Two Swedish Eyes on Media and Public Relations
Once in a while a blogger or a company changes the URL for an RSS feed and often they lose a significant number of subscribers by doing that. I think Bloglines (my RSS reader) should make this process easier by letting users change URLs in their subscriptions. Today, the feed URL is the only thing users can’t change when they edit a subscription. Instead you have to unsubscribe to the old feed and then add the new feed as a different subscription.
I will be speaking about blogs at a breakfast meeting in Oslo on 19 October called “Blogging – when the audience takes the stage“. The Norwegian newsletter Mandag Morgen (“Monday Morning”) has invited me to speak along with its editor Olav Anders Øvrebø who also runs the Undercurrent blog.
Sweden’s leading business daily Dagens Industri will launch a new business magazine called Diego, with a first issue due in November. But as of yesterday, Diego is already equipped with a blog at www.diego.se. Worth noting is that the blog has both comments, RSS and trackbacks. The latter is previously unheard of among Swedish media blogs [Edit: Sydsvenskan’s blog has trackbacks].
Another unusual feature is that all URLs (for comments, RSS, trackbacks etc) are under the domain www.jefferyedling.se, which belongs to the communications agency that produced the blog. This is probably not wise. Any business that launches a venture like this would be much better off owning all the feeds under its own domain. What if the blog is a success with hundreds or thousands of subscribers, and then they find out they don’t want to use the agency anymore, or the agency goes bust. Then Dagens Industri will be forced to change URLs and lose much of its subscribers in the process.
Apart from that little remark, the initiative looks very promising.
Via Jeffery och Edling.
Update: The feeds have now been changed to a new domain. Example, RSS: http://www.diegofeed.se/?feed=rss2
SR Västmanland reports that local dailies in the Ingress Media group – Bärgslagsbladet/Arboga tidning, Sala Allehanda, Fagerstaposten and Avesta Tidning – will start to bring in more material from their readers.
Göran Lundberg, Managing Director at Ingress Media says:
“To be able to keep up with the evolution the paper should open up to more story tellers.”
At Micro Persuasion I read that PR Week has started to offer a number of RSS feeds. Well Viggo and Rolf, how come Resumé and Dagens Media have no RSS feeds? Even business weekly Affärsvärlden now comes in RSS format (feed).
Update: Björn informs us that Dagens Media actually does have a feed.
Aftonbladet has an article online today about the “fact” that the new Swedish party Junilistan (“the June list”) is supported by 18 per cent of the voters. All major Swedish media report on this story today. Svenska Dagbladet’s new business site N24 reports that “18% wants to vote for Junilistan”.
The poll made last night by Sifo and Aftonbladet is nothing short of junk science. It has no relevance as to what people would actually vote for. Voters have several alternatives they are considering and many people might want to evaluate a new party before they rule out the possibility of voting for it. Hence the large number of voters that might consider voting for these parties. Aftonbladet escapes direct lies by saying that there is great support for Junilistan, while N24’s claim that 18% wants to vote for Junilistan is embarrassingly incorrect.
If the poll follows the same structure as the Sifo poll from last month, then the right wing parties are not even included as an alternative. Is it perhaps possible that the inclusion of right wing parties in the survey would alter the results? I believe so.
In the same poll, 9 per cent would consider voting for a party that doesn’t even yet exist, namely Sjukvårdspartiet (“the medical care party”). This is pure nonsense and will in no way reflect behavior on voting day. I bet Spongebob Squarepants would get 10 per cent if he had a party in the survey (I know, it’s a metaphor I’ve used before, but I couldn’t help myself…).
This is media making up news that aren’t news. Please stop.
[Edit: Link removed]
Update: Aftonbladet’s Helle Klein refers to the poll with the same vague statements that lead readers to believe that this is actual votes.
“I see that Junilistan gets 18 per cent in a new Sifo survey”.