TechDay ends links with PR firm after ‘exasperating’ requests
What happened between TechDay and PR firm Archetype?; The Daily Telegraph’s new TV play; SBS’s ad revenue bucks the market.
Writing an industry gossip column sometimes requires pulling together various strands and weaving an amusing tale. Other times, it’s enough to point and say, “Look! What the hell?” This is one such occasion.
A blow-up between a tech news group and a PR firm is becoming a source of deep fascination for PR sector operatives.
TechDay owns a conglomerate of small tech news websites across Asia and the UK, and is the self-described “grand central station” for IT news in Australia (it is, it proudly states, updated “multiple times per day”). It has also had it up to here with PR firm Archetype.
After 17 years, it has severed its relationship with Archetype in what TechDay’s New Zealand-based publisher, Sean Mitchell, wrote was a “shocking turn of events” in a detailed article posted online this month.
TechDay tiptoes that murky line between journalism and sponsored content – it charges $1450 to “turn your press release into a news story and publish it” on one of its sites.
The relationship took a nosedive, Mitchell wrote, when Archetype asked TechDay to rewrite a brief “as if it were our original idea”, which would then be pitched back to its client.
He continued, accusing Archetype of booking meetings over “trivial matters” such as event dietary requirements. It was “nothing short of exasperating”, he wrote. These trivialities “appear to be a tactic to inflate KPI results or billable hours at the expense of journalists’ time (and maybe clients’ budgets)” he added, volunteering that Archetype took more than three months to pay invoices it owed the publication.
Lee Nugent, Archetype’s APAC director, told us TechDay had published “unfounded, untrue and potentially damaging claims” and the firm had tried to resolve the dispute amicably. Mitchell said the dispute had nothing to do with Australia.
It’s Michael_Jackson_eating_popcorn.gif stuff. Sadly, Mitchell’s article, headlined “a cautionary tale of mismanagement and unethical requests”, was taken down days after we contacted both parties.
In other news...
The Daily Telegraph is exploring the launch of a TV product.
DT TV: News Corp must be delighted in the recent success of the Daily Telegraph on TikTok. The Telegraph’s veteran crime editor Mark Morri and reporter Josh Hanrahan have become stars with bored teens, recording low-fi clips where the duo in the newsroom discuss grisly crime yarns or share insights into the city’s ecstasy and cocaine trade.
We hear News Corp has been hatching a plan for a full-blown online video channel that sources are describing as “Daily Telegraph TV”. The rumour is James Willis was poached from Ben Fordham’s producer team to be part of the effort. At the moment, anything will do to fight back against the slow death of newspapers.
SBS in demand: It has been a challenging year for broadcasters, especially those reliant on advertising. Not so for SBS, however, which reported $173 million in “advertising, sponsorship and client services” revenue in 2022-23 – a 12.7 per cent increase on the previous year, its annual report reveals.
It said the 2022 FIFA World Cup, the success of Alone Australia, and a 150 per cent rise in ads on NITV contributed to this bottom-line boost. It received $316.8 million from the government.
Probing: Former ABC political editor Andrew Probyn, who was made redundant in a cost-cutting flurry, has landed on his feet as national affairs editor at 9 News Canberra. He starts in November.
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