WHAT'S NEXT: INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS

The New York magazine at its best!

Creativity that makes you want to read.

In traditional magazines.

Great job!

Via nascapas blog.

You can be the owner of a great newspaper like The New York Times, but this doesn’t mean that you have the talent and character to lead a newspaper that it’s an institution.

A newspaper institution that, at the end of the day, “belongs” to thousands of loyal readers.

So here there are more stupid comments from the capo di tutti capi.

The New York magazine had a brief cocktail encounter with “Pinch” Sulzberger and he made these lousy comments comparing print newspapers to the Titanic!

He thinks that physical newspapers will stick around as well. “The best analogy I can think of is — have you ever heard of the Titanic Fallacy?” he asked. We hadn’t. “What was the critical flaw to the Titanic?” We tried to answer: Poor construction? Not enough life boats? Crashing into stuff? “A captain trying to set a world speed record through an iceberg field?” he said, shaking his head. “Even if the Titanic came in safely to New York Harbor, it was still doomed,” he said. “Twelve years earlier, two brothers invented the airplane.”

…

“We are trying to convert shipping companies to airplane companies,” said Sulzberger. “Same business: transporting people safely across long distances. Different cost structure, different way of doing business, but the same core business. There is still a very vibrant business in shipping. It’s just not taking masses of people across the Atlantic. It’s now taking families around the Seychelles, or something like that. There will still be passenger ships, but they’re not going to be in the same business. So print will still be here, I believe, decades from now. But will it be the driving force? No.”

As one reader of the pice said:

Airplanes did not surpass ships as the primary means of crossing the Atlantic until 1958. The TITANIC was not trying to set a speed record (it would have been physically impossible). Her construction was hardly shoddy. Airplanes in 1912 were little more than flimsy toys. The Atlantic was not crossed by commercial airplanes until the late 30s and then in hops. Lousy analogy!

Yes, a lousy analogy from a lousy publisher.

So with this kind of “friends”, the newsroom of The New York Times doesn’t need any enemy.

The enemy is inside.

It’s the owner!

(Picture by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Prima Donna and photographer Annie Leibovitz is in a great financial crisis.

New York magazine tells the story at its best.

Conde Nast “contract for life” with Vanity Fair and a $250,000 day rate are not enough for a fancy photographer and that lived above her means for quite some time.

War photographers don’t have first class seats, champagne, cocaine and the best suites available.

Or butlers, nanies and Frech cooks.

So, her debts now total a staggering $24 million.

From the start, as NY magazine says, Leibovitz paid little or no attention to budget restrictions, and she spent money recklessly, losing cameras, accruing parking tickets, and even abandoning rental cars.

Yes, she is a unique photographer but her ambition and greed destroyed her artistic talent.

Covering celebrities, super rich and mega stars made here a poor journalist.

And a terrible boss.

The New York cover story must be read by any journalist.

When so many colleagues have no jobs or they are paid not well, this kind of excess explains why some magazines are in big trouble.

Shame to them!

In the NY magazine’s comments to this story, one reader makes a perfect summary of this tragedy:

It’s very clear that Ms. Leibovitz spends wildly out of her means because she is emotionally unfulfilled. It’s the classic story of buying things to compensate for lack of love. She’s been trying to fill that void for years with homes, outrageous, grandiose generosity, chefs, gardeners, and any other whim she feels can make up for her lack of emotional stability. She’s not hungry for stuff, she’s hungry for love. This really is the East Coast version of Michael Jackson, as one commenter stated earlier. A very unhappy, extremely talented individual who thinks that buying the best baubles will provide them with the true happiness they crave. I wish her all the best and instead of putting her energy into investigating the best things money can buy, she should re-direct her efforts into finding the best therapy money can buy. For her, that would be priceless.