Filtered

Retraction

Last week I wrote about a story I believed represented IP that was stolen from the AFR.

Today I received an email from my former colleague at the centre of that story who was very disappointed about the post and asked me to remove it from my blog and apologise.

I've done just that. This is the first time I can recall deleting a post. You don't do it lightly, so take that as an indication of my sincerity.

And no, I’ve not received any other correspondence or been instructed in any way by my employer.

To explain, I honestly regret that what was meant to be a cheeky post has been perceived as an attack on his character. That was certainly not my intent. Blogs, like email, can be misinterpreted. As for how the post reflected on my character, well that's just something I'll have to wear. We all make bad judgement calls, and since this is a personal blog, I'll stand up and say that was one of mine.

I’d like to make it very clear that I think Ben is one of the most talented IT journos in the country.

I heaped high praise on him during a speech to staff when he left. Despite what you might otherwise think now, I meant every word of it and have not changed my opinion.

My only option in a case like this is to set the record straight and fix the mess because I value relationships far more than competitive jousting.

Dell's spoiler

You might have noticed we ran a Q&A with Michael Dell in Monday's AFR. It's was purchased from the good folks at CNet.com.au - here's the original version.

For those of you interested in media machinations, you might be interested to know that yes, this was a good old fashion spoiler. Dell's PR machine, in their infinite wisdom, had decided they would give an exclusive interview with Michael Dell to The Australian during his flying visit to Sydney on Monday.

Naturally enough, I was none too happy when I found out a week before the event when proactively asking for an interview. I was outraged, actually. Here's my logic: Dell gets 85 per cent of its revenues from corporate IT. The AFR is the single most important daily source of IT news for the top tier of business executives in this country. Yes, I'm biased, but the most recent McNair survey of Aussie IT media backs up my argument. Meanwhile, Dell is under the hammer at the moment. What's needed is a publication that can ask the tough questions, I told them. The argument fell on deaf ears.

So I did what any good editor would do with knowledge of his competitors plans and ran the spoiler on the day of the media briefing, complete with a news story highlighting Dell's 42 per cent share price slide in the past 12 months. Can't have made Dell PR happy on the day when the Big Boss came to town. Meanwhile, turns out The Aus did not run what Dell PR people said would be a "World According To... " Q&A with Michael Dell on Tuesday, the day after the briefing. Instead they had a short news yarn, as did I.

The net of all this is that Dell missed out on getting a Q&A in either publication and managed to offend one, if not two, editors. And both publications missed out on a good opportunity to provide our readers with more insight into the world's biggest PC maker and its founder. I'd argue it wasn't me who did the spoiling.

Update: The Aus published their Q&A today, a week after the event.

Now we are NOT talking

Telstra CTO Hugh Bradlow strikes me as a guy who understands future technologies and the impact on business.

He struck up a conversation on the interesting, if not controversial, subject of Net Neutrality. And as you'll see, I joined that conversation with a comment seeking his opinion on telcos charging content providers for the use of the Internet. A fair question, and one that Hugh started to address in his second post here.

Net neutrality, and related issues like quality of service, are subjects of keen interest here at Filtered. And given that our day job is devoted to talking to people about such things, we duly requested an offline conversation with Mr Bradlow. As I said, reading his blog you get the idea he's got a well-rounded view that would be of wider interest to people.

But that request was denied today. Once you step out of the blog and into tightly controlled PR universe, Telstra's shutters come down once again. Telstra does not want to be in any way linked to the current discussions about media reform in Australia, I was told by a PR woman. She won't even let Mr Bradlow out of the cage in the context of restricting our discussion to Net Neutrality.

The kicker to all of this is that the AFR and Telstra have for some months (years?) been engaged what the politically astute would call a robust public discussion. Their distaste for this situation is one that I'd suggest ultimately circles back to the telco's desire to control the media universe. I know of at least one AFR reporter that Telstra is currently not talking to, and without a believable explanation I have been swept under the same rug.

And so Telstra is now learning again that the more you try and control the media, the more it bites. Telstra might think its new blog gives it publishing credentials and a platform from which to right the media wrongs, placate its long-suffering shareholders and give those same shareholders and staff a platform to attack the media.

But you can't on the one hand create the illusion of openness, and then on the other selectively refuse to engage in discussions with the media where there is an obvious opportunity to continue that discussion. Telstra needs to understand that blogs represent a corporate culture built on the premise of conversations. Look at what Scoble did for Microsoft. If you don't want to go down that path and change your corporate culture for the better, get rid of the blog and stop polluting the web with PR drivel. That way Telstra's PR machine can carry on as it always has and not worry about changing its ways because of the illusion of openness created by Now We Are NOT Talking.

If there is a positive note I can leave you with, at least the blog from the non-talking company finally has RSS feeds. Next step, add trackback, if you dare.

Number one!

Caution: blatant self-promotion ahead!

The big news this week is the annual McNair survey of IT readership in Australia has rated The Australian Financial Review's IT section - the humble responsibility of yours truly - the number one daily publication for senior IT executives. Meanwhile, the AFR's MIS Magazine, edited by Paul Smith and also overseen by yours truly, is the number one monthly magazine for senior IT executives.

It's a very satisfying win for us on the MIS front, having toppled CIO Magazine after its very long run in the number one slot. And I'll be bold enough to suggest that the AFR result is a great win because The Australian has been attempting to make hay from their recent wins at the annual MediaConnect Lizzie awards. It's nice to se the record straight. To explain the difference between the Lizzies and the McNair report, the former is an award from media peers, the latter a survey of reader behaviour and opinion. While I'm a fan of Phil Sim's work with the Lizzies, it almost goes without saying that the marketing types pay more attention to McNair.

ITJourno (a firewalled site for journos) had this to say in a story by Phil:

..the AusIT lost 18 percentage points on the expenditure metric and is now read by 19 per cent of senior IT executives accounting for 25 per cent of spend. That now places it below 'Next' with 31 per cent and the Fin Review IT section with 30 per cent.

On the subject of MIS:

According to the McNairIT 2006 research, MIS is read by 52 per cent of senior IT decision makers, who are responsible for 71 per cent of the total Australian IT spend in companies of 50 people or more.

That was an improvement on its 2005 figures, in which it was read by 48 per cent of senior IT executives, accounting for 68 per cent of total spend.

CIO, meanwhile, is being read by the same number of IT decision makers as it was in 2005 at 48 per cent, but those readers this year accounted for only 62 per cent of the total spend, as opposed to 71 per cent last year.

No doubt there will be plenty more competitive gnashing of teeth. But regardless, team AFR is feeling quite chuffed, if not vindicated.

Don't call it a web site

Now, the first thing you need to know about the AFR's new website, is that it isn't a website. As per the ads that announced the venture in today's AFR, AFR Access is "the serious investor's toolkit".

I've actually participated in an internal trial, and it operates something akin to a sophisticated AJAX application - except that it's built using Macromedia. So what, exactly, is AFR Access? Well, you can subscribe to different content packages that include the AFR and different news and information sources from around the world. It also has a bunch of financial tools, as per the tag line. And it costs money.

What do I think? It does what it was designed to do, which is not be a free news website. I'm not aware of many other online apps from a big media outlet out there like this, so it seems to me we're unchartered waters. There's a free trial and an online demo at the site, so I'd be interested to know your reaction. Don't be shy now.

Telstra PR bites again

Man, I do love a good online argument. And this one's a pearler. One of Telstra's PR bloggers at Now We Are Talking, Rod Breum, has come out fighting after another stinging missive from AFR journo Pamela Williams last Friday, called "Connections line up at Telstra." (I'd link you to the story, but it costs $3.30 to view, and there's no permalink. Sigh.)

But to summarise, her argument is that Telstra has breached its own procurement guidelines by appointing billions of dollars in IT contracts to companies like Alcatel without a decent tender process. Telstra boss Sol Trujillo has not only imported dozens of Americans to run the company, but he has abandoned its historical rigorous tender processes where multiple suppliers lined up. Sol is all about quick deals with mates, she argues. It's a big piece, thoroughly researched, and over 5000 words. My only criticism would be that she uses a lot of unnamed sources.

Here's Rod's first post in response, which contains the internal memo Telstra sent to staff. It contains all the usual PR drivel you'd expect. My favourite line:

What readers were not made aware of, was that the journalist Pam Williams has been bombarding Telstra with questions for several weeks.

Gasp! News Flash! Pam was doing her job.

Then in an incredible display of maturity, Rod continues by posting the questions he fired back at Fairfax in retaliation. They're really un-funny, and bizzare. For example: "Will you please explain the process that was undertaken in Fairfax's most recent decision to procure newsprint? Was this a fully competitive tender advertised internationally? How many tenderers were there? Please name the unsuccessful tenderers."

To follow, was another post which contained Fairfax's response. You guessed it, no comment. But the biggest sensation is that Rod has accused Fairfax of breaching its own, and the media industry's, code of ethics:

The biggest threat to Fairfax and its so-called “rivers of gold” classified advertising is Telstra and Sensis...While the journalist Pam Williams put her name to this attack on Telstra, Fairfax insiders tell me it was driven by people much higher up in the company with an obvious agenda

The idea that an AFR journalist applied a commercial agenda to a story of this nature is laughable to say the least. Rod, you really have lost the plot. I've said it before after the first William vs Bruem fight, use the Telstra blog for a useful conversation rather than this emotional drivel.

Simon Sharwood, an Aussie IT Journo and one of the many people to offer insightful comments on the Telstra posts, says it well: There's a problem here. On the one hand, you would have us believe that Fairfax is not upholding standards it holds you to. On the other, you are willing to use the same "anonymous sources" tactic you decry to justify your assertion the AFR's story is a commercial attack on Telstra. You cannot have it both ways, Rod.

Kirk on the cover

Fairfax CEO David Kirk is on the cover of BRW with the sensational line "Stop the presses!".( The union will love that one... ) Adele Ferguson has written a good yarn about the biggest challenge facing one of Australia's most dominant media organisations. And a disclaimer, Fairfax is my employer. Sure, it's a bit of an eyebrow raiser to see the boss of Fairfax on a Fairfax magazine, but hey, remember all the Kerry Packer tributes that graced the cover of PBL publications? Anyway, here are the opening lines (the story is hidden behind the cost wall):

David Kirk is on a mission. Five months into the top job at John Fairfax Holdings, Kirk is hell-bent on repositioning the company away from the market perception that it is a fuddy-duddy, old world, low growth, poorly managed newspaper business that has a botched online strategy and is a sitting duck to be taken over and broken up. Instead, Kirk wants the company to be seen as a vibrant, new-age digital business, combining print and online, with a solid growth story.

The basic issue, which is a preoccupation here at filtered, is how do you grow online revenues without cannibalising print revenues?

One interesting factoid that feeds this discussion is from Fairfax CFO Sankar Narayan: "We are trying to create the best possible newspaper environment and retain as much advertising as possible. This includes smart marketing and creating the right vehicles. Margins are good online. They are in the high 20s, which is comparable to newspapers."

It's interesting because I think most pro-new media types are quick to write off newspapers because of the well-worn story that many are in circulation declines, and parts of the advertising base like car, employment and real estate ads are moving online. But the fact remains that it's a high margin business.

Meanwhile, the article goes on to argue that Fairfax needs to focus on one major acquisition to hedge against a takeover or the sale of different business units.

Go get a copy of the magazine, or buy it online if you dare. I'd be really interested to know your thoughts on Fairfax's ability to execute its online vision.

Frank's not on the A+ list

Frank Arrigo is looking to create more class-based stereotyping of bloggers by calling for names to include on his A-list of Australian bloggers. Except the catch is he's game enough to suggest that this list should *not* include journalists, who I'd like to point out are not merely observers of the blogosphere, but active participants and contributors.

Well Frank, Charles Wright (who is sitting next to me in the media centre here at Kickstart) and I have decided that we will go one better and compile the "A+ list" of Australian bloggers who are not vendors, and preferrably journalists, or at least content producers. It just seems like the right thing to do because you have upset our oh-so fragile sensibilities.

So in addition to Charles and yours truly, our approach will let us include Cameron Reilly (across the table from me at the moment), Phil Sim, Ben Barren, Darren Rowse, Paul Mongomery, Richard Giles, Shane Williamson, Trevor Cook, and Mike Walsh. Oh, and there was some debate in the media centre here about this, but I think it would be unkind if we did not include our mate Brad Howarth.

Who else should be deemed worthy of being included in our highly exclusive list of non-vendor Australian bloggers? Don't be shy to self-nominate and join the revolution.

ps. Oh dear, Cameron clearly does not share our sense of humour. Don't worry Frank, we still love you.

Unwired fallout

Today's Fin carries a scoop by yours truly regarding early plans for spectrum auctions next year. It impacts Unwired because it's wholesale WiMax business will be negatively impacted (looks like its stock sank 7.6% on the news today too).

Anyway, those funsters over at Whirlpool who don't do us the service of using their real names claim that I'm "in bed with Telstra." Ahh, nope. I don't hold shares in Unwired or Telstra, and a closer read of the story will show you that Telstra, Optus and any other carrier will be able to bid for the new WiMax spectrum. Those crazy funsters....

Dissecting Tuesday yarns

One of the great passing interests in the IT industry, I presume, is looking at the tech sections of the major newspapers on a Tuesday and comparing stories, editorial judgements and so on.

Excuse the blatant chest-beating, but today was something of a red-letter day for us at The Fin because a fantastic package on federal government outsourcing written by Emma Connors and Ben Woodhead not only made it to the prime slot on page 1 (known as the "splash") but jumped inside to a couple of pages of comprehensive analysis. We also got lots of pointers off page 1 to those stories, which is a good sign that my esteemed editors still know a good tech story when they see it.

The core element of this package is interesting because the govt in its wisdom has decided that rather than retail central control of $3 billion worth of IT decisions, they'll delegate more power to the agencies. That will have a huge ripple effect for thousands of people toiling away on tenders. Oh, and there's just a small question mark hanging over whether this switch in approach will do anything to avoid a long, proud history of massive govt outsourcing screw-ups.

On the media side, it's also a sign that as the summer wind-up begins to kick in the only way you are going to get good IT stories is by having reporters in locations such as Canberra for a few days dedicated to big projects. There's precious little else happening of major interest that's being served up from the PR or vendor industry - not that I'm complaining about that, mind you. ;)

Meanwhile, my not-so-subtle campaign to include more podcasting and blog stories in the mix included a column from Peter Moon. He's taken a look at ePodcast Producer, software that costs btw $US90 and $US240. Cameron Reilly was cheeky enough (how unusual ;) to suggest in email this morning that we'd given the company a "free plug." As I told him, it's a column, and a review at that. But there is a good point to add: there's no shortage of free software out there for podcasting. One that I've mucked around with is Audacity. I think the TPN guys might even still use that?

Anyway, the interesting thing about podcasting is that it's finally being understood to be a mainstream phenomenon. The ABC has done a lot to that end - we ran a Strategies piece on ABC new media director Lynley Marshall today, btw - and TPN is proving that you can build an international audience of 1 million people in a very short period of time with a fraction of the ABC's budget. The big message for corporate IT is that podcasting is symbolic of a broader trend towards user-driven technology and media decisions. People have always wanted the ability to time-shift content (hello VCR, audio tapes), but never had an easy option. It's of course still early days - podcasting really only surfaced last August - but I suspect it won't be long before decent commerical models start to emerge.

The other story worth mentioning from today's paper - with a heavy caveat that these are my personal views and not that of my employer (and I don't own Fairfax or Mooter shares) - is Fairfax's $4.1 million stake in Mooter Media. I've just finished reading The Search, and one of its central popositions is that search technology will become even more personalised in the future. Mooter is still in very early stages, so the Fairfax decision is curious to say the least. But I do get the feeling we will see more Mooter-like companies springing up with this value-add approach to online advertising.

The biggest issue right now is online search advertising is already a hotly-competitive volume game. It's difficult for online publishers to raise margins, but's already the holy grail. And from a patriotic perspective, I hope Mooter doesn't become another LookSmart and fade into the ether.