James Franco, the new king of all media

Howard Stern may still be the self-crowned King of All Media, especially since he just sealed another obscenely lucrative deal with Sirius XM Radio. But James Franco is fast becoming the media man of the hour. See him seduce and make out with himself in a mirror! (It's part of a New York Times series called "14 Actors Acting.") Weigh in on whether you think he'll be a good Oscars co-host with Anne Hathaway! Check out his award-worthy performance in 127 Hours, where his life-saving (and arm-detaching) move as hiker Aron Ralston is so overwhelming it's caused moviegoers to puke and pass out! And for General Hospital junkies, breathlessly await Franco's return in February to the daytime drama! (He's been on the show twice before, starting in '09, and his psycho artist character, named Franco, apparently isn't finished wreaking havoc on the melodrama's denizens.) That's scads of exposure. Lucky for him, Franco is so unassuming and non-Hollywood that he's not likely to face a backlash from all this attention. Anyway, who could get tired of looking at that face? Not me.

'WaPo' dinosaurs learning to love the iPad

Oh boy, this is embarrassing. Print journalism legend and apparent technophobe Bob Woodward scratches his head over an iPad (they got the Washington Post on that thing?) and has to resort to asking even older-school newsman Ben Bradlee how the contraption works. It's all for a good cause, I guess: The paper's launching an iPad app, via this slick looking but painfully acted short video. Watch it above, and let me know if that Robert Redford reference isn't the most awkward "joke" you've heard in a long time.

What to make of the Thomas Cringe Affair

After making some off-kilter remarks about Jews recently, longtime White House correspondent Helen Thomas has called it quits. A YouTube video caught her saying that Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and return to Poland and Germany—obviously an offensive comment. What exactly did she mean by those comments?
  What many people take offense to, I'm sure, is the implication that Jews should return to their pre-Holocaust environments (only to be slaughtered there by Nazis)? Another interpretation is that she's saying Israel is, in a sense, an "occupied territory," which many people (including me) feel is untrue and a case of revisionist history—this has been backed up historically as early as 1917 and as late as 1967. (The conflict between Israel and Palestine is not as simple as a few Wikipedia pages; I'm simply linking here to give the reader historical background information.) Or was she just saying, "I think the Israelis were wrong in attacking that aid flotilla outside of Gaza"?
  We may never know, because the 89-year-old newspaper reporter has done the right thing in apologizing and retiring.

Mayonnaise lover Stephen Colbert will be swimming in Miracle Whip very soon

Click the ad to enlarge. When a sandwich spread (ewww) announces that it's mad as hell and it's not going to take it anymore, you know the Earth has spun off its axis. This past summer, Miracle Whip decided it was no longer going to be the stepchild of the condiment world. So, in a new ad campaign by mcgarrybowen, the Whip attempted to prove its hipness and coolness and anti-mayo-ness by showing hip, cool, anti-mayo people eating a lot of sandwiches and laughing. A lot of people, including Stephen Colbert, felt differently. Colbert went so far as to defend mayonnaise on his show. Now comes the really fun part. Today, Miracle Whip has gone and declared war on Stephen Colbert. The brand has apparently bought every ad slot on The Colbert Report this evening, and placed the ad shown here in newspapers warning Colbert that his commercial breaks will be filled with "mayonay-sayers" who will be "in your face and massively dope." I'm intrigued and scared by this. Intrigued by the prospect of how Colbert will top his previous parody, and scared that after that much of a Whippin, I may never eat a sandwich again.

—Posted by Cindee Weiss

Newspapers deserve to survive if only to tell a few more stories like this

Back in journalism school, I learned this mantra: Always get the name of the dog, the brand of the beer, the age of the kid. It's the details, in other words, that make a story on the printed page come to life. So, to read a feature—in a daily newspaper, of all places—that explained to me the significance of Nextel cell phones, Snickers bars, Tecate beer and Jacuzzis in the lives (and deaths) of Mexican drug traffickers? Irresistible. (And written without the purple prose that would've been an easy fall-back? Refreshing!) The recent Los Angeles Times story profiles a gifted painter/sculptor named Jose Espinoza who's become the go-to artist-in-residence for the most notorious drug dealers in Sinaloa, the epicenter of Mexico's narcotics trade. What he does is fascinating: Without questions or judgment, he paints murals and frescoes, mostly religious icons, in homes so grand they make Scarface's Miami pad look like a hovel. (The local term for the palaces? Narcitecture.) What the reporter did was equally nervy: follow along with the subject, who also adorns the elaborate mausoleums of those felled in the trade, to illuminate a man who creates beauty amid violence. Not that stories like this are going to save dying newspapers—or even that this one sold any more copies that day—but it sure was a rare weekend gem. Take a look here.

—Posted by T.L. Stanley

Will the forecasters do any better this year predicting the future of print media?

After a phenomenally bad year for the publishing business, we'd like to think better times are ahead for our beloved newspapers and magazines. But the industry's esteemed prognosticators couldn't have been more wrong up until now. Last year, PricewaterhouseCoopers predicted that consumer magazines would end this year 4.5 percent up. This year, PwC revised that to a decline of 13.5 percent. ZenithOptimedia wasn't exactly on the money, either: Last year, it said the industry would grow 5.5 percent. This year, it lowered that to a decline of 10 percent and then 18 percent. Next year they're calling for better times. But to be fair, forecasting the media business these days is as futile as predicting the weather, and few did that better than the late George Carlin ("Weather forecast for tonight: dark"). Keep it simple, guys.

—Posted by Lucia Moses