As Britney goes, so goes the US economy. Britney Spears is touring less, thus injecting less into the ailing US economy. Coincidence? Portfolio magazine doesn’t think so.
The most useful magazine journalism of the (still) new year comes to us not from the usual sources — Newsweek, Time, etc. — but from Portfolio, a business publication. It has enumerated the vast amounts of money Britney Spears is worth not just to herself, but to others as well — about $110 million to $120 million annually to the struggling U.S. economy. This is what Portfolio calls the Britney Industrial Complex.
Now Public, a Vancouver tech start-up, is trying to change the way the news is written by putting the power in the hands of the people. Well who am I turn up my nose to this invitation? I’m a self professed news junkie, so why not spread what I’m reading with a larger audience? I’ve yet to write my own article, but you can see what I’ve been highlighting on my members page or on my Now Public widget to the right of my home page.
For all of you how are asking where I’ve been these days, the simple answer is, working on the final semester of my masters thesis. I’m really excited about my research and the discoveries I’ve been making. I’ve been trying to establish a new language for social media storytelling, which has led me to do tons of research into the work of Marshall Mcluhan, Walter Ong and Eric Havelock. I’ve written a ten part series on the connection between orality and social media storytelling over on my thesis blog: i am user generated.
Comments and crits are always welcome, preferably over beers somewhere.
I’m grinning ear to ear today after finding this ad. It combines all my loves: soccer, basketball, art cinema and advertising. It also has a great score. Then there’s the whole element of DIY that the Wall Street Journal article elaborates on. Steve Nash enlisted the help of Lola Schnabel, daughter of Julian Schnabel, to shoot the mini-documentary.
Another example of some soft sell advertising in a longer form from Lumix cameras features two teams of camera assassins whose goal it is is to photographer the other team as many times as possible without getting photographed themselves. See who wins:
