Eubie's notes

Big media may not like him, but they do need him.

Matt Drudge, of the Drudge Report, has become important to major media’s news operations. A link from Drudge can rocket traffic that day. The LA Times profiles the media-shy Drudge in Hot links served up daily: Internet pioneer Matt Drudge sifts the news online and sends millions here and there. In the article several admit that while the criticism him publicly, they also alert him to items hoping for a link.

Every day, journalists and media executives in newsrooms across the land hope they’ll have something that catches Drudge’s fancy — or, as he has put it, “raises my whiskers.” Most keep their fingers crossed that he’ll discover their articles on his own and link to them. Others are more proactive, sending anonymous e-mails or placing calls to him or his behind-the-scenes assistant.

Thanks to the help of a go-getter ad salesman, the fortunes of Drudge Report have improved too:

Gone is the cramped Hollywood apartment and the little Geo Metro that Drudge used to drive around town. He now lives and works in a $1-million-plus condominium in Miami’s super-sleek Four Seasons hotel, “where civilized living reaches its highest form of expression,” according to a sales pitch for the residences.

The site also understands the value of content — at least as he defines it:

According to Nielsen/NetRatings, the Drudge Report received 3 million unique visits in June, with visitors spending an average of 1 hour and 6 minutes on the site. That’s a lot of time clicking around, giving advertisers more opportunities to be seen. Nielsen/NetRating’s measurements also show that visitors return an average of 20 times a month. Most newspaper websites would be fortunate to draw a quarter as many return visits.

Latest study says 45% of Americans are not saving enough for retirement meaning they will not be able to have the same lifestyle as they currently have. Study was made by Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. The “retirement risk” has grown since 1983 when the risk was 31% of adults. Study was funded by a grant from Nationwide, according to the press release.

Here’s the chart of how retirement risk has changed:

The Silicon Valley is a different place that other parts of America. You be worth millions, but feel “modest” according to article in NY Times: In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don’t Feel Rich

One reason is that it costs a lot more in Silicon Valley to live modestly than in the rest of the world. Small houses in the rest of the country can easily top a half million in San Jose.
Part of their angst is the comparison to their neighbors:

“People around here, if they have 2 or 3 million dollars, they don’t feel secure,” said David W. Hettig, an estate planner based in Menlo Park who has advised Silicon Valley’s wealthy for two decades.

Another factor could be the memories of what they were worth before the dot-com bubble and now. It could have been so much bigger:

Yet like other working-class millionaires of Silicon Valley, she harbors anxieties about her financial future. Ms. Baranski — who was briefly worth as much as $200 million in 2000 but cashed out only $1 million before the collapse of the tech bubble — returned to work in March.

Feeling wealthy may be more about you life style and your surroundings rather than money.

Fortune (through CNN web site: Can the Washington Post survive?) looks at the Washington Post’s drive to be successful in print. With motivation like director Warren Buffet saying that print won’t work, it’s a valiant effort that many newspapers hope will work. There is a question if other paper will make the transition.

Here’s some interesting take-outs from the article:

Cost cutting won’t be enough:

Operating income for the Post Co.’s newspaper division fell from $125.4 million in 2005 to $63.4 million in 2006. (Most of the decline was caused by a $47.1 million expense for early-retirement buyouts.) In the first quarter of 2007, operating income for the newspaper unit fell by another 53 percent.

The revenue lost from print will be much harder to replace online:

The best evidence of the difference is the fact that advertisers paid about $573 million last year to reach readers of the company’s newspapers, predominantly the 673,900 daily and 937,700 Sunday subscribers to the Post. Advertisers paid only about $103 million to reach the eight million unique visitors to the Post‘s Web sites each month.

It has been able to keep its local audience:

The Post‘s daily circulation peaked at 832,000 in 1993. It has dropped by nearly 20 percent since then, while the region’s population has grown by about 20 percent. Says Buffett: “Per capita readership really is falling rapidly.” Even so, the Post retains the highest penetration of any paper in a top-ten market

An interesting comment to the article from Steve Yelvington: Selling ice cubes in Antarctica

It’s a lengthy piece full of facts and sidebar graphics and illustrative anecdotes about the Washington Post, but I can boil it down to one simple truth: If your business model is predicated on scarcity and you’re suddenly operating in a world of surplus, you’re in deep doo-doo. Time to come up with a Plan B.

Boing Boing: Weekly World News dies after 28 years of awesum, Bat Boy bummed

This isn’t in the U.S. yet, but when it is I know of a few who’ll be watching Eastenders this way. NY Times: BBC Launches Free Internet TV Service — The BBC launched an online service on Friday that allows people living in Britain to download many programs from the last week.

Dallas Business Journal: Seattle company buys Dallas’ Pegasus News. Buyer is Fischer Communications which says it Fisher, plans to expand Pegasus‘ model to other U.S. markets.

Comment from Terry Heaton on his blog — In what I view as the smartest move to date by any local media company, Fisher Communications of Seattle has purchased Pegasus News of Dallas. I know both groups, and I can’t think of a better marriage than this.

It’s hard to track calories

One reason groups are pushing for better calorie counts on foods ordered from fast-food and other restaurants is because of the difficulty people have in estimating it themsleves, according to Calorie Labels May Clarify Options, Not Actions, in NY Times. Even dietitians have problems.

And it’s not just average diners who have a hard time estimating the calorie content of food in restaurants. Even trained dietitians have failed miserably at the task, according to Dr. Wootan. (Margo Wootan, director of nutritional policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest)

A study by her group and New York University found that dietitians consistently underestimated the calorie content of restaurant food, figuring that a typical meal of hamburger and onion rings in a sit-down restaurant would have 865 calories. It had 1,550.

Crosscut Seattle reports that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer may move to the electronic paper, flexible plastic display high resolution devices within two years. After it was posted, the P-I denied the story.

Sometime in the next two years, if Hearst Corp.’s plans work out, a handful of Seattle Post-Intelligencer readers will begin getting their morning news not from the paper on the front stoop or by dropping change in a corner newsbox — or even on their laptop — but from a new electronic newspaper that’s displayed on a screen as light and flexible as paper. The screen will be about the size of a small tabloid newspaper, and it will be in color.

The electronic P-I will carry real-time news, same as the Internet, not yesterday’s news like traditional papers. Readers will turn the e-paper’s pages by touching the flexible screen. And when those readers head off to work, they will roll up the electronic P-I and stuff it in their pocket, purse, or briefcase.

Some newspaper will won’t to be the first since Philips announced it’s electronic newspaper device — E-newspapers may soon be here finally.

Reuters: Computers read news, and trade on it quickly — This sounds cool and scary at the same time. I’ve seen too many times when stories start off in billions when it should have been millions and losses become profits.

It takes a person about 10 minutes to read a 2,500-word, front-page feature story in the Wall Street Journal. Computer programs increasingly being used by investors to parse news stories can process one in about three one-hundredths of a second.