iHate Front-Page Advertising —No, I’m not talking about those nasty bars that have been creeping onto the bottom of A1s across the country for years. Someone should give an award to Apple’s marketing team. They scored an above-the-fold white-text-on-black ad on the front page of our Albuquerque Journal under the clever headline "iCan’t Wait."Info boxes, of course, went under the titles "iPros," "iPrices," "iPlans" and "iWait." I bet the good people at the American Home store were pissed. They probably had to pay for their space, and it was even underneath the "U.S. Examines Death at Downtown Jail" story. Imagine the affront. It’s a chicken-egg conundrum. Are people clamoring for the iPhone because it’s some killer piece of technology, or did the hype machine do its job really well? Apple leaked info about the thing a year ago or more, slowly building interest and enthusiasm, until the company finally doesn’t even have to pay for your average ad space. It’s rocking front-page, full-color, serifless ads/news stories and infiltrating every major media market in the U.S.And now I’m writing about other people writing about it. Stop the iNsanity.
Thin Line
Protest Asshat — Wall Street Journal reporters didn’t show up for work Thursday to protest union negotiations in which Dow Jones seeks to trim down health benefits and cap pay. I love this telling little detail, which points to why journalists are typically criminally underpaid. The strike was only a half-day, which is the equivalent of what many government employees call "early Friday" or even plain old "Tuesday." See, journalists are like addicts. They’re junkies for excessive workloads. I bet that half-day felt like thousands of years. I bet they felt out of touch when they returned to their desks. More important than their benefits, the Journal’s staff writes that they, "Want to demonstrate our conviction that the Journal ‘ s editorial integrity depends on an owner committed to journalistic independence."You remember, of course, who wants to buy that mag. From now on, when you hear someone refer to "The Man," I hereby decree that to mean "Rupert Murdoch." Maybe we should go with "The Assman," just to make it more contemporary. Or perhaps "Asshat."
