Monday, May 19, 2008

Teens Read?, Yahoo Beware!, User-Created Mag

Teens Reading More
Newsweek had an interesting article about the resurgence of reading in teens. The article cites a couple of reasons for this "perfect storm for teen lit":
the most obvious two being the increasing sophistication and emotional maturity of teenagers and the accompanying new freedom for writers in the genre to explore virtually any subject. Another is that bookstores and libraries are finally recognizing this niche and separating teen books from children's books.

Read the article here.

Icahn Issues Ultimatum to Yahoo
Regular readers of this blog will remember that I wrote extensively about billionaire investor Carl Icahn and the pressure he brought to bear on Time Warner a a few years ago after buying a 3.3% stake in the company. He demanded that the board of directors break up Time Warner into four pieces. He and the company finally reached a settlement in February, 2006. The New York Times reported:
. . . a deal was struck: two independent directors would be added to Time Warner's roster . . . Time Warner also agreed to increase its planned buyback of shares to $20 billion, from $12.5 billion, and to commit to reduce costs by $1 billion.

Icahn has now turned his gaze upon Yahoo. He has purchased 4.3% of the company's stock in shares and option. On Friday, the Associated Press reported:
Spurred on by outraged shareholders, Icahn notified Yahoo Thursday that he will lead a revolt to oust Yang and the rest of the Internet company's board unless they renew negotiations with Microsoft that fell apart May 3 when the two sides couldn't agree on a price.

Yahoo hasn't even had time to relax after fending off Microsoft's advances. Read the whole story here.

A User-Generated Magazine
In an interesting twist, the June issue of Budget Travel is being published with almost 100% reader-generated material:
. . . Budget Travel has allowed its readers to generate all of the text and photography—only the “40 Best Deals” section was written by staffers.

Read about it here.

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