Ned and the first reader: Ned Desmond, whose name may sound like a TV news anchorman, is the executive editor of Time Interactive and is the current featured guest on PaidContent.org’s ContentNext Blogview series.

Seth seethes: Seth Godin evokes Lincoln, who I think once said something like, “Travelocity can fool some of the people some of the time, but may regret it if that person blogs.”

Update: The WSJ (it’s free, this week) has an article by Scott McCartney today that explains what has Seth seething.

Election-year covers: Chronologically, here are the Time & Newsweek covers that featured a candidate (or spouse) in 2004. Both magazines did a campaign related cover in late October that did not feature either candidate. (Cover archives: Time, Newsweek)

Sitting on it: The Newsweek special election report, as blogged earlier, has lots of behind-the-scenes information the magazine agreed to hold until after November 2. The (pro-Bush) NY Post now editorializes that some of the information was so important it should not have been held back.

Quote:

Because the magazine promised the campaigns that anything obtained by this team of journalists during the course of the campaign would go unreported until the election was over. Promises are promises, but whatever happened to what, under different circumstances, Newsweek and similar publications would herald as “the public’s right to know”? It’s not as if rules like this haven’t been bent or even broken before — when journalists believed there was an important story that could have a dramatic impact on a national campaign.

What exactly was it that the NY Post thought we ought to know? While they say it was to what extent Kerry was willing to go to get John McCain to be his vice-presidential running mate, I personally think the item that would have brought down his candidacy was this revealing quote about a photo shoot for the cover of Time Magazine:

“The morning after the Feb. 3 primaries, which vaulted Kerry into a virtually insurmountable lead, the candidate was fuming over his missing hairbrush. He and his aides were riding in a van on the way to a Time magazine cover-photo shoot. [Marvin] Nicholson had left the hairbrush behind. ‘Sir, I don’t have it,’ he said, after rummaging in the bags. ‘Marvin, f—!’ Kerry said. The press secretary, David Wade, offered his brush. ‘I’m not using Wade’s brush,’ the long-faced senator pouted. ‘Marvin, f—, it’s my Time photo shoot.’ ”

I’m assuming Kerry found a brush as the photo to the left is the only Time magazine cover I can find during that time-frame…and in it his hair is picture-perfect.

Also, MediaPost.com’s Michael Shields reviews the Time and Newsweek election specials and, like me, gives Newsweek a squeaker win with 51% of the vote.

Literacy for kids: Just ran across this press release about the organization, “magazine publishers family literacy project,” designed to provide magazine subscriptions to children whose family may otherwise not be able to afford them. Glad to be able to pass along this link to magazineliteracy.org, that, at least from little I know, sounds like a great idea.

Retrovesting: Had it not been reported by Rafat Ali, I may have missed this press release regarding a $10 million funding round raised by Business.com.

Quote:

Business.com, the search engine designed and organized exclusively for business, today announced the closure of a new round of financing. Benchmark Capital, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm, has invested $10 million in Business.com.This new round of funding will enable Business.com to invest in technology infrastructure, product development, and sales and marketing to meet the growing market demand for its vertical business search capabilities…

“Business.com was founded in 1999 on the concept that the information needs of business professionals are different from those of consumers,” said Jake Winebaum, CEO and founder of Business.com. “We’ve focused solely on this large and valuable market segment for the last five years, fine-tuning our service and laying the foundation for what’s become a strong, profitable, and fast-growing business. Benchmark’s investment now allows us to accelerate our product development and expand our sales and marketing efforts.”

Gee. I never thought I’d see this.

How magazines get started (continued): One of the seven readers of this weblog, Sean Callahan, has an article at btobonline.com about publishers launching technology magazines like Redux Herring and the Deal’s Tech Confidential.

(Explanation: How magazines get started.)

This is a test: I took the picture at left (with my phone’s camera) of the magazine “Wired Test” at a huge grocery store magazine newsstand in Greenfield, Mass., Saturday afternoon. (While I live in Nashville, I spend a lot of my time in blue states.) I know nothing about the magazine other than I can’t easily find an announcement about it. (I’ll link to one as soon as I discover it.) The magazine looks like a mash of Wired & Lucky — very CondeNastic.

Also, I received an e-mail from someone this morning asking about it and alerting me to its appearance. Thanks.

Dejacon III: I did not attend Bloggercon III, but Stowe Boyd, who I leaned against a wall with during Jeff Jarvis’ over-flow session at Bloggercon II, describes it as I imagined it would be. It’s great to gather with people who are passionate about what’s taking place in the blogosphere, but a bit frustrating because of certain constraints and expectations and personalities on parade. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there, but am positive my weekend was better spent.

Update: Rafat apparently liked Stowe’s “brilliant, pithy” analysis.

He’s right, except when he’s wrong: Eric Enberg spends a few thousand words saying what I said the morning after election day in a couple dozen: certain bloggers who probably did everything they could to avoid statistics courses in college did the world a disservice (I think I said they “botched it”) by unleashing meaningless numbers onto the blogosphere. However, Engberg goes on to prove how clueless he is by projecting ont all bloggers the unfettered stupidity of a few. Which means, I suppose, that I can discount everything Enberg has to say because he’s saying it on CBSnew.com and it was probably faxed in from a Kinkos somewhere.(via: Micro Persuasion)

Hey, I’m back: Thanks to the avalanche of e-mail I received from two people wondering why they couldn’t access rexblog.com. It’s back up now (thanks, Steve) and I will post all the little items I’ve collected today. Just imagine that it’s several hours ago and you heard them all here first.

How magazines get started (continued): It’s not often that I get to blog a How magazines get started (continued) article from a hometown newspaper, but today, the Nashville Business Journal profiles the launch of a business-to-business publishing venture, Aviation Insurance & Risk Management, the first magazine published by Franklin’s Next Dimension Publishing LLC.

Quote:

Next Dimension is the creation of Chappell Smith & Associates Inc., a full-line insurance agency known to the aviation industry as CS&A Aviation Insurance. Chappell Smith has offices in Franklin, Murfreesboro and Atlanta, and has about 3,600 clients.