Unrequired Reading {5.10.08 to 6.10.08}

These are some of the things that have caught my atten­tion lately. It’s a more eclectic mix than just the news busi­ness, but then so’s life:

• Rude Awaken­ing | FT.com — “[T]he inter­net is a great lev­el­ler and porn now finds itself in a sim­ilar situ­ation to the music and news­pa­per indus­tries, which are both strug­gling to adapt to the online world. The pro­fu­sion of free con­tent online has shaken estab­lished busi­ness mod­els in those indus­tries and relent­lessly eroded their profitability.”
• Some Bodkin! | Eco­nomic Prin­cipals — “Eco­nom­ists have done pretty well at stitch­ing the global eco­nomy together these last thirty years, dur­ing a period of unpre­ced­en­ted growth. The fail­ure to give recur­ring fin­an­cial crises a more prom­in­ent place in its under­gradu­ate texts is, how­ever, some­what embar­rass­ing, or so it seems to me.”
• Arise, Lord Carter of Con­ver­gence | Ofcom­watch — “I think Stephen Carter is the only per­son in the his­tory of the UK to go from being the unelec­ted head of a pub­lic reg­u­lat­ory organ­isa­tion to being the unelec­ted head of the rel­ev­ant min­istry that over­sees that same pub­lic reg­u­lat­ory organisation.”
• Bleed­ing ‘Times’ Blood | New York — “The fifth gen­er­a­tion, the sons and daugh­ters of Arthur and his cous­ins born between 1965 and 1990, have largely remained in the shad­ows of the company’s affairs, anonym­ously going about their lives as bene­fi­ciar­ies of its gen­er­ous dividends, their names lis­ted in the occa­sional SEC fil­ing detail­ing the fam­ily trust. Like their par­ents, they’ve led the lives of a pres­ti­gi­ous trust-fund family—attending private schools like Dalton and Field­ston and acquir­ing Ivy League edu­ca­tions at Brown and Columbia, then cast­ing about for noble life pur­suits or whatever pleases them.”
• French élite on trial in ‘Angolag­ate’ | France 24 — The cast of the infam­ous “Angolag­ate” trial which opens on Monday is one worthy of a block­buster thriller or a high-society Parisian bash. Jean-Christophe Mit­ter­rand, the son of former French Pres­id­ent François Mit­ter­rand; one of the former president’s advisers, Jacques Attali [a FRANCE 24 colum­nist]; as well as former Interior Min­is­ter Charles Pasqua, are in the dock. They are accused of tak­ing part in a vast arms-trafficking net­work with the Angolan régime in the 1990s.
• Start­ing a Blog | Ian Delaney — “[A] simple wordpress.com or blogger.com account will be a start. Just go to the address and open the account. It is really easy, as the videos describe. It’s also easy to just have a go and then delete the whole thing: then there’s no embar­rass­ing past to be unearthed by someone. Just have a go and then delete the whole thing.”
• Chair of Ofcom job | Guard­ian Jobs — £200k, 3 days a week: “The Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing to appoint a suc­cessor to Lord Cur­rie as Chair of Ofcom. The Chair provides lead­er­ship to the Board and Ofcom more widely and is Ofcom’s senior rep­res­ent­at­ive to its stake­hold­ers, includ­ing licensees, other reg­u­lated entit­ies, the Gov­ern­ment and Parliament.

  As a can­did­ate for this uniquely influ­en­tial role you will have an out­stand­ing track record of Chair or other Board level lead­er­ship within a major organ­isa­tion. Exper­i­ence of busi­nesses oper­at­ing in, or of reg­u­lat­ing, rap­idly chan­ging com­pet­it­ive mar­kets (ideally inter­na­tion­ally) would be highly desir­able, as would exper­i­ence within the tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions, spec­trum and/or information/content sectors.

  This appoint­ment is made by the Sec­ret­ar­ies of State for Busi­ness, Enter­prise and Reg­u­lat­ory Reform (BERR) and Cul­ture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The pre­ferred can­did­ate may be required to appear before a Par­lia­ment­ary Select Com­mit­tee prior to appointment.”

Tagged as: Unrequired Reading