Media Culpa - Two Swedish eyes on media and public relations

Spinning around

Precis, The Association of Public Relations Consultancies in Sweden, are hosting an event tonight that I am going to attend. The event is called Spinn 2004 and during the evening Precis will hand out awards for best marketing PR in 8 categories. The name Spinn upset people at agency Spinn Action Marketing AB, who thought Precis should have managed to give their competition a name that had not been taken by an agency.

I have another problem with the word "spin". It doesn't have very positive connotations to it and I am surprised that the PR industry really wants to be associated with spin or to be recognized as spin doctors.

Some negative definitions of the word spin:

> twist and turn so as to give an intended interpretation; "The President's spokesmen had to spin the story to make it less embarrasing"
> make up a story; "spin a yarn"

The name was coined by Citigate Gramma.

A moderate blog

Johan Norberg notes that Sven Otto Littorin, the party secretary of the Moderate Party, has launched a blog.

Swedish Television: Blogging is not ok

One of the leading Swedish bloggers, journalist Per Gudmundson has decided to quit blogging. He had come clean with his employer SVT (Swedish public service television) about his blog and his boss noted that the blog articles goes against the policy for SVT journalists to refrain from public statements or actions that might jeopardize the objectivity of the company [SVT]. And since blogging is a job at below minimum wage his decision was pretty easy. Job: yes. Blog: no.

Per says in his final blog post that "the blog is stopping me in my career and I need to move on".

Sadly one of the few blogging journalists and one of the best blogs will be no more in the blogosphere. For some, blogs will be a career booster but for others it will be an obstacle. About three weeks ago Gudmundson was named Sweden's fourth most influential blogger by media monitoring company Observer, but that information cannot have reached his boss at SVT.

UPDATE: Tobias Billström, member of the Swedish Parliament says about the decision:

- I question the management's evaluation of Per Gudmunson's blog. Of course a journalist can't watch a demonstration he participates in himself, but to comment on different courses of events on a blog is not a problem for impartiality.

Swedish media about blogs

I was interviewed last week by news agency TT Spektra for a "how-to"-article about blogs. These articles will probably be published in several smaller Swedish dailies the coming week and maybe promote blogging on a wider scale in Sweden. The first article can be found online today in Hudiksvalls Tidning.

> Bloggar ger folket en röst.
> Så kommer du igång att blogga.
> 10 bra bloggsidor.

UPDATE: The article has now also been published in Ljusdals-Posten, Hälsinge-Kuriren and Karlskoga-Kuriren.

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Add Technorati to your browser

Technorati have launched a beta version of a new cool feature called Technorati This. Add it to your Links Toolbar and you can access Technorati from your browser, no matter what page you're viewing.

You can use the Technorati This favelet in three ways:

- Select some text on any web page. Click the Technorati This favelet and it will search over 4.7 million weblogs for that text.
- While browsing any web page, click the Technorati This favelet and it will show you what bloggers are saying about that page right now.
- If the browser window is empty when you click the Technorati This favelet, it will ask you for a keyword or URL to search for.

More about Technorati This here.

Other useful favelets to add to your toolbar can be found here, for example Babelfish translations from Italian, French, German and Spanish into English. Finally I can read La Gazetta dello Sport in English.

Google reports success with internal blog

In an article in Network World, Jason Goldman, Blogger product manager at Google reports about the tremendous benefits from the first 18 months with an internal Weblog system. Google deployed an internal blog shortly after acquiring Blogger in early 2003. Says Goldman:

"Since then, we have seen a lot of different uses of blogs within the firewall: people keeping track of meeting notes, sharing diagnostics information, sharing snippets of code, as well as more personal uses, like letting co-workers know what they're thinking about and what they're up to. It really helps grow the intranet and the internal base of documents."

Get buzzwhacked

Do you have an LOK (lack of knowledge) to what words like googleproof mean? Then double click on this ghetto fabulous site to stay on top of the latest buzzwords. Buzzwhack have listed popular buzzwords from 1904 to 2004 and you can read the entire list in The Guardian. Recent examples:

1996 ghetto fabulous
1997 dot-commer
1998 text message
1999 Google
2000 bling bling
2001 9/11
2002 axis of evil
2003 sex up
2004 chav

Googleproof: One of the few benefits of sharing a name with a celebrity. It's virtually impossible for anyone to "google" or find out about you using an Internet search engine. You're googleproof.

More about new words: Swedish slang dictionary.

Via Constantin Basturea.

More on the cover up

Isobel Hadley-Kamptz gives sister paper Dagens Nyheter another blow on Expressen's web page today regarding the deleted sentence from Oivvio Polite's text from Bloggforum.

Spitting images

Spot the similarities? The new ad format on the top of both di.se and dagensps.se makes them look very similar.

di.se

Footnote: Dagens Industri made their redesign before DagensPS.

Aftonbladet launches electronic posters

Dagens Media reports that Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet has started with electronic posters in some stores in Stockholm. These tv screens are primarily supposed to promote Aftonbladet and can be updated centrally at any time. They can also contain ads for other products like snuff or gambling.

Blogger demographics

ClickZ has an article about blogosphere statistics.

I had seen some of it before at Technorati, but this information about blogger demographics was new to me. According to a Perseus study about 90 per cent of all bloggers are between 13 and 29. Which means that I am among the 7.5 per cent oldest bloggers out there. Ouch, maybe I can get a senior discount on my web hotel.

By the way, no bloggers over 69?

Via Micro Persuasion.

Reaching 20K

One of my favourite PR bloggers Neville Hobson reached 20,000 hits to his blog last Sunday. So I checked my stats on Monday night and found out that I had reached 20,000 unique visitors, exactly 20,000. How uncanny. Number of hits was around 26,000.

Bias, what bias?

My post yesterday about liberals being dissatisfied with media sent Swedish blogs into a buzz (1, 2, 3 and 4). The point I was trying to make was that when liberals say they are not satisfied with the media, I would like to hear why. One can only assume that it comes from a perceived leftist media bias, but I want to hear more convincing arguments.

I argued yesterday that most leading papers in Sweden are politically to the right. Some argued that this is only reflected in the op-ed pages but on the other hand, that is where the heavy opinion building material is published. And for example Dagens Nyheter states that "The paper is being edited in a liberal and open minded spirit." Yes, the paper, the whole paper.

Of course I am aware of the surveys from recent years that show that journalists are voting to the left of the public. The interesting question is, is that being reflected in the reporting. No, says media professor Kent Asp of JMG (Journalist School at Gothenburg University) in his official media report of 2002. Asp says that during the last election "the right wing parties got more favourable media coverage than the social democrats and its two support parties".

Media paper Journalisten explains: "[this] should be interpreted as that the right got more exposure, more positive attention and a larger impact for their key topics. The right got most positive treatment in Rapport and Aktuellt [on Swedish public service TV] followed by TV4 news, Dagens Nyheter, Göteborgs-Posten, Svenska Dagbladet and Expressen."

Journalisten continues: "Examining all the media in the report shows that the social democrats got the least favourable coverage of all parties."

Another example. Dick Erixon writes on his blog on Oct 29, regarding the Cecilia Uddén topic, that "[...] something that media organisations want to avoid at any cost, then it is to give right wing voices space in media." Might very well be so, but I'm not convinced. A survey performed by journalist Maria-Pia Boëthius showed that the influential programme "God morgon världen" on Swedish Radio during 1999 had 63 per cent right wing panelists and 37 per cent left wing. And that is in a medium that is supposed to be unbiased.

Per Wirtén writes in Arena: "Then something odd happens, namely that many journalists vote to the left, but they write liberal. It is quite interesting. Instead of polling journalists' voting habits, you should examine their values."

It is so easy to claim there is a leftist media bias. If you can prove it, it would be easier for me and others to believe it.

Media notices blogs

Swedish media continues to notice Observer's list of the 10 most influential blogs. Recent articles: Falu-Kuriren, Sundsvalls Tidning and Sydsvenskan.

Marketing is now about relations

You think that marketing is about pricing, promotion and distribution? That's sooo 1985. The American Marketing Association has updated its defintion of marketing, which it has had since 1985. The new one is all about value and customer relations.

Old: "Marketing is the process of planning and executing conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of goods, ideas and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals."

New: "Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders."

Via What's Your Brand Mantra?

Ericsson looks at RSS

Peter Stark, Application Manager at Sony Ericsson har written a position paper for W3C "Mobile Web Initiative" Workshop in Barcelona. In the paper Stark argues that:

"To further address the issue of how to get users online, and their reluctance to browse the Web in the traditional meaning, we look at another major trend. Push services are on the rise on the Internet, based on the de facto standard RSS. We believe that RSS has a great potential in mobile phones, as a technology to automatically provide updated content to users - accessing the Web without browsing."

Beyoncé goes RSS

Sony Music has started a number of RSS feeds for information about artists like Beyoncé Knowles, Cypress Hill, Korn and Nas. All feeds here. Maybe they will include audio files in the feeds in the future.

Liberal bloggers dissatisfied with liberal media?

I was part of a panel debate on Monday night at Bloggforum in Stockholm along with several of the most distinguished Swedish bloggers. The first panel included for example liberal thinker Johan Norberg who after the panel went on to participate in a debate at the Publishers' Club, Publicistklubben. Norberg summarized his experiences in an interesting article in Smejdan and on his blog. He writes: "[...]Publicistklubben was an old, tired and homogenous club for buddies in Swedish radio, discussing how to avoid criticism from outside, which they considered dangerous. Bloggforum, on the other hand, was a wonderful meeting of energetic bloggers from all sides, with ideas, a belief in the power of arguments, and a conviction that criticism and competition is something important that makes you better. When I despaired about old media at Publicistklubben, I was comforted by the fact that I had already seen a better future at Bloggforum."

He continues: "I have rarely seen such separate worlds. At Bloggforum there was a touching unity about the fact that critisism, conflict and competition are the very breath of life for media. It is because bloggers constantly monitor and critizise each other that you are forced to check your sources, sharpen your arguments and improve your analysis. It is the guarantee for the readers. If someone continues to make mistakes or lie, dissatisfaction spreads across the net and you lose credibility and readers.

Only fifteen minutes away, were representatives from the old monopoly media and argued that it was scary that it has become allowed to scrutinize their reporting."

During Bloggforum, Norberg touched upon the question on why there are more liberal bloggers in Sweden that leftist. As part of the explanation both during the panel and on his blog, Norberg blames media.

"EXPLAINING THE LIBERAL BLOG EXPLOSION: Another of the big discussions at Bloggforum was why classical liberals, libertarians and free-marketeers seem to be more active bloggers. This was my guess when I got the question:

– We are more dissatisfied with the media, so we have to be the media ourselves to get our point of view across."

[Two more points found in original article here.]

Most uf us who are familiar with Swedish press, know that 8 out of the 10 largest (paid) papers in Sweden are liberal or conservative, and one of the other two is Dagens Industri, who hardly can be categorized as social democratic in its reporting. So how can liberal bloggers be dissatisfied with their own media?

Sweden's 10 largest papers:

1. Aftonbladet: "independent social democrat"
2. Dagens Nyheter "independent liberal"
3. Expressen: "liberal"
4. Göteborgs-Posten: "liberal"
5. Svenska Dagbladet, "independent conservative"
6. Sydsvenskan: "independent liberal"
7. Dagens Industri: "independent"
8. Nerikes Allehanda: "liberal"
9. Östgöta Correspondenten: "independent conservative"
10. Upsala Nya Tidning: "liberal"

[Edit: I placed DN and Expressen in wrong order]

Watching the watchers' watchers

Blogland is not for the paranoid. Bloggers claim they are the antidote to media concentration and sloppy/biased reporting because they are watching the watchers, finally media are held accountable for the information they publish ("We will fact check your ass"). Another typical feature of blogs is that they are also watching each other. I'm still amazed about the fact that so many people think it is worthwhile to check what I write. Last week, media monitoring company Observer decided to watch my blog along with 9 others. And I have an RSS feed in my Bloglines.com account that monitors citations of my domain kullin.net via Popdex.com. Apparently there are 8 other people who do the same which means that not only are people monitoring what I say, but also what others are saying about my blog. That's cool - and scary.

PR blog research

Last week Mike Manuel did some research on the frequency of posts among fellow PR bloggers, including me. He concludes that "the average PR blogger creates a little more than 50 posts per month or ~2 posts per day". During the period that he researched, my blog doesn't reach that figure, but on the other hand 25% of the content was generated by one single blogger, Steve Rubel of course, so I think I did fine.

Musicplasma

Blogging has gotten me several new contacts around the world that I would never had the chance to know if I hadn't had this blog. Today I had the great opportunity of meeting Yann Mauchamp, Development Manager at World Editors Forum, an acquaintance only made possible through blogging.

Apart from discussing all kinds of media, internet and social networking related topics, Yann also gave me tip about this cool page that helps you find new artists based on your music preferences. Type in the name of an artist at www.musicplasma.com and it will give you several suggestions. This is a very good illustration of my music taste circa 1984.

Musicplasma search for A Flock Of Seagulls

Dagens Nyheter censors article about Peter Borgström

Journalist Oivvio Polite today wrote a story about Bloggforum that took place on Monday night. It was published in Dagens Nyheter's culture section, the very one that Peter Borgström wrote for. He was critized earlier this year by Stockholm Spectator for plagiarizing articles from the New York Times.

When Polite wrote his article, it contained a sentence about Borgström, but DN deleted that sentence without informing Polite. The sentence is in the middle of the article, so it cannot have been taken off because of lack of space.

His original text, published on his own webpage:

"What have for example all non-blogging journalist got to hide? A lot, if you should believe the blogger that revealed that DN journalist Peter Borgström had been borrowing a bit too much from the New York Times."

In Swedish:
"Vad har till exempel alla ickebloggande journalister att dölja? En hel, om man skall tro bloggaren som avslöjade att DN-journalisten Peter Borgström lånat lite väl flitigt ur New York Times."

The last sentence, in italics, had been erased by DN. The entire article is available on Polite's webpage in Swedish.

Link via Gustav Holmberg.

UPDATE: DN answers to critisism in Journalisten.

Lobbyist of the year

Ann-Therése Enarsson, secretary-general for A Non Smoking Generation was named Lobbyist of the Year 2004 at an award ceremony on Wednesday night for her passionate work that resulted in a new law which bans smoking in Swedish restaurants. The new law will come into effect on June 1, 2005.

On Thursday, the Swedish journalist awards were presented. Winners were:

Story teller of the year:
Susen Schultz, Svenska Dagbladet, News and feature graphics

Innovator of the year:
Marcos Hellberg, Jonas Franksson and Olle Palmlöf, SVT Väst, "CP-Magasinet"

Revelation of the year:
Katarina Karlsson, Norrbottens-Kuriren, About how Slovakian workers were used by SSAB, forcing them to work under dangerous conditions and for low wages.

Lukas Bonnier's Grand Journalist Prize:
Kerstin Brunnberg, Swedish Radio

...and now that bloggers more or less officially have gotten the status as influcencers of public opinion, who will take the initiative to name "Blogger of the Year"?

Swedish science mag launches group blog

I overheard this during Bloggforum on Monday evening and via Erik Stattin I found the link. Swedish science and technology magazine Forskning & Framsteg has started a group blog. Among the 12 bloggers there are 7 journalists from Forskning & Framsteg, one journalist from electronics magazine Elektroniktidningen, one associate professor in psychology from Stockholm University, one linguistic researcher from Swedish Institute of Computer Science, one historian and one professor emeritus in zooecology from Uppsala University.

The blog allows comments and has an RSS feed, but no visible permalinks. For some reason the RSS feed doesn't show up in my Bloglines account, although it says "10 new items". Hope it is just a temporary bug.

Halebop launches Sweden's "first" mobile blog

Halebop today launched the first (?) mobile blogging solution in Sweden, according to a press release. For 5 SEK (about 0.55 Euro) mobile phone users can get a private blog for their photos on www.halebop.se. To promote the launch Halebop lets hip hop bands Snook, MMBA and Chords have their own mobile blogs on the site. So far, they are not very blog-like, but rather a Flickr-like hosting solution for photos from camera phones. No permalinks for example. And question is if it even is the first solution in Sweden. Zmart launched a mobile blog solution in April 2004, but I can't quite figure out how it works and if you are able to post photos or not.

Swedish version of this blog

I have started a Swedish version of this blog because there are times when it is easier to write in my native tongue, and some stories might only be relevant to Swedish readers. In addition, some Swedes might find it easier to comment in Swedish. The blog is called Sfumato (definition).

I just posted a text in Swedish on Sfumato about a rising interest in blogs from traditional media, which indicates that the decreasing number of articles in October was just a dent in the curve.

Recent articles (in Swedish):
Internetworld
Nerikes Allehanda and Bergslagsposten
Dagens Media
Internetworld
Dagens Media

Spray jumps on the blog train

Lycos-owned web host/portal Spray adds blog functionality to its portfolio of web publishing tools. Customers that uses Spray's web hotel are able to use three different blog publishing tools; WordPress, Nucleus and b2evolution.

Lukas Moodysson writes in the New York Times

Swedish film maker Lukas Moodysson has an article in the New York Times. He often comes across as a complete goofball, this article is no exception. But as always with Moodysson, when he finally gets down to the nitty-gritty, he always has a point.

His latest controversial film "A hole in my heart" has been labelled revolting. It may very well be. Moodysson comments about these reactions:

"But I do think it's fascinating that people think it's more offensive if a human being throws up than if someone is shot in the head with a pistol."

Blog coverage decreases

The initial media interest in blogs during the fall has cooled off. In spite of coinciding with the run-up to the US election, the number of articles in Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish and Danish media decreased in October. Question is if this is a temporary dent in the curve (I think so).

Blog coverage in Nordic media 2004

A logical media life cycle for a phenomenon like blogs would include at least four steps.

1. Underground - not on the radar screen of traditional media.
2. Novelty - blogs in themselves are considered news. News stories would include descriptions of blogs, "how to"-articles, pros and cons etc.
3. Mainstream - people know what it is. News stories would include successful cases and descriptions, what are blogs good for, further developments etc.
4. Commodity - blogs are taken for granted and becomes part of the "normal" flow of news.

This life cycle is different for different kinds of media. For example, IT trade press has been writing about blogs for a long time, but dailies and business press have written substantially less. Considering that most people in Sweden still haven't heard about blogs, I am convinced that blogs are still in the novelty stage of the news life cycle.

What media are covering blogs (# of articles so far in 2004)?

Sweden:
1. IDG (37)
2. Computer Sweden (32)
3. Svenska Dagbladet (16)

Norway:
1. IT-Avisen (51)
2. Dagbladet (20)
3. Dagens Næringsliv (print edition) / Propaganda / TV2 Nettavisen (10)

Finland:
1. Digitoday Finland (21)
2. ITviikko (13)
3. Tietoviikko Online (9)

Denmark:
1. Berlingske Tidende (9)
2. Politiken (8)
3. Computerworld Online (7)

Front pages for sale

Swedish newspaper front pages are for sale. Two days in a row, the two competing free dailies in Stockholm have sold their cover pages to advertisers, or actually it is called a "wrap", an extra page before the front page, but designed to look a lot like the actual front page. City/H&M

Yesterday, there was an ad on the covers of Metro in Sweden, Finland and Denmark for the launch of the game Halo 2.

Today, H&M did the same with the cover of Stockholm City to promote its launch of the Karl Lagerfeldt collection in selected shops. Clearly advertisers are pushing the envelope in terms of how far into the editorial sections that you can go.

One single subscription for 9 of 10 Swedish top blogs

The fact that Observer now monitors blogs is a sign of the growing importance of this new medium. The fact that a blog savvy person doesn't really need to buy that service, illustrates the tools available that enable us to be our own monitoring company.

I have created a group at Blogdigger.com called "Bloggtoppen" for nine of the ten blogs that Observer listed yesterday to be of special importance (Dick Erixon doesn't have a web feed, so you would have to visit his site yourself, which in turn may give further arguments for his departure from the list). That means that you would only need to paste this URL into any news aggregator like Bloglines.com and then subscribe to this feed.

http://groups.blogdigger.com/rss.jsp?id=504

Or you could simply visit the webpage of Blogtoppen at http://groups.blogdigger.com/groups.jsp?id=504 and then you get all the posts from these nine blogs.

Is my blog officially a medium now?

Peter Lindberg sent an email to Observer regarding today's ranking of the most important blogs in Sweden.

Daniel Nordlund at Observer replied:
"The background to our ranking is that we have come to the conclusion that blogs as channels are so important to monitor that we have added the most important ones as part of our monitoring service.

The list that DN today published is the list that we have started to monitor, in other words, the ones that we have graded as being most important. At the same time we are convinced that the importance of blogs will increase and in turn also monitoring of them. Because of that, looking forward, we are going to invest a lot in this area."

Does this mean that my blog now is officially considered a proper medium and that all sorts of PR people will start pitching me now (that has already started but not by anyone from Sweden)?

Anyhow, the upcoming blog debate in Stockholm on Monday, Bloggforum.se is promising to be a historic event, considering that all top 6 on the list of the most important blogs will be in the panel, and 7 of the top 10. That should be an incentive to participate in our debate.

UPDATE: The top ten list has been discussed a lot during the day in the Swedish blogosphere and the main issue has been, not surprisingly why these ten have been chosen. Many don't have comments activated and may not even be considered blogs. Johan Norberg, PJ Just Nu, Niklas Lundblad, Dick Erixon and Peter Lindberg have all chosen not to have comments. I still consider them blogs, although Erixon probably would be more blog-like if he had permalinks on his posts.

Some critisism to the list today has been around the fact that there are other Swedish blogs with possibly more readers than these ten. So why has Chadie for example been excluded? I think that Observer have ranked the blogs not only on number of readers but also considered:

1. Focus - are they trying to influence readers with a clear agenda?
2. Platform - are they writers that already have influence? If Göran Persson started blogging tomorrow morning he would be the most influential blogger before lunch, simply because of his position. Many of the names on the top ten list already are influential people in media and/or politics.
3. Topic - these blogs are all focused on media and politics and other blogs that comment on a broader variation of topics may lose out in terms of impact.

And because of that, my guess is that Observer thinks that some Swedish blogs may reach a lot of readers, but in regards of their influence over public opinion, they are not influential enough to be on the list.

Sweden's 10 most influential blogs

Media monitoring company Observer has compiled a list of the ten most influential blogs in Sweden, and I am at #5. Erik Stattin is the doyen of the Swedish blogosphere and he is rightfully at the top of the list, which is all male in fact.

The list has two group blogs (#3 and #7) and is heavily skewed to the right of the political scale. One would almost consider it a Timbro jackpot, considering the connections between liberal think tank Timbro and #2, #3, #6 and #9, which I have mentioned previously on this blog. Furthermore it is interesting to note that there are at least four blogs on the list that started only this year, namely my own, JKL's, Stockholm Spectator and PJ Just Nu.

1. Erik Stattin
2. Johan Norberg
3. PJ Just Nu
4. Per Gudmundson
5. Hans Kullin
6. JKL
7. Stockholm Spectator
8. Nicklas Lundblad
9. Dick Erixon
10. Peter Lindberg

Blogs will influence view of the church

Swedish christian web site Crossnet.se reveals plans to launch a blog. Individuals will be able to publish a personal blog under the domain crossnet.se for a small annual fee.

Crossnet writes: "Blogging is seen by congregation researchers as a means of changing and developing the new generation's view of the church."

172 Nordic media RSS feeds

MikroDatorn launches RSS feed

The next IDG publication to launch an RSS feed here in Sweden is MikroDatorn. It was released three hours ago, so I'm surprised no-one else has blogged it yet ;-)

Feed here: http://mikrodatorn.idg.se/tjanster/rss/rss.xml

More IDG feeds here.

The next headache - trackback spam

Read today on the Media Drop about problems with people sending trackback pings that have absolutely no relation to the post. It never occured to me that trackbacks could be abused, but it is very obvious once you think about it. All possibilities can be abused and exploited, just like email and comments.

...and it's not even that new. Googling "trackback spam" gives you more than 9,000 hits! How long will we be able to have trackbacks that doesn't require approval first?

Swedish journalist could have voted in US election

Swedish business daily Dagens Industri's New York correspondent Lars Thulin yesterday went to a polling station, waited in line for the voting booth for 20 minutes, went in and checked out the voting machine. If he wanted to he could have voted. Problem is he is not a US citizen.

He cheated his way in by simply ignoring to have his signature checked and instead go straight to the voting booth line. Had he done it the proper way, the officials would have seen that he was not in the electoral register, but the world's most powerful democracy was pretty easy to fool.

If he'd only had a camera phone with him to photograph the incident like Brian Nicks did when he tried to vote in California on Monday.

The Times they are a-changin'

The Times today is shifting to full tabloid format for the first time in its 216 year history. The historic event gets covered from different perspectives in the Times and in rival paper The Independent.

NRK published Arafat's obituary

Ever wondered how media so quickly are able to publish an obituary over a person who passed away? Well, in most cases it's because of a highly skilled staff who are trained in research and used to speedy writing. But sometimes media write obituaries in advance to have them ready if a person who is ill is about to give up the ghost. Only trouble is if media happen to publish the obituary before the individual actually has died. This is exactly what happened to NRK.no, the website of the Norwegian broadcasting corporation NRK.

For one hour last Saturday, NRK.no had an article on the website about the death of Yasser Arafat. The article's headline was "The star of Palestine has faded away". The article continued "He never got to experience what he dedicated his life to; the proclamation of an independent Palestinian state. Nevertheless, Yasser Arafat's name will always have a special standing in the history of the Palestinians and the whole Middle East."

Link via Journalisten.no

Norwegian opposition leader launches blog

Kristin Halvorsen, leader of Socialistisk Venstre, SV, (The Socialist Left Party) in Norway last week launched a blog. The premiere of the blog coincides with the launch of her book "Straight from the heart".

The first two posts was by her personal "advisor" Roger, but then Halvorsen has been posting herself. She blogs about the American election, no/yes to EU and the rights for homosexuals to register a partnership, among other things. The blog has a comments function but no trackbacks or RSS feed visible, so she is not fully using the capabilities of a blog.

Fredrik Reinfeldt, are you reading this? Buy me lunch and I will show you how to launch a personal blog.

Swedish blog software no lemon

The Swedish software company Mindroute launches a new version of its content management software Lemoon which contains blogging capabilities. It is also possible to use Lemoon to publish RSS feeds. The president of Mindroute, Rickard Hansson, promises more blogging news during the coming months.