Media

The 33rd America's Cup taking place this week in Valencia, Spain, already seems destined to be remembered as one of the most vicious and brutal sporting events in history, as rival billionaires Ernesto Bertarelli and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison duke it out in the courts and the media -- and drive away fans and advertisers.

The good news, for magazine publishers, is that the earthward plummet in newsstand sales has finally started to moderate. The bad news is that sales are still falling at a vertigo-inducing rate -- just not quite so rapidly as they were a few months ago.

That battle may be over, but more is on the way. Publishers Hachette and HarperCollins are now also on board with the pricing model championed by rival Macmillan, which sets e-book prices higher. Amazon has restored Macmillan's titles to its site after a one-week protest -- but a much bigger, costlier fight looms.

It was controversial for CBS to accept an anti-abortion ad from group Focus on the Family. But long before the game started, Focus had already accomplished its goal of communicating a pro-life message through the vehicle of affable college-football star Tim Tebow and his mother.

Are these spots still worth the jaw-dropping $3 million and up for 30 seconds to reach 100 million viewers? It depends on what you're selling -- and how well you make your pitch. Here's why only some advertisers will come away winners in the big game.

The Super Bowl is not so super to many economists. Experts in the economics of sports say the NFL and its boosters have grossly overestimated the economic benefit of Sunday's championship game in Miami between the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts.

Heinz is changing its ketchup this year, introducing a different recipe and different packaging. That's a bold move for the world's most popular ketchup -- and one that also has an unfortunate resemblance to Coca-Cola's infamously bungled launch 25 years ago.

The Girl Scouts have sold cookies since their early years, bringing in $700 million a year. But sales slipped about 1% last year, prompting the group to look for new ways to get its message across. The result? They've posted a video on YouTube called "What can a cookie do?" which has attracted about 24,000 hits.

The philosophical ideas of three writers, taken to illogical extremes, have wreaked havoc on the world's economy. Here, a look at the danger of embracing the wisdom of James Surowiecki, Thomas Malthus, and Ayn Rand.

With no end in sight to the war between Amazon and Macmillan, the publisher fighting the retailer's pricing on digital books, rival publisher Hachette is taking Macmillan's side, adopting the agency model and releasing e-books simultaneously with the first print edition.