reading list
Did you know that by 2019, half of America’s high school classes will be taught online?
See my story for Parade magazine. And cast your vote in a poll about whether school districts should share funds with cyber schools.
Parade: the rise of cyber schools April 26, 2010
Mad Men Yourself August 19, 2009
Mad Men's charming, sad and mysterious Betty and Don Draper. Photo by Frank Ockenfels 3, courtesy AMC.
The AMC series Mad Men may be about advertising’s golden age, but it’s also illustrating the power of the industry’s digital age.
It seems fitting that a show about ads should woo us with, well, ads. No marketing blitz in recent memory has been so multifaceted and successful.
Actors promoting Mad Men in Columbus Circle, NYC.
First there were Facebook promos hawking the season premier, which Tivos across the country recorded Sunday. Then, there was the viral marketing of MadMenYourself.com, a site that lets you dress up as a Mad Men character and post the illustration to your Facebook and Twitter accounts.
In New York, the show went a step further this weekend and hired actors to parade around Columbus Circle in 1960s garb. Other PR reps passed out fliers on street corners, and the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) projected mid-century advertisements on the side of a building. Enthusiastic viewers then gathered to watch the premier together in Times Square.
I’d never had an inclination to watch the show. But all this prompted me to buy the season 1 DVDs to see what the fuss was about. For all its clever advertising, so far Mad Men has succeeded in making me mad at men. I know it’s fiction, and I tend to take my TV shows too seriously, but the unflinching look at life and, especially, sexism in 1960 makes me want to run out and reread The Feminine Mystique.
Actresses promoting Mad Men in Columbus Circle, NYC.
I’m pushing through the episodes because Donald Draper is such a mystery, and I’ve heard characters in the current season, set in 1963, will start to seek liberation after some awful events like JFK’s and MLK’s assassinations. (This New York Times article does a good job of explaining why a show about a time so antiquated is so relevant right now.)
As the show suggests, the sales department can only get you so far. In the end, viewers will stay tuned if Mad Men‘s creativity lives up to the hype.
Buy Schwag From a Mag May 8, 2009
A friend just sent me this New York Times story about the former staff of Domino magazine selling off items they accumulated for photo shoots in the magazine’s heyday.
Like many magazines, Domino went the way of the dodo this year, publishing its last issue in March. A sister of Lucky fashion mag, it spotlighted trendy home decor on the cheap, and the style direction truly was inspired. I know several people who painted and decorated by this book.
Tomorrow, editor-at-large Tom Delavan will invite the public into his garden apartment to pick through choice items on sale for a song. Deborah Needleman, the editor in chief, says she’ll be selling “fancy party frocks from a nice former life I happily don’t have anymore.” Strikes me as a little sad, although party frocks are the least of journalism’s recent casualties.
The Times reports that the footed African platter pictured above will be $40 and the the claw-and-ball-footed table will be $100. I am eyeing the French 18th-century three-legged farm stool, $90. We’re told haggling is OK. After all, the editors presumably are making 100 percent profit on these items.
Which raises an interesting ethical question that goes unaddressed in the article: Should journalists be selling off schwag? When I worked in newspapers, we didn’t accept a bottle of water at city council meetings. Unsolicited gifts were donated to a silent auction benefiting charity. At magazines, I was surprised by how different the rules were, the way free dinners, makeup and gilded horseshoes (strange, I know) seemed to roll in on a conveyor belt. Selling the stuff takes it to a new level. (Though I have yet to see anything as egregious as schwagaddict.com.)
I guess when a magazine dies, such ethics questions die with it.
Saturday, May 9
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
13 West Ninth Street (at Fifth Avenue)
cash only
