Mediaboss Marketing

The I Take It Personally campaign will appear in many places, including on buses.

Montgomery County police and the countys Department of Liquor Control have launched a public awareness campaign to prevent drunken driving and to prevent over-consumption by patrons, targeting the upcoming Fourth of July holiday.

The campaign, titled I Take It Personally, asks community members and retail establishments to prevent friends and customers from drinking too much before they get behind the wheel.

We cannot arrest ourselves out of this problem, said Capt. Thomas Didone, director of the county Department of Police Traffic Division. The only way we can work is having you to make good decisions and have a plan.

The campaign will have messages on buses, bus shelters and within 27 county liquor stores and private establishments serving alcohol over the summer months, through September. Its using the hashtag #ITakeItPersonally.

People have a couple of options if they are drink too much while celebrating, according to a county statement.

The SoberRide program is offering free Lyft rides, up to $15, for the first 1,500 patrons to use the code SOBERJULY4 within the Washington-Metro area over the Independence Day holiday. SoberRide will run from 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 4 to 2 a.m. the next morning. You must be 21 or over to qualify.

The I Take It Personally campaign includes a partnership with local transportation services, Dryver and Lyft, to provide reduced-cost safe rides for the rest of the summer, via smart phone mobile apps using the code MOCODLC.

The Dryver program, the nations largest designated driver service, is an alternative transportation service that provides professional drivers to drive your vehicle for you. Dryver allows you to ride in your own car while leaving the driving to a professional. Fully-screened and fully-insured, Dryvers employees have more than 10 years of driving experience and arrive dressed in professional attire. Hourly personal driver services range from $14-$19.50 an hour (depending on location) and car pickup services are $25 plus mileage. Dryver offers an affordable solution for enjoying a night out or getting a ride home for yourself and your car. Dryver is offering $20 off towards a first-time use of their designated driver service.

Lyft, a reliable taxi-type service that allows rides to be requested on demand, is offering $5 off the first three rides.

Read the rest here:
Police, Alcohol Control Take Drunken Driving Personally - Montgomery Community Media

Now Playing: Watch this: iPhone 8: 5 new juicy clues

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Control Center was designed to be your one-stop tool for controlling various aspects of an iOS device. However, it quickly turned into a mess. You had to swipe between three different panels that offered different actions and tools, and using it was more inconvenient than anything else.

With iOS 11, Apple has totally redesigned the Control Center. Aside from a few permanent buttons, you can completely customize Control Center to work better for your needs.

In addition to the standard toggles for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, airplane mode, media controls, brightness, volume, rotation lock, do not disturb and AirPlay there are 18 additional controls you can add to Control Center.

To customize Control Center, open Settings and select Control Center. A list of various options will show up, each with a green "+" or red "-" sign next to it.

Tap on the green icon to add an option, or the red icon to remove an option. Use the familiar three-line handle on the right side to rearrange the options.

You can swipe up from the bottom of the screen at any time to view your changes, and then make further adjustments as needed.

The complete list of optional controls you can currently add to Control Center is:

As you can see, this goes well beyond the standard music playback and device connectivity settings as previously accessible in Control Center.

If you add more controls than can fit on your iOS device's display, you can scroll down to view more.

Of course, the new shortcuts are welcome additions. However, Apple has added even more functionality to Control Center than a simple app or settings shortcut button.

Regardless of whether you have Force Touch, most Control Center shortcuts offer added features if you long-press or apply pressure to the display.

For example, if your device has Force Touch, press on the Timer control to quickly set a timer for a set amount of time. Or long-press on the Brightness control to make an adjustment and control Night Shift.

Pressing on the connectivity box, for lack of an official term, will reveal AirDrop and Personal Hotspot settings.

In other words, when you add a shortcut to Control Center, don't just take it for what it is. Use Force Touch or long-press on an icon to reveal even more settings.

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iOS 11's best features for iPhone and iPad

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Apple's Control Center gets a needed boost on iOS 11 - CNET - CNET

Yet as many analysts see it, Mr. Westergrens departure was an inevitable result of the investment from Sirius XM, the satellite radio giant controlled by Liberty Media. Executives at those companies, particularly Gregory B. Maffei, Libertys chief, have made it clear that they admire Pandoras core advertising business but have little interest in the rest.

This is the door being opened wide for the Liberty-Sirius XM team to come in with a new agenda for Pandora, said Barton Crockett, a media analyst with FBR Capital Markets.

In its announcement on Tuesday, Pandora said that Naveen Chopra, its chief financial officer, would be interim chief executive while the company searches for a new leader, and that Jason Hirschhorn, a former executive at Myspace and MTV Networks who runs a popular news aggregator, had joined the board.

Shares in Pandora were flat on Tuesday, rising only 3 cents to close at $8.49. On Monday, they had jumped 2 percent after the technology news site Recode reported Sunday night that Mr. Westergren was preparing to leave.

The exit of Mr. Westergren, a former musician who has been internet radios most enthusiastic evangelist, is the most dramatic development in a tumultuous year for the company, full of management departures, a falling stock price and continual pressure from Wall Street to sell.

Mr. Westergren, who also left his position on the board, did not respond to messages seeking comment. But in a statement issued by Pandora, he said he was incredibly proud of the company we have built.

We invented a whole new way of enjoying and discovering music, Mr. Westergren added, and in doing so, forever changed the listening experience for millions.

Mr. Westergren was one of the founders of the company in 2000, when it was called Savage Beast Technologies and sold music recommendation services to businesses like Best Buy. He was chief executive of Savage Beast from 2002 to 2004.

Renamed Pandora Media in 2005, the company became by far the most popular internet radio service, using a proprietary music genome technology that analyzed the characteristics of songs its users liked, and fed them others like it.

One of the few digital music brands to become a household name, Pandora amassed 80 million regular users and built a substantial advertising business, generating more than $1 billion in sales last year.

But the company antagonized the music industry along the way, and was slow to adapt to the challenges posed by Spotify and Apple.

After taking over as chief executive in March 2016, Mr. Westergren tried to remake the service, striking licensing deals with record companies for a new subscription service, Pandora Premium, that let users listen to any song for $10 a month.

Investors were skeptical of those plans, and worried about all the cash Pandora was burning through.

In the third quarter of last year, for example, Pandoras new music deals contributed to a $93 million jump in its licensing costs, and by the end of 2016, the company logged a $343 million net loss, double its loss from the year before, according to filings.

The sale of Ticketfly was another bruising experience. Pandora bought the company, a fast-growing ticket provider for clubs and theaters, in late 2015 for $335 million, and this month sold it to Eventbrite, another ticketing start-up, for just $200 million.

When he took over last year, Mr. Westergren said repeatedly that Pandora was not for sale, despite strong pressure from activist investors and a sagging stock price; since the beginning of the year, its shares are down by a third. But a deal of some kind seemed inevitable.

Since Sirius XMs investment was announced on June 9, Pandoras board has faced a conflict between Mr. Westergrens expansive plans for the company and the wishes of its incoming directors. Recruiting a strong new chief executive would have been problematic with Mr. Westergren still on the board.

Tim stepped in to be C.E.O. at a critical time for the company, Timothy J. Leiweke, another board member, said in a statement, and was quickly able to reset relations with the major labels, launch our on-demand service, reconstitute the management team and refortify our balance sheet by securing an investment from Sirius XM.

Over the last year, there has been continual turnover among Pandoras executive ranks. Sara Clemens, the chief operating officer and a driving force behind its acquisition strategy, resigned in December. In April, just weeks after the company released Pandora Premium, its chief technology officer left.

On Tuesday, Pandora announced that Michael S. Herring, its president and former chief financial officer, and Nick Bartle, who had joined the company only nine months ago as chief marketing officer, were also leaving.

A Pandora spokeswoman also confirmed that the company would soon be exiting Australia and New Zealand, the only countries where it operated outside the United States.

With these changes, Pandora will have undergone a nearly complete overhaul of its management in a little more than a year. More moves are expected, although analysts are hoping that the latest changes, and some level of control from Sirius XM, will steady the company.

This is the calm after the storm, said Amy Yong, a media analyst at Macquarie Securities.

A version of this article appears in print on June 28, 2017, on Page B3 of the New York edition with the headline: Turmoil Continues at Pandora Media As C.E.O. Joins Management Exodus.

Read more from the original source:
Turmoil Continues at Pandora Media as Its Chief Executive Resigns - New York Times

I, as a good Democrat, support Kathy Griffin and those true Americans who walked out on Mike Pence's speech at Notre Dame last month.

In Griffin's case, it proves conservative control of the media (TV, newspapers, radio) in America ganging up getting someone fired because of their political views.

All good Democrats should get behind these two people and the few Democrats in Congress who fight to keep our democracy and stop the Republicans in their tracks from turning America into a big church, dominated by a one world government. Also destroying our voter rights, worker security rights and women's rights to choose what they do with their own bodies.

How do you cut the taxes of the rich, starve all government programs of money to operate, then run a country? Didn't work for Hoover won't today.

Frank Couch

Anderson

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Letter: Conservative control of media is shown - The Herald Bulletin

It was many years ago, but the memory lingers of the first time I was embarrassed to be a journalist. It was a steamy summer afternoon and reporters and photographers were shoe-horned into a small Manhattan apartment for a civic groups announcement.

As we waited, a photographer wearing a press card in his battered fedora picked up a bud vase from a table, pulled out the rose and drank the water in one gulp.

The hostess was horrified and shrieked, What are you doing? He looked at her as if she were nuts and said simply, Its hot in here and Im thirsty.

I laugh now at the outlandishness of the photographers behavior, but at the time I cringed and wondered: Do I really want to be a journalist and end up like that?

America should be so lucky now. Bad manners are the least of it.

In the sixth month of Donald Trumps presidency, we are witnessing an unprecedented meltdown of much of the media. Standards have been tossed overboard in a frenzy to bring down the president.

Trump, like all presidents, deserves coverage that is skeptical and tough, but also fair. Thats not what hes getting.

What started as bias against him has become a cancer that is consuming the best and brightest. In rough biblical justice, media attempts to destroy the president are boomeranging and leaving their reputations in tatters.

He accuses them of publishing fake news, and they respond with such blind hatred that they end up publishing fake news. Thatll show him.

CNN is suffering an especially bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, even trying to make a virtue of its hostility to the president. In doing so, executives conveniently confuse animus with professional skepticism, and cite growing audiences as proof of their good judgment.

The bottom line matters, and there is certainly an audience for hating Trump all the time. But facts and fairness separate major news organizations from any other business looking to make a buck, and a commitment to them creates credibility and public trust.

Thats how CNN sold itself for years boring but trustworthy. Now its boring and untrustworthy.

For all its bravado, the network might be having doubts about its course. Its apology and retraction of a story connecting a Trump associate to a Russia investment fund, and the resignation of three journalists involved suggests the network fears it has lost control of its own agenda. It also issued a special edict barring all Russia coverage without approval from top bosses.

Russia, Russia, Russia is a fixation for all the networks, with a new study by the Media Research Center showing 55 percent of Trump coverage on nightly broadcasts was related to the Russia investigation.

That adds up to 353 minutes of airtime since May 17, compared to 47 minutes on Trumps decision to withdraw from the Paris climate pact, 29 minutes on the fight against terrorism and 17 minutes on the efforts to repeal and replace ObamaCare, according to the Daily Callers summary of the study. It said tax reform got a mere 47 seconds of coverage.

Too much coverage is far from the only problem with Russia reporting. Writing for The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald shows how reckless CNN, the Washington Post and others have been, and makes two key points.

First, that mistakes are always in the direction of exaggerating the threat and/or inventing incriminating links between Russia and Trump. Second, that all the false stories involved evidence-free assertions from anonymous sources that these media outlets uncritically treated as fact.

Hes right, and I would add another dimension: For all the focus on Russia, the media totally missed a key point. To wit, that the Obama administration did nothing about Vladimir Putins attempt to interfere in the 2016 election even though the White House knew about it for months.

Of course, most media organizations spent eight years cheerleading everything Obama did, and its no secret that members of his administration, along with career Democrats, are the anonymous sources feeding the anti-Trump narrative.

Still, it is remarkable that, if it werent for the unproven allegations of Trump collusion, the media would have no interest in the Russia story at all. This despite the fact that leading officials, including both Democrats and Republicans, have called the interference an act of war.

But its a strange war one that is important only to the extent Trump can be linked to it. Otherwise, who cares?

Predictably, the press corps has reacted as though Trump has shredded the Constitution, burned the Declaration of Independence and peed in their beer. Reporters are complaining bitterly and some murmur about a boycott, which would be like gouging out their last eye.

The White House Correspondents Association weighed in, saying, reasonably, that the briefings are important sources of information. But then it went off the rails, with its president, Jeff Mason of Reuters, saying televising them is clearly in line with the spirit of the First Amendment and that doing away with briefings would reduce accountability, transparency, and the opportunity for Americans to see that, in the US system, no political figure is above being questioned.

As Masons claims grew more grandiose, I flashed back to that photographer drinking from the bud vase so long ago. He was wrong, but honest and devoid of pretentious self-importance.

On the other hand, there is nothing honest about the claim that letting reporters perform for the camera in the White House keeps faith with the First Amendment. Its just inflated self-interest hiding behind the Constitution.

And really, really embarrassing to those of us who love journalism.

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The media will do anything to bash Trump and now they're hurting - New York Post