kullin – Page 271 – Media Culpa

Corporate blogs as an internal channel

One of the reasons I started blogging was that I thought this would be an interesting way of communicating for the company I work for. But it has been hard to find really good examples of corporate blogs.

So I found this article to be a good reading for would-be corporate bloggers. Clickz.com writes about Symmetricom, the world’s leading provider of atomic clocks, and precision devices and equipment. They use blogs to keep in touch with a decentralized sales force that includes 325 representatives and distributors scattered throughout the world.

Jeanne Hopkins, Symmetricom’s senior manager of e-marketing and transactional sales channels says: “My boss now says it’s the most fantastic sales tool he has ever seen implemented in an organization. And people in the field tell us they feel more connected to the company — and in the know.”

Bloggers influence big media

Online Journalism Review reports about blogger Robert Cox who tried to get The New York Times to get a correction in the paper. He tried everything, but in the end, it was his parody of the Times’ correction page – and the overreaction from the Times’ legal department – that got the newspaper to change its policy.

Link via Dan Gillmor.

New York Times in unusual media culpa over Iraq coverage

The New York Times today had a healthy and unusual article (free registration required) about its own coverage of the Iraq war.

“Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge.”

Some parts of the coverage the paper is not happy with, and that includes for example trusting sources like Ahmad Chalabi or people close to him.

“The problematic articles varied in authorship and subject matter, but many shared a common feature. They depended at least in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on “regime change” in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks.”

A sample of the coverage is online at nytimes.com/critique.

Consumers use blogs to get even with brands

I was reading this post on Whatsnextblog about how disgruntled former employees use the internet for revenge. A few minutes later I stumbled onto this website, saabdisaster.com, which is a blog that was “created because Saab Sweden and it’s agent in South Africa are having big problems for the last six months, and we, Saab owners, are the victims of that!” There seems to be at least 17 Saab owners committed to the blog and they claim to have had 9000 visitors during the last week.

The initial reaction is of course that this is a public relations disaster for Saab in South Africa, but because of the viral nature of blogs, these things have a tendency to spread. One post was made on the subject in a discussion forum at UK Saab owners club and traditional media reported about the site too. One wonders if Saab has a strategy in place to monitor if and how this spreads through the blogosphere?

For the record I have a Saab 9-5 and I’m very satisfied with it, but then again, I’m not in South Africa.

The assimilation of Saab

Being born and raised in Trollhättan, the location of Saab’s world headquarters, I found this article from The New York Times to be interesting (free registration required). It is about the assimilation of the Saab brand into the GM family.

Link via Branding Blog.

MTV starts pink channel

MTV Networks will start a 24-hour cable television network in February targeting gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender viewers. The channel will be called LOGO and aired in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.