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The Audit

What’s the right price for ebooks? (updated)
May 16, 2012 11:00 AM
Author Chuck Windig, GigaOm's Mathew Ingram, and TechDirt's Mike Masnick all took on the question of ebook pricing recently, arguing that production costs (you know, minor details like advances, editors, etc.) don't or shouldn't factor into the end price. Ingram... Continue reading
The Audit

Audit notes: Commercialization, GM and Facebook, Saverin’s taxes
May 15, 2012 11:15 PM
Conor Friedersdorf makes a nice catch on Tom Friedman's Sunday column bemoaning the commercialization of seemingly all aspects of American life: For example, his column is bizarrely titled, "This Column Is Not Sponsored by Anyone," despite the fact... Continue reading
The Audit

The business press embarrasses Jamie Dimon
May 14, 2012 11:04 AM
In what FT Alphaville called "the most excruciating bank conference call we’ve ever heard," press favorite Jamie Dimon announced last week that JPMorgan Chase has lost more than $2 billion on bad derivatives bets made by its chief... Continue reading
The Audit

Audit notes: Chesapeake woes, the Untaxable, Reuters on HSBC
May 11, 2012 07:34 PM
The hits keep coming at Chesapeake Energy. Today, it's The Wall Street Journal's turn. It reports on page one that the company has put $1.4 billion in unreported liabilities off its balance sheet, far more than analysts had estimated.... Continue reading
The Audit

The Washington Post Co.’s Self-Destructive Course
May 11, 2012 06:10 AM
The Washington Post Company‘s dismal quarterly earnings release last week was received with something of a shrug—more of the same. But the report is worse than the reaction suggests and raises fundamental questions about the Post's strategy, not just... Continue reading
The Audit

Audit notes: WSJ dings austerity, Weisenthal, The Global Mail
May 10, 2012 07:58 PM
If you're looking to get up to speed on what happened with the euro and Greece, you could do a lot worse than Marcus Walker's excellent page-one story in The Wall Street Journal today. The Journal recounts how Angela... Continue reading
The Audit

Audit notes: Blodget’s anonymous Zuck fans, Ongo no-go, social news apps
May 10, 2012 02:12 AM
Here's the sourcing in Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget's New York cover story on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg: "a colleague of Zuckerberg," "another early colleague of Zuckerberg," "one Silicon Valley veteran," "one Valley veteran," "A Zuckerberg confidant," "one insider,"... Continue reading
The Audit

Clearly, Quartz wants to help elites go optimize themselves
May 10, 2012 12:58 AM
The Atlantic's big new business-journalism project is off to an inauspicious start. First there's the name: Quartz, which is different, and that doesn’t mean worse, necessarily, but…whatever. It's a name. Here's the press release explaining why the venture... Continue reading
The Audit

Audit Notes: Murdoch’s Influence, Reuters’s Chesapeake drumbeat
May 9, 2012 06:10 AM
The News Corp. scandal is so massive and so sprawling that it's just about impossible to bring all the pieces together to see a relatively complete picture. So find some time to read this remarkable 8,000-word essay by openDemocracy founder... Continue reading
The Audit

Audit notes: News Corp.’s board, Lehman’s hubris, Awards and Slideshows
May 8, 2012 12:55 AM
David Carr takes a look at the News Corporation board of directors, which is as stacked with the CEO's cronies as any board out there—and that's saying something: Like many media companies (including the one I work for), News... Continue reading
The Audit

The housing market at an inflection point
May 7, 2012 07:00 AM
After seven or so years of bearishness on housing, I decided a few weeks back that the market was probably at or near bottom, and my wife and I started to think about buying. I may have been a couple... Continue reading
The Audit

Audit notes: Still pro-euro, foreclosures, privatized parking meters
May 4, 2012 05:24 PM
British Labour politician Peter Mandelson takes to the Financial Times to argue that, after all we've seen, the UK should still tether itself to the euro down the line. Wow: Saving the single currency is about to push the... Continue reading
The Audit

Facebook’s low, low ad rates
May 4, 2012 04:00 PM
The Wall Street Journal has a nice piece on advertisers' doubts about Facebook. As I noted a few months ago, Facebook brings in just penny a day of revenue for each of its users and its rate of... Continue reading
The Audit

The most important journalist in business news
May 4, 2012 10:56 AM
Quick: Who's the most important journalist in business news? Is it The Wall Street Journal's Robert Thomson or Paul Gigot? The New York Times's Larry Ingrassia, Andrew Ross Sorkin, or, as Dean has argued, Gretchen Morgenson? Bloomberg's Matt Winkler?... Continue reading
The Audit

Audit notes: Dollar dictator, the SEC’s small fry, Americans go Swiss
May 4, 2012 02:21 AM
The Atlantic's Matthew O'Brien, whom you should really be reading, raises an important point lost in all the discussion about Ben Bernanke and whether he's doing enough to combat unemployment. Last Sunday in The New York Times Magazine, Paul... Continue reading
The Audit

Audit notes: Murdoch and the Conservatives, M&A, ESPN fail
May 2, 2012 07:20 PM
Peter Oborne writes a must-read column for The Telegraph on how the Murdoch scandal is threatening, unnecessarily, to bring down David Cameron's government. The Conservatives don't fully realize that Murdoch's vice grip has been loosened, that for the few... Continue reading
The Audit

Reuters uncovers Chesapeake CEO’s other day job
May 2, 2012 05:35 PM
Reuters unloads another outstanding scoop on the sketchy doings of Chesapeake Energy Aubrey McClendon, reporting that the CEO ran a hedge fund inside Chesapeake from 2004 to 2008 that bet on natural gas. While Reuters notes up high that... Continue reading
The Audit

Audit notes
May 2, 2012 12:13 AM
Rupert Murdoch wasn't the only "not fit" executive seared by the select committee's report on News Corporation scandals today. The MPs found, unsurprisingly, that Les Hinton, while he was publisher of The Wall Street Journal and CEO of Dow... Continue reading
The Audit

The coverup culture of News Corp.
May 1, 2012 07:01 PM
When a committee of Parliament condemned Rupert Murdoch today Tuesday as "not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company," it was a statement as obvious as it was astonishing. Astonishing because, even though Murdoch's aura... Continue reading
The Audit

Audit Notes: Murdoch’s Lobbyists, Reuters on Chesapeake, Shadow Space (UPDATED)
May 1, 2012 01:40 AM
Top News Corporation officials talked about enlisting the top Wall Street Journal Europe editor to lobby politicians for Murdoch's multibillionaire BSkyB bid. ProPublica: But email messages released Tuesday indicate that News Corp. executives at least considered dispatching top editors... Continue reading

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