April 2012

The most important metric for Apple in the quarter that ended two weeks ago -- likely to account for more than half of the company's revenue for fiscal Q2 2012 -- is the number of iPhones it sold from Jan. 1 to Mar. 31.

We've polled 48 analysts -- evenly divided between professional and independent -- and the indies, as usual, have gone considerably further out on a limb than the pros. The numbers from the two dozen Wall Street analysts we've heard from range from a high of 33.1 million from Pacific Crest's Andy Hargreaves to a low of 26 million, submitted by both Deutsche Bank's Chris Whitmore and Brian Marshall of the ISI Group. The average among the Wall Street analysts is 30.5 million, which would represent a year-over-year unit sales increase of 63.8%.

Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications today announced the finalists in the sixth annual Mirror Awards competition honoring excellence in media industry reporting. The competition drew over 300 entries. Winners will be announced at a June 13 awards ceremony in New York. Finalists are chosen by a group of journalists and journalism educators.

Best Single Article, Traditional/Legacy Media

• Jodi Enda, “Politico, Act II” (American Journalism Review)
• Felix Gillette, “The Rise and Inglorious Fall of Myspace” (Bloomberg Businessweek)
• Adam Lashinsky, “How Apple works: Inside the world’s biggest startup” (Fortune)
• Gabriel Sherman, “The Elephant in the Green Room” (New York Magazine)
• Emily Steel and Geoffrey A. Fowler, “Big Brands Like Facebook, But They Don’t Like to Pay” (Wall Street Journal)

Best Single Article, Digital Media

• Joshua Benton, “That was quick: Four lines of code is all it takes for The New York Times’ paywall to come tumbling down” (Nieman Journalism Lab)
• Paul Ford, “Facebook and the Epiphanator: An End to Endings?” (New York Magazine)
• Lauren Kirchner, “AOL Settled with Unpaid ‘Volunteers’ for $15 Million” (Columbia Journalism Review)
• Mallary Jean Tenore, “In real-time, journalists’ tweets contribute to a ‘raw draft’ of history” (Poynter)
• Rhonda Roland Shearer and Malik Ayub Sumbal, “Mrs. Bhutto’s Murder Anniversary Part 1: Troubling Double Standard, American photojournalism's different treatment of foreign victims” (iMediaEthics)

Best Profile, Traditional/Legacy Media

• Ken Auletta, “Changing Times” (The New Yorker)
• Felix Gillette, “Demand Media’s Planet of the Algorithms” (Bloomberg Businessweek)
• Vanessa Grigoriadis, “Maharishi Arianna” (New York Magazine)
• Evan Osnos, “The Han Dynasty” (The New Yorker)

Best Profile, Digital Media

• Danny Gold, “The Man Who Makes Money Publishing Your Nude Pics” (The Awl)
• Joe Pompeo, “The road ahead for The Huffington Post: Nine months and a merger later, ‘Capital-J Journalism’ is still a work in progress” (Capital New York)
• Rachel Sklar, “Chelsea Handler Has It Covered” (Change The Ratio)

Best Commentary, Traditional/Legacy Media

Eric Alterman (The Nation)

• “How Low Will the ‘Washington Post’ Go?”
• “How Rupert Murdoch Buys Friends and Influences People”
• “The Agony and Ecstasy—and ‘Disgrace’—of Steve Jobs”

Syed Irfan Ashraf (The DAWN Media Group/Individualland)

• “Cost of self-censorship”
• “Media’s apologetic professionals”
• “A synthetic image”

John Gapper (Financial Times)

• “Huffington is right to take the cash”
• “The conflict of interest in free news”
• “Innovators don’t ignore customers”

Anna Holmes (The New York Times, The Washington Post)

• “The Disposable Woman”
• “Anna Holmes on Donald Trump’s Sexism”
• “The best TV criticism’s ink is pink, but powerful”

Best Commentary, Digital Media

Gavin Polone (Vulture/New York Magazine)

• “Polone: Why TV Networks Don't Need to Worry About Netflix and Hulu’s Original Programming”
• “Polone’s Four-Step Plan for Saving NBC”
• “Polone’s Hollywood Cost-Cutting Solution No. 2: Stop the Pricey Producer Deals”

Rem Rieder (American Journalism Review)

• “The Incredible Shrinking Rupert”
• “The Wall Street Journal Careens off the Rails”
• “Passing on Rumors”

Jack Shafer (Reuters Blog)

• “The trial of Stephen Glass”
• “Who gets to be anonymous?”
• “The apotheosis of Steve Jobs”

Mallary Jean Tenore (Poynter)

• “How accessible do journalists really want to be?”
• “Journalists value precise language, except when it comes to describing ‘minorities’”
• “Have newsrooms relaxed standards, sanctions for fabrication and plagiarism?”

Rebecca Traister (Salon.com, The New York Times)

• “The Soap Opera Is Dead! Long Live The Soap Opera!”
• “‘30 Rock’ takes on feminist hypocrisy — and its own”
• “Seeing ‘Bridesmaids’ is a social responsibility”

John M. Higgins Award for Best In-Depth/Enterprise Reporting

• Jodi Enda, “The Bloomberg Juggernaut” (American Journalism Review)
• On The Media Team: Brooke Gladstone, Bob Garfield, Katya Rogers, Nazanin Rafsanjani, Jamison York, Mike Vuolo, Sarah Abdurrahman, PJ Vogt, Alex Goldman, “Does NPR Have a Liberal Bias?” (NPR/On The Media)
• Peter Maass, “The Toppling” (The New Yorker and ProPublica)
• Seth Mnookin, “The Kingdom and the Paywall” (New York Magazine)
• Brian Rosenthal, “In Focus: Investigative Journalism students used questionably ethical reporting tactics, sources say” and “‘Dismantling of a legacy’: The rise and fall of David Protess” (The Daily Northwestern)