Free speach in Finland is under attack. Jani Uusitalo, a Finnish blogger was contacted by the Finnish police with a cease and desist letter which demanded he removed information from his blog about events at the elementary school of Korivaara. Uusitalo wrote about the headmaster of the local school who supposedly gave fundamentalist religious schooling to kids in the elementary grades (3-4). The headmaster contacted the police who demanded the information to be taken off the blog, which should be unconstitutional, only a court can order web pages to be shut down

Visit his blog for the full story in English. (Hat tip to Phil.)

Just noticed that Doves have turned their site into a blog. Neat.

Microsoft has started distributing press releases via RSS. I'm sooo way ahead of you ;-)

This is getting fun. Swedish public service television, an influential opinion journalist on a leading newspaper, an anonymous blogger and now the blogging president of Ung Vänster, the youth association of the left party - all punching at each other over a TV show about the definition of terrorism. And you didn't think the Swedish blogosphere was able to stir up a heated debate?

Can journalists become too powerful? Yes of course. We often say that along with our peers, media is the most important source for citizens to shape an opinion of the state of our society. But media concentration, conglomeration, consolidation and corporatism puts the power of media into a declining number of hands. So when DSM for the 30th time announces Sweden's 100 most influential opinion leaders, there is reason to reflect why the list looks like it does.

DSM (Debatt Sanningssökande Mediakritik) surveys every year what individuals are most influential in the debate in Sweden. The questionnaire is sent to 300 journalists, which ones is not disclosed. They are to select 12 individuals they think most shape opinion in Sweden. Not surprisingly, they vote for other journalists. On this year's top 100 list, 17 of the top 30 are journalists (in bold below). Then the list is being sent to media where other journalists write about how influential they are (more than 40 articles today about the list). See a pattern?

Media then present this without disclosing that journalists are the only source. PJ Anders Linder of Svenska Dagbladet for example writes on his blog "[The list] is established by opinion leaders who vote for each other..." Not exactly true is it? The text would have a whole different ring to it if it stated that "journalists vote for each other", right? On another place in Svenska Dagbladet the list is presented as being voted by "300 people who's profession is to follow the debate in society". TT falls in the same trap. How absurd. It is called journalists, and I think your readers deserve to know.

Why is this a problem? Well, if anything, it serves to uphold the view of media as the key influencer in society and that itself is a problem. Politicians can be voted out of office, but with few alternatives on a highly concentrated media market, it is harder to "get rid of" media influencers that we disagree with or for one or the other reason would like to see stripped off their power. This list should be considered a journalist lobbying campaign, nothing else. And second, who voted is not disclosed. Was it 150 journalists with a certain agenda? Was it more journalists from established media that responded, and then voted on themselves? We don't know.

1. PERSON, Göran
2. REINFELDT, Fredrik
3. JOSEFSSON, Janne
4. BERGSTRAND, Mats
5. GUILLOU, Jan
6. MELLIN, Lena
7. OLOFSSON, Maud
8. WOLODARSKI, Peter
9. LUNDGREN, Nils
10. SCHYMAN, Gudrun
11. EKDAL, Niklas
12. GREIDER, Göran
13. ADAKTUSSON, Lars
14. CARL XVI GUSTAF
15. NUDER, Pär
16. BERGSTRÖM, KG
17. ISAKSSON, Anders
18. OHLSSON, Per T
19. BODSTRÖM, Thomas
20. WALLSTRÖM, Margot
21. LEIJONBORG, Lars
22. BLIX, Hans
23. KLEIN, Helle
24. LINDER, Anders PJ
25. GRÖNING, Lotta
26. HEDVALL, Barbro
27. NORBERG, Johan
28. WETTERSTRAND, Maria
29. ABRAHAMSSON, Maria
30. MARKLUND, Liza

Tidningen Ångermanland don't buy the propaganda. Well done. SVT notes that journalists are the source. And journalist Dan Josefsson wrote about this in ETC already in 1998.

Footnote: 3 of the top 30 are also bloggers, see links.

Update: #29 is also a journalist, I missed that one. Thanks Johan.
Update 2: It was Dan Josefsson, not Janne, who wrote the article in ETC. Thanks Bengt.

Today I went out of my way to get hold of a copy of Doves' third album Some Cities, that was released in Sweden today. And I tell you, it was in the kind of weather you'd be close to insane to go out voluntarily in. Anyhow, after listening to the CD on my stereo I threw it into the PC to listen while I was doing some writing. About a third of the back of the sleeve is covered with warning texts about CD copy protection, so I was unsure if I would be able to play it on my PC. The first thing that happens is that this warning note is shown. Now, it's not that I don't trust record labels, but I'm just not up to installing a number of undefined files on my computer, not in these days of DRM paranoia. So I clicked "Cancel".



The fine part? The record played beautifully anyway. A review of the album will be posted tomorrow, hopefully.

A former colleague of mine (aschoenb[at]cme.com) is conducting research for his master's degree of in-house/corporate communication practitioners and their influence and relationships with senior management. He is hoping to understand what attributes, such as organizational structure, individual leadership and relationship management, contribute the most to our role as professionals. I've personally taken the survey and it should take only 15- 20 minutes to complete. The survey is completely confidential and he's promised to send you the results if you're interested. If you work on a corporate communications team here is a link to the survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=1797813187

Thank's for your help.

SVT, the Swedish public service television, has caused irritation in Italy because of an ad campaign promoting SVT as "free television", not folding under political pressure. The campaign portrays Italy as a warning example of the opposite, due to Silvio Berlusconi's strong hold of some 90 per cent of Italian tv which in turn "gave him" the last election. The campaign did not amuse the Italians who unite in front of the insults from their northern EU neighbours. The Swedish ambassador in Rome Staffan Wrigstad was called up to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the embassy was the target of hundreds of email protests.

The reactions from Swedish politicians show that the left haven't lost their tactic skills. Both (m), (c) and (kd) voice concern over the fact that Swedish state owned television makes political statements, while the left, (s) and (v) do not want to interfere. Quad erat demonstrandum, sort of.

Stockholm Spectator has a summary in English, while Expressen has some interesting views in Swedish, if you belong to those who believe that SVT might not be that free of political interference after all.

Constantin Basturea reports that he has more than 100 PR bloggers on his Blogdigger group "Headlines from PR Blogs", up from 30 blogs in March last year. And that does not include the two Swedish blogs JMWs blog and JKL blog.

Lundblad responds to my post yesterday about the importance of blogs. Among other things he writes: "But writing is the most important. Not blogging." (What is blogging really?). And I agree, a democratic society benefits from having thinking citizens that are able to freely express what's on their minds and blogs have enabled millions of people with easy access to a writing platform. But the technology does play an important role here and that's why I pointed to syndication and connectivity yesterday. If we are to look at this topic from a democratic standpoint, then a million webpages with people writing is a good thing. But what is better than writing is dialogue. The way blogs enable people to engage in conversations with others is a strong power that has already brought down both politicians and media stars from their previously almost untouchable positions. This network effect would be hard to achieve if there were 6 million web diaries that only to a limited extent read and challenged each other.

About the connectivity: ego-searching on Google is not quite the same as checking Technorati links, for several reasons. Google is not updated (I think) as frequently and there is nothing that indicates that a new link automatically gets such a high rank in Google that you can easily find it. Technorati on the other hand is updated continuously. An hour after I wrote my last post, you could find it if you searched Lundblad's domain on Technorati, and it was shown first because it was the latest link. And if you want to know what others write about your blog, you could do like me and create an RSS feed for Technorati links and subscribe to it in your news reader. The address to my feed is http://www.technorati.com/watchlists/rss.html?wid=13545. That way I don't need to search myself, I get information automatically the minute it happens.

That is why I mean that the choice of channel is extremely important. Of course the writing is number one, that is the reason why we spend all these unpaid hours in front of the computer. But the result can be vastly different if you choose to write on a regular website or an RSS-enabled blog.

Nicklas Lundblad reflects on the current process at Internetworld to name Sweden's best blogs and, as I interpret it, about why blogs are so darn important. He writes:

"...why is it so important for everyone to be a part of the blog phenomenon? I have a website - kommenterat - where I write.

That's it folks. Is it a blog? Is it a wiki? Is it a Typepad-driven libertarian opinion machine?

Who cares?!"

Well, I do. There is a distinct difference between a website and a blog in that I would never visit Nicklas Lundblad's site on a regular basis (sorry), but since it is now in a blog format with an RSS feed, I am able to subscribe to his texts and that makes it a hundred times easier to follow what he writes. I can scan his posts and read the ones I am interested in, without having to go to the website to check if there are any new updates.

And the connectivity between blogs makes them infectious. If Lundblad makes a Technorati search on his blog, he will find this post in an instant. That would never happen if we had two separate websites.

Let's face it, a genius without a channel to reach an audience, will not be heard or read but a mediocre writer like myself have hundreds of subscribers much thanks to the ease of use of the blog medium. The choice of channel is everything.

Swedish Internetworld has been kind enough to include my blog in the nominations for Best Blog, under the category "IT & Media". 50 blogs in total are nominated in the four categories Politics, IT & Media, Culture and Misc. Voting ends on March 15.

If you like this blog please consider casting your vote here, just click the circle in front of "Media Culpa" and then click the grey button at the end of the page that says "Rösta" ("Vote" in Swedish). That's all. Thanks.

Coming from a company making its living producing intellectual property, today's headline in Dagens Nyheter is all the more surprising. "Slipp slabbet, ladda ner istället" ("Avoid the trash, download instead"). DN today encourages readers to download 50 Cent's new single "Candy Shop" to avoid seeing the distasteful cover (and indeed it is). But to most people, downloading equals getting access to illegal copies of digital music, and since iTunes does not exist in Sweden, and neither CDon nor Poplife has the single available for legal download, the suggestion can only be interpreted in one way. Instead of encouraging illegal filesharing, why not boycott 50 Cent all together until he realizes it's the 21st century? [Article not online, appears on page 2 in DN Kultur.]

Yesterday was the first anniversary of this blog (and I managed to miss it). Some fairly recent summaries of the first year statistics can be found here and a summary of publicity during 2004 is here, with the addition that the interview in Internetworld now is online.

To misquote my favourite EP of all time, "16 Days/Gathering Dust" by This Mortal Coil (featuring their unforgettable version of Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren"), I am back from 16 days of vacation in Thailand, doing not much else than lying on the beach gathering dust. No tv, no radio, no newspapers and no internet for two and a half weeks is very refreshing for a media addict like myself. But back at the lab again, my Bloglines account is close to collapsing, and I seriously don't know where to start reading all the thousands of posts that have piled up since I last logged in. But here are a few things worth noting that happened the last weeks.

* Media monitoring company Agent25 follow in the footsteps of Observer and starts monitoring a number of blogs. UPDATE: My blog is on the list of blogs in English, along with prominent bloggers Bjørn Stærk, Johan Norberg, EU Commissioner Margot Wallström, Peter Lindberg, Stefan Geens, Stockholm Spectator, Undercurrent and Carl Bildt (see below).
* Annika Billström, City Commissioner in Sockholm starts blogging.
* Former Swedish prime minister and leader of the Moderate Party, Carl Bildt has started blogging. What took you so long?
* Alf Fyhrlund from SCB, the Swedish Census Bureau, has started a blog about regional and local statistics in Sweden and interantionally. Link via Markmedia.
* Dailies Trelleborgs Allehanda and Ystads Allehanda starts RSS feeds. (Hat tip to Fredrik Wackå).
* Swedish public service television SVT reconsiders its attitude towards blogs. Two months ago journalist Per Gudmundson was forced to shut down his blog, ranked Sweden's 4th most influential by Observer. Now SVT are looking at how to use blogs to "develop communcation between SVT and its audiences". Irony, anyone?
* SBS who owns TV channel Kanal 5 bought cable channel Canal Plus.