Archive for May, 2013

Frost.com Site Maintenance

Friday, May 24th, 2013

Frost & Sullivan will be moving to a new web site host; and will experience significant down time over the Memorial Day weekend (May 25 – May 27).

Here is the text of their email to local Frost.com client administrators.

To provide better service to our customers and users of frost.com, we have decided to relocate our website hosting, planned for this weekend, May 25th – 27th. No action is required on your part.

Please note that Frost.com will be unavailable for the entire weekend, starting early Saturday morning through Monday morning, May 27th.

We apologize in advance for any inconvenience caused during this move but hope this will provide better service for all of our frost.com users.

New Movies for May: Part 2

Thursday, May 23rd, 2013

Here are the last of the new May DVDs:

Broken City
Dragon
Luv
Hemingway & Gellhorn
Ice Age: the Meltdown
Mama
The Oranges
Pawn

You may browse the entire DVD collection via the library catalog.

New Movies for May: Part 1

Monday, May 20th, 2013

Here are the first of the new May DVDs:

A Monster in Paris
Scandal
Not Fade Away
Silver Linings Playbook
The Details
Django Unchained
Gangster Squad
The Guilt Trip
The Impossible
Jack Reacher
Promised Land
Safe Haven

You may browse the entire DVD collection via the library catalog.

Book Review: Trust me, I’m lying

Monday, May 20th, 2013

Holiday, Ryan. Trust me, I’m lying : the tactics and confessions of a media manipulator. Portfolio, 2012.

In late March, a red billboard appeared on Battleground Avenue in Greensboro, NC. Claiming to be from a scorned woman who caught her husband with another woman, the billboard slowed down traffic on one of Greensboro’s major thoroughfares. The story was picked up and replayed by local and national TV news. Some people immediately suspected that the billboard was actually a marketing trick, perhaps to get the name Nikon (or the unnamed American Express) in front of the public — on TV, radio and newspapers, as well as on blogs, Twitter and Facebook – all for the cost of a small town billboard.

cheating spouse billboard

(Click to view a larger image of the billboard)

Author Ryan Holiday would agree with those who find the billboard suspect. He often uses marketing tricks to sell products. His day job is marketing director for American Apparel, but he also orchestrates deceptions to sell products for other clients. He creates and shapes news for them. In his new book Trust Me, I’m Lying, Holiday explains how marketers use deceptive tactics like fake billboards to manufacture news that draws attention to the products and services that he represents. News is then filtered up, from small blogs to larger sites to national media.

Holiday’s book describes what goes on behind the scenes in the worlds of blogging, PR, and online news and he reveals the methods used to manipulate bloggers and reporters. Bloggers in turn sensationalize stories because the headlines that get the most clicks generate the most money. He reveals bloggers who create artificial content, fabricating outrageous stories out of nowhere or distorting a video until it is completely a lie. He gives several examples, including Andrew Breitbart’s news clip about Shirley Sherrod.

In the end, Holiday offers no easy solutions. When the incentive is pageviews, bloggers will lie, distort and attack. Holiday hopes that his book will encourage the public to pay for news that is trustworthy. He calls on traditional news agencies to work harder to report the truth and to verify their stories. He also calls for stronger libel and defamation laws. Recommended.

© Reviewer: Meg Trauner & Ford Library – Fuqua School of Business.
All rights reserved.