Jason Vest of the Boston Phoenix discusses the recently "unmasked" author of Imperial Hubris, and asks why the author, "Mike," was even anonymous in the first place. The book, the second installment from this author, is a critical piece on America's ongoing "War on Terror," and has garnered quite a bit of media attention. A week ago, the New York Times' Douglas Jehl wrote about the book and its origins, pointing out that the CIA had no real problem with the author's work, and that "the book had been vetted to insure that it not include classified information." But still, there's the anonymity thing. It was widely reported that "Mike" was concerned about repercussions from Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda and that this was the reason for the lack of a full name on the cover of the book.

So while "Anonymous" has not confirmed or denied his identity, many Washington insiders have reportedly known the author's name for some time now, but have not printed it as of yet. Is it because the CIA or another government agency has stated that the aforementioned "fears" were an issue, or is it a way to avoid the issues raised by the Valerie Plame situation? If it's a safety issue that the press is citing, then they're doing so with no merit. Vest reports that the author - who he names as Michael Scheuer - doesn't want the anonymity, and that any suggestions that he did would be incorrect. His editor at Brassey's, Christina Davidson, went as far as to send the CIA a letter that stated "To say that our author must be kept in the shadows because he has expressed fears about al Qaeda retaliation is patently false and impugns his courage," and followed that by asking that they not continue to do so in the future.

Will Scheuer's name make its way into the mainstream press anytime soon, or will they take the CIA's statements as word? While the press has a reason to make sure its collective bread is buttered (in other words, to be in the loop), it'd be kind of curious to see if this identity keeps being passed over, especially if this book stays in the public eye.

CableNewser has a note from MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, who says "Fox News is hated because they're elitists -- and the worst winners television's ever seen." Anyone else second that emotion?

Back in March, publisher Conde Nast announced that they'd be launching a new "home" focused publication with a magalogue feel to it. According to Gawker, the mag will be entitled Domino, and is still planned to launch in 2005 sometime.

Quite a few folks have hit my site today searching for "what happened to RatherBiased.com" through Google.

In case you tried to drop by that site today, you might have noticed it wasn't functioning correctly. I contacted RatherBiased's Matt Sheffield today, and he informed me that they were having DNS issues. Everything should be resolved by tomorrow (Wednesday, June 30) for most people, depending on when their ISP updated its DNS entries..

Today, the National Review announced that founder William F. Buckley Jr. has chosen to give up his ownership and role as editor-at-large, effective this evening, after 49 years of service. Most oft the "new" management team is made up of current executives, with publisher Edward Capano taking on the CEO role, Rich Lowry continuing as editor, and company president Thomas Rhodes heading the board of directors.

The New York Times' David Kirkpatrick also reports that Buckley's son, Christopher, will take on a role at the journal along with Austin Bramwell, a Review writer. Kirkpatrick's article goes on to describe Buckley's attitude towards political journalism and the impact he had on the industry in almost a half-century at the publication. Buckley's column will continue to run in the publication, though there is no word on the frequency of items he will write.

Reuters reports that Jewel has joined the small club of artists that are utilizing Clear Channel's "Instant Live" service, whereby fans attending a concert can have a copy of the concert, in its entirety, within a few minutes of the show's conclusion. But this technology doesn't come without conflict. Ever since Clear Channel announced their patent for the "recording and instantaneous distribution of media on-site at a show," companies like Kufala Recordings have been up in arms over this patent which seems to be very broad and anticompetitive in the eyes of some.

The Shifted Librarian's Jenny Levine posts about the experiences of a reader (Debra Overbey) who has been communicating with some companies about the amount of advertising coming up in various RSS feeds. One company, Abebooks.com appears to have taken Overbey's comments to heart and adjusted their advertising policy - while other feed-offering companies haven't done so. It seems that Moreover has an excess of advertising in their feeds, hovering at or above 50% of the items shown.

I'd say this is a pretty good example of how the RSS-chomping public feels about the situation, and I give kudos to site owners like Rafat Ali who have taken the step to advertise in their RSS while realizing that their readers are using feeds for a reason - speed. Personally, I think you actually digest the ads MORE when you have one or two in a daily run of postings/items, because you might actually take the time to look at them, not just be frustrated that they are in your way.

Back in April, I posted about the announcement that the U.K.'s Channel 4 was planning on broadcasting footage of an abortion taking place, and it had created some furor in the marketplace. Today, The Guardian writes that not only did the program run in late April, but that media regulator Ofcom has said that the "My Foetus" show "treated a difficult subject responsibly and with appropriate sensitivity."

Who screwed up here? Cori Dauber writes that over the weekend, the family of Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, the U.S. Marine who was kidnapped in Iraq, found out about his disappearance and subsequent capture from a media outlet - and not the military - though it unclear which network it was. Both Hassoun and a Pakistani driver, only identified as "Amjad" at this time, have been shown in video distributed by the group who is holding them captive.

Where does the public responsibility end and the corporate/shareholder responsibility begin for a news outlet? Is a network who doesn't report on a story in a timely manner performing a dereliction of their duties towards their viewers and ownership, or should this not matter?

Steve Rubel points out a post at the RSS Weblog informing us that the New York Times has brought their RSS feeds to their own servers and added a few new new feeds for your reading pleasure.

Earlier this week, there was a lot of talk about the CBS' programming surrounding President Clinton's new book, "My Life." The controversy began when it was pointed out by RatherBiased.com that CBS' website had links to Amazon.com where readers could click through and purchase the book, earning money for the network with every book sold.

Is this revenue driver legit after what a lot of people have called "blatant promotion" of Clinton's memoirs? Is there a transparency problem with how CBS is making money off of the book?

As of this morning, the answer appears to be closer to "yes", RatherBiased.com is reporting.

CBS's failure to inform viewers of this conflict of interest may place it in violation of FCC regulations against payola, the practice of secretly making money from the on-air promotion of a product.

It's not just speculation on the RatherBiased.com folks, either. A staffer at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has been looking into the story, and has received word from the FCC that if someone complained about the lack of transparency in CBS' actions, then they will have to "take a look at it."

Well, the time has come for me to take a few days for vacation. I'll be away for about a week, with sporadic updates coming for the site as I get access to the Internet.

Feel free to e-mail me with updates on anything you think is a good heads-up, as I will probably feel the need to search out a wifi-enabled location within a day or so. Thanks for reading!

Fritz Quindt of The Sporting News writes what amounts to be an unfortunate criticism of local television news....unfortunate in the sense of what it means for the sports fan.

Sportscast symbolically succumbed May 27 -- the date Warner Wolf, an anchor credited with originating the modern "Let's go to the videotape" art, was discharged by the CBS affiliate in New York.

If you're not familiar with Warner Wolf's work, then you should definitely check him out on the Internet. While he probably isn't the most charismatic, well-spoken, or best news sportscaster, he was certainly entertaining and respected. He had his highlights "Let's go to the videotape," and his lowlights - having his false teeth come out on live television, for one. But past that, he was an icon in local sports broadcasting that vanished from the airwaves one Thursday in May, told to pack his things and go. In any case, the article is emblematic of the situations coast to coast. Some might see that as a good thing, while others realize that, in some ways, we're seeing the evolution of the news itself.

Radio Ink reports that Viacom's Infinity Broadcasting has dropped Arbitron for market and ratings information and chosen to work with The Media Audit as of July 1st.

Bloglines founder Mark Fletcher points out that the feed aggregator has been named one of Time mag's "50 Coolest Websites" since they did this list a year ago.

While Fletcher is "shrieking like a little girl," as his post states, I'll go a bit further and point out that not only is Bloglines on the list - but it's the first site profiled.

Alice Marshall from TechnoFlak writes in the comments here that CMP has stated that they are not blocking Google News from scraping their sites (as widely reported yesterday) for items to add to their service, and that it was some sort of mistake or oddity.

Dan Gillmor has more, including a note from a CMP editor in chief Fredric Paul, confirming that their sites only block links from competitors, not news aggregators. Paul says "we're not just old media, and we're not completely clueless."

Newsdesigner.com relays some staffing movements at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, including reassigning some writers and getting rid of the paper's whole online team in advance of design changes to take place later on this year.

The Star-Ledger's Josh Margolin has an article in yesterday's paper describing how some radio stations in New Jersey have altered their approach to talk shows and on-air banter in order to stay within the limits the FCC has vaguely set for them.

The main example is that of Mary Walter, who is the host for the evening "Passion Phones" show on New Jersey 101.5 FM (ding!). Walter has significantly changed what she talks about on the air, as well as the levels of tolerance for people calling into her show. Margolin reports that there is "a nearly two-page list of topics [Walter] could not go near on the air -- even though she's used some of them before." While some of the content might be risque, the show isn't exactly the locker room. This just goes to show that it's not just Howard Stern, Bubba the Love Sponge, and others that are taking a hit with the recent crackdown by the FCC - it's much tamer shows with audiences who aren't necessarily complaining about the content.

Yesterday afternoon, Wonkette informed us that Vice President Dick Cheney had some not-so-nice things to say to Vermont Senator Pat Leahy this past Tuesday.

In today's Washington Post, an article entitled "Cheney Dismisses Critic With Obscenity" lays out exactly what happened on the floor of the Senate. According to authors Helen Dewar and Dana Milbank, the Vice President said "fuck yourself" to Sen. Leahy after the Senator brought up concerns about Halliburton and some of President Bush's policies about the country's judiciary.

That the Vice President made the statement is one thing - that the WaPo ran the quote in its entirety is a whole other issue. At this time, I have not been able to confirm whether the print edition of the newspaper will carry the quote tomorrow.

Earlier this week, the Village Voice's J. Hoberman wrote a piece about movies that have come out prior to an election with the hope "to swing the vote."

L.A. Observed's Kevin Roderick reports that three Los Angeles Times writers are moving to the New York Times, creating an exodus of sorts from one paper to another.

Last week, Steve Rubel posted about an interesting email signature he received from a contact of his.

While I can't expect that the rest of the world would adopt something like this, I can see bloggers doing it to assist one another in figuring out what is post-able and what isn't. Plus, it can cut down on the "Hey, can I write about that?" emails, too.

It's as simple as adding:

this email is: [ ] bloggable [x] ask first [ ] private

to your email signature, and making sure to put an "x" or whatever in the brackets that confirm what you're trying to say. It's not a perfect science, and I'm sure that people will forget quite a bit, but hey, not everything starts off perfectly.

CableNewser has another scoop - this time, it's a letter from Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz to journalists who are covering the war in Iraq.

The letter is in response to a statement Wolfowitz made on Tuesday in front of the House Armed Services Committee that "came out much differently" than he expected. He was attempting to share the frustration he had about how some news reporting was being done in Iraq when he said "Frankly, part of our problem is a lot of the press are afraid to travel very much, so they sit in Baghdad and they publish rumors." [Howard Kurtz, WaPo, June 24]

Reportedly, this letter was handed out to staffers of at least one news network in Iraq within the last hour.

Jonathan Dube has the scoop on why CMP Media links aren't working when clicked through from Google News.

[Google News] has chosen to reproduce a significant amount of our content in a manner that we deem to be outside the bounds of fair use on the World Wide Web.

The Associated Press reports that Spokane, Washington is the proud parent of a 100 block "hot zone," giving Internet access to anyone in the downtown area for up to two hours a day - for free.

The network is also set up for police and government use, allowing for parking tickets to be written up faster and letting police run license plates right from their in-car devices. But most interesting about the announcement is about how it works - the story reports that less than 10 antennas are in use for the whole network.

I think I just made a Dennis Miller-eque reference, but that's okay... Jeff Jarvis gives Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" a 2,252-word spanking over at Buzz Machine that should create some good conversation for a Thursday.

[ed: if you're interested, more on Kelvin here]

This morning, the New York Times announced that it had made significant improvements in its ability to print color pages in its daily and Sunday papers, creating an overall increase of 40% more color.

Most dramatically changed will be the National and Northeast editions, which will have a color increase of 75%, moving from 16 to 28 pages. The New York Metropolitan edition will have a 16.67% shift in color, raising capacity from 24 to 28 pages per run. These changes should be evident by early 2006. Why the shift towards more color? Well, advertisers can't get enough of it. Outside of the 500% increase in the six years since the Times started offering it as an option, there has been a 37% year-over-year increase from January through May of this year - so the paper is banking that this isn't a short-term trend.

Also announced in today's release was the addition of eight print sites outside of the NY Metro market, which will make regional distribution of the paper much more efficient.

[via BusinessWire]

Steve Rubel from Micro Persuasion informs us about an upcoming ANA conference (actually, two) where bloggers will be given press credentials in order to attend. Details in the block.

The Association of National Advertisers, the industry trade association that represents 340 companies with 8,000 brands that collectively spend over $100 billion in marketing communications and advertising, will issue media credentials to very select number of established marketing bloggers for its upcoming annual conference.

The ANA Annual Conference, which takes place October 7 – 10, 2004 at the Ritz-Carlton Naples, in Naples, Florida, is the industry’s marquee event. It focuses on issues critically important to ANA members, including building brands, accountability and ROI, and marketing innovation. Terry Semel, CEO, Yahoo! and McDonald's CMO Larry Light will keynote the event and Ron Insana, of CNBC's Street Signs, will join as host. Other speakers include Michael Winkler, chief marketing officer, Hewlett-Packard; John Costello, executive vice president, merchandising and marketing, Home Depot; and Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide, Saatchi & Saatchi.

Bloggers interested in securing credentials should contact Steve Rubel at srubel@cooperkatz.com. Webloggers are required to cover their own travel expenses for the conference and will receive credentials based on a qualitative assessment of their audience and topic relevance. For more information on the conference, visit www.ana.net.

Not sure on the rate details yet for pressfolk, but the room rate for the Ritz-Carlton runs at the least $299/night around that time and goes up from there.

Rubel also points out that bloggers who are qualified for credentials will also be able to attend any ANA event where the press is permitted. Coming up in July is the 2004 ANA Marketing Accountability Forum, taking place on Monday, July 19th at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City. Further details on this and other ANA events are also available on their website, www.ana.net.

The New York Daily News' Lloyd Grove writes in today's "Lowdown" column that one of the gossip columnists from crosstown rival New York Post has been shown the door after writing a nasty email that made it back to his superiors.

Ian Spiegelman, who was a staffer on the "Page Six" section was canned after sending an email whose contents were "completely unacceptable to the New York Post," according to the paper's PR consultant, Howard Rubenstein. Of course, this whole thing stemmed from Spiegelman's response to the "Lowdown" column yesterday which discussed a "love triangle" which Spiegelman was a part of...work in the gossip column, get fired by the gossip column.

One of the first things I learned when I was a media buyer was what *not* to ask the salespeople from publications about - editorial details. Sure, there's an editorial calendar that is available to the public, but nothing too specific in order to maintain some integrity. Publications have two sides to their business - advertising and editorial - and the two shall truly only meet when the pages are bound together (or at least folded). That's why my curiosity was piqued this week after RatherBiased.com pointed out that CBS had a link on its website that pointed to an Amazon Associates link for President Clinton's new book, "My Life."

This afternoon, RatherBiased.com confirmed the relationship between CBS and Amazon.com, and provides further coverage [including a quote from yours truly] of the journalistic integrity that may have been breached in this case. The main question, in my mind, is whether or not "60 Minutes" will continue to be viewed as a "news" program or not. Many other shows on competing networks have caught flack for seeming like advertorial in the past, such as NBC's "Dateline" or ABC's "20/20" - but "60 Minutes" has tried to stay on the other side of that fence. That time may be no longer.

Greg at greg.org directs us to a very interesting item at the New Yorker. In the piece, Louis Menand critiques "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation," making us all realize that just because someone's book sat on top of the best seller list does not mean that the book is relevant - or even correct, in this matter.

The book, by British journalist Lynne Truss, is described as a "spirited and wittily instructional little volume" by Publishers Weekly (as noted on Amazon.com), and is aimed at helping people get their grammar (and punctuation) correct. Sure, we all want to get our punctuation up to par, and who isn't frustrated when they see signs that say "puppy's for sale" in the window of a shop - but if you plan on taking the "Anne Robinson" approach to teaching grammar to others, you might as well get your semicolons in a row.

In this week's episode of "Weblogs can be good for PR," Steve Rubel points out yet another story of blogger contacts company, company doesn't want to talk to blogger, blogger writes about rebuttal.

This time around, it was Mike from Hacking Netflix who tried to score an interview or two, only to get rebuffed by the press folks at Netflix. When I first saw the item, I was concerned that the post would have a blogger just going off on the company because they wouldn't talk to him/her. Thankfully, Mike takes it all in stride, using the opportunity to state that blogs are important - and they are full of possibilities for public relations use.

I think that my concern arose from many "flame" posts that I've seen on blogs in the past when a writer is not given the time of day from a company or individual they are trying to work with. Just as journalists get pushed back on, bloggers will too - journalists obviously have a different level of credibility (though some would disagree) based on longevity of newsgathering as an industry. This will absolutely take time, there's no way around it. It's a site like Mike's that can help this progression as people realize it has a "niche"-ness to it, and that the actions of Netflix and the whole online film industry will be covered on a regular basis. For the same reason people focus on trade publications, readers check out specialized blogs online.

CNN/Money notifies us that USA Today's newsstand price will be going to $.75 this September, a 50% increase. But before you complain, keep in mind that the paper's price hasn't risen in 19 years.

Recently, changes to the methods in which the BBC puts news stories together and reports them on air were announced, and the public was given a chance to comment - here are some responses.

The new policies were installed in response to the Neil Report, which put forth "recommendations and guidelines to strengthen BBC journalism in the future." The report, put together by former BBC executive Ronald Neil and other media which was performed after a formal inquiry (The Hutton Inquiry) into practices at the BBC took place in 2003.

Reuters' Tim Gaynor reports on the fatal shooting of an editor from Zeta, a Mexican newspaper with a history of being on the "wrong side" of the country's criminals. Francisco Javier Ortiz Franco's car was surrounded by unknown gunmen this afternoon while driving in the city of Tijuana. The gunmen proceeded to kill Ortiz Franco while leaving his two children unscathed inside the vehicle. The incident is the third attempt on the life of a Zeta employee in sixteen years, and the second successful one.

Zeta is an solid example of journalists trying to bring truth to the public through the press, and continues to persevere through the continued violence towards its staff. These attacks include the killing of one of the paper's founders in 1988 and the attempted murder of the paper's current editor, Jesus Blancornelas, in 1997. More details on Blancornelas' story and efforts are available here in an article by Mary Sanchez at Poynter Online.

The AP's Gary Gentile writes this evening about Neilsen's big defense of their "Local People Meter" technology, which many critics said would dramatically undercount certain portions of the population - specifically the Hispanic audience. This time around, Neilsen has clarified that a lawsuit filed against them may be purely because one company who stands to lose some ratings points, Univision, is upset about the technology.

One of the reasonably useful blog indexing tools out there, BlogRunner, seems to be missing in action right now. I've tried to send email to the address available on the site, but have received no response just yet.

I had noticed some change in its accuracy and responsiveness in the last month or so, so perhaps it's just disappearing into the wind.

I was just watching the Drudge Report site load, as it refreshes every so often if you keep it open, when I noticed a delay and saw the URLs in my browser's status bar for images that were loading very slowly on the page. First it was one for Yahoo! images, then it was one for The Smoking Gun. How odd.

So I pulled up the source for the page and rightclicked all the images in question and found that four of the six images on the whole page were hosted elsewhere. Details on three of them below.

The first image of Senators John Kerry and John Edwards goes to photo #1 at yimg.com. The image to the lower left of the screencap leads to this photo at iWon.com's imgfarm.com site. And the "teddy bear" in the middle goes to this image at The Smoking Gun. None of these photos are hosted on Drudge's server.

Now Drudge *could* have some arrangement with MyWay, Yahoo!, and The Smoking Gun stating that they would host images he was going to have on his page - it wouldn't be the first time something unexpected had happened on the Internet. But if Yahoo! images were to be hosting pictures for anyone who wanted to use them, especially someone with nine million visits a day, it would be a very unexpected thing.

So, I gave a call to The Smoking Gun - they weren't aware of this specific instance, but knew it had been happening. Their rationale: lots of people are doing it, and "taking" far bigger things than what Matt Drudge was using, so they aren't saying anything about it. I asked if they were concerned about the bandwidth for someone getting 9 or so million visits a day and was informed that it the effect was "minimal." I also contacted the public relations office for Ask Jeeves (the parent of MyWay) and Matt Drudge himself - but have not received responses as of this point.

So how does this work - if Drudge thinks a site will get bombarded with requests and be shut down based on using one of my hosted images, he'll copy it for placement on his server, but if he thinks that no one will notice/care, he doesn't?

Yesterday, I had lunch at a local Burger King, and my colleague and I couldn't help but notice the tri-fold standups on the tables all around the dining area. Outside of a little branding confusion caused by half of the place having "Spider-Man 2" materials and half having "Simple Life 2" ads, it wasn't too overwhelming.

What I did find curious was the statement made on one side of the tri-fold, where Burger King says "As seen in 'The Simple Life 2'." This is sort of like the "As seen on TV" logo you see on some items in retail locations, but not really. I had always thought the point of product placement was that the viewer was supposed to notice that your product was on camera, but you weren't trying to call attention to it in an obnoxious manner. This is like stating "Gotcha! You saw our salads on television!" to fans of the show - while saying "Hey, you - Nicole Ritchie and Paris Hilton ate our salads on television!" to people who don't happen to watch the show. It's not a horrible idea, but if advertisers are going to be forced away from traditional "commercial" spots during a program because of PVR/DVRs, then why would you want to take the chance of drawing the ire of the viewer by reiterating that they saw it in the middle of a television show.

Oh, wait - it's "reality" television, so there's no way Paris and Nicole were told to go to Burger King on purpose, right?

Okay, so the title is a little lacking, but it's the content that counts, right?

This morning, I received an invitation from a contact of mine to go to the MoveOn.org website and pledge to go see Michael Moore's new film, "Fahrenheit 9/11" this Friday. A few emails later, I received an email from a friend with a link to this article by Christopher Hitchens over at Slate that gives Moore's film everything but the silent treatment. Talk about opposites attracting.

Part 1 - The Balance

After posting about the CBS coverage of President Clinton's book and the subsequent drive for affiliate revenue by the network, I've begun to think a lot about the blog medium and how advertising can live within it without ticking off readers. Specifically, whether or not there was "a line" that blogs or online publishers needed to stay on one side of before people who viewed their content would think they weren't honest any longer.

After a little bit of searching this evening, some instant messaging, and a telephone call to Rafat Ali of PaidContent.org, my conclusion is....maybe.

While that's probably not the answer you were expecting (or perhaps it was?), it's where it all ends up. The reason: a lot of people have written their opinions, and many of them have very valid points that, as an objective party, I could agree with.

The first item I found on the topic was this post by Jason Calacanis over at his weblog. In it, Calacanis responds to some critical comments that Jeremy Johnson made about a post he saw on Engadget that had a huge amount of blank space in the post column, and a ton of links, navigation, et al on the right side. Johnson is right about the whitespace issue, as it's something that even this design at The Media Drop has. It's something I've thought about, but in order to maintain a certain amount of consistency on my pages, I've kept it. this page on PC Mag's site. (Thanks to Jason for the correction in the comments section)

So what's interesting with regard to advertising and "whitespace," you ask? Well, Johnson starts off his post with "No one's advertising on the web anymore?" So is it that the navbar needs to be adjusted, or that the content needs to flow a little more and perhaps take up some of that space with advertising or some other bit of information? [related: Steve Hall over at Adrants fills space underneath individual posts with sponsored links, recent posts, and other nav/button content]

[update]I had originally posted this after making a big mistake while reading Johnson's post, thinking he was talking about Engadget's site. Just goes to show you that even after spending over an hour working on something, one little mixup and not re-reading what you used as a source can throw everything off kilter. Fortunately, the point is still valid. The PC Mag link has an overwhelming amount of information below the article itself, including cross links, ads for their print version, et al. However, Calacanis states in the comments "Engadget.com i think would have great design as far as he is concerned since we have a high content to "junk" ratio. :-)" He's right - the content/junk ratio is in his favor. But at what cost with nav links that are irrelevant in some cases. I like having a consistent front page and individual post "look and feel," but I'm doing two things there: a> causing a lot more page load time than necessary, which includes extra bandwidth I don't need to use and underutilizing that whitespace below my individual posts before the need for scrolling. And remember what Jeremy Johnson said about the whitespace - "I thought no one scrolled anyways?"[/update]

Calacanis continues his post and informs us about some changes to come at Weblogs, Inc. sites.

As we work on the new design we’re trying to actually remove many of the features and noise from the top level. We’re also trying to have a minimal amount of advertising—like two, maybe three advertisers per page.

Sure, we’ll loose [sic] some of the .25 or .50 per click advertising, sure we won’t have all the crazy navigation up top, but I think at the end of the day people want to look at something—well—pretty.

True - users do want to see a visually pleasing website, but they don't want to have a lack of navigation, inability to search a site, etc. So it's finding the "happy place," in a way, that is the key here. Also, I don't see a blatant amount of advertising on the Weblogs, Inc. sites, so I'm not sure how much revenue Calacanis is really losing, at least in the present design.

Part 2 - In-Post Advertising

You see, some sites put “advertisement” right up the top, which is great, but other put it a tiny font. Regardless of the size, as you page down they look more and more like blog posts rather then ads, and with the advertisement warning way up top most readers wouldn’t know. The ads are written like blogs posts on purpose—this is very slick.

I'll have to disagree a little bit with Calacanis on this point, as I think most blog writers that have advertising are pretty clear about what is advertising and what isn't. Quite a few blogs have Google AdSense advertising, which is pretty self evident. Sites like MetaFilter have textads clearly labeled as well. As for the items that look like blog posts, those *do* exist. The Weblogs, Inc. sites that have the network's standard template have "third post" advertising, which has a different color (as mentioned as a suggestion by JC in his post) background, and has the word "Advertisement" on the right hand side. I think the concern discussed in the quote above is with posts like this one on Rafat Ali's PaidContent.org site. Other sites have put these "advertisements" at the top of their blog pages for a day or two here and there, sometimes when they are related to conferences and such, in order to draw attention to any reader on the site.

A few things here - just one paragraph earlier, JC had stated that "Users are smart… very smart in fact." - isn't that kind of contrary to the fact that some sites have ads in their blog posts, confusing readers? I'd have to say that most readers, especially those on a highly targeted site like Ali's, would know exactly what they were reading. Especially since he makes a point of saying that it is a "Sponsor Post" that he's doing once a day. I'll come out and say that if bloggers that are looking for any credibility long-term are posting advertisements and aren't being upfront about what posts are ads won't last very long, or at least won't "lure" as many people who don't see what is going on.

With regard to the "Sponsor Post" on PaidContent.org - I was curious about it, so I got in touch with Rafat Ali this evening via telephone, and he gave me some details on it. Namely, that the "advertisement" was put in there in order to monetize the RSS feeds that were being read for his site. Think about it - we're all shifting towards a lot more "feed reading" and a lot less direct visiting of sites than we did one year ago. It's a time issue, mostly - but even so, this gives Ali the ability to a> open up a new revenue opportunity and b> perhaps take in some revenue against the bandwidth his feed takes up. We talked a little bit about the advertisements inline with the posts, and he said he hadn't recieved any negative comments on it.

A little later, I remembered that Steve Rubel over at Micro Persuasion had posted about the ads in the RSS feeds a bit back (May 25th, specifically). When describing Ali's site, Rubel stated that "[PaidContent.org] is a micro-publishing model worth following. It is a living case study that represents the future of media." Now some of you not in marketing or public relations might have