Media Matters – SFU Business in the News – January 29

How SFU Business fared in the news for the week ending January 29, 2010.

BC News

• The Georgia Straight noted the iPad has sparked speculation about the future of textbooks in technology. The Straight quoted SFU Bookstore manager Mikhail Dzuba: “There is no question that the emergences of certain digital technology, like e-book readers, are starting to really put some pressure on the industry.” (Also quoted was SFU ethics prof Mark Wexler on how students have found how numerous ways to go around the cost of textbook, and on how publishers often put pressure on professors not to use open, Internet-based systems because the companies have little to gain.)

• On the same show, marketing prof Lindsay Meredith talked with host Stephen Quinn about VANOC’s new ads and Olympic-related “ambush marketing” by non-sponsors such as Pepsi. Then we saw him on GlobalTV talking about the risks of buying from people who are already selling Olympic tickets and souvenirs. “The closer you get to the games, the bigger the risk you’ll get stuck.”

• Meredith thus brought his personal score card of media hits to a cumulative 1,485. In recent days, despite the fact he’s recovering from surgery, he also did interviews with CTV national, CTV local, CBC Radio, CBC Radio Quebec, the Financial Post section of National Post, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and CKNW. Then Meredith scored two more hits. One in a Globe and Mail story on the sale by troubled Intrawest and owner Fortress Investment Group of the Panorama Mountain Village ski resort in southeastern BC. “Fortress is cornered,” said Meredith. “The banks have pretty much had it with Fortress.” And another hit in the Toronto Sun news service, in a story about a T-shirt that features the 2010 Olympic inukshuk logo and Olympic rings—with the words “Nobody Cares 2010”. “Meredith said the shirts are just another symptom of a mounting pushback against the all-things-Olympic. ‘The T-shirt is about making a public statement and, I think, it’s a public statement generated by VANOC.’”

• Business prof Ed Bukszar was on CBC Radio, talking about the business impact of Toyota’s recall of millions of vehicles and suspension of sales of key models. Bukszar is familiar with Toyota and has visited its operations in Japan.