Why Is Tiger Woods Half-Naked And Looking Like A Prison Inmate on Latest Vanity Fair?

Elgin "Tiger" Woods appears on the February cover of Vanity Fair, photographed pre-scandal by Annie Leibovitz. There is a full portfolio inside--never-before-seen photos of the raw, unguarded biracial golf billionaire.

Pulitzer Prize winner Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights and, most recently, co-author of Shooting Stars, with LeBron James, reflects on Woods's downfall and what his future may hold.

A future that may hold $300 million less in it's bank account, if wife Elin Nordegen has anything to say about it

Woods "had always been the bionic man in terms of personality, controlling to a fault," Bissinger writes. He calls the pre-scandal Woods "the perfect man and pitchman for our imperfect times, a charming non-person," noting that "with Woods, everything was crafted to produce a man of nothing, with no interior--non-threatening and non-controversial."

But "in the end it was the age-old clash of image versus reality.... He deluded himself into thinking he could be something that he wasn't: untouchable. The greatest feat of his career is that he managed to get away with it for so long in public, the bionic man instead of the human one who hit a fire hydrant."

To read the full article, please go to VF's website.

For African-American Magazines Like Uptown & Essence, 2010 is All About The Ad Dollar

By Lucia Moses of Mediaweek

The nation’s first black president, Barack Obama, dominated American magazine covers last year, but for titles targeting African Americans, getting marketers’ attention in this recession has been a tougher proposition.

Black-interest titles to some extent suffered from the same issues facing other targeted media in 2009, with many being independents lacking the resources and scale of multi-title publishers.

Amid this climate, urban music mag Vibe folded at the end of June after its private-equity owner couldn’t refinance its debt. Ebony and Jet’s ad pages plunged 40 percent and 38 percent (respectively) for the first nine months of the year, per Publishers Information Bureau; while parent Johnson Publishing battled reports that Ebony was for sale. And the dropoff in luxury ad spending forced Uptown, a chain of regional magazines aimed at affluent blacks, to scale back.

Essence fared relatively well last year—its ad pages declined 11 percent to 1,136, while the fashion/beauty category itself fell 23 percent. But Michelle Ebanks, president, says the title still isn’t getting its due given that black women spend heavily on cosmetics and apparel versus the general market.

“We’re probably getting 30 percent less than what we should be getting in overall advertising when you think about fashion, beauty, food [and] pharmaceutical advertising,” Ebanks said.

Not all marketers have cut back on the category. McDonald's hasn’t slashed spending in black-interest print media because, explained Rob Jackson, marketing director for African-American consumer market programs there, “They see us in these publications, which has greater meaning. They speak directly to the consumer in a way that mass-market media don’t.”

African-American publications enjoy a strong loyalty with consumers, which makes them an efficient buy for advertisers wanting to reach them, agreed Stefano Curti, president of Johnson & Johnson beauty care.

Ford Motor Co. also has stayed committed to black-aimed media in 2009 on the belief that in a downturn, that audience doesn’t change its spending habits as much as the general market does. “African-American consumers contribute quite a bit to our business overall,” said Crystal Worthem, multicultural marketing manager at Ford. “We want to continue to grow.”

Titles that want to capitalize on that sentiment need to have strong assets outside print, though. At Essence, those include the Essence Music Festival, online video programming and a weekly news segment on CNN. In 2010, its 40th anniversary, it will introduce more fashion and beauty coverage in its issues, including a September issue devoted to those topics. And in January, it will bring out its first research study of African-American women and fashion preferences.

After pulling back in 2009, Uptown also plans to build out its multiplatform strategy. Uptown is working on a lifestyle travel show on Centric, a new programming outlet from Viacom’s BET. It expects to bring Uptown to two more cities in 2010 and expand Vibe, which it bought in summer 2009, to a five-times annual frequency in 2010

Len Burnett, co-founder of Uptown and a veteran publisher of African American–aimed magazines, said while advertisers still overlook the black audience, the election of a black president has helped make the topic more permissible with marketers. “There’s more of an open conversation about it,” he said. “The economy is so tough, advertisers realize, we can’t overlook any consumer. So it’s much more promising.”

DEATH OF BLACK MEDIA: Is Ebony Magazine Really Up For Sale?

Who Will Tell Our Stories, The Internet?

The outlook for the Holy grail of black-owned publishing companies, Johnson Publishing, is bleak. Actually, beyond bleak.

Non-stop speculation has had Ebony and Jet magazines on the ropes for some time. Then the Ebony Fashion Fair traveling fashion show -- a flamboyant staple of black women's fund raising efforts since 1958 -- was canceled for the first time in its history.

And now comes word that the company synonymous with Black America is putting its flagship title, Ebony, up for sale.

According to Newsweek, Johnson Publishing's chairman and CEO, Linda Johnson Rice, is seeking a buyer or investor in an effort aimed at securing the survival of the nation's oldest African-American magazine. It's unclear whether the company's other properties, including Jet, would be part of a possible sale.

We here at 3BAAS Media Group have been addressing this issue for some time and even held an Urban New Media Conference in June to discuss what actions should be taken.

According to those familiar with the developments, Chicago-based Rice, the daughter of Ebony's legendary founder, the late John H. Johnson, has approached, among others, Time Inc., Viacom, and private investors that include buyout firms. Time Inc., the world's largest periodical publisher, already owns Essence, a monthly lifestyle, beauty, and fashion magazine for African-American women.

Viacom, meanwhile, owns BET (Black Entertainment Television). Nothing has yet resulted from any of Johnson Publishing's overtures, however. And it's unclear whether negotiations are underway between the publishing company and any of the identified parties or other potential rescuers.

It's a challenging time for print media in general, so Johnson Publishing's plight is not that unusual. Add to that the question of whether the brand can stay relevant with younger blacks, and prospects look even worse.

The fact that black-owned Johnson Publishing faces this juncture during the year when a black man -- one whose social circle the CEO belongs to -- took the White House, is tragically ironic.

Still, no magazine holds the place in the collective heart of African Americans that Ebony has had since its inception in 1945. At the same time, the level of superiority and arrogance the company has shown can not be ignored. On several occasions we have heard people express frustration over how they tried to take the company in a direction that embraced New Media and kept readers fully engaged.

Even as recent as a few months ago at the 2nd Annual Blogging While Brown conference, several attendees where mumbling about Eric Easter, Chief of Digital Strategy for Johnson Publishing. For many, Mr. Easter was coming across like he had all the answers as opposed to engaging those in the audience that have demonstrated an ability to create an online presence.

Currently, Johnson Publishing only has one photographer, Valarie Garrett, to cover the entire country for both Ebony and Jet. So even the images they once prided themselves on now coming from the record companies, studios, the celebrities themselves, or companies like Wire Image.

So the million dollar question is, "What we gon' do now???"

Source

Newspapers, Magazines, Radio & TV Could Learn Something From GM About Reinvention

It's Not About Going Out Of Business, It's About Getting Down To Business