Media Consolidation

Barry Righoltz's book Bailout Nation has been dropped by McGraw Hill, largely because he refused to soft pedal the ratings agencies role in the financial crisis, and McGraw Hill owns the largest of the ratings firms, Standard & Poors.

They claimed stylistic issues with his first description, which called the ratings agencies, "Pimps to the fixed-income fund managers’ Johns," which to my mind is a fairly accurate description. (He did come out with an alternate chapter, which, while slightly milder in language, was even more damning, because it was more extensively sourced)

As Mr. Ritholtz himself notes, "The problems came not from Legal, but from Corporate within McGH. Legal had not even finished reviewing the manuscript at this time."

If you wonder why newspapers and magazines are "dying", it's because of crap like this, where conglomerates allow other corporate issues to water down their content.