Ronnie Moas, the financial analyst in the spotlight right now for blacklisting Apple and Amazon on moral grounds, appears on CNBC's "Smart Money," and he comes across as high-minded, but nervous and defensive. "It's disgraceful" that nobody's looking into the way employees at such companies are being treated, he says.  "I recently read something about Amazon and how much pressure is on their employees … and at the same time Jeff Bezos with his obscene net worth of $27 bln was on his yacht in the Galapagos Islands. $27 bln and this man is not treating his workers …

GQ magazine is opening its first branded barbershop this Friday at sports and event arena Brooklyn's Barclays Center, in partnership with Fellow Barber. The pub had previously opened GQ-branded bars "in far-flung locations like Istanbul, Moscow and Dubai (next up: Kazakhstan) and even [developed] a GQ-branded car (the Fiat 500c GQ Edition)," writes Emma Bazilian.

"Let journalists deliver the news" is just one of the lessons the New York Times' social media desk learned in 2013, writes Michael Roston, social media staff editor at the paper. "We focus on retweeting reporters and editors who are directly involved in covering the news, steering clear of external sources of information whose accuracy we cannot count on."Roston also analyzes some of the year's successes and less-than-stellar moments in this piece.

Advertising Age is cutting its print frequency down to 25 issues a year, though the minimum number of pages for those editions will increase by 50%. "In related news, Ad Age has promoted its editor, Abbey Klaassen, to associate publisher, editorial and audience," writes Chris O'Shea.

An ad for “Inside Llewyn Davis” excerpted an edited tweet from New York Times movie critic A.O. Scott, marking probably the first time a critic's Twitter musings had been so used. In response, Scott tweeted: “We have reached a strange new place in marketing when tweets become full-page print ads. 'I think you’d like this movie’ -- A.O. Scott, phone conversation with his mother.”However, "CBS Films' use of the partial tweet -- if, as it seems, it came without Scott's full permission, seems to be a straightforward violation of Twitter's rules about the use of tweets in ads," …

Cable networks made sure their parent companies stayed in the black, "contributing more than 60 percent of nearly all entertainment giants' operating profits," due to "ad growth and gains from carriage fee negotiations," writes George Szalai. He cites The Hollywood Reporter's "analysis of data from the first three quarters of 2013." However, "CBS Corp., which has a smaller cable portfolio, is the exception, though its growth outpaced most peers," he writes.

In 2013, venture-backed companies generated $56.5 billion in exits, according to research firm Pitchbook. “A total of 1,814 investors had exits,” notes VentureBeat. Where did all the money come from? “Last year saw 107 IPO exits, which is the most since 2007, the year before the Great Recession … Merger-and-acquisition activity had its slowest year since 2009.” All told, VCs invested $49.9 billion of capital in 6,185 deals. 

After initial lukewarm sales, Bauer Publishing is cutting its 2014 rate base for Closer, the celeb mag targeted to 40-something women that launched the end of October. The rate base is now 100,000, down from the original circulation promise of 150,000.

Daytime soap operas -- a TV genre long left for dead -- have been having a bit of a comeback, with a ratings surge "for the first time in years" in 2013's third quarter, writes Catherine Boyle. "Part of this is due to new story lines and characters targeting the key female 18-49 demographic but the answer may also lie in using social media and the internet," she adds. "The number of tweets about TV increased by 38 percent between the second quarter of 2012 and the same time in 2013, according to Nielsen. And for the first …

CBS comedies "2 Broke Girls" and "Two and a Half Men" racked up impressive numbers of viewer complaints to the Federal Communications Commission in the past few years -- 91 and 98, respectively, "according to documents unearthed by the Government Attic Web site via the Freedom of Information Act," writes Anthony Crupi. Most of the complaints "have to do with viewers’ concerns with sexual innuendo and coarse language," he writes. And "some of the written communiqués filed away by the FCC are (unintentionally) funnier than anything you’ll see or hear on either show."