As we have noted before, PR people love holidays for announcing bad news — which is why Media Orchard had to get up from the Thanksgiving table to inform you that Jessica and Nick had announced their split and that Savvis had accepted the resignation of its stripper-loving CEO.

Now, Women’s Wear Daily reports that Jessica and Nick’s timing has made some celebrity pubs look downright silly:

To be sure, Us editor in chief Janice Min — and her counterparts at the other celebrity weeklies — would have preferred to get the news a few days earlier, in time to include it in the print edition. Did Min believe Simpson and Lachey timed the announcement to inconvenience the entertainment press? “It’d be naive not to think that was a consideration,” she said.

No one got tripped up worse than Celebrity Living. The American Media-owned title published a cover story last week claiming Simpson and Lachey were set to adopt a baby. Worse yet is this week’s issue, on sale beginning Wednesday: Its main cover line reads “Jessica’s Baby Weight Battle: She’s Finally Pregnant!” The blunder is a product of Celebrity Living’s protracted production schedule, which requires the magazine to close almost a full week before it goes on sale. Sister publication Star also has a cover story on Jessica’s “pregnancy” in the current issue.

Not good. Jossip has more here.

Technorati tags: Journalism, PR, Public Relations, Celebrities, Jessica Simpson, US Weekly

When Media Orchard has posted on the topic of video-game sex and violence in the past, we have been cruelly labelled an old fogey by our younger readers.

Call us what you will. We still believe that:

1. Some video games, played repeatedly over time, desensitize children to violence.

2. The ESRB’s current rating system leaves something to be desired.

Family Media Guide warns parents that this holiday season, “some of the most ultra-violent video games ever created are being made available.” The guide goes on to rank the 10 most violent, “utilizing a proprietary audit process (to) capture and document instances of profanity, sex, violence, and substance abuse using a database-driven technology employing approximately 4000 rules and algorithms governing millions of potential rule combinations.”

This certainly sounds meatier than the ESRB system, which rates titles based upon the opinions of three individuals who don’t even play the games.

And the guide’s “winners” are –

Resident Evil 4 — Player is a Special Forces agent sent to recover the President’s kidnapped daughter. During the first minutes of play, it’s possible to find the corpse of a woman pinned up on a wall — by a pitchfork through her face.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas – Player is a young man working with gangs to gain respect. His mission includes murder, theft, and destruction on every imaginable level. Player recovers his health by visiting prostitutes then recovers funds by beating them to death and taking their money. Player can wreak as much havoc as he likes for no reason without progressing through the game’s storyline.

God of War – Player becomes a ruthless warrior, seeking revenge against the gods who tricked him into murdering his own family. Prisoners are burned alive and player can use “finishing moves” to kill opponents — like tearing a victim in half.

Narc — Player can choose between two narcotics agents attempting to take a dangerous drug off the streets and shut down the KRAK cartel while being subject to temptations including drugs and money. To enhance abilities, player takes drugs including pot, Quaaludes, ecstasy, LSD and “Liquid Soul” –which provides the ability to kick enemies’ heads off.

Killer 7 — Player takes control of seven assassins who must combine skills to defeat a band of suicidal, monstrous terrorists. The game eventually escalates into a global conflict between the U.S. and Japan. Player collects the blood of fallen victims to heal himself and must slit own wrists to spray blood to find hidden passages.

The Warriors – Based on a 70’s action flick that set new standards for “artistic violence,” a street gang battles its way across NYC in an attempt to reach its home turf. Player issues several commands to his gang, including “mayhem,” which causes the gang to smash everything in sight.

50 Cent: Bulletproof – Game is loosely based on the gangster lifestyle of rapper Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson. Player engages in gangster shootouts and loots the bodies of victims to buy new 50 Cent recordings and music videos.

Crime Life: Gang Wars – Player is the leader of a ruthless street gang, spending time fighting, recruiting new gangsters, fighting, looting, and of course, more fighting. Player can roam the streets and fight or kill anyone in sight for no apparent reason.

Condemned: Criminal Origins – Player is an FBI serial killer hunter in one of the first titles for the Xbox 360. Game emphasizes the use of melee weapons over firearms, allowing players to use virtually any part of their environment as a weapon. The next generation graphics provide a new level of detail to various injuries, especially “finishing moves.”

True Crime: New York City – Player is a NYC cop looking for information regarding the mysterious death of a friend. Player can plant evidence on civilians and shake them down to earn extra money.

Whatever happened to Pac-Man?

Technorati tags: Video Games, Media, Media Violence, Grand Theft Auto, Gaming

Technorati tags: Web 2.0, PR, Blogs, Websites, Public Relations, Marketing, Advertising, Media

Day after day in the blogosphere, right-wing pundits are unearthing shocking evidence of liberal media bias — most recently, a poorly Photoshopped newspaper photo of Condoleezza Rice and a mysterious “X” that appeared over Dick Cheney’s face during a televised speech.

Now, you and I — as reasonable human beings of any political stripe — would probably assume these incidents were inadvertent errors or, at worst, the unendorsed actions of lone pranksters within the news organizations involved.

But you and I don’t see what the pundits see. They see the grand scheme. (Or at least, they see the tremendous Web traffic their conspiracy theories attract.)

As I pondered this trend in punditry, I came upon this item via CyberJournalist.net:

The (Danbury, Conn.) News-Times accidentally ran an offensive caption on its Web page under a photo of a girls’ high school soccer team.

The newspaper’s Web site published a photograph of the team after a championship-clinching win, but the caption said it was celebrating a teammate’s decision to “come out of the closet as a lesbian.”

The copy editor who wrote the caption was “goofing around” and didn’t realize the caption had gone online, editor Paul Steinmetz said.

Can you imagine how Michelle Malkin or Matt Drudge would have reacted if, instead of lesbians, the punchline of the editor’s prank had been fundamentalist Christians or another conservative constituency?

I enjoy political debate — particularly as it concerns the media. But could we please add some rationality to the equation?

Technorati tags: Journalism, Michelle Malkin, Media, Gays

From Romenesko via New York Magazine:

Koppel might do an HBO show called “The F-ing Media”

Ted Koppel and producer Tom Bettag are hoping to launch their HBO series with a critical look at TV news. (The cable-channel deal isn’t signed yet.) “This is something you can’t do at ABC,” says Bettag. “You’d be accused of fouling your own nest or criticizing your competitors. We have an opportunity in a new venue. TV never looks at itself hard. We want to answer such questions as, ‘Why is 24-hour cable news “blondes reporting on missing blondes”?’”

Technorati tags: Journalism, Media, Ted Koppel, Cable