Andres Wittermann on international media relations trends

Microsoft Stops Free Press

If you think you need Kim Il Sung or The Burmese military junta to control the media and to dictate the contents of the press, that was the old days. I still remember when Intel tried to 'control' the press when a bug was discovered in the early Pentiums threatening to withdraw ads if journalists would cover the story (and what fun we all had to ridicule them for being so blind and stupid at the time).

And here comes Microsoft. They have sent all publications who want to have Office Professional Plus 2007 Beta 2 as a cover CD a contract to be signed by them. This means that every publication carrying this version of Office 2007 on their cover CD have to send the planned articles to MS for approval. Not onl that they want to make sure you get the product right, they specifically state that any negative writing about MS and their products should be avoided by this measure.

They even give you guidelines on what they would like to see written!

The publishers are also told nbot to have any open source products on the same CD - specifically not Open Office.

I can only hope this willcause a major outcry in the media industry. ComputerBILD, Germany's largest IT (consumer) magazine, has already decided not to sign the contract - and does not plan to publish the Office version on their CDs.

And I would have thought no company would dare confront the media this way again!

Empty Spaces

It has been a long time again since I last posted something on this blog. I have to admit it is hard to keep a blog while being so busy with work and family.

Even longer ago I posted a piece about the bad mood in my country about the upcoming footbal World Cup finals. It has only become worse. Not only that we are not sure about the quality of our team - but even worse, it seems like in Japan and South Korea four years ago, we will see empty seats in our fantastic new stadiums.

Sueddeutsche Zeitung is warning this event becomes an exclusive one for sponsors, politicians and very rich people. And winners of competitions run by the sponsors. So we are all waiting for our ordered tickets still (especially my son and two of his friends which I wanted to take to a game). Even PR Blogger is writing about this today (he and his son are also waiting for tickets yet).

It is a shame how these formerly great events for people have turned into money machines where the real fans are watching the games on their recently bought plasma and LCD flatscreens. Or is it a conspiracy of the manufacturers of these who have bought all tickets and don't distribute them? That would explain everything.