- This year's ridiculous list of "the world's largest publishers" from PW continues the silly agglomeration of "income" across radically different publishing industries. Examples: Why should one compare Reed-Elsevier — a substantial proportion of whose income comes from advertising-supported (or even -profited) periodicals, and to put not too fine a point on it vanity-press publications — with, say, Lagardère dba Hachette Livre, which has little participation in those industries. And any such list that entirely neglects the Government Printing Office is just a little bit silly.
This is a classic example of trying to make one's subject seem more important by consolidating it with irrelevancies. That it's been published during the height of election season, months after the end of the reporting period, shouldn't surprise anyone...
Another example from the Seemed Like a Great Name at the Time Department: Minnesota United Football Club joins MLS in 2017, which is a good thing. The official abbreviation, however, is not: MNUFC. One wonders if there's a spot on the staff for poor Wikus, perhaps in community relations. At least Roy Keane's complaint about prawn-sandwich-eating "fans" at Manchester United would then be less likely to resonate...
- From across the Pond, another consideration of who is liable in the internet piracy chain providing a perspective entirely foreign to Silicon Valley — and not just because it doesn't put advertising dollars first.
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Law and reality in publishing and entertainment (seldom the same thing) from the creator's side of the slush pile, with occasional forays into politics, military affairs, censorship and the First Amendment, legal theory, and anything else that strikes me as interesting. |
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