A Friessmas To Remember!

Today I'm 37. (And yes, that was me above.)

This has been my very first "social media" birthday and it has been a fascinating one in that respect. I can't count the number of greetings I've received via Facebook and Twitter and it's hard to believe that I didn't use either a year ago. Now I'm on the brink -- 19 away as I type -- of 1,000 Twitter followers and this:

...has been going on all day. (Updated, per Corey Levitan, 5:48 pm PT). I woke up to the Smith-Friess tradition of playing "Once A Year Day" from the show Pajama Game and this is what our living room looked like this:

Needless to say, breakfast was Milky Ways and Snickers, hidden in those Pooh boxes.

What's interesting is that this past year has been a challenging one because the miserable economy has accelerated the death spiral of the Old Media. I've spent much of the past 12 months relying on old standby clients -- the New York Times, USA Today, Newsweek and others -- while watching them hemorrhage money, cut their freelance rates or budgets or destroy their content and brand altogether. It's only getting worse, regardless of whether the recession is ending.

This Friessmas, though, marks my first post for a major new client whose business model I believe strongly in. You'll be surprised who it is: AOL.

You can stop laughing now. Yes, AOL as an Internet service provider and email service is a joke, old school. I still use it just because I always have, but I laughed out loud the other day when I got this email...


...offering a solution for busy signals when users are online. How 1995, right?

Well, AOL knows that. But they still have about 5 million subscribers and is among the top 5 sources for news on the Internet. That's a tremendous driver that they need to capitalize upon before their base disappears since, as we know, nobody's signing u for new AOL accounts.

What AOL is doing is fascinating. They're becoming, essentially, the online version of Conde Nast. They've got sites on politics, pets, business, pop culture and other topics that, if you go there, you can actually not realize you're on an AOL site. The content is fresh and new and from some of the top journalists who have recently lost or left Old Media jobs. And because a link from AOL drives 200,000-500,000 hits elsewhere, other sites are eager to return the favor and keep that spigot open.

So, in that context, I've been brought on to a news division AOL will brand as Sphere and will provide a certain number of stories every month starting today with my piece on how Mom bloggers are really, REALLY, cashing in.



I'm their guy not just in Vegas but throughout the region for now, and this gives me a tremendous platform to cover stories I've had to leave on the table lately because the major media either didn't care enough to spend money on it or cared so much they handled it from elsewhere. (Hello, Sen. Ensign and CityCenter.)

It's a new beginning, then, which is fitting for the timing. And there are other ventures in the works. I was supposed to start a weekly celeb-interview segment for Las Vegas One last night but it got pushed back because I had to cover the Garth Brooks press conference for AFP. Portfolio Magazine is reconstituting online and wants several business stories from Vegas. And more.

Oh! And right now, my first Las Vegas Weekly cover story is all over town!


I caught up with seven of the student artists who in 1997 as 4th graders created the murals in the D Gate of various cities around the world. They range from a Harvard law student to a recovering drug addict and at now-22 they really reflect the diversity of their generation. I always wondered and thought their fates would make a good Strip Sense column. It ended up being a lot more than that.

And, of course, the Podcast-a-Palooza is tomorrow from 4-6 pm PT at the Palms. So the fun doesn't stop yet. Hope to see all of you there tomorrow, when we can take new goo-goo photos of me (and you!) with Holly Madison! If you can't, drop in via the livestream, which you can find at that link, too.

What a way to start a year! And here, for what it's worth, is what I look like at 37:


OH! And a hearty Happy Birthday as well to Angela Lansbury, Tim McCarver, John Mayer, Suzanne Somers, Kim Kardashian, LeAnn Tinch of the Venetian, Joe Brown of the Sun, Brandon Johnson, Dan Michalski and Meryl Moskowitz! Good tidings to you all!

MGM Mirage Crisis Averted...For Now

Earlier today, MGM Mirage CEO Jim Murren sent this memo to employees essentially blaming the media for the tumultuous week of peril, anxiety and controversy visited upon Nevada's largest private employer that ended with MGM Mirage covering recalcitrant partner Dubai World's half of a $200 million payment. In the long-term, this resolves absolutely nothing, but it gets them over the hump for this very moment.

Murren's was a baffling letter. First, he denied something the media didn't actually report -- nobody wrote that either MGM Mirage or CityCenter HAD filed for bankruptcy, only that one or the other might need to under certain circumstances and that they had retained bankruptcy attorneys, all of which is true -- and yet he also confirmed the bulk of what HAS been reported. Then he closes with an admonition to disregard "stories from others about what the future holds for us." Odd, that.

A blame-the-media campaign works pretty well in politics but not in business; nobody, least of all MGM Mirage employees, will believe that reporters had a hand in creating the situation MGM Mirage is in unless the case is being made that we didn't scrutinize the CityCenter plan better in the first place and ask harder questions about how this math could possibly add up. Otherwise, at least in this phase, we've gotten the story right at just about every turn in recent months.

Well, almost everyone has. This image and caption used to decorate AOL's presentation of the AP story on the debt payment was riddled with problems:

First, they're still stuck saying that the entire thing is just one 4,000-room resort called CityCenter. And they misspelled "project" anyhow. And this rendering, I think, must be a zillion years old. I can hardly recognize any of the CityCenter elements in it and have no idea what the tall tower in the middle is supposed to be. I'd never seen this rendering before, in fact.

But, regardless, MGM Mirage and everyone who is dependent upon the company lives to fight another day, although employees I know also tell me that their 401(k) matching stops and their salaries are frozen indefinitely starting Wednesday, April 1. Better than not having anything at all, I suppose.

This whole thing left me with a sense of deja vu until Miles reminded me that this is something like the fourth or fifth time some major crisis or calamity befell or involved MGM Mirage while I was out of town. I was also gone for the shootings at New York-New York, the car bombing at Luxor, the fire at Monte Carlo, the time the cousin of the guy making ricin at a motel prompted a partial evacuation of Excalibur and what almost was a major casino blackout last year.

So perhaps Murren is right. Maybe it is the media's fault. Or at least, this mediaman's. I accept responsibility -- hell, nobody at MGM Mirage does -- and I'm sorry.

Bad, AOL News People

I just went to look at my e-mail and was stopped by this new headline out front on AOL's home page...


Can't see it? How about now:

And I'm like, "Whoa!" Did something break when I wasn't looking? The biggest new hotel being built on the Strip right now is either Aria or Fontainebleau. I hadn't heard of any delays in either of those.

Alas, you click on the link and it takes you to a 4-day-old Reuters story about the shorning and delays for The Harmon, which was never supposed to have more than 400 hotel rooms and had lost its 200 condo units because of construction mistakes. In fact, oddly, at 400 rooms, The Harmon actually qualifies as the SMALLEST new hotel to have been built on the Strip in as long as I can remember. Sure, it's a piece of the largest construction complex, CityCenter, but this headline is bad.

Just saying.

Wacky Stuff Today

I'm taking it easy today, about to get the Nathan Burton podcast up and just reading the news to catch up a little. Turns out, you don't have to just look at the Review-Journal for weird stuff in the media these days.

First off, I offer this headline from the NO-SHIT files:


Uh, we needed a "report" on this? Isn't it assumed she was in anguish? And, anyhow, apparently she wasn't anguished enough to keep her lying, cheating sack of shit husband from running for president, which would have only taken threatening to expose this about him. What sort of Messianic complex must both of them have to believe they're so important to the fate of the Republic that they should seek to run it knowing he's a lying, cheating sack of shit and it's bound to become public. The nation already went through that once. I feel for Elizabeth up until the point at which she not only forgives him, which is her choice, but also she licenses him to risk further humiliating her family. Then it's her own damn fault. But that's really besides the point. The headline struck me as odd.

That's just my warm-up, anyway. The biggest domestic news of the day is the murder of the Arkansas Democratic Party chairman, right? Not to AOL, which had this list a little while ago:


A potential act of domestic, political terrorism ranks lower than a meaningless poll, Cindy McCain's painful handshake, rescued animals and an obscene debate coach. The Georgia conflict I buy, but otherwise wow.

But wait! It gets better. When you do find the murder story, take a look at this layout. Apparently the death of a Democratic Party official is of equal significance as the fact that a supporter gripped Barbie's hand too hard and sprained her plastic wrist. Were they trying to avoid the perception of journalistic political bias?


But the silliest thing I've seen today is this. In the AP piece on the murder, they quote a 17-year-old party volunteer named Sam Higginbotham. No, that isn't the funny part. The funny part is Sam's line about the gunman:

"He said he was interested in volunteering, but that was obviously a lie."

Well, obviously! And you know how I know? Because he shoved right past me and gunned down the boss. So clearly, he was fibbing! I'm a little surprised the reporters didn't find some desperate Democratic partisan to say, "Wait! What if he wasn't lying! The cops just shot a potential volunteer? OMG!"

Weird, weird AOL headline problem

This was an intriguing headline: "Bush Treated For Son's Name." I was puzzled as to what it could possibly mean. So I clicked on it and up came the latest development from New Zealand about that spectacularly stupid couple who wanted to give their poor son some truly idiotic name.

What I've concluded is that the top part is supposed to refer to the news that President Bush was being treated for Lyme disease, the bottom is for the krazy Kiwis.

Oops.

Rosie O'Donnell is riveting, like it or not

And so she goes.

I'm not really a Rosie O'Donnell fan per se. In fact, in 2002 when she went all super-dyke on the world, I wrote this piece wondering why she was faking a radical persona. (Apologies for the syntax problems there.)

But it's hard to see that her departure from "The View" won't harm the program, which has seen its ratings boom since she arrived with all her attendant, constant controversy. Particularly interesting is that, except for the Kelly Ripa-Clay Aiken thing, none of the many Rosie flaps really had anything to do with her sexual orientation.

That said, I find the American public's refusal to admit they're fascinated by Rosie so odd. There's an AOL poll up now asking (a) whether you're glad Rosie is leaving "The View" and (b) whether you think the ratings will suffer. So far, more than 207,000 people voted -- by far the largest number of votes on an AOL poll today -- and 77 percent said they're glad she's gone, 69 percent say it won't harm the show's ratings.

What's so odd there is that 207,000 people opted to read the story and vote. That's a lot of people. And three-fourths of them are acting like they don't care, aren't interested.

Oh, and one more thing. If Rosie cared what Trump thought, she'd have taken the one-year deal if only to shut him up. Just a thought.

Oh, one more thought. Rosie on a show of her own won't be nearly as fascinating as Rosie on an all-girl gabfest.