‘Breaking Bad’ Props to Be Auctioned

If your idea of living the dream involves banging around the desert in a Pontiac Aztek that has seen better days, the dream just got closer.

Screenbid.com, a new auction site focused on the sale of movie and television props, is set to go live on Friday with a preview of its first offerings: about 250 items from AMC’s “Breaking Bad” television series, including a dull green Aztek that was used, and abused, by the show’s meth-dealing antihero, Walter White.

“We have Walt’s Aztek and the Monte Carlo,” along with other paraphernalia, said Bill Block, a film producer who is joining the entrepreneur Jeffrey A. Dash in founding Screenbid.

The site, they said, is intended to help studios dispose of props systematically, and profitably â€" props that might otherwise be locked in storage, or offered more haphazardly on eBay or Craigslist, sometimes by individuals who simply walked them off a set.

The “Breaking Bad” auction, they said, was organized in collaboration with Sony Pictures Entertainment, whose television unit helped produce the show.

According to Mr. Block and Mr. Dash, who spoke by telephone earlier this week, the auction will actually begin on Sept. 29, when the last episode of the series is shown. (Some items will not be listed until then, to protect plot points.) Sony, they said, has set an undisclosed reserve price on items, which will be withheld if the price is not met.

The price of Hollywood collectibles is notoriously elastic â€" who’d have figured on the $5,000 bid for 12 cans of beer at the “Lost” auction, run by Profiles in History? But Mr. Block reckoned that the “Breaking Bad” props could yield more than $2 million.

Sony Pictures, the new site’s founders said, is already in line with a second auction, which will sell memorabilia from its film “This Is the End,” including furnishings from the movie’s version of James Franco’s home. Props and other items on Screenbid, they added, are authenticated by the studio or producers and artists involved with the sale.

The “Breaking Bad” sale already lists Hazmat suits, a charred pink Teddy bear, a Lucite-encased grill and various automobiles familiar to viewers of the series, about White, a high school chemistry teacher who becomes a kingpin in New Mexico’s methamphetamine trade.

But Sony is not selling White’s mobile meth lab, a Fleetwood Bounder RV, said Mr. Block. “They’re keeping it for their on-the-lot tour,” he explained.

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‘Breaking Bad’ Props to Be Auctioned

If your idea of living the dream involves banging around the desert in a Pontiac Aztek that has seen better days, the dream just got closer.

Screenbid.com, a new auction site focused on the sale of movie and television props, is set to go live on Friday with a preview of its first offerings: about 250 items from AMC’s “Breaking Bad” television series, including a dull green Aztek that was used, and abused, by the show’s meth-dealing antihero, Walter White.

“We have Walt’s Aztek and the Monte Carlo,” along with other paraphernalia, said Bill Block, a film producer who is joining the entrepreneur Jeffrey A. Dash in founding Screenbid.

The site, they said, is intended to help studios dispose of props systematically, and profitably â€" props that might otherwise be locked in storage, or offered more haphazardly on eBay or Craigslist, sometimes by individuals who simply walked them off a set.

The “Breaking Bad” auction, they said, was organized in collaboration with Sony Pictures Entertainment, whose television unit helped produce the show.

According to Mr. Block and Mr. Dash, who spoke by telephone earlier this week, the auction will actually begin on Sept. 29, when the last episode of the series is shown. (Some items will not be listed until then, to protect plot points.) Sony, they said, has set an undisclosed reserve price on items, which will be withheld if the price is not met.

The price of Hollywood collectibles is notoriously elastic â€" who’d have figured on the $5,000 bid for 12 cans of beer at the “Lost” auction, run by Profiles in History? But Mr. Block reckoned that the “Breaking Bad” props could yield more than $2 million.

Sony Pictures, the new site’s founders said, is already in line with a second auction, which will sell memorabilia from its film “This Is the End,” including furnishings from the movie’s version of James Franco’s home. Props and other items on Screenbid, they added, are authenticated by the studio or producers and artists involved with the sale.

The “Breaking Bad” sale already lists Hazmat suits, a charred pink Teddy bear, a Lucite-encased grill and various automobiles familiar to viewers of the series, about White, a high school chemistry teacher who becomes a kingpin in New Mexico’s methamphetamine trade.

But Sony is not selling White’s mobile meth lab, a Fleetwood Bounder RV, said Mr. Block. “They’re keeping it for their on-the-lot tour,” he explained.

Advertising: Old Slogan Returns as United Asserts It Is Customer-Focused

Old Slogan Returns as United Asserts It Is Customer-Focused

A United Airlines ad from the campaign that begins on Sunday.

AFTER almost a 20-year hiatus, United Airlines is once again urging travelers to “fly the friendly skies.”

United's Orchestra in the Sky Close Video See More Videos »

An ad from the mid-1960s, featuring six United employees who were identified by name and position.

The iconic tagline, created by Leo Burnett in 1965 and used by the carrier until it parted ways with the agency in 1996, has been resurrected in a multimedia ad campaign by McGarryBowen that is United’s largest in decades. The campaign also features George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” music United has been using continuously in advertising since 1987.

The campaign â€" which begins Sunday on broadcasts of N.F.L. football games; the PGA Tour championship; the season premiere of “60 Minutes” and the Emmy Awards program â€" contains a refreshed, 21st-century version of the tagline.

United is now telling travelers it is everything from “legroom friendly” and “online friendly” to “shut-eye friendly” and “EWR friendly,” which refers to the hub of Continental Airlines at Newark Liberty International Airport, which United inherited when the two airlines merged in 2010 to create the world’s largest carrier in terms of passenger traffic.

Burnett came up with the “fly the friendly skies” tagline in the mid-1960s when it was pitching United’s business. One famous iteration was a TV spot in which wives urged their husbands to “take me along” on business trips, while one print ad featured six United employees, identified by name and position, who urged readers to “come fly with me, and me, and me, and me, and me, and me.”

After United and Continental â€" whose agency was the Kaplan Thaler Group â€" merged, McGarryBowen, New York, part of the Dentsu Aegis Network unit of Dentsu, became United’s agency in 2011.

Tom O’Toole, United’s senior vice president for marketing and loyalty, said United had opted to return to the Burnett tagline because it wanted to “re-establish United’s position as the world’s leading” customer-focused airline.

He called the timing of its reintroduction “a convergence of a series of advances.” Since 2010, United has completed installation of premium-cabin flatbed seats on select international flights, expanded its economy-plus seating, improved its on-time performance and invested in new customer service training programs for all customer-contact employees.

“The real aim” of the new advertising, Mr. O’Toole said, is to “say to customers, co-workers and competitors that United is back in the game in a big way.”

One TV spot features musicians playing “Rhapsody in Blue” and shows space available in various classes and in overhead bins, as well as United employees in the cockpit and cabin. The voice-over is provided by the actor Matt Damon, who also did the voice-over on United’s 2012 summer Olympics TV advertising.

One print ad shows a man rushing into his home, arms outstretched, to greet his children. The copy says, “Right place, right time-friendly. Fly on your schedule with over 5,000 daily flights. Fly the friendly skies. United.com/flyerfriendly.”

Besides TV and print, media used by the campaign will include radio; outdoor, including in airports; digital; and social media, all with messages promoting United as “friendly.” All advertising except radio features an abstract route map, one leg of which has a dot at each end that could be interpreted as a smiley face.

Gordon Bowen, chairman and chief creative officer of McGarryBowen, said this design was inspired by the logo United adopted when it merged with Continental, whose own logo was a globe.

Mr. O’Toole said the campaign was aimed primarily at United’s “most frequent-traveling, high-yield customers,” as well as at employees “who will enable United to deliver exactly what we’re talking about. It sets an aspirational target for the customer experience United delivers.”

He said United would spend more than $30 million in advertising air travel in the fourth quarter and maintain the same level of spending next year, when it will sponsor the United States Olympic team at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. He called these expenditures the carrier’s “largest in decades.”

According to Kantar Media, in recent years, United has spent from $4.3 million in 2009 to $43.9 million in 2012 to advertise air travel.

Both Michael Derchin, an airline analyst at CRT Capital, and Michael Linenberg, who follows the airline industry for Deutsche Bank, commended United on the timing of the new campaign. “It’s particularly important now because of the service problems they had last year, with the integration of United’s and Continental’s computer systems,” Mr. Derchin said. “They had horrendous on-time performance problems and consumer complaints.”

David Reibstein, who teaches marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, predicted the new campaign would be “more efficient” for United since many travelers will recall the old tagline.

Marty Kohr, a lecturer in integrated marketing communications at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, said it was “very smart” for McGarryBowen to update the “friendly skies” concept.

Henry Harteveldt, travel analyst for Hudson Crossing, called the campaign “a very bold move for United,” but said the advertising carried “the risk of failure: If passengers don’t see United fulfilling its promise of being a ‘user-friendly’ airline, the advertising will be seen as hollow and will backfire.”

Tim Winship, publisher of FrequentFlier.com, a Web site on travel loyalty programs, was dismissive of the campaign, calling “friendly skies” “so last century. In 2013, the skies are anything but friendly, and to suggest otherwise is to insult the intelligence of consumers and invite their scorn.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2013, on page B7 of the New York edition with the headline: Old Slogan Returns as United Asserts It Is Customer-Focused.

2 Top Technology Writers Are Leaving Dow Jones

Dow Jones confirmed on Thursday evening that the company would part ways with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, the co-editors of the very popular All Things Digital news site, at the end of the year when their contracts expire.

Mr. Mossberg has been the highly influential author of Personal Technology columns with The Wall Street Journal for two decades. He and Ms. Swisher collaborated as co-executive editors on All Things Digital, a separate Web site that covered technology and start-up news and also held conferences.

Colleen Schwartz, a spokeswoman for Dow Jones, said the decision to part had been mutual but who would retain the rights to the All Things Digital brand and the archived content had not been decided.

“Right now we have not finalized plans with respect to the brand. The details still being worked out,” she said. Neither Ms. Swisher nor Mr. Mossberg could be immediately reached for comment. Nevertheless, on her Twitter feed, Ms. Swisher made it clear that Dow Jones owned the brand and would keep it. “They have ALWAYS owned it, even though Walt and I built it,” she wrote.

The question of whether Ms. Swisher and Mr. Mossberg will be able to compete with the brand they built is of no small significance.

Technology coverage and conferences stemming from brands associated with technology coverage are a growing business in a largely bleak journalism landscape and one that many people are looking to exploit. AOL, the media company, is expanding conferences through its TechCrunch brand, for example.

Gerard Baker, editor in chief of Dow Jones and managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, said in a statement that The Journal was increasing its bet on technology coverage even without Ms. Swisher and Mr. Mossberg, its most prominent stars.

“We plan to embark on a major global expansion of our technology coverage, which will include adding 20 reviewers, bloggers, visual journalists, editors and reporters covering digital. As part of this global push, we will also be expanding our conference franchise to include an international technology conference and building a new digital home for our first-class technology news and product reviews on The Wall Street Journal Digital Network," he said.

Fortune, which was the first to report the news, noted earlier that Ms. Swisher and Mr. Mossberg had hired the investment bank Code Advisors to find outside investors to support a move to become independent.

A person with knowledge of the deal said the two had backing, but no partners had been named at this point.

New York Times Company to Start Paying Dividend

The New York Times Company announced on Thursday that it would pay a dividend to its shareholders for the first time in five years.

After a meeting of its board, the company said the board had voted to approve a dividend of four cents per share to all shareholders of record as of Oct. 9, 2013. The dividend will be paid on Oct. 24, the week before The Times announces its third quarter earnings. The Times has not paid a dividend since Dec. 14, 2008.

In a statement, Mark Thompson, president and chief executive of The Times, said that the board had concluded “that the strength of the balance sheet justified the restoration of a dividend.”

But Mr. Thompson warned that the company would remain cautious in its financial strategy.

“Given the expectation of continued volatility in advertising revenue and the fact that our growth strategy is at an early stage of development, we will maintain a prudent view of both the balance sheet and free cash flow,” he said.

NBC Plans a Mini-Series on Life of Johnny Carson

NBC will feature one of its icons, Johnny Carson, in an ambitious biopic mini-series, the network announced on Thursday.

The timing of the special was not announced, nor the crucial decision on who will play Carson. That was in contrast to NBC’s announcement earlier this summer of another mini-series based on Hillary Clinton. In that case, the casting of Diane Lane was central to the announcement.

The Carson mini-series will be based on a long-awaited biography of the late-night star by Bill Zehme, who also will serve as an executive producer on the show. His book, “Carson the Magnificent: An Intimate Portrait,” is to be published by Simon & Schuster, although its publication has been delayed several times.

Mr. Zehme is known to have gained access to many of Carson’s personal and professional associates. NBC said the mini-series would include details on Carson’s personal life, going back to his childhood in Nebraska.

Professor Says He Has Solved a Mystery Over a Slave’s Novel

The Bondwoman's Narrative, Beineke Library, Yale University

“By Hannah Crafts,” reads this page from the 1850s novel “The Bondwoman’s Narrative.”

In 2002, a novel thought to be the first written by an African-American woman became a best seller, praised for its dramatic depiction of Southern life in the mid-1850s through the observant eyes of a refined and literate house servant.

John Wheeler lived on the plantation where Hannah Bond escaped slavery.

But one part of the story remained a tantalizing secret: the author’s identity.

That literary mystery may have been solved by a professor of English in South Carolina, who said this week that after years of research, he has discovered the novelist’s name: Hannah Bond, a slave on a North Carolina plantation owned by John Hill Wheeler, is the actual writer of “The Bondwoman’s Narrative,” the book signed by Hannah Crafts.

Beyond simply identifying the author, the professor’s research offers insight into one of the central mysteries of the novel, believed to be semi-autobiographical: how a house slave with limited access to education and books was heavily influenced by the great literature of her time, like “Bleak House” and “Jane Eyre,” and how she managed to pull off a daring escape from servitude, disguised as a man.

The professor, Gregg Hecimovich, the chairman of the English department at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C., has uncovered previously unknown details about Bond’s life that have shed light on how the novel was possibly written. The heavy influences of Dickens, for instance, particularly from “Bleak House,” can be explained by Bond’s onetime servitude on a plantation that routinely kept boarders from a nearby girls’ school; the curriculum there required the girls to recite passages of “Bleak House” from memory. Bond, secretly forming her own novel, could have listened while they studied, or spirited away a copy to read.

The research also shows that Bond may have been given a man’s suit by a member of the Wheeler family who was sympathetic to her desire to flee.

Professor Hecimovich, 44, said that he has verified the writer’s identity through wills, diaries, handwritten almanacs and public records. He intends to publish his full findings in a book, tentatively titled “The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts.”

His work has been reviewed by several scholars who vouch for its authenticity, including Henry Louis Gates Jr., one of the nation’s pre-eminent scholars of African-American history. Professor Gates bought the obscure manuscript at auction in 2001.

“Words cannot express how meaningful this is to African-American literary studies,” he said in an interview. “It revolutionizes our understanding of the canon of black women’s literature.”

Professor Gates said that Professor Hecimovich’s discovery answers one of the large and lingering questions that has vexed him for more than a decade about the author of the book.

Hollis Robbins, the chairwoman of the department of humanities at Johns Hopkins University, called it a “tremendous” finding. “I’m totally convinced,” she said, “to the extent that anything historical can be documented without an iPhone picture of her writing the novel.”

The book, whose language borrows from 19th-century Gothic novels, traces the story of its narrator, who endures life as a slave on a North Carolina plantation and, aided by her light complexion, successfully escapes to the North.

That tale closely mirrors the story of Bond. Enslaved on a plantation in Murfreesboro, N.C., Bond is believed to have been a self-educated woman who worked as a maid to the mistress of the house, Ellen Wheeler, assisting her with errands and personal duties, like styling her hair.

But around 1857, Bond disguised herself as a boy and escaped, fleeing first to upstate New York and then to New Jersey, where she eventually married and found work as a schoolteacher.

The novel, Professor Hecimovich believes, had its beginnings in the Wheeler home, where Bond could have had access to the family’s library and its writing materials, including a distinctive paper that was used to connect the novel to the Wheelers.

A version of this article appears in print on September 19, 2013, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Professor Says He Has Solved A Mystery Over a Slave’s Novel. \n \n\n'; } s += '\n\n\n'; document.write(s); return; } google_ad_output = 'js'; google_max_num_ads = '3'; google_ad_client = 'nytimes_blogs'; google_safe = 'high'; google_targeting = 'site_content'; google_hints = nyt_google_hints; google_ad_channel = nyt_google_ad_channel; if (window.nyt_google_count) { google_skip = nyt_google_count; } // -->

National Book Awards Releases Nominees

In a bid to generate more excitement for its annual National Book Awards, the foundation that administers the prize has released four long lists of nominees for the first time this year.

Five finalists in each category will be announced Oct. 16. The black-tie ceremony for the awards is Nov. 20 in Manhattan.

The nominated books and authors, revealed this week, are as follows:

Fiction: Tom Drury, “Pacific” (Grove); Elizabeth Graver, “The End of the Point” (Harper); Rachel Kushner, “The Flamethrowers” (Scribner); Jhumpa Lahiri, “The Lowland” (Knopf); Anthony Marra, “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena” (Hogarth); James McBride, “The Good Lord Bird” (Riverhead Books); Alice McDermott, “Someone” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux); Thomas Pynchon, “Bleeding Edge” (Penguin); George Saunders, “Tenth of December: Stories” (Random House); Joan Silber, “Fools: Stories” (Norton).

Nonfiction: T.D. Allman, “Finding Florida: The True Story of the Sunshine State” (Atlantic Monthly); Gretel Ehrlich, “Facing the Wave: A Journey in the Wake of the Tsunami” (Pantheon); Scott C. Johnson, “The Wolf and the Watchman: A Father, a Son, and the CIA” (Norton); Jill Lepore, “Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin” (Knopf); Wendy Lower, “Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt); James Oakes, “Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865″ (Norton); George Packer, “The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux); Alan Taylor, “The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832″ (Norton); Terry Teachout, “Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington” (Gotham); Lawrence Wright, “Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief” (Knopf).

Poetry: Frank Bidart, “Metaphysical Dog” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux); Roger Bonair-Agard, “Bury My Clothes” (Haymarket); Lucie Brock-Broido, “Stay, Illusion” (Knopf); Andrei Codrescu, “So Recently Rent a World” (Coffee House); Brenda Hillman, “Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire” (Wesleyan University); Adrian Matejka, “The Big Smoke” (Penguin); Diane Raptosh, “American Amnesiac” (Etruscan); Matt Rasmussen; “Black Aperture” (Louisiana State University); Martha Ronk, Transfer of Qualities” (Omnidawn); Mary Szybist, “Incarnadine: Poems” (Graywolf Press).

Young People’s Literature: Kathi Appelt, “The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp” (Atheneum); Kate DiCamillo, “Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures” (Candlewick); Lisa Graff, “A Tangle of Knots” (Philomel); Alaya Dawn Johnson, “The Summer Prince” (Arthur A. Levine); Cynthia Kadohata, “The Thing About Luck” (Atheneum); David Levithan, “Two Boys Kissing” (Knopf); Tom McNeal, “Far Far Away” (Knopf); Meg Rosoff, “Picture Me Gone” (Putnam); Anne Ursu, “The Real Boy” (Walden Pond); Gene Luen Yang, “Boxers & Saints” (First Second).