WWD.com reports that the WSJ is creating a fashion and design bureau and promising daily coverage under a specific logo. The paper seems to see the move as an ad-sales play designed to cater to female readers as consumers, however, rather than an important supplement to its business coverage for both men and women.
In response to questioning from WWD, Journal publisher L. Gordon Crovitz issued a statement Monday afternoon, calling female Journal readers "the most affluent and most influential, style-setting women, and we're delighted now to be able to serve them even better with our expanded coverage." He added that the Journal readership purchases "more women's fashion items than do all the readers of the women's magazines — combined."
But maybe that's just the WWD spin. Still, I have to wonder about the feasibilty of selling ads that appeal to, at best, half the newspaper's audience--especially since even a well-produced newspaper like the Journal is not a good a medium for luxurious, full-color ads as a glossy magazine. There's a good economic reason that fashion advertisers put their ads in magazines where a) all the readers are potential buyers b) those readers are thinking about fashion when they're reading c) the periodical looks and feels good.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on July 25, 2006 • Comments
Hardly a day goes by when the NYT does not run an article on the Metropolitan Museum's new "recommended" $20 admission policy. The typical attitude seems to be that pricey museum tickets are an abomination. (Never mind that if you join the museum, as frequent visitors tend to do, admission is free.) Economics columnist David Leonhardt, by contrast, provides a bracingly clear-eyed assessment:
So before denouncing the Met's new policy, it's worth considering what the alternatives are. There is no such thing, after all, as a free museum. No matter what the price on the ticket reads, somebody is paying to buy, preserve, protect and display all those van Goghs and Giacomettis. One option is for taxpayers to pick up the bill, in the form of government subsidies. New York City already covers about 13 percent of the Met's $180 million in annual operating expenses, and it — or the state or federal government — could theoretically pay the rest as well.
This plan, however, seems about as wise as it is likely to happen. If those of us who visit the Met aren't willing to pay for its operation, why should people who don't visit it be asked to pay? Schools, hospitals and roads, all of which could use the money, certainly seem like they should have first claim on the population's collected earnings....
Those who don't feel comfortable with it can simply pay the old one, or whatever they would like. There will surely be some well-to-do freeloaders, visitors who pay $1 when they could easily pay $20, but if there were too many of them, the Met's policy never would have survived this long.
"It's an imperfect system," said Judith Chevalier, a Yale economist who studies pricing, "but I'm not exactly sure what a better one is."
The easiest way to see the virtues of variable prices is sometimes to think about what would happen in their absence. Last week the nearby Neue Galerie said it would charge $50, up from the usual $15, to patrons who wanted to view five Klimt paintings on Wednesdays, a day the gallery is usually closed. A few days later, it abandoned the plan in the face of a public outcry.
So think about what happens now. People who would have paid the $50 and gone on a Wednesday will instead go on other, more crowded days, causing everyone to have less space to enjoy the Klimts. The museum, meanwhile, will bring in less money. Precisely nobody benefits from the cancellation of the $50 tickets.
The last time I was in New York, I witnessed one disadvantage of the "recommended" price policy--not at the Met but at the Museum of the City of New York, which has a "suggested" admission price of $9. A couple of Polish tourists, following a guidebook in their native tongue, were trying to convince the ticket seller that the museum didn't charge. She wouldn't budge and kept pointing to the $9 sign. They kept pointing to their guidebook. The language barrier made communication impossible, but I suspect that nobody has let the ticket seller in on the idea that you can pay what you want. In fact, you can't.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on July 23, 2006 • Comments
A quiz, courtesy of LA Guy Steve Kurtz.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on July 23, 2006 • Comments
When Paul Wagner read my friend Sally Satel's NYT article about her Internet search for a kidney donor, he went to MatchingDonors.com and found out about a fellow Philadelphian in desperate need of a kidney. On Valentine's Day, he donated his left kidney to Gail Tomas, saving her life. The story, as reported by the local NBC affiliate, is here.
Fortunately, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philly has an enlightened policy that encourages such matches (unlike some places). From the NBC 10 report:
"With a live donor, we don't preserve the organs for a long time and that is the main reason why the organ lives longer. It's been demonstrated that the survival of the patient and the organ is about 10 percent higher than the patient that receives a cadaver organ," said Dr. Cataldo Doria, a transplant surgeon.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on July 19, 2006 • Comments
The perils of "consumer-oriented" education, as reported in The Onion. (Via Professor Postrel.)
Posted by Virginia Postrel on July 18, 2006 • Comments
Teresa Gubbins emails:
Transplanted David Glueck theorized that liberal movies do well in Plano because of "the kids."
That's possible but I've seen An Inconvenient Truth at the Angelika at Legacy twice; no kids at either screening. The youngest attendees I saw were MAYBE a few couples in their 20s. The audience consisted primarily older (40+) gray-haired types (like myself); no judging a book by its cover but it sure did strike me as a liberal crowd, based on tenor and appearance. (But dang, no Birkenstocks.)
My experience with that theater-entertainment complex is that it draws people from all over the far-northern suburbs - middle-aged daters from up and down the tollway, seeking a wine-drinking, movie-going one-stop destination night.
It's funny that Plano is such a firestarter for debate.
Funny, indeed.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on July 18, 2006 • Comments
My friend Brian, a recent transplant from Dallas to L.A., writes:
Huh? Kaus responds to you by saying:
"Yes! And I cling to that prejudice, especially if you add "and works in a high-tech industry where you wind up hiring a lot of gay college grads." I don't think, in those circumstances, you can afford to get as wildly exercised about sodomy and sin "
Is he from New York or something? He seems to totally misunderstand the dynamic. Plano-ites aren't "wildly exercised about sodomy" -- but most anti-gay people aren't. They are wildly concerned with making sure their kids never hear the word "sodomy," never ask them "mommy, what's a drag queen?" and never have to deal with anything even remotely related to sex. Ever. Period. Until they are eighteen. If then.
He really needs to go to a megachurch and meet up with the mid-level corporate managers, dentists, successful insurance agents and other educated professionals within. Who did he think was funding all those megachurches? The Clampetts?
He seems to think that anti-gay = ignorant. That's part of it, but a bigger chunk are the people who see a real problem in America with sexuality (teen pregnancy, STD's, idiots who shouldn't have children breeding like feral cats). They lump gays in with all sorts of failed "alternative" families -- so they generally disapprove of "gay rights" as part of a sexual liberation movement they see sending the country down Satan's toilet. The gay rights movement and the left has (generally) helped to fuel this by refusing to suggest any sort of reasonable sexual morality to replace the traditional sexual morality we seek to tear down.
The net result -- Plano -- where parents rationally fear their teenage daughters getting knocked up and irrationally fear their sons wearing dresses.
And reader David Glueck, who now lives in San Jose, California, writes:
I saw your post about Plano and thought I would give you my inside perspective as someone who grew up there. People there are not confronted with poverty, warfare, or other social ills (except on CNN). In addition, it is a very mobile community. At one point when I was growing up there in the 90's, 20% of the houses were on the market at any time. So, politics are less about civic duty and concern for the direction of the country, and more about personal identity and a sense of belonging to a community.
The mega churches are a common way for the stay-at-home/soccer mom type to connect with anyone other than her husband and kids. I think people who would otherwise be politically apathetic pick up the politics of that crowd because it feeds their sense of belonging. The husbands go along to church to make the wives happy, but when they vote they vote on tax policy (mainly who will cut them the most).
As far as the mystery of why liberal movies do so well, that's easy, it's the kids (going to the movies is the only thing you can do after 9:00). The kids feel the same lack of community and identity as their parents. Plano is made up entirely of houses, restaurants and shops, leaving little for those seeking cultural and intellectual stimulus. Their sense of identity and purpose comes from rejecting what their parents believe in. Whether it's hip hop culture, heroin use (as was the fad in the late 90's), or anti-war and anti-Bush politics, anything that is at odds with the parents will do. As they get older, their passion for politics will probably fade. For those who do think of politics as more than a popular fad, they will get the hell out of Plano as fast as they can (like I did). So, they won't be around to make a difference at the voting booths.
I think you're right about a Plano being big enough to have a large minority, but don't expect to see it show up in the poll results because they're not registered to vote.
I'll also note that Mickey Kaus attributes to me a quote about Brokeback Mountain that comes in fact from Mark Davis, a conservative columnist and talk show host. I haven't seen the movie.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on July 18, 2006 • Comments
Via John Lanius (who may want to correct my views of Plano), I've discovered that experts agree that daily blog posts are so Web 1.0. A few reasons:
#3- Loyal readers coming back daily to check your posts is so Web 1.0 — As the blogosphere matures, the number of new readers and bloggers will decrease and loyal readers are going to matter more. I have heard many bloggers tell me that they will lose reader loyalty if these readers come back daily and do not see any new posts. This perception is still very strong although irrelevant. Loyal readers subscribe to your blog via RSS feeds and have new content pushed to them. They will remain loyal because they have subscribed, not because you post frequently.
#4 - Frequent posting is actually starting to have a negative impact on loyalty: Seth Godin (a frequent blogger) has a very interesting theory. According to him, RSS fatigue is already setting in. With too many posts, you run the risk of losing loyal readers, overwhelmed by the clutter you generate. Readers will start to tune off if your blog takes up too much of their time
#5: Frequent posting keeps key senior executives and thought leaders out of the blogosphere — My colleagues and industry peers cite bandwidth constraints as the number one reason for not blogging. They are absolutely right: frequent posting is not very compatible with a high pressure job. As an example, not one single blog is authored by a senior corporate marketing blogger in the top 25 marketing blogs listed by Mack. Not only does the blogosphere lose valuable thought leadership, it runs the risk of being overlooked by these very same marketers.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on July 16, 2006 • Comments
Mickey Kaus and assorted readers have been debating a question central to understanding American politics in 2006: What is Plano, Texas, really like? About 20 miles north of Dallas, Plano is a high-tech suburb that is affluent enough and far enough away from Dallas proper to support its own high-end shops, restaurants, and, Mickey's concern, movie theaters. There are actually two questions at issue: 1) Is Plano really a conservative (or socially conservative) place? 2) Does it say anything about liberal causes that Brokeback Mountain and An Inconvenient Truth did well in Plano?
Although Mickey and some of his readers find it hard to believe, Plano is, in fact, a good representative of Red America. Its residents are educated and affluent, and they are also solidly conservative. They vote Republican the way Westside Angelenos vote Democratic--because it's the normal thing to do. Many of them also go to big megachurches that preach conservative doctrines in a contemporary style because that, too, is normal. (Plano is where megachurches go when they need 100 acres for their complexes.) That someone has a lot of money, a professional education, and a fancy car does not mean that person isn't a quasi-fundamentalist Christian with socially conservative views. I don't have poll numbers, but I doubt that a lot of those soccer moms driving SUVs while talking on their cell phones accept Darwinian evolution--not that it comes up all that often. (If you think that's intellectually backward, so do I. But I also think the equally unexamined economic assumptions of a lot of Westside Democrats are just as unscientific.)
So, on one level, Mickey is wrong, and his critics are right. Plano is conservative in all the ways that matter to contemporary politics. Plano is also not where local gays qua gays go to the movies. That would be Uptown Dallas, the area where I live. That Plano is not poor and ignorant does not mean it isn't representative of Red America. But people in Plano aren't spending a lot of their mental energy thinking about hot-button political issues. They're more concerned about their kids' education.
Most important, Plano, like the Dallas area more generally, is a big enough place that even a small minority represents a lot of buying power. If every left-of-center Planoite bought a ticket to An Inconvenient Truth, the Gore film would sell out at the art houses. (Don't forget, also, that local boy Mark Cuban had a hand in producing it.) Since the movie is also a high-brow horror film--entertainment, in other words--ticket sales don't necessarily imply political agreement, just a willingness to listen to Al Gore for a couple of hours. And, of course, the Bible says nothing about the internal combustion engine.
As for Brokeback Mountain, the same large-minority point applies. More important, I suspect, is that Brokeback Mountain was a chick flick, and Dallas area women often socialize in large, single-sex groups who want to stay up on whatever's in fashion. Besides, as conservative columnist and radio host Mark Davis wrote in the Dallas Morning News, that movie was a human story, not a political screed: "What you see a lot of is the living hell they go through as a result of their plight. You see them betray their wives and kids. You see them miserable. There are no cartoonish villains designed to prod you to their side. You simply see a story of great complexity, which you may admire as a film or not." How a viewer interprets that story depends, in part, on what beliefs the viewer brings to the film.
As an aside, I'd note that when you drive around L.A. you see cars with Christian fish symbols on them. That doesn't mean you're in the Bible belt. It means there are all sorts of people in any big city.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on July 16, 2006 • Comments
"Movies taught one big lesson: individual lives have scope and grandeur. Of course L.A. is shallow. Lips that are ten feet long and faces that are forty feet high! But such faces magnify our lives, reassure us that single lives matter. The attention L.A. lavishes on a single face is as generous a metaphor as I can find for the love of God."
That's Richard Rodriguez in Days of Obligation, a beautifully written book of linked essays that I reviewed when it was published in 1993. I use the quote to open the catalog essay for an amazing retrospective exhibit of Hollywood photographs by George Hurrell, the quintessential Hollywood glamour photographer. I met Lou D'Elia, the collector and curator who commissioned the essay, when I wrote a Slate slide show on an earlier Hurrell exhibit.
The new exhibit, which includes more than 100 photos, opens Thursday at the Queen Mary in Long Beach. It's an unusual setting for an art display but an appropriately Art Deco setting for Hurrell's 1930s glamour.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on July 11, 2006 • Comments