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One of Russia's opposition newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, said yesterday it had complained to officials about a massive hacker attack. The denial-of-service attack has kept Novayagazeta.ru offline for the past six days.
Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported that the newspaper has complained to the government. "We filed our complaint with the interior ministry, the investigative committee, the prosecutor general and the FSB security service and we are waiting for their replies," said newspaper spokeswoman Nadezhda Prusenkova.
Novaya Gazeta employed Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist gunned down outside her Moscow home in 2006. Four of the paper's reporters have been murdered or died under mysterious circumstances since 2000, according to AFP.
Update: Ten minutes after posting this story the New York Times posted this story about cyber attacks posing a military threat. "Sensitive information is stolen daily from both government and private sector networks, undermining confidence in our information systems, and in the very information these systems were intended to convey,” Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, said in prepared remarks to a Senate committee.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Russia: opposition newspaper faces denial-of-service attacks; Senate committee looking into cyber warfare
Neal Awards recognizes trade media for mobile efforts: "No award was given in this category"
Random thoughts:
What can I say, it speaks for itself: ABM's 2010 Neal Awards finalists in the category of Best Use of Mobile" reads "No award was given in this category."
In the meantime, I continue to receive January issues of some of the top B2B magazines even though it is now February. One trade magazine arrived today with a 40 page folio (actually 44, they don't count covers) -- not unusual for many magazines except that this is/was considered a heavy hitter in the space. Yesterday I received my copy of Advertising Age, that was interesting, to say the least -- 24 pages.
Last year at this time, as January issues arrived in the mail, I wondered if things could get much worse for print. They didn't, they just continued on in an anemic fashion. Now we are into 2010 and improvement can be seen in some areas -- but only in some. The problem today is that 2009 was hardly a banner year, so improvement might not be good enough. Many publishers were hanging on by their fingernails at the end of '09 hoping that survival would equal success. It's an old story: this is what we do, so either things will improve or we'll close up shop. But, time is running out.
Advertising revenue declines continue at Gannett; dramatic cost cuts lead to a profitable quarter
Sometimes the markets drive me crazy, like when a company reports good earnings but the stock declines anyway. All of this is tied to expectations, and whether the financial results were already built into the stock price. Occasionally, however, the market reacts logically when a company announces "good earnings", but the underlying numbers reveal continued problems.
That was the case yesterday when Gannett share prices fell 11 percent despite the fact that the company reported that the company earned $133.6 million in the quarter versus a loss of $4.7 billion in the last quarter of 2008. The revenue story, though, was bleak, with newspaper ad revenue falling a further 18% in the final quarter of '09 -- and remember, the last quarter of '08 showed huge losses.
Monday, February 1, 2010
A late farewell to a great magazine professional
One link led to another, and to another, and finally led to some very bad news.
The connections: Better Roads, a magazine that was my arch-rival when I was publisher of Roads & Bridges, named Mike Anderson editor of the month trade magazine. Anderson had been an editor at Construction Equipment magazine. This made me want to call Terry McGinnis, one of the best B2B sales reps I've ever known.
I'd known Terry McGinnis since late 1991 when I first joined McGraw-Hill in San Francisco -- I was publisher of Daily Pacific Builder, a daily (M-F) newspaper mostly composed of construction bid news, and Terry was an advertising rep for Intermountain Contractor. Back then, McGraw-Hill's Construction Information Group was made up of regional construction magazines, a couple daily newspapers, and was anchored by Engineering News-Record.
It was an interesting group and an amazing team. Some moved on, some got promoted, but like all teams it eventually broke apart when the internal McGraw-Hill politics changed the dynamics.
Rules to live by: never take media advice from a guy who can't pronounce the name of the publisher of the NYT
I don't know if this was posted as a joke, or whether this guy extended his weekend one day too long. In either case, if your work week is not starting off too well just think what it would be like to have to work for this guy.
Posted for your amusement:
David Carr claims the iPad need media deals
Wish I'd said that. Oh yeah, I did.
Enough traffic envy. Carr should be commended for saying what others are thinking: "... the book industry seems ill-prepared to take advantage of many of the new worlds the iPad opens up. Although five of the top six publishers signed on, there was little indication that they would use some of the muscle the device displays."
Indeed, isn't this the whole problem in a nutshell? The media world wants to continue to monetize its bland offerings while the rest of the world knows they can do better. (Ever read the comments on media sites? There is not a lot of good will being expressed towards the media world right now.) With the announcement that Amazon has "capitulated" to Macmillan and will raise the price of their e-books to $14.99, publishers in the New Media space are once again getting a black eye -- didn't anyone learn from the RIAA's continued missteps?
