She took a shotgun and blew out the brains of a beautiful, blonde homecoming queen in Chicago, but authorities chose not to charge her. She was accused of stalking and battering a beautiful, blonde TV newscaster in Florida, but a jury acquitted her. Georgia Roberts says her life's just like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but others say Single White Female is more like it, according to the first in a two-part investigation by Bob Norman.
Seeking to "hook young people on the newspaper habit, with the hope that they might eventually graduate to more substantive, established fare," the Tribune Company's amNew York debuted in Manhattan on Friday. Free dailies like amNew York face a number of daunting challenges, says Jacques Steinberg, like distribution issues, lack of profitability and cannibalization of existing dailies in the same market. "But perhaps the biggest uncertainty surrounding such publications is how much attention busy young people will pay to newspapers whose short articles ... are in many instances supplied by news agencies like The Associated Press," notes Steinberg.
After years of weaving the worlds of art and fashion into its advertising, Absolut vodka is entering the music business with a CD of club music, according to the company. Called "Absolut Threetracks" the first CD has been distributed to 3,500 disc jockeys at clubs around the world and can be downloaded from Absolut's Web site.
Management consultants Cap Gemini Ernst & Young found only 17% of the 700 U.S. consumers it surveyed in the past six months said TV ads influenced their car-buying decisions. Ads on Internet search engines influenced 26% of consumers. Nearly half, or 48%, of the consumers said a direct-mail offer from a car dealer would influence their vehicle purchases, but the most influential measure was word-of-mouth, cited by 71% of consumers. Cap Gemini expects to release its complete findings this week.
A new, $1-million ad campaign from the Newspaper National Network LP -- the most extensive and expensive in its history -- was set to break today [Oct. 13] in trade magazines and online, and later in newspapers.
A packed house toasted the Seattle arts community last week as four local artists and two arts organizations were named the first recipients of the $5,000 prize, reports the Seattle Post- Intelligencer. All the hugging and kissing between critics and award winners brought a disclaimer of sorts from Stranger Editor Dan Savage. "None of our critics has slept with any of the award winners. Not yet. Maybe it's time they paid up."
Does the latest candidate for the Democratic nomination for President really believe in time travel? Well, that depends on who you ask. According to the media organization which broke the story, Wired News, Clark does and he doesn't. Chris Haire looks at the comments that gave rise to the bizarre allegation and follows the potentially credibility-destroying story as it makes its way around the Web.
As much as 30 percent of the roughly 1.6 billion searches conducted online each week have a geographic or location-specific dimension, according to a survey of search providers recently completed by The Kelsey Group. Attempting to tap into this market, Google and Overture have recently conducted tests of local search applications, and AOL and Yahoo! are increasingly integrating local information into general search results. In addition, earlier this year, Citysearch launched a local paid search product across its nationwide network of city guides.
Tepid shopper interest last year forced retailers to cut their year-end forecasts and resort to heavy promotions to move merchandise. This helped newspapers eke out a 3.8% gain in Q4 retail advertising, on a par with the industry's 1999 spending level. Is another promotion-heavy season newspapers' best hope? "I think we'll see promotions again this year," says Kathleen Brookbanks, managing director of media planning and buying firm OMD Midwest in Chicago, which places ads for retailers like Dell Inc. and J.C. Penney Co. Inc. "When they're depending on taking business from others, they go back to what works for them, and newspapers will do well."
