Vapor gossip: If it’s okay with you, this will be the last post I make regarding Hearst’s pre-development of a vaporzine.

Disclosure: Unlike in the past, Vanity Fair is bending over backwards to disclose (however, in frog-hair type) any connections someone at the magazine may have with the Hollywood power-brokers on its “New Establishment” list. (Personal disclosure: The fact that I’m not adding any snide comment to this post has nothing to do with my friendship with an individual associated with a company owned by the same people who own Vanity Fair or that I owe that friend a lunch.)

rexblog bumper music: Friends (Elton John)

Product placement not good, say Volvo-driving journalism profs: In an apparent effort to undermine their Abercrombie-clothes-wearing students’ chances of ever getting jobs in their major, 61 journalism and law professors sent a letter today to the American Society of Magazine Editors (based in “I love New York“) asking it to enact new rules to require disclosure of product placement in magazines, and to prohibit the disguising of ads as editorial content, or providing special favors to advertisers. The letter was written and organized by Commercial Alert, a nonprofit organization that opposes commercialism. It was mailed via Express Mail from the U.S. Postal Service.

I’m as happy as I can be (sort of like I feel after drinking a delicious glass of Coca-Cola or a steaming hot grande latte from Starbucks) to learn that ASME is being asked to throttle back the way it encourages magazine editors to weave advertisers’ products (like Apple’s new G5 iMac, for instance) into every story. I also hear that somewhere in their guidelines is a rule that makes editors do special favors (like including a Sony MiniDV Handycam in the “cool gadgets” section) for advertisers, as well. And that rule insisting that editors run every press release handed to them by an ad salesman (or sent electronically via BusinessWire, the global leaders in news distribution)…why ASME should be ashamed.

On behalf of magazine readers everywhere (and especially those who purchase subscriptions from the rexblog Amazon.com affiliate store), I’d like to thank these distinguished academics for trying to protect me for the rampant commericalism that has overrun the pages of magazines. Like these professors, I think advertisers should take their magazine advertising dollars and go where they’re appreciated, like a TV reality show or something.

Way to go, you opposers of commercialism!

(via btobonline.com)

rexblog bumper music: I Don’t Have to Hide (Bachman-Turner Overdrive)

Top 300 Magazine Report: Advertising Age has released its annual list of the top 300 revenue-grossing magazines. The article is available online via a free registration. You can download a 5-page PDF of the report by clicking here. (via Resource Shelf)

The accidental Nashville weblog: On Slashdot.org (or, was we call it around here, /.), there’s a huge debate raging regarding the ethics and legality of the “I Found Some of Your Life” weblog. The premise of the weblog is this: Someone finds a digital media card containing 227 photos. The finder decides to post one photo each day to a weblog and make up a story to go along with the pictures.

I clicked over to the blog and within a photo (the Titans banner pictured to the left was my first clue, duh) or two realized that most of the photos were taken within a few blocks of my office (no, not the ones taken in Amsterdam) at a well-known nearby university. Two of the seven readers of this weblog surveyed before I posted this have identified several of the people pictured.

Readers of my weblog can guess my reaction to it: It’s some of the funniest stuff I’ve seen in a long time while being a bit too creepy to enjoy (or, at least, to admit it).

It’s a lawsuit waiting to happen, as one /. poster observes.

Update: As pointed out by Tom’s comment (below), the “weblog” has been updated this afternoon with this message:

No new posts until further notice…To be clear, I have not yet been contacted by anyone appearing on the site. I am allowing some time for the /. ripple (tidal wave) to smooth out. If you are the owner of the memory card, please email me. Obviously, verification will be necessary. Thanks.

I’m just guessing, but I thinking finding the owner has been handled.

Update II: Well, the “I Found Some of Your Life” weblog has apparently lost some of its life. The blogger-author-artist-comedian has apparently gained some insight into the nuances of the American legal system…or has realized how creepy the whole thing was. Funny. Brilliantly funny. But, really creepy.

rexblog bumper music:
Voyeur (Blink-182)

The Year of the Blog? A few weeks ago, I observed that magazine articles about blogging had “jumped the shark” (I believe I also observed that the term “jump the shark” had “jumped the shark”). I predicted that Time magazine would soon have a “cover story that blares, ‘Blogging Nation.”” Okay, so I was wrong about what the cover would say, but this week’s Time does have, what is in effect, “the blogging cover story.”

The magazine requires one to subscribe before accessing its site, but one of those “Bush campaign staff members” who monitor weblogs has already e-mailed me this excerpt from the article:

The (Bush) campaign also keeps a close eye on the blogs, using them, just as it uses Limbaugh, to mainline information to the G.O.P. faithful. “Blogs are what talk radio was a few years ago,” says Bush campaign communications director Nicole Devenish. Her staff members regularly write, along with the message for the talk-radio circuit, the one that will go out to blogs and websites that link to the Bush campaign site. Bush staff members rely on technorati.com and truthlaidbear.com, which track political blogs and websites to see what items in local papers, on websites and in blogs are getting the most hits. “If a story moves up through the rankings and linking, we can know,” says one of the Bush staff members assigned to alert the rest of the team about which stories are moving through the blogosphere. “We get indicators about stories before they break elsewhere. It’s like an early-warning system.”

That attention has proved fruitful, since blogs are where some of the most powerful if picayune attacks on Kerry have taken hold. When Kerry put Swiss cheese rather than the traditional Cheez Whiz on his Philly Cheese Steak last year in Philadelphia and last month in Green Bay, Wis., called the famous Packer stadium “Lambert Field” instead of Lambeau Field, the bloggers lampooned him for being out of touch. Does this matter? The Washington Post wrote off Kerry’s chances in the key swing state of Wisconsin because his slip was “akin to calling the Yankees the Yankers or the Chicago Bulls the Bells.” …

But some Kerry advisers think he has missed an opportunity to rally voters to his cause using the Net. “I don’t think this campaign really understands the new technology,” says one. “Yes, they raised money with it, but they don’t see it as an organizational tool.” The reason, he says, is that the team still steers by the stars of the New York Times and the TV networks. Senior adviser Mike McCurry reads the Daily Kos and a few other blogs, but most Kerry aides don’t and instead rely on one staff member to provide an overnight summary. The Internet is not their medium. “It’s not where they live. It’s not how they talk to each other,” says the adviser. “The Kerry camp hasn’t moved. It’s where campaigns were 20 years ago. They are going to do it the way they did it in ‘88 for Michael Dukakis. They are going to do it on TV, but broadcast television is damned near irrelevant for the rest of the cycle. Things move too fast now.”

I am happy to have mainlined this information to the GOP faithful…however, and this is just a guess as I have a strict don’t ask, don’t tell policy here, that at least four of this weblog’s seven readers are among the GOP perfidious.

rexblog bumper music: Man of the Year (Alice Cooper)

Fishy dejazine update: The latest on the planned weekly magazine, The Redux Herring.

Quote:

(CEO Alex) Vieux is cautiously optimistic and said Red Herring intends to be “humble” and “modest” and that it’s reporting will be “sober.” “You and I know what happened. We lost our shirts,” said Vieux of the ’90s tech boom and bust. “I’m not Bill Gates, so when I lost my shirt it hurt.”

Does this post actually need a punchline? I’ll stand by my July 6 prediction. (via the go-to source on this topic, PaidContent.org)

rexblog bumper music: I Smell Trouble (Ike and Tina Turner)