I’ve thought for a while now that the last best hope for newspapers and magazines was some sort of e-reader or tablet, that could present a reasonable facsimile of a publication but eliminate most of the production and delivery costs. Plus, the Web/computer has seriously wounded reading (as opposed to scanning or grazing). It’s a terrible medium for it and we need something better.
Like what Sports Illustrated has whipped up for a demo. It’s interactive, but it’s still recognizably a magazine. It’s pretty awesome. Watch SI’s editor demo it here:
I’d subscribe to that, wouldn’t you? Get a move on, Apple. (h/t Stephanie Clifford)
— The New York Observer reports that Rupert Murdoch is throwing $15 million into a new New York City edition of The Wall Street Journal with a former New York Sun deputy editor at the helm. Says John Koblin, who got the scoop:
Mr. Murdoch, who was an admirer of Mr. Seeley’s former paper, seems intent on creating a New York Sun on steroids.
Murdoch wants the Journal to be a first-read newspaper, which it’s never been. It remains to be seen how seriously the Times will have to worry about that. That will depend on what portion of that $15 million goes to the newsroom and whether it’s an annual amount or just a startup number. Because that kind of bread can pay a lot of reporters’ salaries.
— The NYT has a smart, interesting story on how the weakened dollar has affected the National Hockey League, of all things:
…the landscape in Canada has changed drastically, because of a rise of more than 50 percent in the Canadian dollar since 2002. A stronger currency has made it cheaper for the six Canadian teams to pay their players in United States dollars and to reduce debts. It has also inflated the revenue of the six Canadian franchises and, in turn, the league’s revenue. That has hurt some of the weaker teams in the United States by pushing up the minimum amount teams must spend on payroll.
But it could have been better. The story is too sports-focused. A nice broadening graph or two saying how what’s happening in the NHL is playing out in other aspects of American/Canadian trade would have been great.
UPDATE: Fixed the NHL part of the headline a couple of minutes after posting to focus on the dollar, not the loonie.
I can tell you from a Canadian perspective. Canada's economy is heavily export / resource based. It's biggest trading partner is America. Canadian schools are top notch and yet remain cheap, relative to the world market.
What happened under Clinton's strong dollar policies was something called the brain drain. People were making the same numbers whether they worked in Canada or in the US, a programmer for instance could make $40,000 in either Canada or the US, but the US worker ws taking in between 30 to 40% more because of the stronger currency, The US shipped a lot of services, such as call centers etc.. to Canada because the people were well educated and they cost 40% less, more so if you factor in the absence of employer health care costs.
And a lot of resources, such as softwood, went from Canadian markets to American ones because of NAFTA (so much that the US stuck an illegal tariff to Canadian Softwood).
Now the Canadian dollar is close to par with the American one. The resource economy is getting 40% less bang for American buck and they have to raise prices, so less sales are taking place.
The brain drain has reversed. Many people are coming home because the financial incentive to work in America is gone. Canada has been seeking different international markets and has been inflating its own housing bubble in order to stimulate domestic consumer demand.
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=04fe6225-ae78-4e70-84e0-6d340844ab01
When I saw Victoria BC 2 years ago, it was getting some spill off business from the winter olympics preparations, but that didn't explain the changes in how jobs were being allocated. Building was sucking all the excess labor away meaning the buses were carrying advertisements for McDonald's not directed at customers, but directed at prospective employees. KFC was paying $15 an hour. These jobs could not find people to work them because rent and house prices were so high that you could not live on a $15 an hour job in Victoria and a person off the street could walk into a construction site and make $25.
That started going downhill last year, but there still is a bit of air in the bubble.
The dollar and bank collapse have produced major changes in US Canadian relations since Canada has not grown in stature, but America has shrunk. Canada isn't sure it can lean on itself and it doesn't have many other choices of who to lean on.
#1 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 3 Dec 2009 at 12:39 AM
And, of course, one of the things we can't rely on anymore is Dubai:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/lightning-co-owner-subject-to-probe/article1376388/
Bear Mountain is limping along with some housing sales, although at least one condominium project was halted and a large financing deal has not materialized. Barrie had said an agreement with Siraj Capital, a company based in Dubai, was to inject $350-million (all currency U.S.) into the development by October, but it has not come to fruition.
The Bear Mountain Golf resort - operated by Tampa Bay Lightning co-owner, ex-NHL player, and (the somewhat jerkish) Victoria native Len Barrie - could go under if the real estate market deflates further.
#2 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 3 Dec 2009 at 12:55 AM