Posts Tagged ‘News’

R U OK?  Four letters as a question conveyed a lot today.

Prosek Partners, the company I work for, has an office in the Empire State Building. It was outside our building this morning that a man  gunned down a former colleague and soon died in a cop shoot out that injured almost a dozen of innocent bystanders.  All of this occurred outside our office building.

Luckily, we’re all fine, and I was actually in a cab on the way to the office when it all happened.

But emails, Tweets, wall postings and texts quickly followed from clients, friends and family from all over the world, many starting with the same four letters as a question.

Social media allowed the news to travel quickly.  We all know that happens.  But I also learned it allows us express real concern and emotion and provide some peace of mind.  Even today.

That’s M2C (or my two cents). Were you involved in today's events, or do you know someone who was? Feel free to share your stories below. End of Story

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No Comments » Written on August 24th, 2012 by
Categories: From the News, Miscellaneous Musings, Social Media
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The NFL season is almost upon us.  On September 5 the New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys kick off the season at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, the first real game of the season.  When the ball is kicked off that evening, so begins the start of yet another four months of trash talking, intense rivalries, compromised friendships and for some, the thrill of victory (or the agony of defeat).  I’m not referring in any way to what takes place on the field between NFL players.  Instead, I’m talking about what takes place online in the super competitive world of fantasy football.

Last season, approximately 27 million people played fantasy football, a $5 billion industry.  That is a bit shy of one out of every 10 Americans, a staggering number that continues to grow by leaps and bounds each year.

What fascinates me most about fantasy football is the media industry that has grown to support Americans’ tremendous appetite for fantasy news and information.  In so many ways it is similar to the financial news industry.  The biggest difference  in my view is that while CNBC, Bloomberg and other financial news outlets have five days a week of live action to report on, the fantasy media really has just one big day a week (not including the Thursday night games that are on the NFL schedule this season).

The biggest similarity in my view is the volume of “noise” created by both the financial and fantasy media.  Turn on a business cable network and you will see four or more experts commenting on the news of the day at once, a scrolling ticker and “breaking news” alerts every other minute or so.  Each expert has a different view on the markets, making it potentially confusing for viewers to digest what they are seeing.  Now is the time to sell tech stocks says one expert.  The other shouts that, if anything, now is the time to buy.

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1 Comment » Written on August 3rd, 2012 by
Categories: Miscellaneous Musings, Sports
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THE WEEK UNPEELED

Not a great week for the banks, it seems.  Moody’s downgraded five of the six largest banks in the US and a similar number overseas based on increased risk and lower profits, lending anything but support for choppy markets last week that saw the Dow lose about 1 percent to end Friday at 12,640.  (Banks did trade higher, though. Buy the fact?) Euro banks aren’t faring well either, with Spain and Italy in bailout cross-hairs. Moody’s since has been on the defense on such argument as why the industry as a whole and why so late. Elsewhere:

  • Google chief Larry Paige “lost his voice,” which caused some to scream (especially some headline writers:  WSJ: “What’s Ailing Google Chief?”); he also missed the company’s annual meeting, btw, so don’t we kinda have to speak up about, in a best-practice corporate comms speaking sort of way;
  • Microsoft unveiled a tablet last week, the first computer the company ever made;
  • Nokia announced it would slash 10,000 jobs by end of next year;
  • NBC news division suffered several media blows about its slumping viewership numbers amid reports that Anne Curry of “Today” will likely depart;
  • King James took home an NBA championship for the Heat; and
  • Artist LeRoy Neiman, known for his impressionistic paintings of sport figures, died. CJP
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No Comments » Written on June 25th, 2012 by
Categories: From the News, Media Navel Gaze
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The Week Unpeeled

Big headline news overnight rewrote front pages across the globe with the death of Kim Jong-Il, the dictator of North Korea, who will now be succeeded by his son.  Not likely easy succession, stories predicted, amid concerns of the military and the stability (??) of the nation that has tested nuclear weapons twice in the last five years.  Markets seemed a bit on edge early on. Elsewhere:

  • The CEO of The New York Times, Janet Robinson, announced late last week that she was leaving, in a surprise move to many
  • Christiane Amanpour is leaving ABC’s “This Week” and returning to CNN. George Stephanopoulus will return to his spot as anchor and stay on at “Good Morning America”
  • Avon is replacing its CEO, Andrea Jung, in an effort to “get back on a growth track.”  She will remain as chairman
  • Zynga’s IPO was flopsville last week, raising questions about inflated Internet stocks;
  • The US officially ended its war in Iraq after nine years, 4,500 American deaths and $1 trillion
  • Christopher Hitchens died
  • The US dollar coin is going into retirement
  • The Dow ended the week down 2.6 percent to 11,866.

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No Comments » Written on December 19th, 2011 by
Categories: From the News, Media Navel Gaze
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The Week Unpeeled

It was a good week for the markets, while much of everything else seemed to crumble. The Dow wound up in positive territory once again for 2011 (up 0.6 percent for year) and advanced nearly 5 percent for the week to close at 11,644. Much of the media world focused on jail terms, outages and “about-faces.”  Such as:

  • Galleon hedge-fund newly minted felon Raj Rajaratnam was sentenced to 11 years in prison in the largest-ever conviction for insider trading;
  • Gap decided to mind its own sales gap by saying it would close more than 20  percent of its stores in North America over the next two years;
  • Blackberrys went silent as the company and millions of users faced its worst-ever outage (ironically as Apple was launching its iPhone 4S): Best Joke Last Week: “What did one Blackberry user say to another? Nothing.”;
  • The White House $447-billion jobs bill failed to pass Senate;
  • The “about-face” part: Hewlett-Packard said it was reconsidering a decision to spin off its PC division and Netflix said that it was NOT splitting DVD from its streaming business;
  • JP Morgan Chase record a quarterly drop in profits, compared with year-ago levels;
  • The US sent troops (only a 100 strong but still symbolic) to central Africa to help find leaders of the Lord’s Resistance Army; and
  • The NBA canceled its first two weeks of the season amid labor disputes, showing once again it’s always about jobs.
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No Comments » Written on October 17th, 2011 by
Categories: From the News, Media Navel Gaze
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