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Across The Media Universe: We've Come A Long Way Since Hypercolor Edition

By Brian Montopoli

January 10, 2007 / 10:26 AM EST / CBS News

(CBS)

Just One Word: Plastics: As Exact Editions notes, "A company called Plastic Logic with a clever technology from the University of Cambridge has raised $100 Million in Venture Capital funding to build a factory for plastic semi-conductor subtrates." (The Financial Times has the story.) Why should we care? Because the technology means "a foldable, re-usable, high-resolution, glare resisting, print-carrying, cheap surface" – one that makes it possible for people to wear newspapers or magazines on their t-shirts. Writes Adam Hodgkin: "Can you imagine what a tube [that's British for subway] journey is going to be like when half the occupants are wearing today's newspaper and the other half is trying to peer at the relevant column?" (via Greenslade)

Another Proud Moment In Journalism: After Monday night's brush fire destroyed six homes in an exclusive Malibu community, the media flocked to the area looking for celebrities whose homes had been ruined, the Los Angeles Times reports. "There was a flurry of activity as actress Suzanne Somers and her husband, Alan Hamel, pulled up in front of their burned-out house in a black Cadillac Escalade," notes the Times. "TV cameras were yanked from their tripods as tabloid show crews clustered around the actress — best known for her role on the television series 'Three's Company' — while she stepped past her burned Jaguar convertible into what had been her home's front courtyard." (At least Somers had some class, noting that it wasn't as though she'd lost a child in Iraq.)

Katie Couric Coverage Worth Reading: Rebecca Dana's New York Observer piece on the "Evening News" anchor is that rare piece of journalism about Couric that's actually worth your time. Notes Dana: "One of Ms. Couric's innovations—or corruptions—of the form is that she occasionally offers up her own reaction to the stories that appear on her broadcast. A vestige of her chattier Today Show days, these frequent interjections are the subject of much deep thought and close analysis in the halls of CBS—and the subject of sniggering elsewhere in television news." Says Couric: "I think that, probably it may be off-putting at times to some people who are used to a very, very buttoned-up newscast that doesn't have much leeway for an occasional glimpse of personality."