I've seen reporting pretty much everywhere about the troubles facing Martha Stewart and her company these days. She's laying off staff and folding magazines, she's reporting a 17 percent decline in revenues and she's taking for herself the lion's share of her company's earnings. But is this just about money management and changing media directions, or is something else going on? An article in the Hamilton Spectator offers an intriguing secondary hypothesis. The trouble with brands based on a living person, they say, is that they come with a "high risk of calamity" as they rise or fall on the escapades...

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