The Most Important News Story You Will Ever Read

A burglar who broke into a home just east of Fresno rubbed food seasoning over the body of one of two men as they slept in their rooms and then used an 8-inch sausage to whack the other man on the face and head before running out of the house, Fresno County sheriff's deputies said Saturday.

This is the type of stuff I dreamed of covering during J-School. Instead, I was forced to go to the courts to cover crimes and investigate wrongdoing. I guarantee this would be a #1 most read article if CNN picked it up.

Read the rest over at the Fresno Bee.

Fit Club - Are you the walrus, or am I?

I'm not expecting you to LOL at this...though I'm hoping you did anyway...but if you didn't at least chuckle or smile or think for a second that the wonderfully wooly hat directly to your left was in the least bit humorous...I suggest you take a minute to go and read this.

Not that I'm hella hating on headwear (or anything else for that matter,) but when you produce items like this one, you leave me no choice but to criticize from the keyboard.

Journalism Students are Still Getting Jobs

That's what a study by the University of Georgia says, anyway.

The median salary earned by 2007 bachelor's degree recipients was $30,000,exactly the same as the median salary earned by bachelor's degree recipients in 2006.

And apparently, that's a good thing...? Read the rest over at Editor and Publisher.

Always in this stress mode...

But at least my job lets me keep that rugged dress code.

Mad Men



The best show on television begins its second season on Sunday Night. All ye with TV's - I'm insanely jealous.

iThink - The Onion Prophecy

I love the smell of irony in the morning.

"You better believe we're going to mix it up with somebody at some point during my administration," said Bush, who plans a 250 percent boost in military spending. "Unlike my predecessor, I am fully committed to putting soldiers in battle situations. Otherwise, what is the point of even having a military?"

On the economic side, Bush vowed to bring back economic stagnation by implementing substantial tax cuts, which would lead to a recession, which would necessitate a tax hike, which would lead to a drop in consumer spending, which would lead to layoffs, which would deepen the recession even further.

Read the rest of this article, published on January 17, 2001...over at the Onion.

iThink - Esquire Digital Cover

It has officially begun. The actual, legitimate, wave-of-the-future death of print. Is it ironic that it's in the pages of one of America's most cutting edge magazines? Or fitting? ...

Two years ago, at a Hearst management retreat, Mr. Granger again raised the idea. This time it would be possible, he was told, if Hearst invested seed money to create a battery small enough to fit in a magazine.

“This is really the 1.0 version,” said Kevin O’Malley, Esquire’s publisher. “Imagine when the consumer walks by a newsstand and sees that it is alive.”

Read the whole thing over at the New York Times.

iThink - This is not the way to build your business

As part of my duties at Inc.com, I filter through the mass email box once a week. While we receive a sizable quantity of legitimate reader correspondence, we also receive more than our fair share of spam. One of my favorites is from Koffi Annan, (a Nigerian, of course) who signs his note: "Making the world a better place."

How are you today and hope all is well with you and family? You may not understand why this mail came to you, but i will implore you to take your time to carefully go through this mail. We have been having a meeting for the pass 7 months that ended 4 days ago at our office head quarters New York (UNITED NATIONS) in collaboration with AMERICANGOVERNMENT.

This email is to all the people that feel they have been scammed in anypart of the world, the UNITED NATION have agreed to compensate them with the sum of US$ 500,000.This includes every foreign contractors that may have not received their contract sum, and people that have had an unfinished transaction or international businesses that failed due to Government problems etc.

We found your name in our list and that is why we are contacting you, this have been agreed upon and has been signed. You are advised to contact Mr. Anthony Leach of AMERICAN EMBASSY IN NIGERIA, as he is our representative in Nigeria, contact him immediately for your Cheque/International Bank Draft of USD$ 500,000. These funds are in a Bank Draft for security purpose ok? So he will send it to you and you can clear it in any bank of your choice. Therefore, you should send him your full Name and telephone number/your correct mailing address where you want him to send the Draft to you.

I always imagined that Nigerian scams must have some semblance of validity for people to fall victim to them, but...apparently I was wrong. Way wrong. But interestingly enough, it's not just illegitimate businessmen who devise typo-ridden business propositions. If you can believe it, (which I couldn't at first), the following came from an actual Texas-based marketing communications agency. Their slogan? All We Do Is Write.

Hello my name is Paula Ramirez with a company call _______. I am subscriber to Inc. for two years now, and Love it.

I just started at _______ and think this a great company for you guys to do an article on.

Right....

Fit Club - Air Jordan 7 Olympic Miro

Words cannot describe.

Just look to your left.

Let's be real - if someone shipped a box full of limited edition dogshit stamped with a Nike swoosh over to the guys at Hypebeast - they'd write about it.

Seriously.

Feel free to lose the rest of your lunch after the jump.

iThink - Book Battle

Clear Channel Communications, aka "The Evil Empire," as it was once (or perhaps still is) called by folks in the biz, is the company that owns something like 1,200 radio stations in the U.S., making it one of the most powerful media conglomerates in the country, and beyond.

The story, as the Wall Street Journal tells it, is that a writer named Alec Foege was planning to write about a book about Clear Channel, tentatively titled "The Monster That Ate Mass Media." (Less than glowing, if you couldn't tell.)

Clear Channel, acting on the idea that the best defense is a good offense (or vice versa, or whatever), commissioned their own writer to whip up "Clear Vision: The Story of Clear Channel Communications." (Expectedly quite glowing, if that wasn't clear.)

Read the rest over at WSJ after the jump.

iThink - Step your Photoshop game up

To your left: photographic documentation of Iran's latest missile tests. Or is it?

The picture on top? That's what appeared on the cover of today's Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Baltimore Sun.

The one on the bottom...is what Agence-Press France says is the real picture.

The New York Times has a breakdown explaining what's real, what's fake, and why you should care.

One of the reasons you should care, aside from the whole missile launch thing, is that this speaks volumes to the way that information is gathered and distributed by the media and then consumed by the public.

What it came down to was some photo editor seeing a picture, deciding it was for real, and deciding to put it on the cover of one of the nation's biggest papers. (And then two other editors at two other big papers doing the exact same thing.)

Think about it next time you watch the news or read the paper. (Or read this blog, or any blog, for that matter.)