Media Navel Gazing by Mark Kollar

Lehman came under fire again, as a 2,200-page report by US court-appointed Anton Valukas painted a dire picture of the fallout amid allegations of breach of fiduciary duties; KKR and Chicago Board Options Exchange increased moves toward listing, a good sign for the IPO market; swaps took the spotlight as the CFTC chairman in a speech called for limits on credit-defaults swaps; and Lindsay Lohan continued with her “milkaholic” lawsuit against E-trade.

WALL STREET BACK, WITH FIRST PLACE TIE WITH LONDON'S CITY
London slipped a bit in 2009 and New York City moved back up the ranks to tie with the City as the financial capital of the world, in the Global Financial Centres Index, compiled by Z/Yen for London’s financial district. London suffered from concerns about new taxes and regulatory issues, while New York improved in the ranks because of a better business environment, resources and infrastructure. Third and fourth spots were in Asia, at Hong Kong and Singapore, respectively. Good showing for New York, where the brunt of the financial downturn took place and good showing for bragging rights. Now to break the tie.

ONLY IN AMERICA, OR MAYBE BANK OF AMERICA
From the strange-but-true files, the bank sent a rep in its Pittsburgh region to a home believed to be in default, who cut utilities, padlocked the door and stole the bank customer’s parrot. Amid apologies, the bank admitted the homeowner was not in default, and the victim sued, alleging the whole incident has caused emotional distress.

SLIM IS PHAT DOWN SOUTH
Telecom billionaire Carlos Slim became the world’s richest man at $53.5 billion in Forbes magazine’s annual and closely watched Richest People list, besting Bill Gates by a half billion dollars and Warren Buffett by $6.5 billion. China contributed 64 billionaires, the second highest among nations, with 403 from the US and 62 from Russia. Slim, remember, helped to bail out The New York Times last year, which shows the Grey Lady is still all the news that fit to print…money.

Media Navel Gazing by Mark Kollar

The unemployment rate held steady at 9.7 percent while non-farm shed some 36,000 jobs, all better than expectations; GM said it would reinstate 660 dealers once slated for dismissal; the Dow ended the week some 2.3 percent higher at 10,566, boosted in part by the jobless report; and HBO acquired the book rights to “Too Big To Fail.”

The Big Apple Makes It to The Journal
The Wall Street Journal will launch its local New York City section next month, competing head one with The New York Times and even its own hometown newspaper The Post. The New York section will have as many as 35 reporters covering sports, culture, real estate and politics and be the second section of the New York edition, six days a week. The Journal is also expected to be part of Apple’s iPad tablet computer so many changes/advances afoot under Murdoch at the moment a little over two years after he bought the newspaper.

All the News That Fit to Advertise
Yikes! The Los Angeles Times graced its cover last week with a wrap-around ad, which looked like the Times, but was a picture of Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter in “Alice in Wonderland.” The editorial staff reportedly opposed the move, which blurs the lines of news and commerce, but were obviously voted down in the sake of money.

Citi's New Digital Move

In their continued efforts to redefine banks’ best practices for transparency and establish “responsible finance,” Citi has launched a new B-2-C blog appropriately titled, “The New Citi Blog.” The website is targeted at retail customers, bringing users face-to-face with Citi’s top executives through a combination of blog posts and videos. However, the blog will also enable Citi to reach a Main Street audience outside of their customer base. Citi’s new approach is a welcomed change to the traditional heavy print targeting we see from firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley whose crafted campaigns and messages often seem overly massaged.

Though Citi seems a bit late to the digital game—make no mistake—the timing of their entrance into the digital marketing world was thoroughly calculated. In an interview with Forbes, Citi CMO Lisa Caputo explained, “We knew the time to do it was after we repaid TARP money. We made a tangible sign of progress, and it was a logical jumping-off point to engage in this conversation.”

The blog will also serve as a new platform for customer relationship management (CRM). To ensure utilization of the two-way communication afforded by social media platforms, comments and questions are funneled to customer service and handled on a one-on-one basis. Caputo emphasized, “We want consumers to know that this is a place where they will get a response.”

Citi deserves credit for taking this leap and recognizing the value of technology as a tool to reach the public. Admittedly, the blog’s success will be dictated by its ability to attract and maintain an audience. Moreover, there is no guarantee that content won’t be over crafted, serving the goals of Citi rather than providing utility to users.

Media Navel Gazing by Mark Kollar

Chile suffered a earthquake with an 8.8 magnitude, forcing tsunami warnings throughout the Pacific over the weekend; the nation witnessed another health-care summit, which Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal appropriately called a “talking-point festival”; ABC News announced cuts between 300 to 400 people, citing “business forces”; Greece scrambled for a bailout in some form ahead of a bond auction; Gatorade dropped Tiger; the Olympics and the US ended a stupendous run; and the Dow ended the month up 2.6 percent at 10,325.

Oracle Shares Business Views in Shareholder Letter
Warren Buffett published his widely read annual shareholder letter over the weekend and reported net income rose 61 percent from a year ago amid speculation everywhere but in the letter that David Sokol, the chairman of Berkshire unit MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., may be the one of next Oracles – two are expected, a CEO and a CIO. In his letter, Buffett called out on fat cats heading companies that lost money, saying “they should pay a heavy price,” and said the recession was an “ideal period for investors,” adding that “a climate a fear is their best friend.”

From Red Square to Foursquare?
The US last week sent a team of geeks to Moscow to demonstrate how Russia’s online social networks can be used to promote social causes and strengthen relationships between the two nations. (According to the article in The New York Times, Russia has one of the most active social networking audiences, with adults spending 6.6 hours a month on networking sites – citing comScore.) Members of the delegation included Esther Dyson of EDventure Holdings, Jack Dorsey of Twitter, the chief of eBay, the “chief lizard wrangler” of Mozilla, and Ashton Kutcher, of course, now more popular than Britney Spears on Twitter. As the Financial Times’ headline expressed best what was called the Innovation Delegation, “From Russian with Tweets.” 140 that!

Beyond The Byline: Carolyn Cui

Today we are happy to bring you the next installment of “Beyond the Byline.” Carolyn Cui covers commodities and investments along with socially responsible investing for The Wall Street Journal. Coming to the United States from Shanghai, China after college, Cui has become an integral member of The Journal’s investment team and a journalist that commands the respect of her peers, readers and PR professionals alike. Thank you for taking the time to chat with the CWQ community, Carolyn!

Without further ado, Carolyn Cui…

Where are you from? Tell us about your childhood / early years.
Across the ocean: China. I was born in Shanghai and grew up like most kids there, spending our entire childhoods studying hard to get into a top university. It never occurred to me until after graduation that I actually would have the privilege to decide where my life could go.

What’s one of your guilty pleasures?

Playing a certain card game, called “80 points,” with my Chinese friends. I feel guilty because it’s not only extremely time-consuming but also detrimental to friendship as it divides the winners and the losers to a degree that outsiders can’t comprehend. Anyhow, I just played this past weekend – and I won this time.

Big family? Small Family? Tell us a little about ‘em.
Mine is a tiny family. I was born in the year when China started implementing the “One-Child” policy. My father really wanted to have a Cui boy who could carry our somewhat unique last name, but he is now awakening to the cruel fact that he has to deal with me.

If you could meet one person, past or present, who would it be? Why?

My grandfather… In the 1940s, he was adventurous enough to leave his hometown in rural Jiangsu Province to come to Shanghai and work as a rickshaw driver. He worked very long hours and didn’t speak the local dialect. Yet his decision enabled my father to receive a better education than he could have at home. Looking back, it strikes me how similar his move was to my decision to come to the U.S. If I could meet him, I would thank him and let him know how much I admire his courage.

Tell us a little bit about your first job.

My first job was as a night-shift copy editor at Shanghai Daily, an English-language newspaper. I also wrote feature stories for the paper, and my favorite one was about a crocodile farm in the city. I enjoyed almost every aspect of the job, except that I didn’t have any night life.

Did you always want to be a journalist? If yes why? If no, what did you think you would do?
No, because I always felt I was too shy to be a journalist. I always thought I should be a detective, since I could usually figure out who the murderer was before finishing a book or a CSI episode ended.

Tell us about the path you took to get where you are.

I left Shanghai Daily to join Dow Jones because I wanted to be in sync with my friends. I was tired of working the night shift and never seeing my friends. I later went to work as a fixer for The Wall Street Journal in Beijing for four years. A lot of earth-shattering news happened over that period, including the SARS epidemic in which thousands of people were killed, as well as the reshuffling of China’s banking industry. For the first time, I realized that great journalism could actually have an impact on people’s lives and even on a gigantic country like China.

Since I didn’t have any formal training in writing or journalism, my boss at The Journal encouraged me to step back for a while and distill my practical knowledge in a more systematic way. I was admitted to Columbia University’s journalism school and later re-joined The Journal at its New York office.

What song is playing on your iPod right now?

Not songs, but I am an avid follower of This American Life and The Moth Podcast.

What three things do you always find in your refrigerator?

Lemonade, wine and dumplings.

Flash forward 10 years. What does the media landscape look like?

The ongoing consolidation in the media industry is likely to continue for a few more years, and eventually each surviving general media group will emerge with a full-line product mix of print, Web, broadcast, and digital news products. Regional papers will probably be folded into these groups, which will produce a local version of the products with a smaller local staff. The inundation of information will exhaust readers and the competition will refocus on the quality of stories. I still expect to see a few niche players in specific areas such as finance and entertainment.

What do you think of the “Twitter Revolution?”

Twitter is a quick answer to the question of what is happening, but I doubt whether this will be enough for people who want to have a thorough understanding of something complex. Many a time, things are more complicated than they appear to be or what others want you to believe. If news were just about passing along the facts, this would not be the sort of career many of us chose to devote our lives to.

What is your favorite place you’ve traveled to?

Annapolis, MD. To be more specific, Cantler’s waterfront crab house…

What is one piece of advice you would offer PR people?

PR people are of great value to journalists’ work. There’s a mismatch between journalists and PR people in terms of coverage, because PR firms normally divide work by clients while reporters are in charge of different topics. I’m always very impressed by a PR person who knows my beat well enough to understand what I am looking for and points me to the right people that I should consider speaking to, even if those people are not clients.

Finish the sentence: I never leave home without my…

… lip balm.

Finish the sentence: In my next life, I want to come back as…

… a detective. For some unexplainable reason, I might find myself being very friendly to reporters.