Print News hitting roadblocks, cont.

In an addition to my ongoing series on the increasing difficulties print news companies are encountering, I bring you a story from the West Coast.

Sfchron

The San Francisco Chronicle is said to cut 1/4 of their newsroom employees by the end of summer. Management decided to go through with this move as well as being open to voluntary buyouts, at a time when the SFChronicle may be experiencing high losses due to the changing world of media. They attribute the layoffs to ‘cut costs and adapt to a changing media marketplace’. It is an effort to outweigh the costs of running a newspaper during a time when most consumers are getting their news from free online sources. Also falling advertising revenue can be included in their reasons for cutting back on staff.

I have said before that newspapers are enduring a changing landscape of which they used to be champions of. Personally I read most of my news from a variety of online sources including bloggers, Newspapers
MSM news sites, and news aggregators. I still firmly believe that newspapers do have an incredible readership and they are able to survive as we have seen in the recent years. It may be that they must learn to live off of less than 20% profit margins which is completely possible. Although I do not believe that cutting news staff is the smartest move for struggling papers. A lot of my news comes first from print and television reporters who are the ones out pursuing stories; I found this out by merely sourcing out a story that I read online. Trace it back to the original reporter. Losing these original reporters could very well let more stories go unheard and un-spread.

May 20, 2007 | | No Comments »

Why do college students want to work at the nation’s top corporations?

I refer you to this Business Week article by Lindsey Gerdes entitled, Undergrads’ 25 Most Wanted Employers.

"Public service or stock price: These were the two features
undergraduates overwhelmingly gravitated toward in naming their ideal
entry-level employer"

Public_corp
Lindsey lets us in on this ranking courtesy of a 2007 Universum study. Moreover, I totally agree with it. More and more of my friends, colleagues, and acquaintances in college tend to regale me with tales of how they will be working for Goldman Sachs, or Trump International, or Google. A lot of them really believe they will land a job with a top, multinational company- and a few of them will make the cut. However, the majority I highly doubt will come close. Don’t get me wrong, I have not lost faith in my generation and fellow students. I am merely realistic in my assumptions. There are only a few top companies in this country, while hundreds of thousands of students will be getting degrees and launching themselves onto the job market. Ok, granted we could focus most of these jobs in five major locations in the U.S.– New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Austin TX. But I still think the amount of graduates shooting for the top is going to be much higher than the amount of top jobs. Kudos to those shooting for the top! Shoot for the stars and you’re bound to reach the clouds.

Personally, I am going to shoot for a company that fits me well. I hope to do my research and find somewhere I can grow, learn, and contribute in a healthy and meaningful way. I may have to power my way through some endlessly dead-end jobs, or some that I just would never picture myself doing; but there will be a light at the end of the tunnel. I will make sure of it.

Belushi_in_animal_house

[My determination usually gets the best of me!] Let’s face it, the two leading factors in college graduates finding a job are money and benefits. Stability, I think, would be an offshoot of ‘money’.

May 15, 2007 | | 1 Comment »

I need a camera…

I really need a digital camera. The last year and a half of my life I have been without a camera. I was previously able to follow my life and friends with my camera. Now, alas, I have no record of the past year and a half. *Sigh* I really do like taking pictures and wish I could post my own via blog or flickr.

Camera

I wonder which one I should look at getting. Does anyone have an opinion on a good-performing, economical digital camera? Let me know-

May 11, 2007 | | No Comments »

Email clients a-plenty, windows live mail and yahoo beta

So I’ve been testing out a few different email clients for some time now. Using Windows Live Hotmail since they’ve been beta testing for … probably about 10 months now. Using Yahoo Mail Beta for about 6 months. Granted I am not legitimately using these clients as ‘clean’ accounts but I am understanding the usability behind them. Winlivemailbetalogo

Windows Live Mail.
Destined for greatness? I think not. Main reasons:

  1. Customization is very low. I wanted to change the layout of my task pane of which there seemed to be no option to do, even though there is an option to move your ‘reader pane’. Themes consist of nine different colors, styles are not even a part of this. Another thing I wanted to customize was which pane came up when I logged in. The ‘Today!’ screen full of news and such comes up everytime I login, I would like to go directly to my mail please. Not only does the Today screen come up with news and such but I also have to wait for two huge ads to load [not really because my firewall and adblocker are FULLPROOF!- but the ads are there.]. I would also like to move around some of the buttons but that is not necessarily important.
  2. When filtering through the mail I was always accidentally clicking on a message when I merely wanted to check it. Which then opened up the message in the reading pane as well as un-checking all the previous items I had checked. There must be a better way to go about this.

I know this is very particular criticism but I think that it is important, and I’m sure the folks at MS will enjoy some comments as well. I did enjoy a couple things although nothing that will convince me to switch over from the all encompassing Google Mail.

  1. I enjoy that I can read a message while going through the rest of my mail items. This was accomplished by enlisting the help of a separate ‘Reading Pane’.
  2. MS upped the amount of space from my old 40MB to 2GB and included a search mail. [Kinda like Google]
  3. The ‘Automatically Sort Email into Folders’ option is very nice. You can include an sender address and key words which will then direct mail into your specified folders.

Livemailshot

Yahoomaillogo
Yahoo! Mail Beta is not very impressive either. Although, as of now most of the options need to be accessed through the classic Yahoo! Mail because well, this one is a beta. At least nothing which will make me jump to that client. I might add that I do not think the point of new clients is to attract totally new customers but to satisfy their current usership and hopefully they will spread the word to those who have not joined the E-Revolution. [Customer satisfaction coupled with WOM]

  1. There are too many buttons. I am getting lost trying to write a simple message! Solution? Possibly a quick-post feature that many blogs have adopted.
  2. Five ADS!!! They are small, but I see them– err, rather see where they are supposed to be.
  3. Initial loading time seems to be so much longer than MSLive or Gmail. Maybe because of all the buttons.

Yahoosplash
The good?

  1. Again, the reader pane. I really like reading email and going through it at the same time.
  2. You can flag messages. Nice for those periods of 100+ messages.
  3. Integrates your life! On top of email, they’ve included a calendar of events, search, RSS feeds, contact management.

[Inventive splash screen!]

May 10, 2007 | | No Comments »

World without billboards…

What would a world without billboards and physical advertisements look like? It would look weird. See for yourself. Sao Paulo, Brazil passed a law banning all outside advertisements by a 45-1 vote.
Max Kalehoff via his OnlineSpin blog brought this story to my attention. Walking through the city [I did this virtually via Tony de Marco's flickr photos, 'see for yourself' above.] empty billboard frames and newly painted buildings are immediately eye catching. We are accustomed to outdoor advertising so much that without it their is a void. I wonder if it should be filled with something? Maybe art?
Warhol

I know our good friend, Andy Warhol, would not be satisfied with such a legislation. In fact, I think he would be the person to start a revolution in advertising, AGAIN! Paintings up on billboard frames, not to advertise a product [albeit the artist's product, again Warholian consumerism].

The funny thing is I’ve had Warhol on my mind for the past couple days. It is interesting how this story came up just in the nic of time. Warholian consumerism, mentioned above, is fitting for an advertising based artistic movement in this decade. Wow, the possibilities! A giant billboard of "Starry Night" replaces the huge MTV logo, pretty soon the internet would follow suit as it usually does. Web2.0 styled logos replaced by watercolor, ink, pencil, and lacquer artwork. I should stop kidding myself, we are in the middle of an artistic movement; the popularity of web2.0 stylings and blog layouts is rising on the web. I should know that logos, digital graphics, banners– these are all art; some of this art is mine ;-)

Wow, I seem to have went full circle in this post. Anyways just check out Max’s article.

May 7, 2007 | | 1 Comment »
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