Television networks and channels are becoming increasingly involved in making commercials, hoping to prevent audiences from skipping ads, Stuart Elliott writes. New efforts at content marketing (also called content advertising and native advertising) have become the norm as networks try to convince marketers to pay more for airtime. Scripps Networks Interactive, the parent of cable channels like DIY, Food Network and Travel Channel, is one of the leaders in the field. Jonathan LaConti, vice president for ad sales at the company’s New York office, said that Scripps strives to make commercials that look “really natural,” particularly if they involve one of the network’s hosts.
Three retailers settled federal claims on Tuesday that they had marketed real fur as fake fur, Julie Creswell reports. Neiman Marcus, Dr.Jays.com and Eminent settled with the Federal Trade Commission for marketing rabbit, raccoon and, possibly, dyed mink as faux fur, to the applause of animal rights groups. The seemingly counterintuitive business plan has become more viable as retailers struggle to meet a growing demand for fake fur and a global supply chain obfuscates the origins of some clothing materials.
Sylvia Nasar, a tenured professor at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday accusing the university of misdirecting $4.5 million in endowment funds over the last decade, Christine Haughney writes. Ms. Nasar, who is the John S. and James L. Knight professor of business journalism at Columbia and the author of the book “A Beautiful Mind,” charges in the suit that the university misused a $1.5 million endowment provided by the Knight Foundation to establish a professorship. The agreement called for Columbia to pay the professor’s salary on its own, then use the grant money for additional salary and benefits like research. Ms. Nasar’s complaint says that instead she spent $174,000 of her own money and when the accounting firm KPMG audited the endowment they found that Columbia’s “misappropriations and defaults” totaled as much as $4.5 million. A Columbia spokeswoman would not comment on pending litigation.
A new book by Jane Goodall, the primatologist, contains passages taken from Web sites without attribution, according to an article on The Washington Post’s Web site on Tuesday, Leslie Kaufman writes. The book, “Seeds of Hope: Wisdom and Wonder From the World of Plants,” written with Gail Hudson, who has worked with Ms. Goodall on two other books, is about plants and their impact on humans, not chimpanzees. Ms. Goodall acknowledged the duplication and apologized, adding that she would discuss the issue on her Web site’s blog.
Tom Bissell, the author of seven books and a contributor to publications like The New Yorker and Harper’s, has broken into a new genre by writing “Gears of War: Judgment,” the fourth video game in the popular science-fiction military series for the Xbox 360, Chris Suellentrop reports. Dialogue, character development and plot are often afterthoughts behind game mechanics and lush combat sequences in games like “Gears of War,” but in this case Mr. Bissell and Rob Auten, who helped him write the game, were instrumental almost from the beginning. The resulting game is fast-paced and lean, propelling the action forward with a subtle story line that inattentive players might miss for the explosions.
The New York Times announced on Tuesday that Alison Smale would become Berlin bureau chief and Richard W. Stevenson would become Europe editor. The change comes as The Times moves to create an integrated global news brand; the The International Herald Tribune, which The Times has owned since 2003, will be renamed as The International New York Times later this year.