges" facing network TV. Article says that while the money is still rolling in, the tide isn't as high as it used to be. It's nothing immediate, but the changes will evolve over the next five to 10 years. Tip from IWantMedia.

Poynter Q& As Mac Tully who becomes Knight Ridder's vice president of operations. He was at the Bradenton (Fla.) Herald. High points of the Q&A are the way Bradenton improved its business and reputation, the need for more stories to show readers that news is being covered, and the belief that daily newspapers need to fight back to regain the market share they've lost over the years.

It's a good comparison read to the Penguin Q&A with Ken Auletta, author of "Backstory: Inside the Business of News" which Penguin publishes. Auletta: "I feel both hopeful, and depressed. Hopeful because technologies like digital cable and the Internet offer so many more choices for consumers of news. Depressed because, increasingly, journalistic divisions are part of giant companies who demand profit margins and “efficiencies” that often war with good journalism, which is expensive." Tip came from JD Lasica.

Brian Chin at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer says blogs make a difference in their reporting.

"They flesh out our coverage, adding both nuance and context that you can't pack into the inverted pyramid structure of traditional newswriting."

"They've also made SeattlePI.com more participatory, sparking lively discussions and debates between readers that's sometimes more interesting than what we have to say."