Gawker: valleywag, tropic thunder

5 questions Viacom doesn't want Valleywag to ask Philippe Dauman

Owen Thomas — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:20:00 EDT

Touchy Viacom flack Jeremy Zweig called Valleywag up to let us know personally that we'd been disinvited from next week's press-only screening of Tropic Thunder. Such a pity! Because we had a list of questions we were going to ask Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman:

Does the fact that you're screening Tropic Thunder for a bunch of local tech reporters rather than the usual film critics suggest that you're not particularly confident in the film's critical reception?
How will the lost $450 million financing deal for a slate of movies that would have included Tropic Thunder affect your Paramount movie studio?
Why do you keep making poor Jeremy Zweig tell reporters that your lawyers didn't ask for YouTube users' personal information when you did, in fact, ask for their usernames and IP addresses — information most Internet users would consider personal? And what's he supposed to say now that you've agreed to mask them?
Isn't Viacom's investment in social network Flux at best an irrelevancy and at worst a mess?
Why is Viacom's MTV, after 13 years of trying, incapable of running an online music service anyone wants to use?

Viacom unleashes PR thunder on San Francisco's press corps

Owen Thomas — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 14:20:00 EDT

Viacom's legal spat with Google has the media conglomerate cast in copyright-hating, freedom-to-upload-videos-loving Silicon Valley as a mustachio-twirling villain, out to expose YouTube viewers' usernames and IP addresses. Bwahahaha! Benighted flack Jeremy Zweig has been reduced to leaving comments on blogs in response. At last, he's getting some corporate firepower: Zweig and Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman Sr. are inviting a bunch of tech journalists a screening next Monday of Tropic Thunder, the Ben Stiller action-movie parody coming to theaters next month, and YouTube probably sooner than that. We've seen the invite list, and it left us scratching our heads.

None of the invited reporters, as best we can tell, are film critics. Instead, they cover technology and business. Here's my bet: Most will show up, if only to get facetime with Viacom's CEO, who rarely makes it to northern California. But if Viacom really wanted to offer local hacks a good time, Zweig should have invited Dauman's son, Philippe Jr. For one thing, Philippe Dauman Jr. works at Google, which means he'd have an interesting perspective on the copyright dispute. And the kid knows how to party. Heck, if Junior shows up, we'll skip the movie and go wherever he leads us. We hang out with journalists far too often, and we're sure he's more fun than the lot who'll show up to the screening.

Viacom's favorite tech reporters:
Miguel Helft, New York Times
Elinor Mills, CNET
Owen Thomas, Valleywag
Jackson West, Valleywag
Scott Morrison, Dow Jones Newswires
Joe Garofoli, San Francisco Chronicle
Jessica Guynn, Los Angeles Times
Rob Hof, BusinessWeek
Mark Hachman, Ziff-Davis
John Paczkowski, AllThingsD
Mark Glaser, PBS
Peter Burrows, BusinessWeek
Eric Auchard, Reuters
Liz Gannes, GigaOm
Brad Stone, New York Times
Matt Richtel, New York Times
Vindu Goel, San Jose Mercury News
Eric Savitz, Barrons
Antone Gonsalves, InformationWeek
Tom Claburn, CMP
George Anders, Wall Street Journal
Steve Johnson, San Jose Mercury News

Robert Downey Jr., Ben Stiller and Jack Black turn social media experts

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 17:00:00 EDT

Forget searching Technorati, pitching bloggers and creating Facebook pages. Know what helps a video go viral? It's easy! Launch it on MTV and cast Ben Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr. — you know, actual Hollywood talent. Then, upload it to YouTube and just sit back and watch as bloggers hungry for content discuss your video's importance in the shifting landscape of online video, all so they can embed it. As we have, below: