There has been plenty of talk about the highest paid actor on television (formerly Charlie Sheen and currently Ashton Kutcher) but what about the highest paid actress? Forbes has just released its list of “Hollywood’s Highest-Paid TV Actresses” and Desperate Housewives star Eva Longoria and 30 Rock star Tina Fey are on the top of the list.

Tina Fey and Eva Longoria both pulled in $13 million between May 2010 and May 2011. In comparison, it would take Charlie Sheen about 10 episodes to make that much. His successor, Mr. Kutcher, is currently making about $700,000 per episode.

So Fey and Longoria may be underpaid compared to their male counterparts, but both actresses are still doing pretty well for themselves.

Fey is both the producer, head writer, and lead actor of 30 Rock. The NBC show hasn’t been bringing in massive ratings, but Fey’s loyal following has helped DVDs fly off the shelves. Forbes reports that 30 Rock is also now in syndication on both Fox and Comedy Central. Fey also just sold the millionth copy of her book Bossy Pants. 

Longoria and the Desperate Housewives cast (all four housewives are on Forbes’ list) have made millions from the show, but Longoria also pulls in a pretty penny from lucrative endorsement deals with L’Oreal and LG.

Here are the top 10 highest paid actresses on TV according to Forbes.

1. Tina Fey – $13 million
2. Eva Longoria – $13 million
3. Marcia Cross – $10 million
4. Mariska Hargitay – $10 million
5. Marg Helgenberger – $10 million
6. Felicity Huffman – $9 million
7. Teri Hatcher – $9 million
8. Courtney Cox – $7 million
9. Ellen Pompeo – $7 million
10. Julianna Marguilies – $6 million

Should the ladies be making more? Should the men be making less?

Eva Longoria and Tina Fey Are the Highest Paid Actresses on TV is a post from: The Inquisitr

Forbes Magazine has named TV star, fashion designer and New York Times bestselling writer Lauren Conrad as their newest columnist, not bad for a girl who started out her career on a reality TV series about spoiled rich kids.

Conrad will be a guest contributor to the financial publication where she will write weekly articles about her time spent in the fashion business, working on a celebrity website, working in the publishing industry and operating a business in the beauty and style industry.

The position, effective immediately will run for the next four months.

According to Forbes writer Jane Lee:

“Lauren’s jump from celebrity to entrepreneur puts her on the same trajectory as many a bright-eyed instant cover girl, but whether she can channel her persona into an enduring commercial tour de force remains to be seen.”

Here’s Conrad announcing her new post at Forbes:

Lauren Conrad Named Forbes Columnist is a post from: The Inquisitr

Forbes has closed new media site True/ Slant after acquiring the site in May for a rumored “single figure millions” price.

Rumors about the future of the site swirled at acquisition, with some suggestions that Forbes might absorb the site into a current property as part of a move to increase its online syndication presence, or that in part the acquisition might have been a platform play.

This closure of the site hasn’t been officially confirmed by Forbes, however a range of True/Slant writers have posted farewells on the site, confirming that it has been shut.

Writer and reporter Neal Ungerleider writes on the site that there have been discussions among writers leaving about forming a new site in the future, writing “So what now? In September, I hope to rejoin some former True/Slanters at a new — as of yet disclosed — project.”

In the final post to the site, Michael Roston notes about what True/Slant has achieved, but doesn’t shed light on to exactly why the site has been closed, other than that operations have been absorbed into Forbes.

In May, True/Slant was doing 1.5 million uniques on what we estimated at the time to be around 3.5 million page views.

Forbes Closes True/Slant is a post from: The Inquisitr

The market for content based websites continues to heat up with news today that Forbes has acquired new media startup True/Slant.

Launched in April 2009 by former AOL News head Lewis Dvorkin, True/Slant combines the effort of over 300 freelance writers in 18 categories, offering a pitch of “quality” analysis and discussion on the news of the day.

As part of the acquisition, Dvorkin will step into the role of Forbes’ Chief Product Officer from June 1.

The price of the acquisition was not disclosed, but is speculated to be single figure millions. The site had previously raised $3 million in a round that included Forbes and Fuse Capital.

Traffic according to True/Slant comes in at 1.5 million uniques, although page views weren’t disclosed. Public figures include an Alexa rank of 9,989 and Compete of 2,446. Quantcast direct measure puts page views at 2.6 million; we’d guess the real figure would be around the 3.5 million mark.

The interesting aspect of the True/Slant business model is one of syndication: the site doesn’t do a lot of advertising and instead seeks to resell/ syndicate its content on other sites and in traditional media. It makes it hard to guess what sort of money they are making, and to put an accurate figure on an acquisition price, but based on the public stats, we’d think single figure millions is probably about right.

The True/Slant acquisition follows the acquisition of content provider Associated Content last week by Yahoo, and shows that after a lull during the global financial crisis, interest in acquiring new media content plays has returned. That’s naturally a good thing for anyone operating in the market.

Content Market Heats Up As Forbes Acquires True/Slant is a post from: The Inquisitr

Wow it only took two days for Google Buzz to become just another numbers game for the tech digerati. Earlier today Louis Gray on Buzz let us know that there was now a Top 12 Leaderboard of Buzz users and now we have Forbes giving us a list of the Top 20 most connected tech people again courtesy of Buzz.

The list was put together by Taylor Buley at Forbes who explains it as follows

This survey is not scientific. The sample size is small and biased toward press who prefer to use personal Gmail accounts over professional addresses. But it’s an interesting window into how these people do their everyday job, and who their likely influencers might be.

Here’s how the ranking was determined: Each person a journalist or blogger follows received a score of one over the total number of people that writer was following as of late Wednesday. That gives weight to people who are among a precious few likely sources to any given journalist.

For example, Ryan Block only followed 25 people, so Dave Morin being among them was worth more points than if Block were following a hundred people. Members of the press who were following many hundreds of people, such as Robert Scoble, were thrown out of the sample; connections to apparent employers and colleagues were ignored.

Overall scores were calculated across all members of the media surveyed.

And the list? Well here you go – The Top 20 Most Connect People in Tech

Mrinal Desai

Anil Dash

Dave McClure

Atul Arora

Bradley Horowitz

Jason Calacanis

Ouriel Ohayon

Tara Hunt

Frank Gruber

Dave Morin

Matt Galligan

Drew Olanoff

Stowe Boyd

Harry Heymann

Orli Yakuel

Paul Buchheit

Ben Metcalfe

Kevin Marks

Jacob Mullins

Andrew Mager

So there you have it folks, yet another list you can feel left out of.

Forbes list of Tech’s Twenty Most Connected People courtesy of Google Buzz is a post from: The Inquisitr

Tara Weiss at Forbes writes in Blogging Your Way Into A Job that you should “Set yourself up as an authority on the work you do” because “It’s easy”…. and I should mention, that’s before the first word in the article.

Some of the gems she shares include (paraphrased unless indicated), my response in italics:

• Times are tough for jobs, so you should start a blog where you make out that you’re an expert to give yourself an edge
  if you’re out of a job, anything is worth a shot. But making out your an expert when you’re not has risks.
• Blog posts should be “short and conversational.” No more than 500 words, 3-4 times a week
  Yep, because nothing says expert like short posts on a subject
• I can’t paraphrase this :”It’s a small amount of work that will likely impress recruiters and hiring managers, because it shows you to be enthusiastic and engaged with your industry. It also makes you look like an expert in your field.”
  see point one. Anyone can write, it doesn’t make them an expert.
• Doing this means you’ll come up first in Google (wait until the next part for context)
  No it doesn’t
• You should set up a free blog on WordPress.com or Blogger. If you can afford it, consider a paid TypePad account (no mention of buying a domain name)
  Because nothing says expert like a Blogger blog and Blogspot URL.
• “For the blog’s title, use your name exactly as you use it professionally, unless someone’s already taken it.” (no mention of buying a domain name)
  So if someone already has it, how will you rank for you name exactly?

Then we get in to SEO territory.

• On SEO: “Make the blog as visible as possible. Search engines tend to list blogs high up in search results, usually within the first few pages in a search of someone’s name. That’s because blogs tend to have links to other blogs or news stories, and links influence search ranking. So link to other blogs.”
  Um…no. Incoming links are the primary driver of Google juice. Linking out is part of a strategy to get links in, but doesn’t deliver No. 1 in Google.
• Insert the expert: “Other bloggers will find your blog, and they will in turn link to you,” says Demopoulos. “Bloggers love to link to one another. Google takes every link as a vote of confidence.”
  Yes, bloggers do like linking, but if you’ve got nothing interesting to say….

Content

• “…set up a Google news alert to receive e-mails about stories with keywords from your industry. That way, you’ll get news about your field in your inbox automatically. Link to those articles on your blog, and write about whether you agree with them and why. Describe relevant professional experiences of your own. Predict how the matter at hand will affect your industry in the future.”
  because nothing says expert more than a blog that only rehashes external content
• Insert expert: “”If you can write an e-mail, you can start a blog,” says Lynch.”
  true, but that won’t make it any good.

There’s more, but I don’t want to make this post too long.

As a general idea, what Weiss is trying to relate isn’t wrong. Blogging about something you have expertise in is a great way to promote yourself online. Setting up a blog is easy as Weiss suggests, but that’s where the accuracy stops.

Establishing a blog, having it read, and finally getting it to rank high in Google is NOT easy for someone entering the space for the first time. It takes work, experience and experimentation to get it right. The idea that this could be done on a Blogger blog without a domain name is just bizarre and possibly one of the worst lines I’ve ever read in an article about blogging, at least in the mainstream media.

The biggest part missing was the most important part: the need to promote your blog. There was mention of sharing it on social networking profiles, but that doesn’t cut it if you’re looking to establish yourself as an expert. Linking out to other blogs when you’re only rehashing news from other sites alone doesn’t cut it either. My sincere hope is that not too many people read the piece and take the advice seriously without at least doing some other homework first.

The award for the worst article about blogging this month goes to Forbes is a post from: The Inquisitr

Reports in Russia are suggesting that Russian giant Onexim Group is in talks to acquire Forbes.

Yakov Sadchikov of Quintura who translated the reports notes that Onexim Group is one of Russia’s largest private investment funds with investments in the mining industry, energy, nanotechnology, real estate and other industries and has under $25 billion in funds under management. Onemix Group recently financed the launch of the Snob magazine in Russia.

Matt Marshall at VentureBeat notes that Forbes is in private hands, and any acquisition would be complicated.

Although some may find the idea of a Russian company acquiring one of the most famous names in American publishing surprising, it’s likely the first of many such acquisitions to come as the economic crisis worsens and heritage media assets flounder. Foreign acquisition may be the only path to keep companies like the New York Times publishing given the current state of the industry.

Russian giant Onexim in talks to acquire Forbes is a post from: The Inquisitr