Picture This

MEMORANDUM

To: Beachwood Steve

From: List Guy Drew

Date: 4/21/10

Re: Sexual Innuendo Photo Essays Beachwood Reporter Should Run

Steve,

I've been doing the market research you requested on how newspaper websites have managed to maintain such cutting-edge audience retention policies over the last couple of years. I got to say it was a tough assignment, what with all the fancy gizmos and high-concept thinking that the mainstream media has used to keep their finger on the online pulse of America.

The newspapers are using all sorts of ingenious tricks: news you can use, problem-solvers for shit that really isn't that big of a deal, jumping on the bandwagon of popular social networking models about five years after they are relevant (see Sun-Times Friendster profile). I don't know how we are going to compete with the Internet visionaries running the MSM.

However, I did find one thing we can steal. I like to call it the blue-ball photo essay. Here's what we do: we find a really sexually suggestive headline for a completely banal and innocent set of boring photos and lure desperate suckers into clicking through 15 pages of ad-laden cockteasing. For example, I saw this on the Tribune the other day: "Movies With Women Hooking Up." I thought I would get some steamy girl-on-girl action but instead I got publicity photos of fully dressed women lazily sulking at each other. What a bummer.

I don't understand why these work; in the face of so much actual and free porn out there, mildly suggestive and barely titillating headlines must only appeal to the elderly men and children under 10 that don't know how to use the Internet.

But they do work; even I, your hard-hearted researcher can't resist the siren's promise of "The Secret History of the Bra." I hear myself saying, "Don't do it man, you are only wasting your time. There isn't going to be anything exciting here." But I can't stop from clicking through anyways. And I always end up pissed off that I wasted 45 seconds of my precious life looking at such silliness.

Here, then, are my suggestions for blatant, sexually suggestive photo essays that are totally innocent and bland that the Beachwood should run:

1. Fingerbanging - America's Hottest Pianists

2. Screwing - Life on an Assembly Line

3. Handjobs - Artwork You Can Do By Hand

4. Balls Out - Golf's Best Caddies

5. Tight Racks - Learn to Play Pool From the Pros

6. Celebrity Wieners - America's Favorite Celebrities Eating Hot Dogs

7. Kissing Willie - Willie Nelson Throughout the Years

8. Hot Teens - A Week in a Youth Firefighting Training Camp

9. Slide It In - How to Repair Your Old VCR

10. Crazy Positions - Weird Jobs

11. Fucked - Newspapers in Ten Years

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Comments welcome.

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