Apple has a track record of playing favourites with publications, so that a handful of journalists get treated like royalty while the plebs consider themselves lucky if they can extract a “no comment”. Of course, these very select American publications retain their editorial independence, but there’s always a hidden threat: they know that if they don’t provide the right sort of coverage, they can be excommunicated. And it looks as though that’s just happened to The New York Times.
Apple has just released a preview (beta) version of a minor upgrade to its Mac OS X operating system, so who got “the treatment” this time? One unexpected recipient was influential blogger John Gruber, from Daring Fireball. He has been called the Ultimate Apple Fanboy, though given the state of Apple-oriented journalism, there are many rivals for this prestigious title.
What’s interesting is that Gruber actually describes the treatment he got:
“We were sitting in a comfortable hotel suite in Manhattan just over a week ago. I’d
been summoned a few days earlier by Apple PR with the offer of a private “product
briefing”. I had no idea heading into the meeting what it was about. I had no idea
how it would be conducted. This was new territory for me, and I think, for Apple.”
…
“The meeting was structured and conducted very much like an Apple product announce-
ment event. But instead of an auditorium with a stage and theater seating, it was simply
with a couch, a chair, an iMac, and an Apple TV hooked up to a Sony HDTV. And instead
of a room full of writers, journalists, and analysts, it was just me, Schiller, and two others
from Apple — Brian Croll from product marketing and Bill Evans from PR.”
Phil Schiller is Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing and used to be the primary stand-in for Apple’s top salesman, the late, great Steve Jobs. In that capacity, for example, Schiller unveiled the iPhone 3GS.
Someone with Apple Royalty status, such as The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg, might well be blasé about this level of attention, but it’s pretty unusual stuff for bloggerdom.
Apple journalists did not have to work very hard to figure out why the New York Times was being blanked in Manhattan, its own back yard: it’s payback for publishing articles about Apple’s problems with the Chinese factory workers who actually make its products. And as The Washington Post noted, they got the message:
Says a source at the Times: “They are playing access journalism…
I’ve heard it from people inside Apple: They said, look, you guys
are going to get less access based on the iEconomy series.”
The amusing aspect of this story is that Apple is shooting itself in the foot. On American newspapers, the people who review products are rarely the ones who write about factory conditions and similar issues. For example, the New York Times’s biggest “crime” was In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad, published on 25 January, which was written not by tech columnist David Pogue but by Charles Duhigg and David Barboza. And I don’t expect they care.
Tweets sent by Rio Ferdinand and Katie Price promoting Snickers are to be formally investigated by the Advertising Standards Authority.
Following complaints, the ASA will look into whether the tweets were in breach of advertising rules by failing to adequately inform the public they were part of a marketing campaign.
When Sky News contacted Snickers earlier this week, a spokesperson said a series of “teaser tweets” had been sent out to “comply with social media regulations” to “ensure Twitter users knew they were enjoying promotional tweets”.
But the ASA will investigate whether it was clear the celebrity was getting paid to advertise the product.
Katie Price also tweeted a picture with a Snickers bar
In a statement the regulator said: “The ASA has launched a formal investigation into tweets by Katie Price and Rio Ferdinand to establish whether Mars’ @SnickersUK#hungry#spon campaign is in breach of the Advertising Codes.
“We are investigating two points: (a) whether it should have been stated in the ‘teaser’ tweets that they were marketing communications and (b) whether the hashtag “#spon” in the final ‘reveal’ tweet made it clear enough that that tweet was a marketing communication.”
More at: http://news.sky.com/home/showbiz-news/article/16157569
The ever-present coffee chain is expanding its dominant position on the market by offering a range of beer and wine to its customers, alongside a wider choice of savoury nibbles such as flatbreads and cheese plates.
The move is intended to draw in a larger proportion of evening customers looking to relax after work.
Starbucks is currently testing the initiative at a series of select stores in Spain and the US, where Burger King is already experimenting with the sale of in-store alcohol.
There are no plans as yet to bring alcohol to UK shops, although it may be on the cards if schemes in other countries are successful.
More at: http://www.stylist.co.uk/life/starbucks-to-sell-wine#image-rotator-1
Journalists are increasingly turning to social media to verify stories, research has found.
According to the fourth International Study of Journalists study by the Oriella PR Network the use of blogs, Facebook and Twitter are becoming more common in being used to source and verify news stories with 47% of respondents saying they used Twitter and 35% using Facebook when searching for news.
478 journalists from 15 countries responded to the survey, with 42% admitting that they had drawn information from blogs that had not previously visited before for news.
62% also said that PR representatives were used when sourcing stories, while another 59% cited corporate spokespeople as sources.
When it came to validating stories already in progress, one third of respondents said that they used Twitter, a quarter cited Facebook and another quarter said they used Blogs.
