Let me start out by saying that I know nothing about media. That's probably not a surprise to people who know me because I am thought of as a "creative" guy. But you might be surprised to learn that I know nothing about creativity. Furthermore, I know nothing about advertising.

How Alex Bogusky morphed into Max Headroom, George Jetson, a baby, an old man, a zombie army, and a manifestation of his own Twitter feed: "What my career has sort of been about has been the democratization of different aspects of the agency world," guest editor Alex Bogusky told us in our initial meeting about this issue.

Can the news business survive once-sacred walls toppling? Work with me on this, because you, the reader, are an integral part of this story. First, I want you to pick up this magazine. Feel the heft of it in your hands. Fan the pages, and feel the words and pictures fluttering at you. If you are reading it in print, or online, I want you to take your index finger and run it under the following line, as if to underscore its meaning: What is the value of this content?

It always feels a bit silly to me to write columns addressing the future of anything, but I can tell you that as I write this one - about the future of media, from a vantage point deep in a global economic recession - the feeling that comes to mind is more like futility. That's because I believe that something far bigger than an economic down cycle is taking place, and I also believe that media is causing it.

Not all fans are created equal. Some will sit passively and watch your sci-fi space epic. Others, well, they're not so passive. As we found while putting this Annotated together, a select few will obsessively research, discuss, catalog, and even write books about fictional creations. Such are the fans of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek. 

Candy companies partnering with summer movie releases has been a no-brainer for many marketing execs during the past few years, but what does it take to sway a 162-year-old confectioner to partner with a movie franchise for the very first time in its long history?

With the advertising market in turmoil and revenue forecasts falling, these are dark days for the print magazine industry. For publishers, the options are simple: Either come up with a survival plan or get ready to fold.

The rule of law is a hallmark of civilization, and like the original iBook, it's nifty but slow. Sometimes, you need to jump-start the system - and that's where Dexter, the acclaimed Showtime series returning this fall, comes in. By day, Dexter Morgan is a top-notch blood specialist with the Miami pd; by night, an avenging angel who eliminates killers with élan.

Fox Networks Group head Tony Vinciquerra is not happy, and he doesn't care who knows it. At least that was the case in late May when Vinciquerra told Daily Variety he was frustrated with Nielsen Media Research after the firm admitted its ratings might be off by as much as 8 percent, due to reporting inaccuracies.

After conducting one of the more contrived promo campaigns in recent memory, HBO scored 3.7 million viewers for the season-two premiere of True Blood June 14 - the most watched show for the network since the series finale of The Sopranos. But it's still quite possible people are more familiar with the ads than the show.