Category: Blog News

John Harrington has all kinds of video from the festival (here) and Daryl Lang of PDN has some good insight from festival founder Nick Nichols (here).

Mr. Zell, not satisfied with the slow decline in advertising and audience his recently purchased newspaper empire (which includes the Chicago Tribune and LA Times) will most certainly experience over the next decade, decided to quicken the pace by trimming news pages across the board and inserting more simple to digest graphical content (a la USA Today). Additionally, in an unprecedented move it was announced that control of the LA Times Magazine would be turned over to the business side of the company (after replacing the entire editorial staff, natch) in what I can only assume will be the making of a giant advertorial for whomever is buying. Sam Zell’s magnanimous failure as a media baron will be clearly marked by these enormous blunders and I suppose the only winner in this is for the NY Times as readers will likely flock to them for in-depth reporting on news stories.

I really dig the work of Geoff Mcfetridge and in this video (here) he talks about creating work that is personal, so when people come to you for something they saw in it you can simply expand on the relationship you already have with it. That’s good advice for all creative people.

He’s also in the Beautiful Losers Movie.

Anything you want to know about becoming an assistant or if you’re a photographer looking to hire an assistant can be found at: http://www.1prophoto.com/

I love how the review of the new OctaPlus57 includes this important tidbit: “No more pinched or smashed fingers during setup or break down like you get with the Elinchrom Octabank.”

Techcrunch is reporting from the Apple event today (here) that AP (Associated Press) is releasing an application for the iPhone that allows people to upload photos and text directly to AP when they witness live news events.

I found this interview with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails interesting because it’s apparent that he became the ambassador for “free music” not because he believes in it but rather because he believes it’s not going away. Here are the relevant parts:

Mr. Reznor has no global solution for how to sustain a long-term career as a recording musician, much less start one, when listeners take free digital music for granted. “It’s all out there,” he added. “I don’t agree that it should be free, but it is free, and you can either accept it or you can put your head in the sand.”

He knows what he doesn’t want to do: make his music a marketing accessory. “Now just making good music, or great music, isn’t enough,” Mr. Reznor said. “Now I have to sell T-shirts, or I have to choose which whorish association is the least stinky. I don’t really want to be on the side of a bus or in a BlackBerry ad hawking some product that sucks just so I can get my record out. I want to maintain some dignity and self-respect in the process, if that’s possible these days.”

Last year Mr. Reznor produced and bankrolled an album for the socially conscious hip-hop poet Saul Williams, “The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust.” When record labels didn’t want it, Mr. Reznor put it online: free to the first 100,000 downloaders as good-quality MP3 files or $5 for more high-fidelity files. He had thought that fans would willingly pay the price of a latte to support musicians directly. But fewer than 20 percent did so. “I think I was just naïve.”

At the time he called the project a failure, but he has reconsidered. “The numbers of the people that paid for that record, versus the people that paid for his last record, were greater,” he said. “He made infinitely more money from that record than he did from his other one. It increased his name value probably tenfold. At the end of the day, counting free downloads, it was probably five or six or seven times higher than the amount sold on his last record. I don’t know how you could look at that as a failure.”

Read the whole story (here).

Clay Stang has a cool new feature on his website where where you can give him art direction from a pre-selected list of topics and he will execute the shot. Visit http://www.claystang.com and select “you call the shots.” I think it’s a very innovative way to show clients how you execute art direction. It’s also a little too realistic on the client side because selecting the shot by committee means we execute the “safe” shot.

Some magazine publishers hoped that this year would see marketers shake off their exuberance for digital media. Perhaps, amid a sober reassessment of the actual results from so much digital experimentation, print could even recapture some of the ad spending lost to the internet.

Fat chance.

Instead, a combination of forces led by the broad economic slump is delivering as challenging a year as ever for traditional publishers.

Read the story on Advertising Age (here).

The world’s first entirely electronic newspapers will go on trial in France next week, offering not only morning headlines but automatic updates every hour throughout the day.

Read more (here), via Bosacks.

Check out this video of Paula Scher from Pentagram (here). I love when she talks about how ideas come to her very quickly and clients like to buy process so if the problem is solved in 1 second then they feel like they’re not getting their moneys worth. She explains “it’s done in a second, plus 34 years [of experience].”

Sad but true quote from the photographer:

PROVO, Utah — A newspaper photographer got a little too close to the action at the state high school track championships _ and was speared through the leg by a javelin.

Ryan McGeeney of the Standard-Examiner was spared serious injury in Saturday’s mishap, and even managed to snap a photo of his speared leg while others worked to help him.

“If I didn’t, it would probably be my editor’s first question when I got back,” McGeeney said later.

More at the Huffington Post, including the photo (here).

Do you like honesty? Robert Wright has your dose from the Photo Fest (here). Always a good read.

Between Andrew Hetherington (Jacko) and Chris Floyd that was started awhile back on Jackanory and has now moved to Blueeyes Online Magazine. Part 1 (here) Part 2 (here). Good read.

Keith J. Kelly has the story (here). Could this signal the beginning of the end for the high profits and consumer appetite of tabloid journalism?

We can only hope.

They’ve got Andrew Hetherington, AKA Jacko, on staff as a reporter so that should keep the coverage lively and interesting. Here’s a post on his picks for what to do at the festival (here).

Andrew Hetherington has coverage of last nights PDN party in NYC (here).

PDN Photography Annual

and law making in general over at Photo Business News and Forum (here).