Seeing The Real Green: Modesto

Modesto, Calif. is located in Stanislaus County, an area that grows more than 250 commodities, anything and everything from apricots (called “cots” there) to walnuts. In fact, the $1.3 billion agriculture industry employs more than one-third of the population.But rich farmland is only part of the story in Modesto. After the harvest, much of the produce is often shipped to canneries and processing centers, powered by...

Celebrating Mars: Fans Cheer Rumors

Reporting with an exclusive, Michael Ausiello with EW.com just fueled the fire in the hearts of Veronica Mars fans. According to Ausiello, Rob Thomas had an impromptu meeting with Kristen Bell to discuss a Veronica Mars movie."It's very tough to focus on it right now with two pilots on my plate," Thomas told EW. He is reworking a resurrected series called Cupid and an adaptation of the New Zealand series called Outrageous...

Melting Credibility: Bigfoot Hunters

So Matt Whitton and his friend Rick Dyer, a former Georgia corrections officer, supposedly chanced onto the remains of Bigfoot and decided to share their story on YouTube. More recently, they held a press conference. "It's not a human, it's not an ape," Whitton, a Georgia police officer, told the media. Whitton was right about that. It wasn’t human or an ape, but a rubber suit designed to drive traffic to their Web site...

Flattening Writers: Dave Fleet

Dave Fleet is a communications professional based in Toronto with a self described passion for social media. I was recently reintroduced to his blog via The Buzz Bin after Mike Nelson included it among the posts selected for “Great Blogs of Fire!” Dave Fleet has a good blog, no question. But the highlighted post? It’s only close.How Might Friedman’s Flat World Affect The Public Relations Industry?Fleet takes journalist...

Trending The Inevitable: Retail Leaves Print

It’s no surprise that Kohl’s and JCPenney are reevaluating their newspaper-circular strategy. online advertising has been chasing newspapers for some time. Losing even a small share of two retail giants will hurt. Last year, JCPenney spent an estimated $149 million in newspaper advertising. Kohl’s spent $136 million. Like many companies, these two retailers are finding that online marketing works. Since July, JCPenney...

Measuring Potential: Intent Over Industry Trend

Despite some bullish interruptions that online advertising is exempt from economic pressures, eMarketer has scaled back its estimates for online marketing. The firm adjusted its online advertising forecast for 2008 from $25.9 billion to $24.9 billion, and social network advertising from $1.6 billion to $1.4 million. However, it’s hard to jump on the doom and gloom bandwagon based on this adjustment and Google's failure...