The Sam Whitmore Sampler

SWMS Tech Media This Week Podcast: Check Out Andy Jordan's Tech Diary at WSJ.com

Check out Andy Jordan's Tech Diary at WSJ.com. He's looking for offbeat consumer tech ideas to showcase on his new video podcast. Reach Andy here. Jordan represents the most employable kind of journalist - self-sufficient, with multimedia skills. Yes, newspapers are slashing payroll, but Mediabistro.com today is posting 639 job openings in its online/new media section. Thank you to MediaShift's Mark Glaser for the positive perspective.

Hear about the new tech edit leadership at WSJ.com, and much more, on this week's SWMS Tech Media This Week podcast (7:35), which is now posted.

To listen to our podcast right now, click on the URL below:

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SWMS Tech Media This Week Podcast: Ziff Davis Media Staring at Bankruptcy

Ziff Davis Media missed a debt payment and retained a bankruptcy specialist to help sort out its affairs. Without eWeek, CIO Insight and Baseline to help pay the bills, CEO Jason Young gets to preside over ZDM's darkest days ever.

Every radio station can become a television station, says CBS Radio chief Dan Mason. In this Media Village dispatch, Mason predicts that radios soon will be built with video screens. Listeners will be able to see the on-air personalities live in the studio, as well as other listeners who are streaming video of themselves. In addition, listeners will be able to interact with the hosts and each other through text, audio and video.

For details on this and much more, listen to the latest SWMS Tech Media This Week podcast (6:52), which is now posted.

To listen to our podcast right now, click on the URL below:

http://slapcast.com/users/SWMS

To receive our podcast automatically each week, paste the following link into iTunes or whatever podcast receiver you use:

http://slapcast.com/rss/SWMS/index.xml

SWMS Tech Media This Week podcast: CMP Gets a Second Life

In an announcement today, CMP Technology stakes its claim as "the first global media company to be certified as a full-service Second Life developer." Virtual worlds may continue to confound the skeptics, but there's a pony in there somewhere.

And what does CNET have to do with the songs "Give My Regards to Broadway" and "It's a Grand Old Flag"? Hear the answer and much more in this edition of the SWMS Tech Media This Week podcast (5:59), which is now posted.

To listen to our podcast right now, click on the URL below:

http://slapcast.com/users/SWMS

To receive our podcast automatically each week, paste the following link into iTunes or whatever podcast receiver you use:

http://slapcast.com/rss/SWMS/index.xml

[CMP Technology and CNET Networks are paid subscribers to SWMS.]

SWMS Tech Media This Week podcast: GreenOptions.com is Growing Like a Weed

Traffic is skyrocketing at GreenOptions.com, a clean tech blog network overseen by CEO David Anderson, who's our guest this week on the latest SWMS Tech Media This Week podcast (7:39). David also has news related to Planetsave.com.

To listen to our podcast right now, click on the URL below:

http://slapcast.com/users/SWMS

To receive our podcast automatically each week, paste the following link into iTunes or whatever podcast receiver you use:

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SWMS Tech Media This Week podcast: No Softball Questions Allowed

Fortune Magazine senior editor David Kirkpatrick did a fine job organizing this year's iMeme conference, held last week in San Francisco. The moderators were especially tough on their guests -- but not unfairly so.

Hear all about it on this week's SWMS Tech Media This Week podcast (7:26), which is now posted.

To listen to our podcast right now, click on the URL below:

http://slapcast.com/users/SWMS

To receive our podcast automatically each week, paste the following link into iTunes or whatever podcast receiver you use:

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SWMS Tech Media This Week: Layoffs and a Closing

Cleaning off the desk on this holiday week:

IDC laid off 35 U.S. employees back in May, about two percent of the company's 1,600-person workforce. The San Jose Mercury News laid off 31 newsroom employees this week, on heels of even more drastic layoffs at the neighboring San Francisco Chronicle. Might be time to subscribe to Paul Gillin's latest blog, Newspaper Death Watch.

More bloggers than ever are agreeing to non-disclosure agreements in advance of big vendor announcements. That's why this scoop from ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley didn't pull the kind of traffic she usually gets, or so we hear.

Citizen journalism's most heralded start-up, Backfence.com, folded this week. Paidcontent.org's Rafat Ali filed this obit.

Hear about these stories and more in the latest SWMS Tech Media This Week podcast (6:46), which is now posted.

To listen to our podcast right now, click on the URL below:

http://slapcast.com/users/SWMS

SWMS Tech Media This Week podcast: The Tech Edit Hemorrhage

Network World infrastructure specialist Phil Hochmuth has joined Yankee Group, while NWW colleague Denise Pappalardo, who tracked service providers, will stay home and chill with the family this summer. Forbes.com lost tech reporter Dan Frommer this past week… no word on why or where he went. We learned this week that former Network Computing technical analyst Lori MacVittie has surfaced as a blogger at F5 Networks. Former eWeeker Peter Coffee is enjoying his new role as blogger/evangelist at Salesforce.com.

Experienced tech edit talent is leaving media at an unprecedented rate. Expect the trend to continue.

And now that it’s clear Rupert Murdoch will land Dow Jones, what exactly will become of the Wall Street Journal? Murdoch gave former Fortune chief Eric Pooley an unbelievably revealing interview this week at Time.com, seen here.

Murdoch told Pooley the following:

"What if, at the Journal, we spent $100 million a year hiring all the best business journalists in the world? Say 200 of them. And spent some money on establishing the brand but went global — a great, great newspaper with big, iconic names, outstanding writers, reporters, experts. And then you make it free, online only. No printing plants, no paper, no trucks. How long would it take for the advertising to come? It would be successful, it would work and you'd make ... a little bit of money.”

Hear about this and more on this week’s SWMS Tech Media This Week podcast (7:07), which is now posted.

To listen to our podcast right now, click on the URL below:

http://slapcast.com/users/SWMS

To receive our podcast automatically each week, paste the following link into iTunes or whatever podcast receiver you use:

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SWMS Tech Media This Week: Ziff Davis Enterprise Group Sells for $150 Million

Insight Venture Partners, a New York-based private equity group, has bought the Ziff Davis Media Enterprise Group for $150 million. What that means for eWeek, CIO Insight, and Baseline remains to be seen. ZDM's recent strength has been in its lead-generation assets - virtual trade shows, face-to-face events and eSeminars - and that's where the new bosses likely will invest most. They also may back new forms of low-cost editorial, such as the nascent IT community site Ziff Davis IT Link. We'd be surprised if print editions of CIO Insight and Baseline survive much longer.

Blogger Jeremy Greenfield has good financial dope on the Ziff Davis sale.

Hear more on the ZDM story, as well as the latest tech media print ad page stats and an analysis of the Wall Street Journal's recent reorganization, on this week's SWMS Tech Media This Week podcast (7:36), which is now posted.

To listen to our podcast right now, click on the URL below:

http://slapcast.com/users/SWMS

To receive our podcast automatically each week, paste the following link into iTunes or whatever podcast receiver you use:

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SWMS Tech Media This Week: David Strom on CMP Layoffs

Did CMP Technology really need to lay off 200 employees this week? Could such a debacle have been avoided? David Strom, founding editor of the now-defunct Network Computing, candidly shares his thoughts in the latest SWMS Tech Media This Week podcast, which is now posted. We decided to go a bit longer this week, at 10 minutes, 39 seconds.

To listen to our podcast right now, click on the URL below:
http://slapcast.com/users/SWMS

To receive our podcast automatically each week, paste the following link into iTunes or whatever podcast receiver you use:
http://slapcast.com/rss/SWMS/index.xml

SWMS Tech Media This Week: Why Renay San Miguel Left CNN

Renay San Miguel spent more than five years as an on-air reporter and anchor for CNN. Today he's a senior vice-president at Weber Shandwick Worldwide. Why did he leave one of the world's most respected news organizations? What does his new job offer that CNN didn't?

Hear Renay address these topics and more in the latest SWMS Tech Media This Week podcast (6:58), which is now posted.

To listen to our podcast right now, click on the URL below:

http://slapcast.com/users/SWMS

To receive our podcast automatically each week, paste the following link into iTunes or whatever podcast receiver you use:

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To hear the unedited 15-minute interview, click here.

[Weber Shandwick Worldwide is a paid subscriber to SWMS.]