Social Cache.
A Nemo blog. Dealing with uncommon cents.

The six remaining Virgin Megastores in the U.S. including the Times Square location (probably the single highest volume music store in America) will be closing for good over the next few months, leaving 1,000 people unemployed.

At its peak in 2002, Virgin had 23 stores across the U.S. with $230 million in sales. Virgin’s billionaire founder, Richard Branson sold off the retail chain years ago and it is currently owned by a joint venture of real estate companies. Though CD sales are down (they fell by a staggering 20% between 2007 and 2008), the stores are being liquidated because their owners think that they can make way more money off of the sale of the property than CD sales.

And, what will be taking over the prime Times Square real estate? None other than the cheap chic apparel chain, Forever 21. The shuttering of these six stores really does signal the end of an era. The brick and mortar music retailers as we once knew them are nearly dead.

After being published for nearly 150 years, the Seattle Post Intelligencer is ending production of its print edition next week. Other papers including the Rocky Mountain News and Tuscon Citizen have also met similar fates.

Though Seattle, Denver and Tuscon still have daily papers, the NY Times is predicting that it’s only a matter of time before some major cities in America are left without any prominent local newspaper at all.

Joel Kramer, an editor and publisher in the newspaper business says that:

It would be a terrible thing for any city for the dominant paper to go under, because that’s who does the bulk of the serious reporting. Places like [online news sites] would spring up but they wouldn’t be nearly as big. We can tweak the papers and compete with them, but we can’t replace them.

To make matters worse, many of the top papers in big cities including The Philadelphia Inquirer and The New Haven Register are owned by companies that have already filed for bankruptcy. Many other large papers have been put up for sale, but there haven’t been any buyers so far.

Newspapers have been struggling financially because their main source of income, based on ad revenues, has shrunk by 25 percent in just the last two years. Some of the slide is directly related to the popularity of classifieds sites like Craigslist and the other contributing factor has been the recession.

In the last 20 years, the daily print circulation of U.S. newspapers has dropped from 62 million to 49 million. In comparison, the number of online news readers keeps climbing, now with 75 million Americans.

Newspapers are cutting down on the amount of times per week that they publish new editions, as well as going completely digital in some circumstances not because they want to, but because they have no choice. “It’s not so much that everyone has a great plan. Everybody is so desperate, they’re looking at every possibility,” said John Yemma of the Christian Science Monitor.

Back in 2006, Vanity Fair ignited an uproar with its cover featuring the naked duo of Scarlett Johansson and Kiera Knightley getting cozy with a fully clothed Tom Ford, who was about twice their age. Though the photo was beautifully shot by Annie Liebovitz, many were left wondering why Ford got to keep his clothes on.

Now comes word that the infamous cover has been spoofed by Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen, Jason Segel and Paul Rudd. Though, it’s not in the way that you would think. The guys are posed provocatively in similar positions as Johansson and Knightley, but they aren’t naked at all. Instead, they’re sporting flesh-toned bodysuits.

These guys are funny and nearly everyone featured on the cover shoot has had scenes featuring some degree of nudity in their films. Though this cover is a spoof, it’s not a very good one. Why do the guys get to stay covered up? Was the magazine afraid to show a few naked overweight men or was it up to the guys to make the decision? Do you think that there’s a double standard?

Today, Obama’s election is taking the center stage and New York’s biggest political star Hillary Clinton is following him to Washington, D.C. At the same time, Wall Street institutions are at the mercy of the capital’s politicians, whose bailouts they’ve come to rely on. And, the city’s key industries (including tourism, finance and real estate) are down. New York just doesn’t seem to be getting much love these days.

Long-time New Yorkers are noticing empty Midtown streets on weekday mornings that, until recently, were full of bustling workers. And, nine Broadways shows closed down on a single day this January.

In the same time that New York’s unemployment rate went up, other U.S. cities including Seattle, Washington and Dallas actually reported gains in jobs.

Has New York lost its edge? The NY Times think that it’s cyclical, though it might take awhile this time around to bounce back. As one interviewee noted, the city that never sleeps may finally need a nap.

It seems like nobody has had the backbone to stand up and admit that American Vogue has lost its luster….until now. Last week, Cathy Horyn finally took the reigns and called out the stale magazine in The New York Times.

Headed by Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour for the last 20 years, the pages of Vogue feel out of touch and lacking the spark that made the magazine legendary when compared to its rivals. A near-constant rotation of the same old faces on the covers (including Gisele, Gwyneth Paltrow, Nicole Kidman and Sienna Miller) makes you wonder if you saw the same exact issue a year ago.

Interestingly, part of the reason that Wintour has survived this long at the helm is no doubt due to her knack for keeping luxury advertisers onboard and forking over the big bucks. Her authority, knowledge and commanding presence are convincing enough to those who haven’t found the same success with their luxury goods online.

Whereas other magazines are attempting to reach out to average readers, Vogue dedicates entire pages to socialites that have no relevance and offers downright hilarious tips on dealing with the recession like featuring a $975.00 sewing kit.

Vogue needs a jolt and a freshening up, with or without Wintour.

What’s your take on the current state of American Vogue? Does it still matter?

On Tuesday, hope for a bailout on behalf of the Big Three automakers faded even further. Democratic congressional leaders chastised the CEOs for failing to convince them that a $25 billion bailout would be well-spent and gave them a set timetable of 12 days to prove otherwise.

This point was made glaringly obvious when Sentator majority leader Harry Reid called attention to the three CEOs for each flying into Washington separately on private corporate jets.

“There’s a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying into Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hands,” Democatic representative Gary L. Ackerman said. “It’s almost like seeing a guy show up at the soup kitchen in high-hat and tuxedo. I mean, couldn’t you all have downgraded to first class or jet-pooled or something to get here?”

If any of these CEOs had any common sense, they would have chatted with Guy Kawasaki beforehand about proper etiquette in this sensitive situation.

In The Art of Laying People Off, rule #6 is Share the pain:

When people around you are losing their jobs, you can share the pain, too. Cut your pay. In fact, the higher the employee, the bigger the percentage of pay reduction. Take a smaller office. Turn in the company car. Reassign your personal assistant to a revenue-generating position. Fly coach. Stay in motels. Sell the boxseat tickets to the ball game. Give your 30-inch flat-panel display to a programmer who could use it to debug faster. Do something, however symbolic.

In layman’s terms, flying to meetings (no matter how important) in a private jet to ask for billions of dollars just makes you look like a total ass. As Dana Milbank says, “There are 24 daily nonstop flights from Detroit to the Washington area. Richard Wagoner, Alan Mulally and Robert Nardelli probably should have taken one of them.”