By Drew Grant 4/23 7:01pm

Retail Therapy

Duane Reade at 40 Wall Street. (Photo via Shao-yu Liu.)

The Re-Education of Duane Reade: A Drugstore as Retail, Therapy

It’s not every weekend that Kerri Gristina, a schoolteacher living in the Bronx, manages to round up her three daughters and load them into the car for a Manhattan outing. When she does, she’ll take them to a Broadway play, to a museum or just to frolic around Central Park. But no matter what else they do that day, the busy mom always manages to carve out some time for one special stop along the way.

“They have natural options, organic options,” Ms. Gristina, who writes a blog called Raising Three Savvy Ladies, told The New York Observer of her favorite place to buy beauty products in NYC. “It’s like a designer store. Maybe it costs more, but having more variety is worth it.”

No, it’s not the Laura Mercier or Bobbi Brown counter at Bergdorf’s. Ms. Gristina’s guilty primping pleasure is Duane Reade.

Seriously. Read More

By Foster Kamer 7/24/12 6:00pm

Spin Cycle

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Chick-Fil-A and Jim Henson’s Creatures Fight P.R. War via Social Media

Chick-Fil-A is an Atlanta-based fast-food chain you may have heard of, whose chicken sandwiches have a cult following, but whose cult-like devotion to anti-gay causes have increasingly put them in the media spotlight. Except on Sundays. They are closed on Sundays.

All of this recently culminated in that telltale culture-news saturation point indicator, a withering segment about them on The Daily Show. And on Friday, The Jim Henson Company—which makes Muppet toys for Chick-Fil-As kids’ meals—cut ties with the company as well. So, how’s Chick-Fil-A fighting back? Read More

By Foster Kamer 6/14/12 5:07pm

WELL PLAYED

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Shell Oil Currently Under Assault by Social Media Pranksterism, Gone Viral

In the summer of 2010, besides yielding enough oil to effectively kill off part of the Gulf ecosystem permanently, B.P.’s oil spill also yielded some decent satire. This manifested most famously in the form of the BP Global PR feed on Twitter, which ended up in the oil company’s aggravated sight-lines. Especially upsetting to the company was the fact that people were mistaking the satirical feed for an actual B.P. feed from their communications department.

Well now, Shell’s getting it, too. Read More

By Steve Huff 5/30/12 1:20am

SNAFUs

Posted to Twitter by Dana Stevens--@thehighsign

Mitt Romney’s iPhone App Exhorts Users to Believe in a Better ‘Amercia’

It’s the kind of mistake that’s irresistible to social media wits: an iPhone app for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign misspells the word America. The app lets users take photos and it currently superimposes the legend “A Better Amercia (sic)” over them. While the Romney campaign is seeking to have the app corrected and replaced in the iTunes store as soon as possible, jokes about the screw-up spread like wildfire across Twitter Tuesday night. It is tempting to run down a catalogue of wisecracks but one tweet represents the general tone pretty well: Read More

By Chris Lehmann 5/09/12 8:30am

Culture Shock

Sarah Phillips (Courtesy Deadspin)

How the Social Media Gold Rush Enabled ESPN Scammer Sarah Phillips

The self-obsessed world of online journalism came close to a singularity moment early this month, when an up-and-coming young sports columnist was exposed as a garden-variety con artist. Over at the Gawker sports site Deadspin, John Koblin reconstructed the luridly fascinating saga of ESPN.com writer Sarah Phillips, who had landed a plum perch in the enormous, vastly profitable industry of sports journalism without benefit of a single in-person job interview. Read More

By Drew Grant 1/18/12 5:00pm

McDonald's

8 Photos

McDonalds worst idea yet: social media

The Best Tweets from ‘McDStories’ Hashtag Disaster


You’d have thought that Taco Bell’s tweet on Martin Luther King Day– “Have you ever dreamed about eating @TacoBell and then woke up and made that dream come true?” –would have been bad enough to scare off any other fast food chains from making another social media blunder this week. But like a line of delicious, deep-fried dominoes, McDonald’s has now toppled in the face of the almighty force that is thousands of bored, scabby teens. Read More

By Drew Grant 11/29/11 2:24pm

The Atlantic

Robert Wright: Journalist, non-Tweeter (via Bloggingheads.tv)

Robert Wright Joins TheAtlantic.Com As Senior Editor, Needs More Twitter Friends

New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer prize nominee Robert Wright is The Atlantic‘s latest digital hire. No, not The Atlantic Wire, just TheAtlantic.com. Mr. Wright has been penning for The Atlantic for 20 years, but has limited his editorial duties to The New Republic, The Sciences, and Wilson Quarterly.

According to the press release sent today, Mr. Wright’s new position at The Atlantic “will cover issues related to politics, foreign policy, science, religion, and philosophy, among other subjects. He will also supplement his writing with video conversations, a format he popularized on Bloggingheads.tv.”

So why doesn’t anyone want to be his Twitter buddy? Read More

By Anna Sanders 10/28/11 2:24pm

Occupy Wall Street

Reporters use social media tools to get the whole story in Zuccotti Park. (Photo: Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images)

Zuccotti Press Corps Toggle Between Twitter and Notebooks

Just before dawn on Oct. 14, Salon reporter Justin Elliott was on Twitter and in Zuccotti Park, awaiting the outcome of Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal to clear out the Occupy Wall Street protestors for cleaning.

“On scene at Zuccotti, infusion of new protesters just arrived with signs “NYPD protects and serves the rich” | big cheers #ows,” Mr. Elliott tweeted.

A few days later, Nocturnalist columnist and New York Times staff reporter Sarah Maslin Nir kept followers up to date on the latest from her Zuccotti sleepover.

“Getting cold and tired, but every serious protestor has a tarp to block the wind. And I refuse to huddle for warmth #gonnadie,” Ms. Maslin Nir tweeted just before 1 a.m. on Oct. 17.

With freezing rain forecast for Saturday, staying warm is a major concern for Occupy Wall Street protesters and reporters alike. For many journalists, the movement is noteworthy for regularly drawing them out of the newsroom for long periods of time, demanding an on-the-fly mélange of traditional and social media reporting.  Read More