A paperboy hawks his wares just north of the Englert on Washington Street in Iowa City. You’d be hard pressed to find a coin-operated news rack these days.

From The Library of Congress, via Fuck Yeah Iowa City, via Days Gone By

• Layoff 165 employees
• Two weeks before Christmas
• Refer to remaining employees as “content generators”
• To the reporter from your own paper who has to write the story

See? Easy.

It's refreshing to be treated as an adult who can handle the uncensored title and passages of "Go the Fuck to Sleep." http://bit.ly/li6CFw

June 14, 2011 6:40 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@bergus

Nick Bergus

The Guardian doesn’t give the book’s title until the fourth paragraph, but when it does, it doesn’t shy away from treating its readers like adults and using the full title. Then, for good measure, it quotes a few passages. In full. (The Guardian‘s online bookstore sells the book as Go the Fuck to Sleep, as well, while Amazon sells something called Go the F**k to Sleep.)

The book’s cover uses slight of hand to obscure the title, but if you happen across one of the PDF versions floating around the Internet, you will see that the cover does, in fact, carry the full title.

Too often, we go through bizarre contortions to create these ugly euphemisms and stand ins for grown-up words. Please, treat me like an adult.

TK: Here’s whats over: boxing and newspapers.

MW: Yeah. Maybe not in that order.

TK: And horse racing.

MW: And horse racing!

CUPERTINO, California—February 15, 2011—Apple® today announced a new subscription service available to all publishers of content-based apps on the App Store℠, including magazines, newspapers, video, music, etc. This is the same innovative digital subscription billing service that Apple recently launched with News Corp.’s “The Daily” app.

Cupertino is where Apple is headquartered. Cupertino is headquartered in California. At least today, Feb. 15. (Note to journalism students: this is called a dateline, despite its emphasis on place.)

Subscriptions purchased from within the App Store will be sold using the same App Store billing system that has been used to buy billions of apps and In-App Purchases. Publishers set the price and length of subscription (weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, bi-yearly or yearly). Then with one-click, customers pick the length of subscription and are automatically charged based on their chosen length of commitment (weekly, monthly, etc.). Customers can review and manage all of their subscriptions from their personal account page, including canceling the automatic renewal of a subscription. Apple processes all payments, keeping the same 30 percent share that it does today for other In-App Purchases.

Apple continues to try branding generics (note the capital letters): App Store, In-App Purchases, Publishers, Customers. Don’t try to use these terms without Apple’s permission. One-click is, apparently, a compound adjective and different than a single click in Apple’s usage. Apple likely didn’t call it One Click because Amazon has patented the amazing innovation that is clicking a button to buy something. And I’m still unclear about who picks the length of the subscription: the publisher or the consumer.

“Our philosophy is simple—when Apple brings a new subscriber to the app, Apple earns a 30 percent share; when the publisher brings an existing or new subscriber to the app, the publisher keeps 100 percent and Apple earns nothing,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “All we require is that, if a publisher is making a subscription offer outside of the app, the same (or better) offer be made inside the app, so that customers can easily subscribe with one-click right in the app. We believe that this innovative subscription service will provide publishers with a brand new opportunity to expand digital access to their content onto the iPad, iPod touch and iPhone, delighting both new and existing subscribers.”

Nearly a third of a subscription price seems like a hefty amount to charge publishers for reselling subscriptions. Maybe junior-high students would be pleased with such a cut (in my day, we were given little colored cotton balls with feet and eyes glued on). But don’t worry, it’s just a philosophy so — oh it’s a take-it-or-leave it philosophy? Hmmm. Don’t forget, subscribing for things is innovative. Or maybe it’s just the charging for subscriptions? Or maybe that’s just a word Apple likes to attach to as many things it does as possible.

Publishers who use Apple’s subscription service in their app can also leverage other methods for acquiring digital subscribers outside of the app. For example, publishers can sell digital subscriptions on their web sites, or can choose to provide free access to existing subscribers. Since Apple is not involved in these transactions, there is no revenue sharing or exchange of customer information with Apple. Publishers must provide their own authentication process inside the app for subscribers that have signed up outside of the app. However, Apple does require that if a publisher chooses to sell a digital subscription separately outside of the app, that same subscription offer must be made available, at the same price or less, to customers who wish to subscribe from within the app. In addition, publishers may no longer provide links in their apps (to a web site, for example) which allow the customer to purchase content or subscriptions outside of the app.

Leverage? Whatever. And “publishers may no longer provide links in their apps which allow the customer to purchase content or subscriptions outside of the app”? Anyway, remember when the iPad going to save the old print philosophy model? LOL.

Protecting customer privacy is a key feature of all App Store transactions. Customers purchasing a subscription through the App Store will be given the option of providing the publisher with their name, email address and zip code when they subscribe. The use of such information will be governed by the publisher’s privacy policy rather than Apple’s. Publishers may seek additional information from App Store customers provided those customers are given a clear choice, and are informed that any additional information will be handled under the publisher’s privacy policy rather than Apple’s.

“Here,” says Apple, “have a bone. A small bone.”

The revolutionary App Store offers more than 350,000 apps to consumers in 90 countries, with more than 60,000 native iPad™ apps. Customers of the more than 160 million iOS devices around the world can choose from an incredible range of apps in 20 categories, including games, business, news, sports, health, reference and travel.

“Can we use ‘innovative App Store’?”
“No, I don’t think so. What’s the thesaurus got?
“How about ‘revolutionary App Store’?”

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork, and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple is reinventing the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced its magical iPad which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

“How about ‘digital music revolution’?”
“Too techno-y?”
“Look, dude, I’m just trying to go home.”

Press Contacts:

LOL. Like you’ll get a call back.

That’s Rentertainment has clearly seen better days. When I was a kid — when you had to physically schlep to a store if you didn’t want to settle for the TV edit of National Lampoon’s Vacation — That’s Rentertainment had at least three locations and seemed to be doing well. Now, it has receded into a $250-a-month piece of the Hall Mall, an off-the-beaten-track home to tattoo parlors and head shops. (The Hall Mall has gone downhill since my childhood, too).

Netflix, Redbox, iTunes, Hulu and other online-stream services have got to be just killing That’s Rentertainment’s business. It’s more convenient to have movies show up in the mail and to browse the selection online. And cheaper two; That’s Rentertainment charges $4 to rent a new release for two days, $3 to rent anything else for three days. I pay Netflix $9 to have a single DVD out at a time and all the streaming I can handle through my laptop, wifi-enabled Blu-Ray player or my Nintendo Wii, and nothing to watch movies and television shows on Hulu.

The recent change of location probably didn’t help business since it’s now more inconveniently located for most movie-renters, but, here’s the interesting part: instead of saying “yeah, there’s just no way I can compete with that infrastructure and convenience,” the CBJ quotes That’s Rentertainment’s owner saying:

I’ve really noticed a generational shift during the past few years with incoming University of Iowa freshmen and sophomores, who grew up watching things on the Internet, where everything’s free, right? … It’s not just educating them about your new location, it’s educating them about the video industry.

Yes, blame the customer for being ignorant of what your older model has to offer. See, if the kids who grew up with free Internet stuff were educated in the ways of the video industry, they’d understand why they should pay more for less convenience. It strikes me as similar to the bitter old-school print guy’s lament about how the Internet is devaluing the core product by letting jerks take this stuff for free. But why adapt when you can complain that the young ’uns are ign’ant, and go out of business?

Remember how The New Yorker is on Tumblr? Tumblr is diverse. Some blogs cover politics. Some collect examples of cutting edge Web design. Some blogs have a personal vibe. Some post for lulz. But the ones that work, at least to my mind, remember that Tumblr is a social platform and have an authentic voice.

Back to The New Yorker. One Tumblrer posted a link to The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” Q. and A. with its bingo-like 4-by-5 grid of illustrated mugs and the line “There is definitely some kind of inappropriate bingo to be played here…” A funny, authentic way to link to the piece.

Those jokers at The New Yorker reblogged and added to hilarity: “Perhaps a game where each correct answer corresponds to the writer’s Q.&A? Click on the image to read Q.&A.’s from each “20 under 40” writer about his or her origins, inspirations, and coming work.”

Yes, as tone deaf as I’d expect Eustace Tilley to be .

We are now on @tumblr! Follow us: http://newyorker.tumblr.com/

But the magazine has 199 pages of Tumblr posts and its first post is dated Dec. 1, 2009. So really they meant

We are now going to try to pay attention to our @tumblr! Follow us: http://newyorker.tumblr.com/

or

We remembered we are on @tumblr! Follow us: http://newyorker.tumblr.com/

or maybe even

We figured @Newsweek got good pub for their @tumblr! Follow us: http://newyorker.tumblr.com/

After several e-mails back and forth and a few phone calls with the reporter, the magazine’s photo editor got in touch to schedule a day when a photographer could come out and get some art for the piece. They picked a day the following week.

The magazine flew a freelance photographer from Washington, D.C., to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on a week’s notice, and paid for his meals, rental car and a night in a hotel. He spent the day taking photos and ended up with a glorified stock photo and a cutline that doesn’t even identify it has being anywhere outside of Washington, D.C.

The story mentions and quotes my wife a single time. At the very end.

So how much did this photo cost? And what did it add?

And is it any wonder that this business model has been proven unsustainable?

It this week’s Hoopla, Gazette Communication’s weekly for “young adults,” there is a short interview with Doug Roberson, longtime booker and bartender at Gabe’s and the Picador. After the interview, Mr. Roberson was laid off. This sucks.

But to make matters worse for Mr. Roberson, when the story appeared online, it ran with this editor’s note:

Shortly after this interview The Picador’s owners downsized and Doub Roberson was let go. He’s hoping to become an independent concert promoter in Iowa City.

Two pieces of corporate-speak and a butchering of Mr. Roberson’s first name. And while the paper for young adults (and I assume from the drink-special ads they using the psychology definition and not the library definition of young adult) is full of trivial fluff pieces, it really pains me to see a name — a simple, common names — make get past the “editors.”

(Disclosure: I met with the team developing Hoopla last fall to do some training on WordPress as a content management system.)