the(new)mediaslut

Seems suing your tech competitors in the Year of Pig is the new black.

1. HP sues Acer for patent infringment

2. Oracle sues SAP for corporate fruad

More suing to come? 

The ulcers you see on the poster on the right arn’t real, so?

Singapore’s Health Promotion Board recent "Quiting is hard. Not quitting, is harder." campaign came under fire from some Singaporeans over its unethical use touch-up to highlight the consequence of smoking.

From The New Paper ’s Ng Hui Hui :

FIRST, it received flak for being shown on television during prime time.

Then, word started circulating that the ‘victim’ in the commercial - a woman with decayed teeth and blisters on her lips - could be a model whose face was made-up to drive home the effects of smoking-related cancer.

Yesterday, campaign organisers Health Promotion Board (HPB) confirmed that the woman in the commercial is indeed a model engaged by advertising firm DDB Singapore.

DDB won the tender for the board’s latest anti-smoking campaign. The ad firm and the HPB declined to provide details about her.

themediaslut wonders loudly, "So what if the model isn’t a real victim of smoking. When did Ad Life ever become Real Life?

Advertisments always show the best of a product, or the worst of it, but never the real stuff.

Go to any fastfood resturant in Singapore, do you really get what you see on the ad? 

 
Left: Real life burger.
Right: With better lighting and a dash of Photoshopping, your perfect Big Mac.

themediaslut came across an insight commentary from Don Sambandaraksa of the Bangkok Post about the truth of the Shin Satellite saga.

It seems that there are many loopholes in the contract that could make for some problems for Temasek selling Shin Satellite, even if the Singapore government has objection to the sale.

Was the contract a blank cheque fir Shin Satellite?

From Bangkok Post:

The original idea for the contract was for one satellite, Thaicom 1. However, it is common practice that every satellite has a backup, so included in the 1991 contract for Thaicom 1 was Thaicom 2, its backup clone.

However, there was a clause in the contract which stated that if demand for transponders outstrips supply, the concessionaire can ask for permission to send up another satellite. The contract makes for confusing reading, as it always refers to transponders and not satellites. One could argue, then, that the contract is a blank cheque for as many satellites as they want in order to balance out the demand and supply of transponders.

themediaslut is aware that to install satellite dishes in Singapore without the proper permits is illegal.

However, a New Zealander has found a way to turn a $10 wok into a satellite dish.

This worries themediaslut as it could make woks illegal in Singapore.

How is themediaslut going to enjoy her mother’s or grandmother’s stir fried dishes?

From The New Zealand Herald :

Why pay $20,000 for a commercial link to run your television station when a $10 kitchen wok from the Warehouse is just as effective?

This is exactly how North Otago’s newest television station 45 South is transmitting its signal from its studio to the top of Cape Wanbrow, in a bid to keep costs down.

Save the wok, save grandma’s kitchen!

$10 a day for a $8,000 loans sounds great, but can the borrower really afford it?

themediaslut saw this ad and was wondering if such loan ads should show how much monthly repayment one has to make for the loan instead of the daily repayment scheme.

Base on the ad, the loan is for Sgd8,000 for an income of Sgd1,600 with a repayment of Sgd10 a day.

After the CPF deduction of 20%,  the borrower would take home Sgd1280.

For Sgd10 a day, the repaymeny works out to Sgd300, based on a 30 day a month average.

After paying for the loan, the borrower’s take home pay is now Sgd980 a month.

Is this something the borrower can live with for the next 30 months, inclusive of interest?

In an IGN article, Ian Livingstone of Eidos Interactive lamented Singaporean’s inability to think outside of the box.

From IGN :

Livingstone opined that Singapore lacked "the ability to think outside the box to create new intellectual property, new game-play and new characters".

Singaporeans reading this entry would easily point the finger at the country’s education system which does not encourage creativity or "thinking out of the box".

In true Freakonomics fashion, themediaslut, in a recent conversation with a primary school teacher, can now single out a small component of the primary school education that is preventing students from a young age to "think out of the box". 

It is not the art or music syllabus that needs to be change, it is the teaching of composition that needs another look.

Why?

Primary school students are not encourage, and are even penalised, when their compositions are too "fantasy-full".

"If a primary school student were to submit a composition that do not confine to the physics of the real wold, we will have to penalise them," said the primary school teacher.

"For example, the story is about a thief stealing a handbag from a lady, then it has to be the police who will take charge of the situation.

"If a superhero, like Superman, was the one saving the day, then the student must be penalised for writing something that defies the real world."

To get more marks for their composition, primary school students tend to stick to composition story lines that have been trial and tested.

It is not surprising to find this teacher also complaining how boring these compositions can get.

"When marking their compositions, most of the storyline seldom defer from another," said the primary school teacher.

"Only the words used are different. The better students would use stronger adjectives. The weaker students, one can only hope they can string a couple of sentences into paragraphs."

This isn’t surprising.

Why take the risk and be rewarded with penalty marks?

This is especially so true when a difference in marks in an English composition could result in the primary student not being promoted to a secondary school of his choice or not being promoted to the secondary level at all.

Hence the link to Livingstone’s earlier statement. Our game developers are tauted as followers, not creators. Same as our young students, they follow, they don’t create.

PC and console games are stuff made of fantasy and imagination, things that defy the laws of physics.

World of Warcraft, one of the most successful game to date, is nothing but a total fantasy. It is set in a universal of make believe, where humans, night elves, dwarves and draneis ally against the undeads, taurens, orcs and blood elves.

If students as early as twelve years of age are awarded for thinking inside of the box and penalised for thinking out of the box, how can one expect Singaporeans to create games that are completely new?

themediaslut says let our young students be awarded for their creative imagination, not punished them for doing so.

Maybe to encourage our younger generation to think out of the box, our leaders in the education department should also give this post a worthwhile thought or two.

themediaslut not only had be in the train cabin like a packed sardine, she also had to endure the most irritating audio advertisement by M1 on the train.

At every single stop, the M1 audio advertisement will appear after the train’s announcement of its arrival at each stop.

The M1 audio advertisement is now giving themediaslut a splitting headache and it has been 2 hours since themediaslut left the train.

Though it is an ingenous idea to tag an audio advertisment after the trains’ official one, couldn’t M1 arranged with SMRT to have that advertisement played every other three stations instead of every single station?

Dear M1,

your current brand tagline, "1 Life, Live it!"

Yes, themediaslut knows she has 1 life, but themediaslut would like it to be a peaceful one too!!!

After posting Where’s the passion in IT journalism, those who know themediaslut has been asking her if she is stirring shit or being too cynical about the Singapore IT media industry.

themediaslut says "neither".

themediaslut posted the entry because she is concerned of the  disappearing "aura" of IT journalism in this age of "mechanical production".

From Chris Anderson’s "The Long Tail: Why the future of business is selling less of more" , the following state resonates themediaslut’s feeling.

"Emphasizing the examples of photography and film, along with recorded rather than performed music, (Marxist philosopher Walter) Benjamin worried that the "mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the massess toward art. The reactionary attitude toward a Picasso painting changes into the progressive reaction toward a Chaplin movie… The conventional is uncitically enjoyed, and the truely new is criticized with aversion."

Is IT journalism here taking the same route?

After friendly discussions with PR friends, corp comms teams, vendors and even senior journalists, it seems the passion in IT journalism have dissappered from the island state of Singapore.

It is in total agreement that IT journalists are no longer interested in the chase for the story and to an extend, unable to identify a story even it is staring right there in their face.

A PR friend lamented that a particular IT journalist in a daily paper is only interested in a story as long it fill his/her template of who,what,why and how, and send the answers in an email so it can be cut and pasted.

On the other hand, an experienced journalist friend said there is no need for the journalists today to chase for a story because they are constantly spoon fed by their PR counterparts which outnumbers the journalists here by almost 1:10. Or that the journalists now are short handed with 10 stories to fill a day.

Even when IT journalists look to cut and paste a press release and make the story sound as if it is theirs still do it wrong. A PR friend lamented how he/she had to make frantic call to a IT journalist who cut and paste a press release that the story did not appear as the orginal message of the press release. The journalist even had the cheek to reply,"But I cut and pasted everything from your press release".

How about the whole idea of networking after office hours?

Unfortunately, it doesn’t exist anymore. Not even for a cup of coffee. IT journalists go back home exactly when the clock strikes 6pm and sees no point in mixing around with the industry players.

However, from a journalist’s point of view, it is very difficult for a journalist to see any benefit it would do to their story if something is leaked during such networking session. 

Like in any other story, it face start off as a rumour before the journalist get somebody to reply offically. However, during such session, the vendor will just say, speak to my PR.

IT journalists today are so mechanical it is difficult to find somebody who steps out, or whose stories sound so similar to each other, it has become too easy for reader to ignore publication for another.

There are even stories of IT journalists who only do email interviews as he/she is to shy to talk to the vendors.

A journalist shy? Sounds like an oxymoron but such journalists exist.

It is this lack of passion, and not the lack of advertising dollars, that will lead to the downfall of IT journalism in Singapore.

IT publishers will still say they have the readers but the numbers are never subtainsiated. Maybe the readers are just the advertisers happy to see a product review that has originally scored a four out of ten but changed to a seven after having being threatened to withdraw the entire year’s advertising contract.

Even if the example if completely fictatious, that is the perception of readers today have of IT journalism.

Wither the passion and we will witness the begining of an end.  

In themediaslut’s day job as a journalist, themediaslut works by putting her ears to the ground and have to ask questions in order to get her stories.

However, what frastruates themediaslut often is when the responses become "Please wait for the press release" and especially when it comes from the PR agencies.

The problem with waiting for a press release is that when the information is released, its not new news.

This is because every other journalists will get the same information and it will be published everywhere.

If every publication publishes the same information, how is the journalist or the publication going to stand out among each other?

If the publications are not going to stand out, how are they going to attract readers?

If the publications are not going attract readers, how are these publications going to get more advertising?

If the publications don’t even get advertising revenue to surive and it folds, wouldn’t there be one less journalist or publication for PR to send their "press release" too?

If some clients based their PR’s performance on the number of media clippings they get and because less publications means less clippings, why would the client then want to hire the PR if they cannot perform?

If a journalist was to keep asking questions to break the news and the only response the journalist gets is "wait for the press release", it is going to kill the enthusiasm of the journalist.

The irony of all these is that when the press release is published, sometimes wholesale, in a publication, that publication will be cided as a place where press releases are dumped by the same PR agencies.

However, can you blame the PR agencies?

Unfortunately no, as much they would like to talk to the media about a news, they would have to get permisssion from the client before the news is released.

Is there a solution?

As expected, STOMP made the front page news of The Straits Times today.

However, Aaron Koh, for ITJourno Asia, wrote an interesting headline that might change the landscape between the Singapore blogging community and the local mainstream media.

Headline: The Straits Times editor says: Its time to accept blogs and be part of the phenomenon

Why did Koh write that?

Because Koh quoted Han Fook Kwang, editor for The Straits Times, to say “I don’t blog and I don’t rule out blogging in the future.”

“My children blog and it’s a new phenomenon,” said Han.

“We have to accept to it, get use to it and be part of it.”

For rest of the story, you would have to visit www.itjournoasia.com , but access is only allowed via subscription only.

themediaslut wonders if this is the new peace between the Singapore blogging community and the local mainstream media.

Other blogs that posted entries on STOMP:

http://mooiness.com/2006/06/14/stomp-star-blog/
http://www.justinlee.name/2006/06/15/straits-times-stompcomsg-launches-a-short-review/
http://www.jeffooi.com/2006/06/web20_both_sides_of_the_causew.php
http://miyagi.sg/?p=1129
http://www.adrianlee.info/2006/06/15/rant-stomp-is-kinda-lame/

themediaslut was playing with Google’s blog search when themediaslut came across this link.

http://technoadoption.typepad.com/english/2006/04/the_killer_appl.html

Compare this with what themediaslut wrote earlier –> http://themediaslut.com/2006/04/326

So who copied who?
From "Lisa’s"  blog, the entry is about 3G in Europe and yet there is mention of Starhub and Singtel.. geez… 

Also if you do a search on that entry, you can find the classic themediaslut third person approach to posting the entries.

At least, if you want to cut and paste from other blogs, give them some credit and link it back to the original site.

Wonderful this Google Analytics as themediaslut exposed the visiting PR agencies to this blog.

Top 5 PR agencies to visit themediaslut.com for May 2006

1.  Edelman Public Relations Worldwide

No of visits: 32
Keywords search: IT Journo (1), Jason Coates (1)
No of visits from Firefox browser: 17
No of visits from Opera browser: 8
No of visits from IE browser: 7

Slut thoughts: Hmm.. Before Jason Coates joined Yahoo as their Corporate Comms Manager, he was at Edelman. But why are people at Edelman searching for him after he has left? 

2. Burson Marstella (SEA)

No of visits: 30
Keywords search: mediaslut blog (3), mediaslut (1)
No of visits from Firefox browser: 6
No of visits from IE browser: 24

Slut thoughts: Thank you for searching for a mediaslut.  

3.  Fleishman-hillard (Singapore) Pte Ltd

No of visits: 15
Keywords search: none
No of visits from Firefox browser: 13
No of visits from IE browser: 2

4. Weber Shandwick (Singapore)

No of visits: 4
Keyword search: Oo Gin Lee (2)
No of visits from IE browser: 4

Slut thoughts:  Maybe they were looking Gin Lee’s blog which is at http://whiteodyssey.blogspot.com/ 

5. McGallen & Associates

No of visits: 2
Keyword search: Seamus Phan (2)
No of visits from Safari browser: 2

Slut thoughts: Only PR agency to use a Mac.. Think different, themediaslut says.

(Update: A reader has provided the answer to the question in the comments field, but give the question a thinker before looking at them.)

A primary six teacher provided themediaslut a simple arithmetic question which can be found in the Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLE).

Can you find the sum of all the numbers from 0 to 100 in less than 3 minutes without the use of a calculator?

(themediaslut was away on a Mission Impossible mission last week. Disclosing the details of the mission would result in the possible closure of this site.)

After reading The Undercover Economist , themediaslut has a economic theory of why advertisers in the region (especially Singapore and Malaysia) are not demanding for the IT trade magazines here for audited circulation numbers.

themediaslut’s economic theory is advertisers do not demand for circulation audits because if they were to do so, it will actually drive up the cost of advertising in the magazine.

In other words, the lack of circulation audits is actually resulting in lower ad rates as oppose to the current believe publishers have that circulation audits will have an inverse relationship to their ad rates.

Without these circulation audits, the advertisers have the power of scarcity in their hands.

The supply of magazines chasing advertisers for their advertising dollars outnumber the demand for advertisers to advertise in these magazines.

As such, the sales bring down the price of the advertiser is the weapon to sale the magazine pages.

As the magazines fight on price, there is a limit to how low the price can be brought down to attract the advertisers.

Without the price advantage, the sales then go for the content advantage.

Sales start to promise the advertisers if they advertise, the product will be featured and reviewed by the editorial team.

Soon all magazines start to do the same.

Without the content advantage, sales might resort to pressurizing the editorial team to give the advertisers a five out of five stars.

All magazines will also follow the same track.

The mix of sales and editorial will in many ways affect the readers’ perception on the editorial integrity of the magazine.

As such, the magazine risk losing readers.

This, in turn, results in a vicious cycle in which publishers wouldn’t dare to do any audits on their circulation because they know they won’t have the number of readers they actually have in their media kit.

Let’s turn the table the other way and try to put the power of scarcity into the hands of the publishers with audit circulation figures.

Say magazine A has audited readership of 10,000 readers, the highest in the country, magazine B has 8,000 readers and magazine C has 6,000 readers.

Of course, advertisers will go to magazine A because of its high readership.

Say magazine A charges S$10,000 for a page, B charges S$8,000 and C charges S$6,000.

Advertisers will still go for A because it will only cost them SGD1 per reader, the same as B and C.

Say the cost of printing the magazine, including the cost of hiring the editors, remain constant for A,B,C at SGD4,000 per magazine, then Magazine A will still make more profit than B and C.

All three magazines will want to increase readership in order to get more ad money, except for A who might only consider looking at maintain its position or improve it too.

In doing so, the magazines are looking to constantly increase readership to pull in the advertisers rather than using price and risking editorial integrity to get more advertising dollars.

This, however, is actually the reason why advertisers are not demanding for an audited circulation because they would have to pay top tier money for space in magazine A.

Would advertisers want to advertise in B and C?

No, because the difference in 2000 or 4000 readers can mean a significant difference in the purchasing decision of this 2,000 and 4,000 readers .

B & C will also invest in its editorial to ensure they have top notch journalists and editors to pull readers to their publications to increase circulation and will pay top dollars for them.

Are there any other benefits to circulation audits or is this assumption to naive in its thinking? 

While the new NSMen portal is now www.ns.sg, the old www.miw.com.sg has been given a revamp? Redesign? Resale?

This is two pertinent excerpts from their FAQ:

Q2. Why does MIW still exist if it is no longer the NSmen’s portal?
MIW.com.sg is a commercially owned portal and is operated by Green Dot Internet Services (GDIS).
This revamp is part of our efforts to offer more interesting, insightful and exciting content to meet the changing needs of Singaporean men.

Q9. What happens to my existing MIW account?
Your existing account will still be valid and you can login from 4 May onwards using your existing MIW Login ID and Password to participate in contests, voting features and forum discussions.

Will be asking them the extent of the data left on their database of NSMen accounts.

The geekyslut saw this letter recently and did a double take. Check out the date received and the subsequent "post marks".

A final cessation of operations notice came 17 days after its own postmark (*dubious*). Anybody using this email service seriously would be screwed left, right, centre, up and down. Where did it hang up? 17 days is a lot of time. Unfortunately, Hotmail, to which it went, does not show delivery headers. But before you blame Hotmail only, 17 days is years on the Internet.

A straw poll of five eligible male friends also turned up ???? about this email at all. Although many remember receiving a sealed snail mail about MIW going defunct.

It reminds this slut of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where the notices were "always there on display". Dube diligence, this slut says. What’s your take? Tell the sluts…

No, this is not bashing the Malaysian govt or its censors.

It’s a lamentation by film director Amir Muhammad, about how Berita Harian (MY) more or less single-handedly influenced the censors, LPF, to retract an approval for his movie, The Last Communist.

Other movies have been released in recent times, such as The Motorcycle Diaries, about Che Guevara.

The movie is a song-and-dance treatment of the life of Chin Peng, who caused much trouble for Malaysia (with Singapore) after WWII until the country’s independence.

As such, Muhammad’s is of the opinion that the paper is unfairly out for his blood.

To add to his argument, he said that his film had previously been approved, after painstakingly shown to a few choice parties, including one from the Malaysian Special Forces.

The moral of this story is once again about the power of the media – Berita Harian (MY) is an established paper in the country — and *then*, the new power of the people to talk back, via blogs such as Amir Muhammad’s, at http://lastcommunist.blogspot.com.

The fact that the blog spreaded the news more than the paper itself should convince you to the power of the blogs.

Here is also a review of the movie by a blogger.

Indoscene heard this comment from some regional journalists during a city tour of the Lion City. 

We are here for an ASEAN media briefing sponsored by a local corporate powerhouse. 

And for a number of the media, it was the first time leaving their home countries.

Some may scoff and say what business do inexperienced journalists have coming on overseas junkets? 

Their english capabilities may be limited, they never ask questions and their comprehension on the products on hand may be suspect.  

This can be especially true as some media (such as in Indonesia) have a rotation policy to prevent one journo becoming too much of an expert in one topic and hogging all the knowledge.  Or to make sure not one reporter become too close to the client.  Or perhaps to prevent one taking all the overseas trips and not bringing back any gifts for the rest of the office.  

Reporters, after all, should have a good basic understanding of many topics.  

As a result, you can have a tourism writer covering the latest in electricity generation using the infamous 1.21 gigawatts protocols or a tech writer experiencing the beauty of a slow food festival.

But what about the sponsoring organization’s return on investment in bringing these journos from overseas? 

Look at the long term. 

There are many senior journalists nowadays who definitely know their stuff and can ask all the pertinent (if not favorable) questions to craft their excellently written articles. 

But young reporters are eager to learn, and are rarely given the opportunity to go overseas and experience new technologies or points of view.  

Even a simple visit to the Fountain of Wealth (which consists of a 5 buildings and the largest water fountain in the world forming an open palm facing skyward to bring in good feng shui - heard that from an overseas country PR manager regaling his charges of his extensive knowledge of Singapore - knowledge Indoscene also saw on the Discovery Channel!) can provide a contrasting perspective to the visitor who have always lived within their own shells.

In the long term, these cub reporters will be grateful for the opportunity for them to learn new things and gaze upon the sponsors a bit more favorably. 

This is how relationships begin. 

Indoscene has heard tales of senior reporters, because of their influence and stature (and perhaps near-monopoly of certain pages), can demand business class seats for short trips, permanent loans of test products, as well as hyper exclusive interviews. 

Would a company alienate the rest of the media just to satisfy maintain the power lust special relationship of one senior editor?     

Indoscene believes that everyone must start somewhere. 

If senior or experienced reporters are unavailable, bring in the cubs and have a PR manager or agency consultant guide them through the destination city as well as through the mounds of press releases. 

It could be the beginning of a beautiful relationship. 

And we could even learn about ourselves again, helping them take their tentative steps.

Six year old girl sends letter to Apple with ideas for her favorite iPod Nano and general counsel tells her to jump off a cliff (well, figuratively at least). 

Then the press hears about it.

Indoscene is sure if her letter landed at the PR desk, they would have carefully read it, immediately respond presonally and pat themselves on the back for good karma. 

Give it to lawyers on the other hand, and the poor PR person must deal with the stupidity (yes, stupidity) of people wearing horse blinds. 

You’d think people with a Masters degree (law, right?) would have more sense.

Like the poor PR agency for Temasek , Indoscene wonders if Apple will be seeking a new General Counsel.