City Paper writer’s must-read critique of Huffington Post

Amanda Hess of Washington City Paper has written an excellent, insightful article on Huffington Post, critiquing the popular news site’s opportunistic blurring of the line between progressivism and fetishism:

Only a religious conservative would bother to make a stink out of a body part which most men, women, and children have in sets of two. It’s almost enough to make fetishizing nipples on your Web site sound like a liberal position. If it pisses off the religious conservatives, that means it’s a good thing, right? After all, this is just “entertainment,” anyway—who cares if it’s progressive or not when we’re all just staring at nipples and having a good time? As Harry Shearer points out on HuffPo, everybody’s doing it!

The problem is that people really do care about nipples. They care so much about nipples that the Huffington Post devotes pages and pages of photographs to them when women accidentally (or, you know, against their will) reveal them to the public. In that way, there’s no difference between the religious conservative who is scandalized by a bare breast popping up in the middle of his football game and a liberal Web site which devotes its resources to naked chicks. A woman’s body part is a priority. Real women’s issues, not so much.

Not only is Hess’s piece thought-provoking and very well-written, but it’s a much needed tonic for anyone who’s ever been turned off by Huffington Post’s “everything and the kitchen sink” approach to news.

Creative Loafing's Ben Eason talks to Editor & Publisher

Ben Eason, Creative Loafing’s CEO, gets some prime real estate in Editor & Publisher‘s Special Report on newspaper bankruptcy.

The most interesting part of the article is Eason’s revelation that he expects CL to emerge from bankruptcy over the summer, at which time “everyone will know the company’s real worth”:

“As time goes on, people are more realistic in what the company can produce going forward. We have an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to suggest to the creditors, to the judge, to everybody involved what we believe the company will look like going forward and then we have the opportunity to suggest what the capital structure is going to be. We are forced to value the company, not as we would like it to be, or what it was, but what it is today.”

6 Hour Power ad is sex in a bottle

Over at Slate, Seth Stevenson wonders if 6 Hour Power is running the most sexually explicit ad ever:

In my view, the ad very clearly implies (right up until the reveal of its final shots) that the secretary is back there, hidden from view, fellating her boss to orgasm.

Indeed it does. The question is whether the rest of the commercial uses that implication to its advantage.

Amanda Hess of Washington City Paper says that, despite Stevenson’s assertion to the contrary, the ad isn’t successful:

Creative Loafing, bankruptcy, Ben Eason and morale

Washington City Paper takes a dig at its owner, Creative Loafing, in this March 13 Morning Roundup by Mike Riggs:

Also, Wayne Garcia of Tampa’s Creative Loafing has a great update from yesterday’s CL bankruptcy case, in which someone–can’t say who–tells a fib or two about the state of company morale.

It’s fairly obvious that Riggs is talking about CL CEO Ben Eason. Here’s the relevant passage from Garcia’s post:

Sunday Paper financier offers to buy Creative Loafing

Atlanta Magazine‘s Steve Fennessy is reporting that Knoxville, Tenn., businessman Brian Conley has offered to buy all six papers in the Creative Loafing chain for $13.3 million. They include the Creative Loafing publications in Atlanta, Charlotte, Sarasota and Tampa, as well as Chicago Reader and Washington City Paper.

About the news, Eason didn’t have much to say to Fennessy. But Conley talked at length, describing to Fennessy where he disagrees with Eason’s business philosophy:

Newspapers aren't dead, part 2

Ah, much food for thought today. In his ongoing look at the transition from print to digital, Alan Mutter points out that traffic to newspaper sites is derived largely from readers of the print product:

One of the biggest reasons to question the potential for standalone newspaper sites has been identified by Greg Harmon of Belden Interactive, who since 2001 has polled 300,000 newspaper website users in 250 markets across the country.

In his work, Harmon has discovered quite consistently that fully two-thirds of the visitors to newspaper sites say they visited the site because they are readers of the print newspaper.

Jeff Jarvis — BuzzMachine guru, noted “Blog Daddy” and author of What Would Google Do? — thanks Mutter for doing the math, but offers this counterpoint:

Some papers simply cannot afford the cost of print now and so they’d better figure out life post-print or there won’t be any.

Not entirely irreconcilable positions, both with something important to say about the state of media today. Let’s revisit one of Steve Yelvington’s assertions, which inspired this post: