Public Address - Hard News (Home)

All your copyright are belong to us | Jan 25, 2008 10:24

Yahoo!Xtra seems to have staggered into another PR debacle. As this Wellington Flickr Group thread relates, the company decided to extend its "round the world" photo competition by approaching a group entrants to have their pictures published on billboard sites it had already booked.

There would be no payment, but it was quite a nice idea, and it was voluntary. But the terms differed significantly from those in the original competition, which required entrants only to broadly licence their entry for commercial use by Yahoo!Xtra. The subsequent waiver required them to "acknowledge and agree that Yahoo!Xtra owns and shall own all rights, title and interest (including copyright) in the Photograph."

This is bullying, unnecessary and just dumb PR. The successful entrants are being invited to a March 4 event at the Auckland city art gallery, where they will meet the professionals who have helped judge the photography. If they make it there, they should ask the pros what they think about giving up copyright.

Are there any reports from the local loop unbundling beta trials being run by Orcon? The ones holding out the promise of 24Mbit/s ADSL 2+ type speeds? Just wondering.

Staying with tech, our favoured means of playing the TV programmes out friends in Britain and America so kindly send us over the interwebs has been to connect my MacBook to the TV by means of an ugly but highly effective VGA-to-video converter from Dick Smith Electronics; playing the files in QuickTime with the Perian components.

We only discovered this week that there was another way: just whack a USB drive in the front of the Xbox 360. The Xbox system detected and downloaded an MP4 codec and played the files very nicely. So would the sleeker and quieter PlayStation 3 (yes, we have both -- I get sent this stuff for my job) do the same thing? Not on your nelly. It couldn't even see the files, and it appears that Sony wants the world to adopt its proprietary video format. Oh yes. That'll work really well …

Meanwhile, Hilary and Obama go to war with radio ads. Hilary's came first and it's yer basic lying sleaze. Obama's response seems warranted.

No Right Turn looks at New Zealand's playing on the 2008 Environmental Performance Index.

A language you probably don't speak: Schizophasia.

New Colin video. Cats rule. Well, ours does.

New in the blogosphere, and a feed well worth bookmarking: Chris Bourke. The journalist, author and former Kim Hill producer has a couple of nice peeks into the Truth newspaper archive, which he's been exploring as part of his current project.

Chris has previously mentioned to me some of the stuff he's turned up in researching the forthcoming book, and I pointed out that it was perfect blog fodder. So I'm delighted to see that he's begun blogging.

(58 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

Theories, please ... | Jan 23, 2008 10:05

Theories, please, on why our plucky little bourse staged its recovery while those across the Tasman and around the world just kept diving yesterday?

Does anyone else find the economic policy responses of not only the incumbent, but all the US presidential hopefuls unconvincing to the point of being delusional?

I can haz interest rate cut?

I'm not up to much more than the above starters today.

Here's why.

(I feel better since I wrote it.)

(103 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

Spin Spun | Jan 22, 2008 10:55

The Sunday Star Times page three lead story that opened with the words "The Labour-led government is being dubbed the 'most-spun' government ever, as its workforce of spin doctors balloons to almost twice the level it was five years earlier," is quite the work of irony.

As Jim Tully pointed out in Ruth Laugesen's story, and as IrishBill at The Standard reiterates, the more troubling reality is not so much an increase in public communications staff as the hollowing out of New Zealand's newsrooms. It's not hard to see why this happens: it's the money.

Especially in the print field, and especially in the freelance sector, remuneration for journalism has gone backwards as PR wages have ballooned. It used to be that you needed to bring at least a few years of actual media experience to a comms job. Not any more. Kids with only the most junior journalistic record can land public comms jobs that pay them the kind of money they could only expect at the far end of a journalistic career. If you can stick it, it's a no-brainer

But that's not the irony. The irony is that the story is based on a press release crafted by a spin doctor at the taxpayer's expense. It's this one, issued under the name of National Party State Services spokesman Gerry Brownlee and headed 'Labour 'most spun' Government ever'.

Brownlee did not write the press release or submit the Official Information Act requests himself (the numbers are compiled from select committee questions and OIA requests). He has staff for that. An accompanying Word document lists "churchst" as the author and "Parilamentary Services" as the company.

And, as Poneke predicted late last year, the staff have been busy. National has been drip-feeding OIA-based stories through the holiday period, outdoing even the government agency comms staff tasked with churning out releases for the silly season.

In a way, I suppose, we've got value for them. Simon Power's crime stats were run basically unmolested in the news media. And Brownlee's release was faithfully recorded in the Herald and on Newstalk ZB ("There are claims the Labour-led Government is the 'most-spun' government in history"), Radio New Zealand ('Government PR costing taxpayers $47m - National') and TVNZ ('More spin doctors on govt payroll').

Only Laugesen was professional enough to bother seeking comment and context in reporting the story. In doing so, she discovered that a great many of the 448 public comms staff are not in fact in media relations and cannot reasonably be called "spin doctors". Public agencies communicate with us and provide us with information on a scale that was unknown a decade ago -- largely via departmental websites and publications.

It should hardly be a surprise that the Ministry of Social Development has 54 comms staff. It communicates with millions of New Zealanders, through no fewer than 18 websites, along with various brochures and campaigns. ACC has a similar task. The increase in communications activity from the Police in the last five years has been substantial.

No one, however, has bothered to ask after the figures that aren't there. Brownlee's release is quite canny. It demonstrates that the number of staff and contractors put together has nearly doubled in five years, and now comes at a cost of $47 million annually. But the change in cost in those five years, corrected for inflation, is nowhere to be found. Could it be that the retention of more contractors has provided economies over providing comms services with permanent staff? (IRD actually spends more on contract comms work than on comms staff salaries.) We don't know. It's all quite nicely … spun. And you paid for it.

There are obvious advantages for the public in an increase in the direct provision of information from public agencies -- and, to an extent, even in an upsurge of media releases: where once we only had the mediated version via the newspapers, we can now consult the original on Scoop. But insofar as there is an increase in media spin making its way into news columns, it's a matter of concern. On the other hand, you can see why everyone does it. Because it's clearly a bloody doddle.

(51 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

Monster Weekend | Jan 21, 2008 11:41

A post published yesterday on Kiwiblog asks The Standard hosted by the Labour Party? Well, no, as it happens, but it does look messy. And it has naturally been occasion for a torrent of thrashing, screaming and outright pants-pooing from the usual suspects.

The Standard became a victim of its own success last year when its traffic overwhelmed its small-time hosting set-up. Its keepers asked for help, which was forthcoming from Labour Party member Lynn Prentice, who operates a server cluster for a group of left-leaning websites. This kind of thing is very common on both sides of the political divide in the US. But the IP address range used by the cluster is registered to the Labour Party itself.

Prentice promptly explained the situation: that the block of addresses had been made available to the party and passed on to him. And then again explained that his service has been made available to various other groups, including Action Hobson and some vegans and greenies.

In itself, it's hardly a scandal, but The Standard has hammered David Farrar regularly for his National Party links, which often go undeclared when he's tapped as an "independent commentator" in the media. So even a technical connection (especially when it's the result of a donation in kind) is a poor look for them. Personally, I think The Standard's contributors could gain a lot from simply going out under their own names. And Prentice should either take registration of the address range or find a new one. In the EFA era, it's not appropriate to head into election year under this sort of arrangement.

Meanwhile, in similarly-themed news, it turns out that Tim Shadbolt's bold and independent stand for free speech is actually being bankrolled by Hollow Men stars the Talley brothers. Shadbolt claims he had no idea who they were, they just gave him a lot of money ...

---

Anyway, onto the more pleasurable business of the weekend: it was something of a monster theme. We heard The Police chugging through 'Roxanne' from a couple of kilometres away, while scarcely believing the evidence of our eyes that Roger Federer was being made repeatedly to serve to stay in the Australian Open by Janko Tipsarevic. The pair of them played insane tennis at each other and although you always felt that Federer had a little more, it was incredible to see the master put in a position where he could go out in the third round. Later (much later -- the match didn't finish until 4.30am local time!) Lleyton Hewitt overcame Marcos Baghdatis in another monumental clash. This seems to be the best Aussie Open in years.

Earlier on Saturday, our Wellington friends Alastair and Wendy came around, and then their friends, which allowed me to exercise the urge to feed people. I'd splashed out on some eye fillet for the Thai beef salad, and if I say so myself, I totally ruled on the Broil King. A glass of wine was never to far from hand, and it was all a very pleasant sequel to the Big Day Out.

Yesterday, we saw the monster movie du jour: Cloverfield. I really liked it. The idea of capturing the entire narrative via one consumer video camera was perfectly executed (although that thing had some battery life …) and it made for a visceral and convincing cinematic experience. The American reviewers who got all huffy about it being a cheap reference to 9/11 need to chill out. It's just a movie. My advice: see it and then have some fun exploring all the viral back and side stories scattered around the internet.

But, of course, the real monster was the Big Day Out itself. To be honest, by 6pm, four hours after we arrived, I was wondering if we were going to get a real hit. For me, Dr Octagon lost momentum, Dizzee Rascal was great but we had to bail when half the people on site charged in alongside us and the temperature shot up alarmingly (I was worried that one woman near us, her E clearly coming on, was going to get heatstroke). Billy Bragg seemed no better than okay, ditto for Pluto, etc …

But MD and I got ourselves over to Lilyworld, where the first thing that happened was that a happy woman in a hat bounded over and chirped "Hi! Remember me? Supermarket girl!" It was the Public Address punter I'd shared some tips with in the Foodtown queue that morning. Choice. I'd swap a hundred angry wingnut commenters for one Public Addresser who really knows who to enjoy herself.

And at Lilyworld, enjoying yerself was the name of the game. After some funky soul remixes from the hosts, Lady Saw took the stage with her crew and, man, she was firing. And any woman who can rock the crowd with a song about her own infertility has my respect, doubled.

We returned to the arena for Shihad. Shihad have played more Auckland Big Days Out than any other band, usually in the 7pm slot on one of the main stages, and I think I've seen most of those shows. This might just have been the best of them. They were absolutely majestic. I've posted a ropey mobile phone clip that captures some of the scale of what went on in the first comment for this post (the clips embed better in the discussion forums), along with a couple of others, but I did like MD's photograph:

After that, Bjork was intriguing and avant-garde, but not entirely what the Rage crowd wanted to hear. The gigantic and growling version of 'Army of Me' was my favourite part.

From there, it was LCD Soundsystem in the Boiler Room. They lived up to expectations and then some. What a brilliant, unlikely, propulsive, original and exciting outfit. 'All My Friends' was triumphant and the 10-minute techno-freakout of 'Yeah' was just plain mad. It was most exciting.

The organic rock of The Clean made a nice follow-up, before we headed back to a fairly cheesy, but amusing, set from Carl Cox in the tent. From there, with MD at the wheel, we got back home in pretty good time, and just sat silently on the back deck, taking in the warm, quiet night, tired, but happy.

Robyn Gallagher has this striking photograph of Samuel Flynn Scott that positively embodies the "It's lie!" refrain in Nest Egg, and the rest of her Flickr set is worth a look too, as is her blog roundup. Everyone has a favourite crowd moment. Mine was seeing a dude on crutches with his left leg in plaster from the knee playing hackey with his mates. For Robyn, it was this:

While I was sitting there, I saw a hilarious thing. Two dudes, both wearing different t-shirts with "GUNT" on each of them, saw each other and the t-shirt he was wearing. They got excited and did a manly hug, before wandering off into the crowd, perhaps never to meet again.

Peter M at Dub Dot Dash has an excellent roundup: he also loved LCD Soundsystem and Lady Saw, and, like me, enjoyed what he heard in passing of Arcade Fire. How odd that that we never saw each other.

My homie Andy Moore (note: not the Christchurch wingnut behind the pro-smacking and EFA protests) has a very nice photoblog in which he catches me in a minor state of undress. I was between shirts …

There's an enjoyable first-time-at-the-BDO-in-years journal on Spatula Forum. Plus some dude's travel blog.

Writing in the official Bjork tour blog, Jonas Sen from Bjork's band loved our green and pleasant land (the weather is pretty shabby in Iceland at present) but declared their BDO performance "OK, but not that great." The Gold Coast show was much better.

Making up for a shortfall in real BDO blogging (there seemed to be a lot less of it this year), the kids at TVNZ, the Herald, and Stuff were tasked with blogging for the man. Prize to Stuff's crew, I think, for actually making it to Lady Saw, and for Chris Schultz's observation that "Shihad haven't turned into the Feelers."

For Disturbed Kiwi, "Rage was worth the money" but he occasionally "wonder[s] about the mentality of most people who seem to enjoy the music I do".

In the course of a comprehensive review (he had the same feeling about Shihad as me), Shotbro also despaired of the stadium crowd:

Bjork was as pitch perfect and crazy as I thought she would be. She is a performer that never seems to deliver anything but her best and not all people at Mt Smart seemed to appreciate it - who would have thought Bjork would get boo'ed for doing an encore? That was more embarrassing for the crowd than it was for her. So many people spent too long standing in the sun, waiting for Rage Against The Machine, that they lost their minds.

Yamis will be getting back to us with his Rage review.

And, just to close things out, a consciously hip drug party ad from the authorities in Britain. Be careful out there, kids …

(151 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!