Joe Territo writes about the retirement of one of the more productive - and controversial - journalists of recent times, Jack Anderson. Anderson's column, "Washington Merry-Go-Round," had run in the Washington Post for decades, and was instrumental in covering many scandals and happenings inside of D.C. When Anderson ended his run just over a week ago, it was, as the Post describes, "the end of an era," for he was "the last of the old-fashioned muckrakers."

For Territo, who worked for Anderson over a decade ago, this marks a time when "journalism is sanitized," leaving him to "long for old-fashioned, Anderson-style dirt digging." As self serving as Anderson might have been, it's probably not an unfortunate request to make.

Over at Little Green Footballs, there's a post from Friday evening about another fact check against Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11." In this instance, it's not a shortening of quotes to change context or anything like that - it's the actual changing of reality in the film.

The Illinois-based Pantagraph newspaper states that Moore's use of a front page of their paper isn't really the issue. It's that the front page he used, dated December 19, 2001, never contained the headline it is shown with - "Latest Florida recount shows Gore won election." In fact, that headline was never on any article in the paper, only as a letter to the editor from December 5th of 2001.

I'm not sure how Moore or the movie's distribution company, plan to get out of this one. In a documentary, altering facts - or reality, in this case - is not going to fly. Newspaper headlines are newspaper headlines, plain and simple. I don't want to hear about how the fonts were different or anything - use a newspaper's name and style - it's misrepresentation at its worst.

Recently, arguments for new pricing on cable television, specifically so-called "a la carte" models, have been making news. The cable providers argue that doing so would make cable super expensive, while consumers state that they are paying for channels they don't want and not getting others that they do want, purely because of bundles of channels that they are forced into.

A reader writes in with a link to a Wired article by Michael Grebb that states that some industry insiders are "expressing skepticism that [a la carte pricing] would destroy the economics of the industry."

On Friday, the Washington Post Company made its earnings announcement for the second quarter of 2004. According to the Associated Press article, the publisher stated profits of $84.9 million, a 40% increase over the $60.6 million gain for the same period in 2003. However, newspaper advertising revenue represented only a 5% increase in revenues while the Kaplan education division represented $29.4 million, more than one-third, of the profits by the company.

If the recent bunch of media company results are any indication, then there is definitely no "trend" that can be followed across the board when assessing their economic value going forward. Some publishers/publications are doing very well when it comes to advertising, some are continuing to have difficulties.

Since the original posts on this topic, I've received two comments about the prevalence of front page ads on European newspapers, so I thought it was definitely worth mentioning. The comments continue to stay around the idea that the ads had to be visually appealing in order for it to be seen as a positive move.

After doing a little more digging, I learned that ads were cropping up in the U.S. on the front of newspapers years ago, as the Dayton Business Journal's Richard Curtis reported way back in 1997. At that time, Thomson Newspapers Inc. chose to do so with five of its Ohio newspapers. The Dayton article also points out that advertisers who supported the move thought it was a great opportunity, even suggesting that if a paper like the Cincinnati Enquirer made this offering, advertisers would "jump on it." Also of note in the piece is that until around 1900, front page advertising was on almost every newspaper in the U.S.

One of the more outspoken critics of the advertising in 1997 was the Gannett Company, owner of USA Today. Steven Anderson, then-spokesman for the paper, said at the time that "We feel the front page, for the most part, is sacred," and that "It's key to bringing people into the paper." On June 8, 2000, less than three years later, Gannett announced its purchase of Thomson, acquiring the company that believed heavily in front page ads. USA Today now sells front page advertising as well. (Inline image: cropping of the front page of the Friday-Sunday edition of USA Today, July 30-Aug 1.)

If you're interested in additional newspapers that have front page advertising, then check out the Newseum site. By clicking on their "Today's Front Pages" link, you can see (as of today's post date) front pages from 342 newspapers out of 43 countries. Mousing over the images will bring up a preview to the right, and clicking on the images will bring up a larger version. After just a casual glance, I caught a few newspapers that have advertising somewhere on their front page - typically towards the bottom of the page - so it looks as if this method is here to stay, and will probably only continue to grow.

Hollywood Reporter's Georg Szalai reports Friday that News Corporation has re-signed its president and CEO, Peter Chernin, for five more years. In June, there was speculation that Chernin might leave the conglomerate should a "better offer" - such as the top job at Disney - came available. This leaves the man at the helm of News Corp., Rupert Murdoch, with a solid succession plan should he leave the position in the next few years. As previously reported, the long term plan is for one of Murdoch's sons, Lachlan or James (or some combination of both), to run the company at some point. Keeping Chernin on allows for a solid transition to that eventual point, and allows the younger Murdochs to continue growing their already established business acumen.

Radio World's "NewsBytes" feature had an item on Thursday about additional programming on XM's satellite radio service. The provider has added a new station, "XM Public Radio," which will have many popular public radio shows such as "The Writer's Almanac" with Garrison Keillor and "This American Life."

The New York Times picks up a Dow Jones report about Newsday's announcement that details the lowering of advertising rates at the paper. Specific details are not included in the article, as Newsday representative Stu Vincent called the various concessions "confidential negotiations between Newsday and its advertisers." These rate reductions are in response to "misstatements" made by the newspaper with relation to circulation figures over the past few years.

During Wednesday night's events at the DNC, I noticed some interesting differences between MSNBC and FNC crawls covering comments John Edwards made about changes to tax cuts. After Edwards' speech ran and the crawls reappeared (well, FNC never took theirs away) on all channels, MSNBC repeated some of the more interesting quotes, including..."So now you ask how are we going to pay for this?...Let me be very clear, for 98 percent of Americans, you will keep your tax cut-that's 98 percent. But we'll roll back the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, close corporate loopholes, and cut government contractors and wasteful spending."

At the same time, FOX's crawl carried the following..."So now you ask how are we going to pay for this?...We'll roll back the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, close corporate loopholes, and cut government contractors and wasteful spending." I don't speak for everyone, but unless FOX is attempting to appeal only to the "wealthiest Americans," I'd say this is kind of changing the spirit of the statement.

Also heard on FOX after the speech - Black Eyed Peas came on stage to celebrate with "Let's Get It Started," and Brit Hume made a comment along the lines of "I don't want to make any conspiracy statements here, but perhaps there's the chance that the Democrats didn't want people who wanted to criticize Edwards' speech to be heard right after he left the stage, so they have the Black Eyed Peas up there. I'm sure they really appeal to people in the swing states." Unfortunately, I didn't have it taping on the TiVo but I think I got the general tone of what he had to say.

John Edwards' speech can be found here at Newsday.

Gawker points out that Matt Drudge isn't making any friends by using other people's photographs on his site. This time, Drudge seems to have taken a photo by Tom Tomorrow, altered it, and posted it for consumption.

So outside of using the bandwidth from other sites such as Yahoo!, The Smoking Gun, and others, Drudge is now actually taking other people's photographs and altering on his site for his use, with no credit being given to the owner of the photo.

Am I missing something here? The average Joe (website owner, blogger) has been known to catch major flack for taking other people's photos or using someone else's bandwidth, but Drudge's site does this on a massive scale, if his statistics are any indication - and no one is saying anything about it.

[update] As of Tuesday evening, August 3, no response has been returned from Yahoo! media relations, but I did hear back from the Associated Press, whose copyrights I would assume are being passed over when images are being used - let alone bandwidth from image hosts like Yahoo! and others. The AP's official response from Director of Media Relations Jack Stokes was "We decline to comment at this time."

[ed: Post updated for clarity on 3 Aug 2004. I was trying to state the case of constant misuse of photographs on the Drudge site, whether it was bandwidth-related or just the alteration of images.]

Radio Ink has the skinny on analyst firm William Blair & Company's stock rating assignments to both XM and SIRIUS. The firm assigned an "outperform" to XM and a "market perform" to SIRIUS, and say they "have greater confidence that XM will perform favorably" against expectations.

I find this particular set of ratings to be done very well because Blair has clarified what people should look to see from these companies - read: profitability - that as long as both services continue to make headlines and creep upward in revenues and subscribers, progress is being made.

Time Warner's second quarter of 2004 might not have been as successful as the same period a year ago, but it exceeded expectations of analysts, who predicted around 15 cents/share profit. On Wednesday, the media conglomerate posted a $777 million profit, or 19 cents per share. In 2003, Time Warner had an exceptional second quarter, reporting $1.06 billion in net income - although the Associated Press reports in the earnings coverage that the prior year's gains were assisted by investment profits and a settlement with Microsoft. That settlement, regarding browser antitrust issues, totaled $750 million - significantly impacting Time Warner's financials during that quarter.

Today's "Page Six" column in the New York Post has a report stating that Don Imus' former chef intends to sue the radio host for stealing his recipes. Chef Ron complains that Imus and his wife, Deirdre, used a number of his recipes in a recent bestselling book, "The Imus Ranch: Cooking for Kids and Cowboys."

On Tuesday, CNET posted an item about the passing of longtime journalist Karen Southwick. Southwick had been working as an executive editor for the site's software coverage - including the Oracle/PeopleSoft battle that has been going on for some time now. According to the piece, she was "held in equally high regard by both her peers and those she covered" - something that many writers, editors, and media people can only hope to aspire for.

Monday night, I traded emails with Tom Mangan about the Indianapolis Star's announcement about advertisements going on the front page of their newspaper. He gave me some quality insights on the topic that I'm able to share with you here.

When asked if he thought front page ads were "taboo," Mangan replied, "I'll tell you there's a lot of resistance in the newsroom. I asked the same question in an online forum for newspaper designers and the response was generally negative, though a few said that they wouldn't mind ads on Page One if they were well-designed and visually attractive." Which is key - newspapers may reject advertising that is unsuitable for use due to content, but not necessarily because of a design flaw. Those that "create" your morning paper take pride in what they do, and will now have to work around yet another item on their front page. It's probably tough enough keeping articles above the fold as it is, let alone when your useful column inches taken away by the advertising side of the paper.

He also pointed out one thing when discussing locales that only have one daily newspaper - pricing. As an ex-media buyer, I can tell you that some publications had pricing that was certainly not what you would expect. "Ads on the cover -- which will be sold at pricey premium, presumably -- are just one more way to squeeze people who feel they have no choice but to advertise in the local sheet," Mangan noted. Obviously, a company doesn't have to advertise on the front of a newspaper, but when push comes to shove - or your crosstown competitor buys a display ad on A1 - it's tough not to play along.

[ed: On a side note, the Star has yet to reply to my request about pricing for their publication's front page.]

Bloomberg's Jonathan Berr writes Tuesday that the current speculation around Time Warner's most recent quarterly results stand on one thing - advertising sales on its cable networks. According to Berr, ad rates on Time Warner's TNT exceed those of competitors in a lot of cases, especially during episodes of "Law & Order" - where ads dwarf those of USA Network and Comedy Central. That's all well and good that their rates are high - the key is that people are obviously buying. On Wednesday, analyst speculation will get a test when the media company releases its second quarter earnings.

According to the television schedule for Tuesday, none of the major broadcast networks - CBS, NBC, ABC - will be showing convention coverage from 10pm on. This only seems to be the case for Tuesday, though, with everything starting right back up on Wednesday night.

Any word on why this is the case?

[update] Matt Sheffield from RatherBiased confirms that CBS would not be covering the convention Tuesday, and adds that this development "is unsurprising since the nets seem to be taking an even bigger ratings hit than ever."

WISH-TV out of Indianapolis reports that the Indianapolis Star, a Gannett property, will be accepting advertising on its front page.

Will this become a trend in newspapers? Many papers have text advertising towards the top or bottom of their front pages, but rarely, if ever, do they offer display ads. Is this taking a step that is going to alienate readers?

Jeralyn Merritt at TalkLeft is at the DNC in Boston and has what might be the first picture of Atrios, well, at least in a blogging sense. She also points out that his name is Duncan. Dave Winer confirms. And people say nothing ever happens at political conventions!

[via The Agonist]

LA Weekly's Nikke Finke has the scoop on the sudden retirement of New York Times Hollywood beat reporter Bernard Weinraub. According to the article, not only was this a total surprise, but it left Times executive editor Bill Keller to ask Weinraub to stay on in "a writing and idea-generating" capacity with the paper.

[via Drudge Report]

Greensboro's CBS affiliate, WFMY, picks up a Dow Jones article, "Interent Virus Hits Websites," about a new virus variant that screws up search results. The virus, currently being transmitted through e-mail, is launching attacks against various search engines from the computers it infects. Looks like spellcheck got infected at WFMY.

Looks like the latest issue of the Guild Reporter, the official publication of the Newspaper Guild and the Communications Workers of America, didn't have a really good last review before it hit the presses. Generally, I've been told it's a good idea to at least make sure the headline of your top story reads correctly. So unless there's a new government agency we haven't heard about yet, "Court scuttles FFC media rules" is probably not the correct headline that should be adorning this paper when referring to the FCC.

Unfortunately, there's no copy of the most recent issue online to see if the same mistake came up there. C'est la vie!

On Friday, Corante made an addition to their blogging staff - Suw Charman of Chocolate & Vodka fame. Charman will be running the spiffy new "Strange Attractor" blog, which Corante's Hylton Jolliffe describes as an "examination of the emerging world of blog-based media."

Charman takes it a bit deeper, saying:

What makes for a successful blog? How do we counter high churn rates and rapid abandonment? And how do we implement blogs in business in a way that engages users and brings most benefits?

Over the coming months, I will be examining these questions as well as looking at some of the side issues, for example, what is the role of storytelling in business blogging? Are the best bloggers also the best storytellers? Or does content trump language?

Very smart move, methinks. Corante generally has a good finger on the pulse of what people are interested in, and Charman has an excellent way of expressing her thoughts and opinions on various subjects - should be a good match. And if you're worried about becoming bored with the tedium of the "business of blogging," then you're probably in for a surprise. Take a gander at Chocolate and Vodka (some of those posts have been placed in the Strange Attractor blog, too) for a bit and I think you'll see what I mean.

Last week, Associated Press staffers who were heading to the Democratic National Convention in Boston were told that they need not pack a business suit for each day they'd be present. Each person was given four or five Associated Press-branded polo shirts to wear while they were on the convention floor, a definite change from previous years when formal business attire was the norm.

I'd be curious to hear from anyone else on-site if other media folk have similar situations.

Kate Kaye at MediaPost asks "Could blog convention coverage catapult the so-called blogosphere into mainstream consciousness?" in an article Monday. Discussed are the recent explosion of ads on Henry Copeland's Blogads network and mainstream media coverage of blogging creating chatter that might be more than just regular hype of something "new."

Denver's ABC 7 reports on a story by the Associated Press that details a move by Gannett to continue growing their advertising business to elevator video screens in the U.S. and Canada. Last April, the publishing company purchased Captivate Network, who claims 4,500 "wireless flat-panel television screens in the elevators of premier office towers across North America" where they can bring advertising, news, and business information.

Following the TINSTAAFL approach (there is no such thing as a free lunch), Captivate has been able to bring advertisers one more step closer to their target market in a manner that is probably a lot more innocuous than it sounds. Think it doesn't have an impact? Well, their website states that their medium has "fundamentally expanded the advertiser's ability to reach this desirable audience by an additional 8-10 hours per day." They are also claiming to have 30 million impressions/month, which is a fantastic statistic. At first I was somewhat skeptical here, thinking that someone remembering a car company when they went to their desk in the morning wouldn't be beneficial in the long term - but Captivate's press releases confirm a 45% recall from a Nielsen Media Research study from 2002.

On Thursday, Lost Remote's Cory Bergman posted about a NewsBlues report that CableNewser's Brian Stelter would be starting up a new blog, TVNewser. Bergman also stated that Stelter had signed on to do some work for mediabistro.com.

Well, those are sort of the facts.... Turns out that Stelter will be doing TVNewser for mediabistro.com, and that his CableNewser site will be redirecting to the new blog. So instead of just cable news coverage, the new blog will cover all television news happenings. A little domain searching gives you an idea of the "Version 2.0" that Stelter has been writing about for a few weeks now - and if you're interested in celebrating the site's launch, mediabistro editor Jesse Oxfeld is hosting a party on August 11 in Washington D.C.

Atrios announces that he has just gotten advertising from MSNBC on his site through Blogads. This is the second big move of note by a decent size advertiser in recent weeks through the Blogads service, the first being spots for "The Manchurian Candidate."

Like many people, I read the works of Charles Johnson over at Little Green Footballs on a regular basis. I don't necessarily agree with everything written at that site, but it's definitely a solid outlet for finding articles and other tidbits about politics, the War on Terror, and other news. That said, I definitely have an issue with the way that Johnson picks at media outlets and journalists in some cases. There are definitely times when he is right to call out bias, but the repeated use of "al-Reuters" and other such names definitely don't breed a community with any constructive behavior towards articles or commentary that he doesn't agree with.

On Friday, LGF had a post entitled "New Flight 93 Details; AP Lies." The post was in response to an article the Associate Press released, "Panel: Flight 93 Crashed Without Struggle." Johnson claims that the AP "Lies" when it says that the plane "crashed without struggle" and I think he's taking the article's headline a bit off. A commenter at the site clarifies that perhaps the AP could have said that there wasn't a struggle in the cockpit. But instead, it's all out there like the AP is horrible, they're trying to mislead people, and that they are l-y-i-n-g when that's obviously not the case by the content of the piece!

Sure, sometimes an editor drops a headline that we don't agree with or people think really stinks, but you know what? Send the editor or author an email or call them up and state your case. Instead, we go on the bash-fest that has become a reason why people get tired of hearing about comments on sites like LGF, Daily Kos, or MetaFilter. Hell, MetaFilter (informally) doesn't allow links to LGF, and the crew at LGF immediately responds to anyone visiting from MeFi as "moonbats," which in my opinion shows a lack of cred on both sides. It epitomizes what is wrong with political debate in this country (well, not just this country).

In this case, I can see why someone might feel that the headline wasn't perfectly clear after reading the article - but to suggest, more or less, that a lot of the work coming out of an organization like the AP is going to be a lie or misleading is just ridiculous. It's like picking for the sake of picking. Do something productive and make a statement about how the AP could have fixed this. Inciting a riot of readers to bash an organization does nothing more except create a fury on the "other side" of the political world. But perhaps that's what some people want, and I'm preaching to those who don't care.

Jeff Jarvis says it all in his post entitled "To the point" on Sunday morning - leading to New York Times public editor Dan Okrent's latest column. I'll keep the suspense going until you read it for yourself.

I can't wait to hear the trashing that this gets the Times for the rest of the week. Then again, people are always a sucker for the obvious.

Steve Rubel points out (via Mark Tosczak) that the Boston Globe is looking for bloggers to send in photos taken at the Democratic Convention in Beantown. Details here in their "Celebrity Sightings" portion of their convention coverage.

Elpasotimes.com picks up an Associated Press item about the removal of a one hour liberal talk show from radio station KNFT in Silver City, New Mexico. According to the story, more than 20 advertisers called the radio station to complain about the show, forcing station owner Matt Runnels to take the program off the air.

[via The Raw Story]

The Post-Crescent has an article about Friday's announcement by Gannett detailing their acquisition of 34 print publications from Wisconsin-based Brown County Publishing Co. This brings Gannett's total ownership of publications in Wisconsin from 10 up to 44.

The National Debate's Robert Cox posted Friday about the launch of MSNBC's HardBlogger, the blog attributed to "Hardball" and MSNBC folks. The blog's personalities include: Chris Matthews, Ron Reagan, Willie Brown, Dee Dee Myers, Joe Trippi, Chris Jansing, and Joe Scarborough.

MSNBC has an item up from Joe Trippi about the key to the 2004 elections. Trippi believes that young voters, disaffected young voters, and first time voters are what will make or break a candidacy this time around. Some other points: Howard Stern does have an impact on voters and that blogs represent a large group of interested, informed parties.

On Friday, AP's David Koenig wrote that Clear Channel Communications posted a second quarter 2004 profit of $254 million, a 1% increase over last year's earnings for the same period. Acting CEO Mark Mays did state, however, that July & August ad revenues might not be so huge but speculated that September "looked strong."

Both Brian Stelter at CableNewser and Matt Sheffield over at RatherBiased.com point out that ABC has been bitten by the cable news network bug, and they've added Internet and mobile phone components to their offering. The AP's David Bauder writes that ABC News Now "begins operating at noon Monday, presenting gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Democratic National Convention, anchored by Peter Jennings." ABC is absolutely experimenting to see what kind of results they get over the time between July 26 and Election Day in November, when the channel is set to disappear. No advertising will be broadcast from the national feed, which will be available only over digital cable, broadband Internet connections, and some Sprint mobile phones.

According to the ABC News Now website, there are various broadband providers offering the service. A complete, state-by-state listing of digital cable providers showing the station will be available soon (hopefully by Monday). The FAQ states that the channel will not be available to satellite telvision customers. Representatives from DirecTV and DISH Network had not responded to inquiries about ABC's channel as of post time.

[update] DirecTV confirms that they are not carrying the network at this time, and did not elaborate on its potential inclusion in the future.

According to an article by Dave Astor at Editor & Publisher on Wednesday, a company that produces Sunday newspaper comics sections for 38 newspapers has chosen to remove "Doonesbury" from its product. This happened after Continental Features took a survey of its customers and asked if they would like to keep the strip. A majority (21) stated that they would prefer not to have Trudeau's work included in their weekly comics, and Continental plans on abandoning it in the near future. This has brought about some discussion about censorship - although no one is stopping the papers from individually carrying "Doonesbury" on their own - it just won't be in the Continental-produced section.

[via Joi Ito]

PR Week's Keith O'Brien covers the announcement about Hpnotiq (yes, that nifty blue liquor) choosing Word of Mouth PR to do their public relations work in Canada.

So what, right? Well, the best part is that Word of Mouth is going to use photos of celebrities "holding the bottle" to market the company. Not amused? It gets better - the photos are going to be used in the press kits themselves, not even the traditional advertising/marketing plans. Taking advantage of the fact that Canada is - just like the U.S. - a "media-based culture" is a great move on the PR side, IMHO.

On Wednesday, MediaChannel.org's Jonathan Rintels shared his thoughts on why cable television operators should offer up so-called "a la carte" pricing for their customers. To support his argument, Rintels states that "these take-it-or-leave-it cable network bundles are shaped not by consumer and audience choice, but by the demands of media conglomerates and cable operators who have a chokehold over cable carriage." And he's probably right about that. But on July 18th, USA Today reported that a recent study done by Booz Allen Hamilton for the National Cable & Telecommunications Association showed "dire" results if a la carte pricing were put in effect. Not only is there a massive cost for the cable companies themselves, but monthly rates would go up a minimum of about $12/month, and that costs for individual channels would grow almost ten times, from $.38 to $3.39. I think it's tough to make his argument without looking at this side of the issue.

While the costs quoted are one side of this topic, there is also the issue of how the companies do business in general. Many people do have concerns that cable companies give preference to channels that they own/create themselves over ones put together by outside production companies. I understand the argument that groups like Consumers Union make about this, there is still one small thing involved here - capitalism. The cablecos are perfectly right in their creation of networks to put forth programming across both their own - and other methods - of television distribution. If a company's "cost per channel" is lower based on doing their own programming, is that such a bad thing?

One of the other points of contention that Rintels makes is that "networks targeting women, minorities, seniors, and other demographics less desirable to advertisers are in extremely short supply." Again, he may - and probably is - dead on about this. The thing is, you can't force programming to be created, especially paid television programming. You can certainly state your case to production companies and television networks about their lack of shows focused on these groups, but you can't force the bust-up of channels because of it.

My conclusion? As much as I've had my own concerns in the past about how cablecos do business, leave channels out, and have pricing changes that seem outrageous - I don't believe that this is a reason to force a la carte pricing.

Last May, Twentieth Century Fox announced that bulk orders of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" would be available over the summer. On Thursday, USA Today's Mike Snider reported that not only are the bulk packages selling - they're more than 20% ahead of expected sales levels.

According to a Reuters report, Viacom shrugged off their recent changing of the guard to post a $754 million profit in the second quarter of 2004. Television advertising sales seem to be the linchpin to the year's solid numbers.

The Washington Post's Norman Chad lays it out there with 23 big points about sports (and other things) on television these days. My favorite is definitely #9 - "I'm not much on ratings, but I'm told that "I, Max" on Fox Sports Net is beaten consistently by "If Walls Could Talk" on Home & Gardening TV." HA!

[Thanks to J for sending this along]

Over at RatherBiased.com, Dan Rather is being called out for using the words "carefully orchestrated leak" when describing the recent public discussion around ex-National Security Adviser Sandy Berger's removal of documents from the National Archives before the 9/11 commission began. According to RatherBiased, Lexis-Nexis searches show Rather only used the phrase when discussing "leaks" that negatively impact Democrats - never Republicans.

Over at J-Log, Bill Stoller contributes some great advice that's helpful for bloggers, readers and publicists alike - how to get reporters to check out your e-mails.

Many of the online news portals have a wealth of advertising that seems to come from various places. Some sites use their own advertising "network," while others use affiliate or external programs to develop their advertising space. The FOXNews.com site seems to use a combination of these methods, including some advertising through MaxWebLinks.com (which I believe is a service of NewsMax.com). You can see an example of the MaxWebLinks ads here, towards the bottom of the page or in the right navigation bar - they typically have a blue background in the box of textual ads.

On Tuesday, the FOXNews.com site had an advertisement for "Cialis Viagra Levitra" which leads to online prescription vendor NetDr.com.

After doing a little digging, it turns out that NetDr.com is registered as follows:

NetDr International Ltd.
1754 Avenida Paulista
48th Floor
Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo 01310-200
Brazil

Looking further into NetDr's site, it looks like you can order all kinds of prescriptions there - Viagra, Levitra, Propecia, Cipro, Xenical, Vaniqa, Celebrex and Cialis. You can get 30 tablets of 500mg Cipro (in case of Anthrax) for $280! So let's see. While the site repeatedly states that your "application" will be reviewed in order for the "physicians for a consultation," it's not apparent anywhere that a customer would have to get a doctor to give a formal prescription. The physical server for this website seems to reside in the southwest U.S., though by some of the items written on the site, it would appear that the business does operate out of Brazil. [note: generally, American websites don't write "US$" on their pricing. "$" is usually sufficient.]

Still offering the benefit of the doubt, it is worth a look at the United States Food & Drug Administration website to see if this is legit or not. The FDA has put together a website that contains a list of "do's and don'ts," along with advice on how to see if what you are purchasing is a) legal and b) really what you think you are ordering. Furthermore, the FDA leads individuals interested in purchasing pharmeceuticals online to the NABP - the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy. Scrolling a little bit down the NABP's homepage, you'll find an item entitled "Find a VIPPS certified Pharmacy" - with VIPPS meaning "Verified Internet Pharmacy Practice Sites™." NetDr.com is not one of the pharmacies verified by the NABP. In fact, there are only 14 that are, a few of which are national chains in the U.S.

The legality of ordering online is pretty plain, it seems. According to Aaron Larson at ExpertLaw.com, it can be legal to import a prescription drug - with one rule - you have to be "a United States resident with a valid prescription" (emphasis added). Most of these sites don't ask for a prescription, and the "examination" you receive from the "doctor" on the other end may be no more than a brief order form.

There is the distinct possibility that the advertisement "slipped through" whatever methods are in place to check out various vendors, but one would assume that offshore pharmaceuticals are probably not something an outlet like FOX News wants to be associated with. As of post time, FOXNews.com, NetDr.com, MaxWebLinks, and Bill O'Reilly had not responded to phone calls or emails on the subject. Further details will be posted as they become available.

[ed: Take a look at the logo for NetDr.com next to the one for WebMD and see if you notice anythi