Web And Print Publication Politico Will Cover A Black President, But Won't Hire Black People!

John F. Harris, Politico editor in chief, second from left, insists Politico is not as white and male as it looked on CNN's "Reliable Sources."

What Harris is basically saying is are you going to believe him, or your lying eyes???

Editor Says Camera Shots, Reputation Mislead - Watch the video and then you decide.

CNN took viewers Sunday to an editorial meeting at Politico, the buzz-creating Web-and-print operation that launched in Washington three years ago. For many journalists of color, what was striking was not what was said but who wasn't saying it.

"Did anyone catch CNN's Reliable Sources going inside the newsroom of Politico.com?"

Roland S. Martin, the CNN and TV One commentator, wrote to the National Association of Black Journalists e-mail list. "It was pathetic. All white folks at the table deciding the stories to cover. Not one African American or any other minority.

"I only saw one woman, and I swear she didn't say a word. They had her sitting next to the editor, and it was clear she was window dressing," said Martin, who is secretary of the association.

Another wrote Journal-isms, "I just watched with my significant other in absolute horror on CNN that POLITICO's morning 'top editors and reporters' meeting had not ONE female or ONE person of color. POLITICO has often been referred to as one of the top and influential DC publications. How is this possible when they seem to only represent the views of white men? How can they consider themselves 'new media' when they look just like the old media?"

Harris said Politico's recruiting efforts have 'made a diversity a focus.'John F. Harris, Politico co-founder and editor in chief, says the camera shots might have been misleading and that Politico is, in fact, committed to diversity.

"We are making strides that are gratifying to me, even as I have always considered this a long-term project," he said. "We have racial diversity in most of the most important positions in our newsroom — on the White House team, on our photo team, on the copy and production desks, and on our congressional team."

However, Harris told Journal-isms, "our corporate policies don't allow me to release numerical data."

Politico launched in January 2007, continue reading...

Bossip & MediaTakeOut Fail To Make The Twenty Most Valuable Blogs In America

It has been a year since 24/7 Wall St. did its latest edition of the Most Valuable Blogs. Valuations have moved up significantly since then, with advertising CPMs having improved markedly since the beginning of 2009. If you're looking for a black-owned site -- keep looking.

All of the blogs analyzed here are private companies. Blogs owned by larger firms are not measured. Blogs used primarily as fronts for other businesses have also been excluded. Some of the blogs on the list have raised VC money and those sums can be used as guidelines if they are disclosed.

The only worthwhile value is what an acquirer will pay, so any estimate needs to take into account the value the blog may have to an outside buyer. Several blogs from earlier versions of this list were sold, among them Ars Technica and PaidContent. Some of the largest blogs based on audience measurements do not have significant revenue and are also excluded.

For instance, “The Daily Beast”, a large news commentary site controlled by IACI, takes almost no advertising. In theory, it has little if any economic value at all.

To determine value, 24/7 Wall St. looked at unique visitor and page view information from several public sources including Alexa, Quantcast, Compete, and comScore. These services are often criticized for estimating website traffic too low and we have taken that into account to the extent possible. We also looked at audience measurements provided by the blogs themselves when it seemed credible.

Our estimated CPMs for ads are based on the current display and text ad environment, the quality of ads at each blog, and the number of ads that it runs on the average page. The CPM value assigned to each blog is based on all the ads it runs on its typical pages.

Large blogs with big “moats” got higher multiple that smaller ones. Recreating Huffington Post or TechCrunch would be extremely difficult, even in a moderately good economy. Blogs with one founder who does most of the writing were given lower multiple because the presence of that single person is essential to the company’s value. Finally, blogs which have operated for a long time or have recently received funding received higher valuations because they are more likely to survive.

1. Gawker Properties, $300 million. This group of blogs which includes Gawker, Deadspin, Gizmodo, and Lifehacker has about 23 million monthly unique visitors and 250 million page views. Owner Nick Denton has pointed out the business is highly profitable and growing and that advertising revenue has performed better than expected. Almost all the advertising at the family of websites is premium marketing from major companies. The average CPM on a page is estimated to be $20. That would drive $60 million in annual revenue. Gawker is not expensive to run. Its writers are paid relatively low wages. Many of the blogs Gawker owns have only five or ten writers and editors. Gawker keeps at least 50% of its revenue as operating income. The valuation is based on 10x operating income.

2. The Huffington Post, $112 million. The Huffington Post is ranked first among all blogs on the Technorati 100, which means it has a huge number of websites linking to it. Quantcast puts its global unique visitor audience at 20 million. The site is set up to encourage navigation from page to page and uses editor slide shows to build page views which are probably about seven per visitor. Huffington advertisers are a mix of high and middle CPM marketers. Average CPM per page is about $10. The company’s annual revenue run rate should be up to $16 million. Huffington executives say that the company does not make money. Huffington’s prestige and its strategic value to a buyer make it extremely valuable. The 24/7 figure is based on seven times revenue, a much larger-than-normal premium for a media property.

3. Perez Hilton, $44 million. The entertainment and gossip site have over 7 million unique visitors. 24/7 estimates twelve page views per visitor. The site carries very little premium advertising although its text link ads probably do well. CPM per page is $6. The site has revenue of about $6.2 million a year. Perez Hilton has very little staff and appears to have very low operating costs. The company’s margin should be 60%. This site would be very valuable to a large media company with online entertainment content.

4. Drudge Report. $42 million. Most measurements of the blog show that traffic trends are flat to down. The site has about nine million unique visitors. Page view estimates published by Drudge are absurdly high. The site carries a very modest amount of premium advertising and it is unlikely that the CPM per page is above $5. Revenue is about $8 million. Drudge appears to have very low staff levels and extremely small operating costs. Operating income should be about $6 million.

5. TechCrunch. $32 million. The sites that make up TechCrunch have almost 4 million unique visitors and the network has about eighteen million page views. CPMs are very high due to the quality and number of advertisers. 24/7 Wall St. estimates them to be $35 per page. Advertising revenue is about $7.5 million. Other related businesses bring in another $2 million. TechCrunch has a staff of about thirty. Company margins are about 30%, or just less than $3 million.

6. PopSugar Properties. $26 million. The Sugar Network has 11 million unique visitors to its site which include PopSugar, FitSugar, GeekSuger, and SavvySugar. The visitors to the sites are young and predominantly female. The quality of the advertising is low and the sites probably do not get a CPM per page of much more than $6. The company has revenue of about $7.5 million a year. The sites have a very large staff, probably more than 60 people. Operating profits are no better than 25% of revenue, or $2 million. This company would have tremendous value to a media company that targets young women.

7. Politico. $23 million. The site is the largest single media property in the US devoted exclusively to national politics. It has more than 5 million unique visitors and 40 million page views a month. Politico needs a better sales operation. It carries a number of high quality advertisers from corporate image and policy marketers mixed with a number of very low CPM campaigns. Advertising CPM per page is $10. Politico has a great deal of value to a national news organization. It does, however, have very high costs and employs at least 80 people. Politico loses $5 million a year on $5 million in revenue.

8. MacRumors. $20 million. MacRumors has 6.5 million unique visitors per month and 45 million page views. The quality of the advertising is weak. The company’s revenue is about $4.4 million. MacRumors staff is small and the publishing platform the site uses is probably very inexpensive. MacRumors margins are at least 50%. Competition in the “Apple” news website business has gotten fierce.

9. Boing Boing. $18 million. This leading tech and gadget site has 3 million unique visitors a month and probably over twenty-four million page views. CPMs should be relatively high–$14. Boing Boing has revenue of $4 million. The company has thirty or more people so its margins are probably only 50%.

10. Mashable. $17.5 million.This is the top blog in the country that concentrates on social media. It has 4.2 million unique visitors a month. Mashable employees about thirty people. The site has 30 million page views a month. Some of the advertising is from the tech industry and should carry high CPMS, but a fair amount of the inventory is sold to more generic marketers. Total CPM per page is $12. Total revenue for Mashable is $4.3 million. The site is in a highly competitive part of the blog market and is not the leading site in size or reputation. Margins are about 45%.

11. Seeking Alpha. $16 million.Seeking Alpha, the financial content aggregation site, is now nearly as large as some major media websites like SmartMoney and FT.com. The site has 2.5 million unique visitors and 18 million page views. Revenue is $3.5 million a year because of the high quality of the financial advertisers that the site runs. The company has a large staff in Israel and the US. Seeking Alpha has a complex publishing structure. The company makes a very small operating profit. It would be very valuable property for a large media conglomerate that has business and financial websites. Unlike some other sites on the list, SA does not rely heavily on its founder and CEO for its future success.

12. GigaOm. $15 million. This network of websites, founded by Om Malik, includes Tech Insider, CleanTech, Open Source, and Mac Lovers. GigaOm also has a paid research operation and runs several conferences. The sites have about 1.7 million unique visitors and 12 million page views. CPM per page $20. Total advertising revenue is $2.8 million. Sales from other divisions are $1 million. The company has close to 35 employees and high costs of operating conferences. Operating profit is $1.7 million.

13. Breitbart Sites. $11 million. This family of sites includes Breitbart, Big Hollywood, Big Government, and Breitbart TV. Total unique visitors across all sites are 3.2 million and 18 million page views. The site carries a reasonable amount of premium advertisers. CPMs are $12, putting total revenue at $2.5 million. Staff levels seem to be very low and the publishing platforms are simple. Operating profit is about $1.5 million.

14. SB Nation Network. $8 million. The company has a network of about 200 relatively small sites across all major sports. The network has 4 million unique visitors. SB Nation has about twenty employees. The sites are a page view machine but the advertising is low quality. Total revenue of $2 million with very modest margins.

15. ReadWriteWeb. $7 million. The site covers online trends. It bills itself as a site for tech innovators. The site has 1.2 million unique visitors and 10 million page views. The company has a staff of ten. CPM per page is very high with some pages carrying as many as 10 premium ads. CPM at $20 brings total revenue to $2.4 million. Margins are probably close to $1 million. ReadWriteWeb is in an extremely competitive part of the online content business.

16. The Business Insider. $7 million. The Business Insider is a family of websites covering media, the internet, business, and finance. The sites together have 1.8 million unique visitors and 14 million page views. The sites carry a large amount of premium advertising. The Business Insider revenue is about $2 million. The firm has a large staff of about 20 people and probably losses a modest amount of money.

17. Destructoid. $5 million. Mega-gamer site with 1.1 million unique visitors and ten million page views. The website is game reviews meets social networking. It appears to have very loyal audience. Most of the content is user-created and the staff appears to be small. There are not a lot of ads, but those that run are from the game industry and should have high CPMs. Annual revenue is $1.4 million and margins are at least 50%.

18. Apple Insider. $4.5 million. Another of the many websites about what goes on in the land of Steve Jobs and his many spectacularly successful inventions. The site has 1.2 million unique visitors and eight million page views. Advertising is a mix of high-end consumer products, which tend to pay low CPMs, and business electronics. Apple Insider appears to have a small staff. Revenue is about $1.3 million and the site should make $700,000 in operating profit.

19. //film. (SlashFilm). $4 million. The audience for this film blogging site has dropped about 15% over the last three months, but unique visitors are still 1.3 million and eleven million page views. The site carries very little premium advertising, averaging CPMs at less than $10 per page. Revenue for //film is about $1.3 million a year. The company probably is keeping more than half of that as profit.

20. SearchEnginLand. $4 million. This site, which covers the search engine industry, makes most of its money from conferences called the SMX Search Market Expos. The company that runs the site and conferences is Third Door Media. The main site has about 400,000 unique visitors and 3.5 million page views. That means the internet part of the company has revenue of just over $600,000. Revenue from the conferences is probably $2 million. The parent firm has a large staff.

Source

Hollywood Adds Money & Talent To Web Shows, Time For Blacks To Get With The Program

Web sites that buy original video clips often pay so little that "The Bannen Way," a flashy crime thriller debuting online, looked destined to be made poorly if it could be made at all.

Yet budding filmmakers Jesse Warren and Mark Gantt managed to hire 40-odd staff, including a boom operator, camerapeople — yes, more than one — and even production assistants on hand to offer sunscreen and sandwiches. And the production had actors familiar to some TV and movie audiences, including Michael Ironside, Robert Forster and Vanessa Marcil.

The secret to their success? Treat the Internet run like a TV or movie release, which often loses money on its on-screen debut, but can make healthy profits when issued on DVD or Blu-ray and later sold for reruns on cable or overseas.

With that in mind, major movie studios are now getting behind such productions, giving them a lift in budgets and quality — a far cry from the shaky camerawork and dubious special effects prevalent when Web video became a new phenomenon a few years ago.

For Warren and Gantt, who wrapped up shooting in October, a snazzy trailer they produced helped snag Sony Pictures Television as a partner.

"We came up with this idea," said Warren, 31. "There's no limit to how many episodes there can be in a Web series. So why don't we design it as a (feature-length movie) so we can sell it as a DVD feature at the end?"

Sony executives, it turns out, had the same idea.

The studio picked up the project in April and gave it a budget of around $1 million. That's nowhere near the $30 million-plus budgets of many Hollywood movies, but more than the producers were told they could sell it for. Web sites typically pay up to $5,000 for a short clip of original video; with 16 episodes, other Web sites might have paid around $100,000 for "The Bannen Way."

"This money buys more lights and more production value," said Gantt, 40.

Warren appeared to bask in the fullness of his crew: "We can afford extras rather than having our friends come in."

One quirk of the Web is that each episode must have a cliffhanger to keep online viewers coming back. In one scene, the audience learns for the first time that Neal Bannen, the title character, had been working for his mob boss uncle. Bannen's father is the chief of police, and viewers realize the son is about to be entangled in a cops-and-robbers struggle between father and uncle.

"It moves pretty well," Warren says, snapping his fingers. "We had breaks that would naturally lend itself to the Web."

Sony Pictures Television hopes the release will gain buzz and a few advertising dollars when it begins to debut in increments in January on the Sony-owned Crackle.com, a site targeted at males aged 18-34. Then, it will stop running for free online and get repackaged for sale to TV outlets, on iTunes and elsewhere.

Editing finished this month on the feature-length project. There's no substantial difference between the whole or spliced versions — just that the Web version has episodic breaks at certain climaxes.

Although the main goal is to drive traffic to Crackle.com, which Sony Corp. acquired when it was called Grouper for nearly $60 million in 2006, made-for-Web productions are expected to make a profit by themselves.

Thus, studios scrutinize projects before approving them and committing funding — green-lighting in industry speak. In this case, studio input during the production was also part of the process.

"We go through a very similar green-light process as we would for any piece of content in the studio," said Eric Berger, senior vice president of digital networks for Sony Pictures Television, which is planning to make 15 Web productions annually. "How and why we make them and where we will make money is conceived with every project."

Paramount Pictures's digital arm is also backing made-for-Web productions that can make additional money in other formats. Paramount spent $1 million to $3 million making a horror movie, "Circle of Ei8ht," which began showing on MySpace in installments in October in an initial run through Dec. 8. The series had generated nearly 5 million views online — which would rank it among the most-watched shows if it were on cable TV.

To help pay for production, Viacom Inc.'s Paramount lined up a key product-integration deal with PepsiCo Inc.'s Mountain Dew and sold rental and on-demand rights for one month exclusively to Blockbuster Inc. MySpace, which is owned by News Corp., kicked in marketing support.

"I don't think there's been a more expensive piece of content made for the Web," said Thomas Lesinski, president of Paramount Digital Entertainment, which has two other Web projects in the works.

He added that hiring professional talent and crew and paying for an original score will help sell "Circle of Ei8ht" when it makes it onto other platforms such as iTunes, DVD and video-on-demand.

"The stuff that we're creating could easily play on television," he said.

Brady Brim-DeForest, the co-founder of research and news site Tubefilter.tv, calls the renewed activity "the second coming of original programming online."

He cited the recent success of "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog," which "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" creator Joss Whedon made during the writers strike last year.

He estimates "Dr. Horrible" cost $220,000 to make but brought in about $2.4 million within a year, after sharing advertising revenue on Hulu.com and selling the movie and soundtrack on iTunes, as well as DVDs and merchandise. It went on to win an Emmy.

Internet shows have also made the transition to television. After a one-episode flirtation on NBC, "quarterlife" found a home on the NBC Universal-owned Bravo network last year. Sci-fi Web series "Sanctuary" made it on Syfy, and "Secret Girlfriend" ran on Comedy Central this fall.

Yet for every Web series that is made with a modest budget and high-profile directors such as "The O.C." creator Josh Schwartz — who made "Rockville CA" for The WB's site — there are about 20 made independently on a shoestring, Brim-DeForest said.

"What's so spectacular is they are all drawing an audience, finding a niche," he said. "That's the power of the Internet as a distribution medium. It's very compelling."

In October, Michael Eisner's Web production startup Vuguru got a multimillion-dollar capital injection from a unit of Canada's Rogers Communications Inc. in a deal that gives Rogers the right to use Vuguru content on television, the Web or even its rental video stores in Canada.

Vuguru had already made several sales internationally. Its "Prom Queen" hit from 2007 was translated, recast and reshot for the Web in Japan. A dubbed version ran on cable TV in France and it ran as-is on Yahoo's Australian site.

Rogers' minority investment will ensure Vuguru can ramp up its production to some 15 projects a year, compared with a half dozen over the last two years combined, said Andy Redman, chief operating officer of The Tornante Company LLC, which owns a majority of Vuguru. The plan is to boost the staff to 30 in a few years, up from two people who currently work on Web projects full-time, he said.

Redman compared the growth of the new platform to cable television in the 1980s, when networks like ESPN, CNN and MTV were just getting going, reaching focused audiences at first and then growing.

Today, cable networks like AMC put on some of the most critically acclaimed series on TV, such as its Emmy-winning "Mad Men," and have largely cast off their reputation as being a receptacle for reruns or shows that failed on broadcast TV.

"It was the platform to be joked about," he said. "Five years later, they've realized this whole new medium passed me by."

By RYAN NAKASHIMA (AP)

On the Net:

The Bannen Way: http://bit.ly/8pI4Ky

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: http://bit.ly/8D6Wjm

Rockville CA: http://bit.ly/6HRmCk

Vuguru: http://bit.ly/7IE3Ee

MIND ON MY MONEY: ING BANK? THE ORANGE BALL? VIRTUAL BANKING?

ING Bank is a company that seems to be everywhere, but in essence is nowhere.

I see you ING Bank, advertised on television, magazines, and newspapers ... but where is the ING Bank branch to cash my pay check, get a travelers check or run to, with cash in hand to "cover a check."

I see you ING Bank, in my mailbox with that orange envelope offering me $25.00 if I open an account, I see you on billboards and yes, I see you on your now famous park bench advertising. So where is the ING Bank branch to get that certified check, put the jewels in the safe deposit box or ask the eternal question “when will this check clear?”

Finally, where is the ING Bank branch with my most important features; like that cute Filipino teller with the great smile, the free cookies and the free espresso from your “state of the art single cup variable coffeemaker." One minute I see ING Bank the next minute I don't, but it always feels like you’re following me around. So to borrow a phrase from the film “Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid” let me ask, “Who are those guys?”

ING Bank is a "virtual" bank that only exist in cyberspace. You do all your banking online. No brick, mortar or smiling teller. You give up all this for what they have reasoned, you the consumer really want; very high interest rates and not a whole lot of fluff. How high you ask? While the typical savings account gives you 0.46% interest. ING is offering a whopping 4.5% on a regular savings.

Where the heck did they get such an idea would catch on?

Well … from you. Consumers put up with ticket less flying and Southwest Airlines surged their profits with no reserved seating. You don’t mind going to Home Depot and the grocery store and doing "self check out". You are buying from IKEA, designer furniture that you don't mind assembling yourself and paying bills online has cut your late fees in half, right?

ING Bank Direct other stats:

The largest Internet bank with half of the $90 billion done in online banking.

• More than 5 million account holders (100-150 thousand new each month)
  
• No fees no minimum balances
  
• Live customer service here in the U.S., no voice prompt from Calcutta India
  
• 5 Ciber cafes in major cities if your DSL goes down.
  
• Reluctantly have started checking accounts
  
• Offers only two mortgages 5year@ 6.6% and 7year @ 6.67% (because they figure most people move or refinance in 7 years.
  

ING BANK - we may not see you, but we are definitely feeling you!

The First Presidential Debate-- ONLINE!

Yahoo!, The Huffington Post and Slate announced today plans to host two online-only presidential debates during the 2008 campaign. These first-of-their kind debates will be hosted on all three Web sites and give voters the opportunity to ask questions directly to the candidates, participate in the debate in real-time, and even determine which candidate is giving the best performance. The debates, scheduled to take place after Labor Day, will be hosted by PBS' Charlie Rose. (READ MORE)