Salon.com > David Carr

Bloomberg’s box

Tue, 10 Apr 2001 19:30:00 +0000

Michael Bloomberg, who built a massive gated community in the financial information business and has $4 billion to show for it, may soon trade his rarefied perch for the chance to run a revenue-hungry New York City in a down cycle. It's odd market timing for a former Salomon Brothers man, but ego is never far away when you're talking about Bloomberg. His desk may be nominally out on the floor, amid his troops on Park Avenue, but it's framed by one of the most lovingly tended walls of fame in all of titandom. If he were the mayor of New York, he'd have dozens more newspaper clips to choose from every day.

Still, Bloomberg's interest in public service is pretty hard-core. He has served on a raft of important boards and has been giving away fistfuls of money from the very beginning of his career. He is a magnificent Alger-esque cliché the American entrepreneur with a single idea so powerful that it laid its own tracks to dominance. But his autonomy in an age of publicly traded, vertically (and horizontally) integrated behemoths has left him unable to grow much beyond providing financial data. And that's not enough for Bloomberg: The real reason he's looking toward the public sector is that he's on the verge of being bored stiff.

Don’t talk dirty to me

Tue, 20 Mar 2001 20:30:00 +0000

In the January issue of Hearst Magazines' Cosmopolitan, the editors brought back the pruriently perennial "Bedside Astrologer," which promised to be "Your 365-Day Guide to Love, Passion, Success, Money ..." It was almost exactly the same as the previous year's intro, except that in January 2000 the astrologer offered advice on "men, sex, money and more." What's changed? When it comes to the word "sex" and some of its more risqué iterations, girlfriend's got a big ol' case of lockjaw.

Don't pull up to the checkout line looking for "Sex Tricks He's Never Seen Before: The outrageous 'rock' technique and 21 other moves that will make his thighs go up in flames" (free instruction cards included). You also won't find cover lines like "Supersize Your Sex Life: Take home 10 tasty tips from the world's lustiest lovers. Trust us, he'll never get his fill of you." And forget about seeing come-ons like "The Bedroom Trick That Will Blow Him Away (All you need is a hair scrunchie)." Instead, there are tips to "Make Him Crave You" and "Turn Him On Like Crazy" and for finding "Deeper, Sweeter Love."

Who will buy the Village Voice?

Wed, 29 Sep 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Quick. Who owns the alternative weekly you used last Friday night to shop bands and drink specials? No idea? Thought so.

People don't care who owns the weekly barrel of ink, as long as it gets spilled in ways that allow them to be intelligent consumers of their respective civic cultures. That's why when pet-products king Leonard Stern announced that he was selling his seven weeklies in various markets around the country -- including industry flagships like the Village Voice and L.A. Weekly -- it didn't merit much more than a blip inside most daily papers. But within the industry, the move was viewed with seismic portend.

E-mails crisscrossed through alternative newsrooms all over the country, with the requisite chatter about this being a "dark day" for the industry. Oh, really? A pet products company -- Hartz Mountain -- fills its shopping cart with start-ups and going concerns in Cleveland, Minneapolis, Seattle, Orange County, Calif., and Long Island, N.Y., over a period of years. Then it notices there's a lot of stupid money out there and decides to dump its properties while the getting is good. It's good old fashioned American business, writ large over what used to be a bunch of grubby upstart rags but that are now increasingly in the habit of rigorously covering pressing lifestyle issues like finding the best gym to work out in. Where's the tragedy?

Gilded ink

Fri, 10 Sep 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Late '90s America is so jam-packed with rich people that advertisers are
scrambling to find new ways to perform cash-ectomies on them. Glossy magazines
like Vanity Fair and In Style, both setting the mailbox to groaning with their
phonebook girth, are no longer enough. In an infinitely expanding economy rife
with stupid money, companies that make high-end goods -- and the ad agencies who
pimp them -- have to innovate.

In this digital age, who would have thought that a major beneficiary of the
heedless needs of the newest of the nouveau riche would be venerable newsprint?

For decades, the glossies -- the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue and her ugly
sisters -- owned the franchise for collecting money from the purveyors of the
stylish and vestigial; newspapers had to content themselves with real estate
voyeurism as an adjunct to their classifieds. Of course, there was a time when
dailies dipped into glossy pretension with their Sunday magazines, but these have
gradually attenuated as the mega-spending department stores have increasingly
favored their own glossified inserts. Even the vaunted Sunday New York Times Magazine is
looking a little anorexic, pummeled by the competition from all corners of the
mag world.

Talk of the town

Sat, 10 Jul 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Talk is here even though it's not. Miramax capo Harvey Weinstein's gassy pronouncements about the synergistic potential of a magazine owned by a large film company have become corporeal. Evidence: videotape releases of recent Miramax movies include a decidedly odd 30-second snippet at the beginning, preview-style.

Picture Ed and Audrey, Boise sophisticates, stopping by the Blockbuster to rent "Little Voice." They settle in for the previews, gee-whizzing about all the celebrities Woody Allen has jammed into "Celebrity." There's Leonardo. Kenneth. Bebe. Melanie. Then trailers for a bunch of Merchant Ivory knockoffs. Finally, a chic-let of a woman with an ineffable accent pops up. She has claims on a single name too. Tina. ("Herself" as she is known at her new shop.)

"I think a new century needs a new magazine and new voice," she says. The "new"-ness is a reach, but you have to appreciate the modesty that claims only the next century as her realm and not the next millennium.

The bold words on the screen instruct Ed and Audrey to "Get Ready to Talk."