Out of the Box

The Paradox of Cable News

Has the cable news audience peaked?

Well, maybe, but that’s the wrong question. The importance of these channels has never depended on a mass audience. In fact, they are something of a niche product whose influence far outstrips the number of eyeballs they attract.

Jack Shafer of Reuters says a recent decline in numbers suggests that the audience has maxed out, especially now that cable is in more than 90 percent of American homes. CNN, which tends to suffer when there is no breaking news, has seen its numbers sink in prime time, while one blogger says the partisan audiences for still-dominant Fox and for MSNBC may have hit a ceiling.

Says Shafer: “Bill O’Reilly? Peaked. Chris Matthews? Peaked. Anderson Cooper? Peaked. Democratic Party outrage over what Fox News said about the president? Peaked. Maddow, Hannity, O’Donnell, Sharpton? Peaked, peaked, peaked, peaked.”

I beg to differ.

The (Not So) Daily News

The New Orleans Times-Picayune and three other Newhouse papers in Alabama are cutting publication to three times a week.

The cost of printing seven days a week is becoming unsustainable. It’s still profitable to print two or three days a week, not because those are the only days when news happens but because newspapers are still in the distribution business and those are the most lucrative — still-lucrative — days to distribute inserted and printed ads.

That could change again when and if (a) newspaper circulation falls below the critical mass needed to distribute coupons and circulars and (b) local advertisers become more savvy and finally move online themselves. Then printing and distributing paper will become even less profitable, even less sustainable. That’s when print could — mind you, I didn’t say “will” as I’m not predicting the form’s demise; I repeat, “could” — disappear.

By then, newspapers had better be ready. That is, they had better have become digital companies. That is the essence of the digital first strategy: become sustainable, successful online companies that can survive without (or with) print. And grow again from there.

It’s Not Complicated: Keeping Zuckerberg In Line

I snapped to attention upon learning that Mark Zuckerberg’s girlfriend draw up a set of rules to make sure she didn’t take a back seat to Facebook.

Clearly, Priscilla Chan is one tough cookie. Maybe she even got it in writing that he’d tie the knot a day after the IPO.

But now that Zuckerberg is a big-shot CEO of a public corporation, Priscilla needs to make sure their marriage doesn’t sink faster than Facebook stock in the first two days.

Check out my Daily Beast piece on 8 new rules for Zuck to live by–or else.

DD: Instagram As a Tool for the Media

Ethical Shopping and the Guilt Trip: A Love Story

Fashioning Change is already beta-testing a great site called Wear This, Not That, which invades any big-brand shopping sites you may be browsing and offers ethical alternatives to clothing items you may be interested in. You can also use it from the Fashioning Change site, where you can select a number of fashion retail brands and search for better alternatives.

The tool will also tell you what good you’ll be doing by buying from Fashioning Change instead of the mainstream option. For example, if I buy a United By Blue messenger bag, instead of one from J Crew, I not only save $19, but I also give my money to a company that “removes 1 pound of trash from oceans for each product sold” and get a product that is 100 percent organic cotton. On the other hand, the site tells me, J Crew has a lack of transparency in its supply chain and no commitment to eco-friendly manufacturing.

Kurtz and The Wrap’s Sharon Waxman on Excessive Media Mogul Pay

Compensation for media executives is skyrocketing – and occasionally bears no relationship to the success of the company. Our Howard Kurtz discusses with The Wrap’s Sharon Waxman.

Fast Chat: Romney’s Gay Spokesman Quits; Dan Rather Still at War; New BlackBerry

Lauren and Howard discuss the controversial resignation of Romney spokesperson Richard Grenell and Dan Rather’s return to the news.

Video: Grover Norquist Juggles the Issues

Grover Norquist is a serious guy.  A really serious guy.  He’s never held elective office, and most people don’t know his name.  Yet more than any other human being on the planet, Norquist drives the bus when it comes to pressuring Congress into keeping taxes low.

Turns out, he has a silly side.

Howard Kurtz and I sat down with the billionaires’ best friend and founder of Americans for Tax Reform in his downtown Washington office to get his reaction on a piece novelist Stephen King wrote for The Daily Beast titled “Tax Me, for F@%&’s Sake!”

The serious stuff is here:

And then, well, there’s this video I took with my iPad as we were packing up to leave.

Twitter’s International Intrigue

Sometimes Twitter seems unstoppable.

No matter what the news event, tweeting now plays a key role. Once dismissed as a pedestrian toy for the bored to record what they had for lunch, the social network is now part of the media and political bloodstream.

On Sunday, Twitter users managed to circumvent a French embargo on election results to tell the world that Nicolas Sarkozy had been booted from the presidency. The tweeters used code names to avoid running afoul of the law. Sarkozy was either Rolex (his opulent lifestyle with Carla Bruni) or the wine Hungarian Tokaji (his pere is Hungarian). Francois Hollande, France’s incoming president, was called Gouda cheese, among other things. The hashtag: #radiolondres, for a BBC World War II service.

The reason for the subterfuge: France imposes fines up to $99,000 for releasing election results before 8 p.m.

Days earlier, Twitter users also outsmarted the Chinese regime as the case of dissident Chen Guangcheng played out during Hillary Clinton’s visit to Beijing.

Brokaw on the Media’s Disconnect

Tom Brokaw knows how to spin a good yarn.

We were chatting at Washington’s Newseum, where he was helping celebrate the centennial of my alma mater, the Columbia School of Journalism, when the longtime NBC anchor described how he and Walter Cronkite once escaped the craziness of Louisville on Kentucky Derby weekend by hitching a ride on a hot-air balloon.

Brokaw seems at ease after so many years in the Nightly News trenches, traveling around the country for occasional specials and promoting his latest book. And he delivered some biting observations about the news business in a video interview with my colleague Howard Kurtz for The Daily Beast.

Most Americans are not as ideologically divided as the pugilistic pundits they watch on television, Brokaw says. They feel disconnected from the “closed game” of politics, which has “its own language” and “its own culture.”

Public Weighs In On President Obama’s Endorsement of Gay Marriage

As soon as the news of President Obama’s earth-shaking endorsement of same-sex marriage broke, I jumped on my Facebook page to ask friends to weigh in.   We’d like to hear from you if you think his views will have a powerful impact on the coming presidential election.

Many Democrats hailed Obama’s dramatic comments to ABC’s Robin Roberts; some Republicans, including Mitt Romney, voiced opposition; religious conservatives lambasted the president. But it remains to be seen how such a sensitive issue plays with voters, and in my book Facebook is as good a listening post as any.

Here’s a particularly passionate response from reader Phil Catalf0:  ”Yes, I think he was right to do so and I think it was courageous of him. Frankly, I wasn’t sure it would be best for him to do it, because I was worried about the political cost; I think it’s imperative that he be reelected and that the Republicans be handed resounding defeats this year at all levels of government, given the outrageous things they have enacted or attempted to enact at the federal and state level. But President Obama did the right thing, and I salute him for it. By the way, lest anyone think I’m a gay activist, I’m a 61-year-old straight male who has been married to the same woman for nearly 34 years. And I have never felt that homosexuality or the prospect of gay marriage posed any kind of threat to our marriage–nor that it went against God’s will.”

Real Founders of Silicon Valley: Those Bravo-Inspired Entrepreneurial Events In Full

Regular readers will know that PandoDaily has been somewhat, ah, skeptical of Bravo’s new “Silicon Valley” reality show, which begins shooting next month. “Snobs!” cried one critic. “Wait until you know more details before you judge!” wailed…well, actually, the exact same critic who in no way has been lobbying for a cameo on the show.

And, sure enough, now that said details have begun to emerge, it appears we may have entirely underestimated the legitimacy of “Silicon Valley.”

Stop the Press

If there’s one thing Mitt Romney and President Obama can agree on, it’s how much they can’t stand the press.

I watched in amazement on Wednesday as Romney’s press wranglers tried to physically stop reporters from asking questions at a rope line in St. Petersburg.   Even a Secret Service agent jumped in, telling them to “come off” the line.

Since when did covering a meet-and-greet become a federal offense?

Were campaign officials afraid that the candidate would say something off-message that they would then have to defend for the next news cycle?  The words “Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order” – Romney’s dismissal of the mission that killed Osama bin Laden — are probably still ringing in the ears of campaign staffers.

Fitness Tech Must Shape Up

In a world filled with glorified pedometers the Up was to be something different, an all-in-one device that would measure sleeping habits and serve as an alarm on top of its mundane step-counting duties.

The Up was the future of fitness tech. Until the wristbands stopped working.

No warnings. No rhyme or reason. One day the Up was working, and the next it wasn’t

Is This The New Pinterest?

It’s a fast-growing website that let’s people share the fruits of their shopping–a more focused and more commercialized version of Pinterest.

Users can set up personalized catalogues that their friends can browse for ideas.

The site is in China. But a version might be heading our way.

Justin Bieber, Vigilante

The LA County Sheriff wants to talk to the diminutive Canadian pop sensation following a photographer’s claim that Beiber shoved him, causing injury.

Does This Image Entice You To Read Our Site?

In a strange new promotion, the Daily Caller – a site run by pundit Tucker Carlson – is giving away a FMK9C1 handgun engraved with the Bill of Rights every week until election day to one lucky, trigger-happy contestant.