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I've always felt it to be slightly sad that, when a CEO announces his departure from a company, its share price goes up. Although I have no concrete details on this, it does seem to me that the reaction to such announcements is more often positive than negative. When I own shares in said company (in this case, Office 2 Office, up 6.3% on news that CEO Ray Peck has moved on) then I am quite pleased.
I suspect that the more-frequent fillip to shares reflects an underlying belief amongst investors that change is good, provided the company has't been a rip-roaring performer. Office 2 Office has been a bit of a wimp this past year (unfairly, I think, so I have held on to the shares), but a change in CEO would normally, I would have thought, had a negative impact before any positive reverberations fed through. Perhaps the upward tick reflects the time scale under which investors operate.
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The publishing business mainly consists of publishing directors and promoters in bed with each other sucking each other's cocks, so it is of little surprise to me that Bluff Magazine nixed one of its poker writers for reporting "the truth" about Daniel Negreanu (whatever that might be -- that he isn't that good except against poor players, and thus on a par with most winning limit players, only able to skin the donkeys through ABC play?). What did surprise me was Dr Pauly's talk of "journalistic integrity".
Perhaps they do things differently in the US, but, well, puh-leaze. If you write for a publication that takes advertisements, then journalistic integrity has nothing to do with it. It's all about not upsetting the advertisers. I'm lucky. I produce a subscription publication that doesn't take ads, but even I have to be careful when it comes to writing about some of the companies who are significant clients of other publications in my company's portfolio. To this extent, the poker magazines' "big clients" are the poker sites, and the poker sites want to protect the reputations of their representatives, the name poker players. You aren't going to get an exposé of the sleaze in poker in a glossy that publishes adverts from casinos and poker site. If you want to write journalistic integrity, write a book.
Once you stop "just writing a blog" and become a paid writer for a poker glossy, you become a hack, and you write what your employers want to read, not "the truth" (whatever that might be).
I suffer no crisis of conscience about this. I'm a grown-up. I know how it works. What puzzles me is that there appear to be writers in the poker world who aren't aware of this simple state of affairs. Pauly has been around long enough to know what's what. But perhaps he's just too much of a free spirit to accept it.
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A good example of "being in bed with promoters" is always the entertainments page. Look at yesterday's "Metro" in London. "Was Sienna not faking it?" runs the headline, which leads a story that is little more than a puff piece for Factory Girl . Can the writer really believe this, that Hayden Christiansen were really "at it" when a love scene was filmed? Do these people know nothing of the ways of slimeball promoters? And, more importantly, are they not aware that precisely the same promotional trick has been used many times to increase attendance at a movie not killing the box office (the remake of "The Postman Always Rings Twice" rings a bell here)?
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I defrosted and cleaned the freezer last night/today. I feel very self-righteous. Now I just have to eat up the food transferred from freezer to fridge and m,ake up one of the largest vegetable curries in history from the now unfrozen peas, beans and, quite possibly, chips.
++++++++++
I suspect that the more-frequent fillip to shares reflects an underlying belief amongst investors that change is good, provided the company has't been a rip-roaring performer. Office 2 Office has been a bit of a wimp this past year (unfairly, I think, so I have held on to the shares), but a change in CEO would normally, I would have thought, had a negative impact before any positive reverberations fed through. Perhaps the upward tick reflects the time scale under which investors operate.
+++++++++++
The publishing business mainly consists of publishing directors and promoters in bed with each other sucking each other's cocks, so it is of little surprise to me that Bluff Magazine nixed one of its poker writers for reporting "the truth" about Daniel Negreanu (whatever that might be -- that he isn't that good except against poor players, and thus on a par with most winning limit players, only able to skin the donkeys through ABC play?). What did surprise me was Dr Pauly's talk of "journalistic integrity".
Perhaps they do things differently in the US, but, well, puh-leaze. If you write for a publication that takes advertisements, then journalistic integrity has nothing to do with it. It's all about not upsetting the advertisers. I'm lucky. I produce a subscription publication that doesn't take ads, but even I have to be careful when it comes to writing about some of the companies who are significant clients of other publications in my company's portfolio. To this extent, the poker magazines' "big clients" are the poker sites, and the poker sites want to protect the reputations of their representatives, the name poker players. You aren't going to get an exposé of the sleaze in poker in a glossy that publishes adverts from casinos and poker site. If you want to write journalistic integrity, write a book.
Once you stop "just writing a blog" and become a paid writer for a poker glossy, you become a hack, and you write what your employers want to read, not "the truth" (whatever that might be).
I suffer no crisis of conscience about this. I'm a grown-up. I know how it works. What puzzles me is that there appear to be writers in the poker world who aren't aware of this simple state of affairs. Pauly has been around long enough to know what's what. But perhaps he's just too much of a free spirit to accept it.
++++++++
A good example of "being in bed with promoters" is always the entertainments page. Look at yesterday's "Metro" in London. "Was Sienna not faking it?" runs the headline, which leads a story that is little more than a puff piece for Factory Girl . Can the writer really believe this, that Hayden Christiansen were really "at it" when a love scene was filmed? Do these people know nothing of the ways of slimeball promoters? And, more importantly, are they not aware that precisely the same promotional trick has been used many times to increase attendance at a movie not killing the box office (the remake of "The Postman Always Rings Twice" rings a bell here)?
+++++++++
I defrosted and cleaned the freezer last night/today. I feel very self-righteous. Now I just have to eat up the food transferred from freezer to fridge and m,ake up one of the largest vegetable curries in history from the now unfrozen peas, beans and, quite possibly, chips.
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