By Stephanie Doctrow, RP Staff, on Tue Feb 14, 2012 at 1:30 PM ET Send one of these valentines to your favorite journalist, and you’re guaranteed to get a smile. [Media Bistro]
New research from the Pew Research Center tells us what we already know; even the nation’s top news websites are having a hard time getting advertisers to move online. [Poynter Institute]
One of America’s best newspapers, The New York Times, looks at the future of another amazing paper, The Washington Post. [NY Times]
Why are magazines designing two different covers: one to appeal to newsstand purchasers, and one to appeal to subscribers? [Adweek]
Get ready to feel worried for the future of America. Buzzfeed gathers tweets from Grammys viewers… who don’t know who Paul McCartney is. [Buzzfeed]
By Greg Harris, on Tue Feb 14, 2012 at 12:30 PM ET
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Feb 14, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET  From the heart? Or from Hallmark?
I’ll be buying a nice Valentine’s Day card for my wife.
The big kind that requires a special envelope big enough to for the over-sized card, ribbon, and frilly stuff attached to it.
But I’m also going to do something else.
I’m going to write–in my own words—a personal message of how I feel about my wife, how much I love her and appreciate her.
Sure, I’ll find the card that most closely says what I mean.
But if I don’t write something myself, I’ve outsourced to Hallmark (or another card company) the job of telling my spouse what she means to me—and that just doesn’t seem right somehow.
Some people might say they aren’t eloquent and prefer let the card speak for them. But a simple and non-eloquent personal message from the heart beats the most eloquent message written by another for the one we love any day of the week.
And especially on Valentine’s Day
By Kristen Hamilton, RP Staff, on Tue Feb 14, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET
Remembering Whitney Houston… [The Cut]
Miss Piggy in Louis Vuitton? Yes, indeed. [Styleite]
Read Rachel Zoe’s interview about her fall 2012 collection! [NY Times]
Barbie has come to life…as a fashion designer. Check it out: [Fashionista]
By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Feb 14, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET Some random Valentines Day musings on the latest professional sports phenomenon, Jeremy Lin — the Harvard grad and current New York Knicks basketball point guard, who came out of seemingly nowhere to light up a sports nation frozen in the post-Super Bowl, pre-March Madness tundra of February:
- A recent Sunday ritual of mine — donning a Tom Brady jersey and stepping up to the bar at my neighbor Buffalo Wild Wings — continually was challenged by by fellow Kentuckians who’ve wondered how I became a New England Patriots fan. The first reason — my man-crush on Pretty Boy Brady (as revealed in this piece about Pretty Boys I Begrudgingly Admire) — is not sports bar-appropriate. Neither is the other — my seven year tour of Harvard University — so I would mumble something about living in Boston. Next year, I know I can lift my head up proudly in this basketball-fanatic town and announce, “I went to the same school as Jeremy Lin!”
- One previously unremarked consequence of our Twitter and Facebook dominated world is how quickly jokes now become old and clichéd. Over the weekend, I must have read 500 tweets struggling for a laugh by adding appending “Lin” to a word or making some pun with a word that can be transformed somehow to use “lin.” (I.e., “Linsanity” “Blew up like the Lin-denburg”) Yesterday, I received an email from a fellow Harvard alum (see now I don’t need to hide it!) who passed on this bon mot: Jeremy Lin’s ball-handling is so sick; the other teams are in need of some insu-Lin. My response? That joke’s so February 10.
Read the rest of…
The RP: I Heart Jeremy Lin
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Feb 13, 2012 at 4:30 PM ET  My all-time favorite job interview story.
About a decade ago I heard this story from a colleague in NJ, a manager I admired greatly. He was speaking about how he hired people and used this story as a reference to make his point.
A large corporation was hiring for an executive management position and had narrowed the field to two. The executive team would now take each finalist to dinner at a nice restaurant to get “a feel” for the person and if they fit in with the company’s culture.
The first dinner was with a male, we’ll call him Candidate Jones.
Dinner with the execs could not have gone smoother….Jones was warm, witty, engaging and smart. When he ordered he felt he ordered appropriately, had impeccable manners and fit in seamlessly with the other execs. As Jones himself put it to a friend afterward, “I knocked it out of the park!” Adding “The job is mine.”
Except Jones didn’t get the job.
Why? The executive team explained that although Jones ingratiated himself to them, they noticed that when it came to the coat check lady, the waitress, waiter and bus boy, he was condescending —even rude.
The exec team explained, “We are hiring a manager for people under him or her and not someone who will be engaging with us all day each day. We just don’t feel you are a good fit for that position.”
And that, as they say, was that.
Does this really matter? I can attest that since hearing that story I watch closely how each person I deal with treats the wait staff when at a restaurant. It’s a powerfully effective gauge.
So, want to move up in the world? Treat the waitress and busboy with the same respect you are showing your boss (or future boss), and you just may receive the respect from your boss that you are seeking.
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Feb 13, 2012 at 3:00 PM ET  Favorite story on workaholism.
About 20 years ago I bought a daily mediation book on keeping balance in your life if you have a tendency to lose yourself in your work and fail in other important areas in your life.
It didn’t help me as much as I’d hoped but here is the one reading
I think of often and chuckle to myself.
“Every night Johnny’s dad would come home with an overstuffed briefcase–papers falling out and scattering and dad scurrying to keep everything together to work on later that night. And each night the son would watch knowing it meant less time with his dad who would be working into the evening.
One night, though, Johnny had an idea.
When is frantic dad walked in the door, arms drooping from papers and binders, Johnny offered, “Dad, I’ve been watching you work so hard every night after work trying to just keep up. And I’m really proud of you. But dad, it may be time for you to be put in the “slow group” at work.”
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Feb 13, 2012 at 1:30 PM ET  Finally!
2 years ago I was with a group of businesspeople and we were asked to respond to some questions.
One was “If you could go out to dinner with anyone in the world, who would it be?”
Most people wrote down people like Bill Gates and Donald Trump.
I didn’t. Nothing about either of those men makes me hungry.
I wrote down Nelson Mandela but didn’t mean it. In fact, it had never once crossed my mind that I’d like to have dinner with Nelson Mandela. And hasn’t since. I was just trying to impress the moderator.
In fact, no one came to mind and that bothered me.
But now I know the answer. Donald Fagen (formerly of Steely Dan). I’d genuinely like to hang out with him for a night–have dinner and pick his mind and experience his rich imagination. Even more so than Nelson Mandela. A lot more.
Now….where would I like to eat? Hope this doesn’t take me another 2 years to figure out?
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Feb 13, 2012 at 12:30 PM ET What does it mean to grow up?
When my son was four years old we were up late one night looking for something to do.
He grabbed a chess set and asked, “Want to play!?”
Taken aback by his enthusiasm, I said I did but admitted I really didn’t know how and he’d have to teach me.
He said it was easy and to sit down and he’s show me.
He divided the pieces and set them up in a way I didn’t recognize. I was waiting to be amazed that my 4 year old already knew how to play chess.
His first instruction was a shocker, though. He said what we do is slide the pieces across the board and try to “knock each others pieces down—like in bowling.”
I loved it! “Alright!” I said. “I think I’m gonna like this chess stuff.”
We played for about 30 minutes firing pieces back and forth. He added a few new rules (clarifications, really) along the way that ensured he would “win.” Which was cool.I wanted him to.
I was just thrilled to finally learn how to play chess. It always looked complicated and slow. But turns out it really isn’t. At least to a 4 year old.
A few years later my son taught me how grown ups play chess. It’s OK but, as I suspected, complicated and slow. I like the way 4 year olds play better. Not everything about being a grown up is all it’s cracked up to be.
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Feb 13, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET There is an important difference between having talent beyond measure and being a person beyond reach.
I never thought that would be the legacy for pop star Whitney Houston. But it just may be.
I think it was 1985 when I first heard of–and later saw live at Rupp Arena–Whitney Houston. It was a remarkable and unforgettable performance.
She had a God-given gift–a soulful yet cheery voice that filled up the entire arena and left everyone in awe. She was also beautiful, graceful and seemed to “have it all.”
She was, so it seemed, untouchable. There was nothing critical that could be said of this pure-hearted girl raised in the church who was taking her gospel-trained voice and quickly becoming an international pop diva.
 But surely not the usual kind of diva, right? Whitney would be different–it was assumed.
But in the end, none of us are different. None of us transcend the temptations, the human failings and foibles that endanger us all.
Whitney Houston died yesterday far too young–and far too unrecognizeable from the person who we were introduced to over 25 years ago.
Why? It wasn’t Bobby Brown, or just drugs, or just ego and the inevitability of success gone to her head, or fans demanding perfection where there is only a woman.
Although Whitney Houston wasn’t “untouchable” she did manage to become “unreachable.” And that is when tragedies, like her untimely death yesterday, are made possible.
It’s not that celebrities are too different or too good or too anything to reach out for help.
It’s that sometimes they cross a line into “believing” they have become something else (maybe a brand, a business line, or just a bigger than life superstar) and have forgotten how to sidle up along the rest of us and say the simple–but painfully difficult– words, “Could you please help me?” And mean it.
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