Category: City Pages

City Pages – Exception that Proves the Rule

There’s a best practice in podcast-o-land:

Don’t go public with your podcast until at least episode 6.

Like too many local publication moves in this area – they’re far too focused on ad-supported page views to let the technology work for them – technology like RSS and downloadable files. At best what the City Pages launched was an mp3 blog. And that’s generous.

“It just dawned on me why City Pages hasn’t ever understood this. Traditionally, in order to get the City Pages, you’ve always had to go to a City Pages kiosk. You’ve never been able to subscribe to it.” – Aaron Landry

“I want to hear what didn’t make the piece” – Paul Schmelzer

Way Off Target

I caught the same article Dave did this morning at the CP Blotter and didn’t think anything of it.

Thankfully, Dave did a little poking around and found the “three of every four dollars in profit” is not on all of Target profit, but rather on the 15% increase in profits in a single quarter.

What does that mean in numbers? Hypothetically. Let’s say a company has a year’s profit of just under a $1 million ($998,675 to be exact), 15% quarterly profit increase might look something like this:
Q1 – $200,000
Q2 – $230,000
Q3 – $264,500
Q4 – $304,175

Now let’s compare the two numbers;
(City Pages) 75% of Q1 to Q4 profits: $749,006
(Business Week) 75% of Q3 to Q4 increase: $29,756

That’s a discrepancy of $719,250.

That’s not just a big difference – that’s bad, deceptive, and misleading journalism.

BTW – if you want to crunch the actual numbers yourself, here’s Targets 8K filing. If you’re wondering, Target’s 2006Q1 earnings were $886 million.