Letters of Note: Arkell v. Pressdram

Sometimes kannu one has to respond in this manner. Classic :)

Letters of Note: Arkell v. Pressdram
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2013/08/arkell-v-pressdram.html

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"Messrs Jeffrey Benson and Michael Isaacs of Tracing Services Ltd, currently on bail on charges of conspiracy to create a public mischief, appear to have lost most of the work collecting debts and tracing absconders for the Granada group, to the considerable regret of Mr James Arkell, Granada's retail credit manager. Ever since last June, when Tracing Services got the contract, Mr Arkell has been receiving £20 every month from Tracing Services, but the payment now appears to have stopped."

On April 9th of 1971, much to the dismay of one James Arkell, the brief story quoted above was published in Private Eye, a British satirical news publication founded in 1961 which, thanks to its unflinching commitment to uncovering scandals, is no stranger to legal disputes. Indeed, a few weeks after this particular piece hit the shelves, a letter arrived from Arkell's solicitors which can be read below, as can an uncompromising reply from Private Eye which has since become famous in legal and publishing circles for reasons which will become clear.
Never ones to miss an opportunity, Private Eye published the exchange very quickly, and almost immediately Arkell withdrew his complaint. The magazine have since used the dispute as shorthand when responding to threats, e.g. "We refer you to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram."
Note: 'Pressdram Ltd' is Private Eye's publisher. Also, there was no "case" legally, despite the name by which the dispute is now known.
(Source: Private Eye, via Jon Jenkins — huge thanks to Stephen Bailey.)

29th April 1971
Dear Sir,
We act for Mr Arkell who is Retail Credit Manager of Granada TV Rental Ltd. His attention has been drawn to an article appearing in the issue of Private Eye dated 9th April 1971 on page 4. The statements made about Mr Arkell are entirely untrue and clearly highly defamatory. We are therefore instructed to require from you immediately your proposals for dealing with the matter.
Mr Arkell's first concern is that there should be a full retraction at the earliest possible date in Private Eye and he will also want his costs paid. His attitude to damages will be governed by the nature of your reply.
Yours,
(Signed)
Goodman Derrick & Co.
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Dear Sirs,
We acknowledge your letter of 29th April referring to Mr. J. Arkell.
We note that Mr Arkell's attitude to damages will be governed by the nature of our reply and would therefore be grateful if you would inform us what his attitude to damages would be, were he to learn that the nature of our reply is as follows: fuck off.
Yours,
Private Eye

Zell to L.A. Times: Drop Dead

Dear son

A free press is vital for democracies. At least that was the model in the 19th and 20th century. It was when communications  channels were limited and citizens needed somebody to capture information, edit it and then present it. 

But technology is blowing up the media model. Free press was only from the perspective of freedom of speech. But the Internet has made communications open and the economic model simply doesn't work. That's why old style newspapers are slowly but inexorably dying. 

But it's not just the technology which has blown up the newspapers. At end of the day, they are businesses as well. Just because they are doing news doesn't mean that they are immune from the laws of economics and good management. This article talks about a classic case of bad strategic management. In this case, the blame clearly lies with the board. 

By the time you grow up, not sure what the media foot print will be but I wouldn't invest in a newspaper or publication company. Just too unclear. 

Love 

Baba

LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS | Zell to L.A. Times: Drop Dead
http://lareviewofbooks.org/post/12555828808/zell-to-l-a-times-drop-dead

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James O’Shea
The Deal From Hell: How Moguls and Wall Street Plundered Great American Newspapers Public Affairs Books, June 2011. 416 pp.
Since it seemed it couldn’t get much worse, Los Angeles Times editor-in-chief James O’Shea decided to look on the bright side. It was 2007, and the newspaper had a new owner. He was Sam Zell, an iconoclast, as they call rich older men who ride motorcycles and wear leather jackets, whether they look good in them or not. Maybe Zell would be iconoclastic in the right way, you know, odd but decent and smart, useful, so O’Shea phoned the Chicago businessman about giving the Times an in-person interview. Zell agreed. O’Shea then offered to pick up his new boss at the airport. Zell declined, informing O’Shea that his personal jet could easily deposit him near his beach house in Malibu. When Zell called back an hour later, the polite part of their relationship was already done. Zell informed O’Shea that he would, in fact, fly into LAX and make himself available to reporters at an office there. “I was going to invite all of you to come to my house in Malibu,” said Zell — for the second time indicating his address — “until you sent a fucking reporter up there and scared the shit out of my housekeeper.” Zell wanted it conveyed that he traveled in an entirely different social sphere than O’Shea. “Let me tell you something,” he continued in his distinctive rasp. “You want to talk to me, call me and I’ll talk. But you don’t fuck with my employees. Got that?” O’Shea immediately apologized, even though he wasn’t sure what for.
And so began the improbable last chapter in the fall of a major newspaper, as chronicled by O’Shea in The Deal from Hell: How Moguls and Wall Street Plundered Great American Newspapers. Among other things, the book is a reminder that whenever you think things can’t get worse, they can. They can get much, much worse. I was there, at the paper, working at the magazine, with a good critic’s seat, up close and on the aisle. As we were living it, we knew this tawdry drama signaled yet another sea change for newspapers, with potentially devastating consequences for our democracy. It was also, thanks to Zell and his cronies, more entertaining than it had any right to be. The end of the story is in the beginning. But where is the beginning? Orwell aside, let’s say it was 1984.
That year was a numerical high point for newspapers. Americans purchased 63.3 million of them a day. James O’Shea was happily employed at the Chicago Tribune’s Washington bureau. Sam Zell, having made hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate, was busy finding ingenious new ways to avoid taxes. He was at the right place at the right time: regulations were falling away like leaves in autumn. He began acquiring companies that had recently emerged from bankruptcy. Using an accounting loophole called “tax-loss carry-forward,” he could dodge taxes for years on these companies. (This was preferable to rigging real estate transactions through a bank in the Bahamas, a move that almost landed Zell in jail in 1977. He avoided prison by testifying against one of his lawyers, who also happened to be his brother-in-law, and who subsequently served two years for tax evasion.) By 1984, the economy had recovered from Paul Volcker’s stop-go recession, and President Reagan was busy cutting taxes and deregulating the savings and loans and other industries. The mood of the time was pleasure grabbing and hedonistic, not unusual for easy-money eras. On the coasts, people of means kept bowls filled with cocaine they would bring out for company. Finance was thriving. The Wall Street guys smelled of lime cologne, their suits crisper, their hair shinier, and their restaurants more theatrical than anything we had seen in a long time. They said we would all benefit from their windfall, and it seemed like maybe we all would, even if those of us working at our first, low-paying jobs had no idea how.

Reviewing Classifieds

Was stuck waiting for a meeting to begin when my eyes fell on the free morning rag, the Metro. This is handed out to tube and train travellers in London so is pretty widely read I would have said. 

It was opened to the classifieds and some of them were very interesting so took the liberty of snapping some pictures. As you can see, the great and good of the great unwashed human herd land up in these pages. Flights, gay sex, basic jobs and some other weird and wonderful advertisements are all here.

Shiekh Lamin offers positive results on healing, clairvoyancy, advising, family matters, loved ones, depressions, court cases, anti social behaviour, stress, exams and career. And no payment requested up front, just pay after everything is hunky dory.

Holy cow, here’s another one, Mr. Kajali, but he has business transactions to his repetoire compared to the aforementioned Sheikh

 

But as with everything, there is specialisation and competition. Mr. Kajali should not rest relaxed, he has competition. Cheik Yahuba has 37 years of experience sorting out problems and besides the others, he brings back lost loved ones and also sorts out sexual problems AND throws in business problem solutions in for free :)

But people sneer at just Sheikhs and Mr.’s, now we have a Professor Touba, who seems to specialise in all effective problems. And he seems to have a hyperspecialisation in business problems. Professor, eh? Now that’s something significant, you dont get professors for cheap, you know? And that’s why he isnt promising payment after positive results, I am sure he will want to get payment upfront, or is that because he is a clairvoyant? Knows who is a good credit risk or not? I think the wanker bankers are missing a trick, instead of investing billions in GARP training, people and systems in risk management, we just get some of these worthies. Bingo, problem solved, eh?

Plus a Professor!, I am missing a trick, even Ivy League Professors will be upset that they do not get a chance to claim all these wonderful qualities that Professor Touba is claiming.

But take a look on the top right, second down, they are now going for double barrelled names, its not just Mr. or Sheikh, but its Mr. Sheikh Ibrahema and he has speed as his unique selling proposition. He talks about speedy resolutions. Speedy Sheikh, eh?

Then we have Mr. Salem (in pink, no less!), Mr. Taslimi, Mr. Haje Makil, Mr. Dembo and Mr. Bama) bringing up the rear…

btw. where are the women? bloody male dominated patriachal gits crowding out the women from this field. I could have sworn that women are the perfect Clairvoyants...(says the man well experienced with the fault finding women in his life ranging from mother, wife, daughter, sisters, girlfriends, co workers, etc. etc.)

Also note the advertisement for flights to Erbil, Iraq on the right. Heh, they are offering £399 for a one way ticket. Tells you all, no? And that too via Air Olympic. Going to Iraq on a airline named after the abode of Gods with a one way ticket is just too close to death, danger and heaven for my comfort….

The security training wasn't that interesting, but when you are tired of getting security trained, you can go into the topless bar. Drinks are £10 quid each!, but it was a relief that they talked about the fact that there are hostess’s available. The idea of having topless hairy man-breasted men serving me £10 quid drinks was not really palatable to me personally. But the idea of juxtaposing security training with topless bars just struck me as funny.

And then you have another interesting combination. The London’s Women’s Clinic wants sperm donation and the men will get paid expenses, but just below are two advertisements for services (Thai Spa and Oriental Massage) where release of male sperm entails payment on part of the men. See the business idea that I am getting to? I am surprised nobody twigged to this. Sometimes newspapers throw up the weirdest of things..

Slideshow

Technorati Tags: Journalism,Newspapers,United Kingdom

The economic future of newspapers is dire

I have been generally keeping an eye out on how newspapers are going to work out given the economics of the industry. And today I read a small update which brought home the economics pretty hard. I quote:

Take the New York Times Company. It generated $74.4m in online advertising in the third quarter, 10.2 per cent more than in the same quarter in 2007. But the $6.9m increase in online ad sales was dwarfed by the $73.7m decline in print advertising revenues, which plunged by 18.6 per cent. Even if it managed to halve its $677m quarterly operating expenses by dropping the hard copy, online ad revenues would cover just 22 per cent of its running costs.

Strip out the NYT’s other sites, such as About.com, and assume those third quarter online ad sales were generated only by NYTimes.com. That makes the 20.3m unique readers who used the site worth about $1.22 each per month, a fraction of the value of a print subscriber. To break even as an ad-funded digital-only business, with a quarterly cost base of, say, $338m, NYTimes.com – already the number one newspaper site in the US – would either need four times as many unique users or ad rates four times as high as today’s, or a bit of both. Industry consolidation will help but making the numbers without other revenue streams, such as subscriptions and conferences, will be a Herculean challenge.

Can you see the problem now? I keep on thinking, all this web 2.0 business is fine, but where is the money? Who is going to pay for all this?

Don't put lipstick on a pig when our newspapers need hard surgery

This headline was so funny, but the headline referred to an important aspect, how do Newspapers innovate? what are they doing? Some very interesting observations on that post. Loved some of the ideas:

1. Be different
2. Shake things up
3. Raise hell and sell newspapers
4. Make readers smile, not depressed
5. Great stories
6. Be hyper-local
7. Integrate or die
8. Graphics, graphics, graphics
9. Try wild ideas

But what will be the newsroom be like of tomorrow?

1. a "Superdesk" at which the chiefs are accessible, visible and open.
2. a "Community desk" at which a team is in charge of integrating audience comments, pictures, videos, tips and opinions
3. an "Assignment desk" at which reporters, photographers, etc sit.
4. Integrated mini TV and radio studio
5. Digital walls on which the newsroom staff can see the online edition displayed at all times.

Now trying to think laterally, this is what actually happens on a trading floor. The heads are visible, there are technologists and people who put together integrated news, assignment is automated and we have everything integrated - voice, data, you name it and finally, large digital displays are on the wall where we see the world. Curious, does this mean that a news story will become like a financial trading transaction?

Technorati Tags: Newspapers,Journalism,Internet,Web 2.0,Financial Institutions

Traffic down at national newspaper websites

Quite an interesting result: I quote:

National newspaper web traffic declined month-on-month in February, falling back after high visitor levels the previous month, according to figures released today by the Audit Bureau of Circulation Electronic. All five UK national newspapers reporting monthly figures saw a drop in unique users visiting their sites in February. However, the long term picture was more rosy with most recording large year-on-year increases in site traffic.

So I guess it means that less numbers of new people are visiting these sites but people who already are visiting the site, they are visiting for a longer period. Whatever be the reason, paper newspapers are stiffed!

Technorati Tags: Newspapers,Internet