Head Scratcher: A Non-Story in Questionable Taste

Phoebe Prince, a student at South Hadley High committed suicide.

Several of her classmates were indicted by a Grand Jury for contributing to her death, which takes the case into national headlines, so WWLP in Springfield (MA) filed a report on whether it sells hotel rooms?

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Using Hot Photos, Sex & Sexism to Generate Clicks

Last December, Glynnis MacNicol wrote a diatribe for Mediaite in which she calls into question the use of sexism to cause outrage in the blogosphere, which translates into clicks.

To support her thesis, Ms. MacNicol revisited the idea of using sex to generate traffic and she linked-out the Huffington Post's reprint of the Pirelli calendar, plus an article from the Washington City Paper, in which the author links to several HuffPo slideshows of nipple slips to illustrate a similar theme.

Yesterday, I questioned the wisdom of Ted Rall's most recent animation. Though among his "tips" to save newspapers was a slide that read; "Another key to survival: Pop culture core readers love".

Somewhere between Mr. Rall's suggestion and the common knowledge that sex sells, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution must have taken something to heart because last night, they published to their website, which I assume is in today's print edition, an enlargeable photo and repackaged press release from Playboy giving a short bio for a local girl deemed "Miss April" (pictured), along with notice of a casting call.

Semi-Related: Miss Nebraska Brittany Jeffers promoted to KLKN anchor

Man Hopes Minor Dustdevil Becomes Gustnado

An organization called "Make America Safer Today" is hoping to make Wednesday, March 10th "Cyber Flag Day". Raymond Decker, a member of the group's "cyber team" is hoping to garner enough free publicity through the media, they can get "thousands" of suspected prostitution ads flagged on Craigslist on a single day.

Perhaps that is a noble goal, one which some people might support, but if publicity swells to the point that "Cyber Flag Day" becomes known beyond just a few people or if it's any measure of success, it'll definitely count as an unqualified PR triumph.

After all, MAST only has 25 followers on Twitter, where they also tweet about immigration enforcement, terrorism and "Taliban pukes", plus 38 fans on Facebook. MySpace seems to be their most successful effort at social networking thus far, where they have 444 friends, though the majority of the comments consists only of "thanks for the add".

While "Make Orlando Safer Today", the parent group for "Make America Safer Today" has just four subscribers to their YouTube channel, where they list "upending lowlifes" as their only hobby.

It'll be interesting to see if this thing can grow, though they may be cutting the it kind of close. Of course a lot the effort's success will be determined by the gullibility and laziness of modern media, not to mention whether Wednesday is a slow news day.

BTW: Mr. Decker, you're welcome for the backhanded ad.

Much Ado About Nothing

UC-Davis economists Victor Stango and Christopher Knittel conducted a study, where they looked at stock prices of companies having an advertising or endorsement relationship with Tiger Woods and they concluded that his scandal has cost shareholders $12 billion.

There didn't appear to be any difference, if the company publicly fired Woods because as Smith College economist, Andrew Zimbalist is paraphrased by the Sacramento Bee; "the stock market tends to overreact to the news, good and bad".

Illustrating Zimbalists's point and with no fact-checking by me, a commenter has found that the companies listed as "hardest hit" have all rebounded and their stock prices gone up, since the study was done.

Does This Make the Trip Tax-Deductible?