Media Culpa - Two Swedish eyes on media and public relations

As long as you behave, you don't have to worry

Undercurrent has some privacy concerns about Norwegian media conglomerate Schibstedt's new search engine Sesam.

"...searching for a person's name at Sesam will return not only web pages, but also address, phone number, overview over the person's board memberships (!), photos of the person and articles about him or her in Norwegian newspapers the last 20 years."

Related: Nicklas Lundblad writes in Smedjan about how ordinary printers are spying on us (in Swedish).

Credit where credit's due

Gunilla Kinn has some interesting comments on the I'm-just-borrowing-a-few-sentences culture in Swedish journalism.

Another example where established media does not credit the correct source: N24 and the original at Susning.nu/stekare. Instead they make up a fake name: Claës von Braten, who does not seem to exist. Braten means "stekare" (roast) in German. (Hat tip to anonymous commentators in the article on N24).

She links in mysterious ways

I'm puzzled by Technorati. My blog has recieved about 20 new incoming links in the last 6 days, of at least 8 or 9 are from blogs that have never linked to me before. But I have been stuck at incoming links from 128 sites for more than a week. It doesn't seem like Technorati is updating this number as often as they update the actual links. Am I wrong?

Olle Svalander is "Mats Hård"

The author behind the popular football blog "thefinartoflosing", that also has become a book, reveals his real identity. The pseudonym "Mats Hård" has been a mystery to the entire Swedish blogosphere until now. Svensk Bokhandel has the scoop.

Via Kulturbloggen.

The 40 best magazine covers

The American Society of Magazine Editors has chosen the 40 best magazine covers from the last 40 years. Ranked first was Rolling Stone magazine with a photo by Annie Leibovitz of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The photo was taken on what would be the last day of Lennon's life.

Brand Autopsy has put together a nice slide show of these 40 covers.

The top 10 magazine covers:
1. Rolling Stone, Jan. 22, 1981, John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
2. Vanity Fair, August 1991, Demi Moore.
3. Esquire, April 1968, Muhammad Ali.
4. The New Yorker, March 29, 1976, Saul Steinberg drawing of Manhattan.
5. Esquire, May 1969, Andy Warhol.
6. The New Yorker, Sept. 24, 2001, Illustration of World Trade Center.
7. National Lampoon, January 1973, "If You Don't Buy This Magazine, We'll Kill This Dog."
8. Esquire, October 1966, "Oh my god -- we hit a little girl."
9. Harper's Bazaar, September 1992, "Enter the Era of Elegance."
10. National Geographic, June 1985, Afghan refugee.

Google issues "gag order" on bloggers at event

This article from CNET is interesting for two reasons. First, Google is inviting 400 people, including bloggers and journalists, to an "off the record" partner forum. In other words, Google is prohibiting participants from writing about the event "To ensure that our presenters and attendees can speak openly". I wouldn't exactly call information that is uttered in front of a 400-headed crowd "a well kept secret".

Second, CNET is apparently updating its articles "blogging style", by using strike through on "deleted" text (see the bottom of the article).

Via Lost Remote.

It was just a matter of time...

From today's Aftonbladet:

"The new trend. Ordinary Swedish women are secretly sex-blogging on the net"

(... as opposed to blogging off the net?)

Swedish dailies abandon news agency material

Sweden's largest daily Dagens Nyheter today announced it has quit its current agreement with TT, Sweden's leading news agency. The goal is that DN will manage without external news agency material from the beginning of next year. Recently Metro, the free daily, announced a similar decision. Metro previously relied heavily on articles from news agencies and it is estimated that Metro spends close to 10 million SEK a year on TT news.

- We need to own our own material. It is becoming increasingly important to own the intellectual property rights to be able to forward them to other channels, Chief Editor Sakari Pitkänen then told Resumé.

- We have examined what we get from TT and found that the price tag is too high, said Charlotta Friborg, Dagens Nyheter's Administrative Chief Editor.

Metro will increase its own staff while DN will use its current editorial staff, which already is under pressure from reductions.

- News are summarized in so many places today. Maybe time has run out on traditional local news agencies, Sakari Pitkänen told DN.

The Centre Party sells local dailies for 190 million euro

The Swedish Centre Party has sold its media holding company Centertidningar AB to a consortium consisting of MittMedia Förvaltnings AB, Morgonpress Invest AB, Tidningsaktiebolaget Stampen and VLT AB (publ). The value of the deal is an impressive 1.8 billion SEK (190 million euro) which makes the Centre Party one of the richest political parties in Europe.

The acquisition of Centertidningar includes the following Swedish dailies:

Fully owned: Hallands Nyheter, Lidingö Tidning, Länstidningen Södertälje, Norrtelje Tidning, Nynäshamns-Posten, Södermanlands Nyheter and Östersunds-Posten.

Partially owned via interests in Hälsingetidningar: Hudiksvalls Tidning, Hälsinge Kuriren and Ljusdals-Posten.

Top 25 PR and advertising blogs

This is a few days old, but I can't resist a top list that includes my blog. Scott at Media Orchard lists the top 25 PR blogs, based on blogs tagged "Public Relations" at Technorati (admittedly a blunt instrument for determining "authority" of bloggers, but hey, it's always something).

1. Micro Persuasion
2. gapingvoid
3. Global PR Blog Week 2.0
4. Duct Tape Marketing Weblog
5. ALLIED by Jeneane Sessum
6. POP! PR Jots
7. hyku blog commentary by blog consultant Josh Hallett
8. Media Guerilla
9. B2B Lead Generation Blog
10. AuburnMedia
11. Media Culpa
12. PR Meets the WWW
13. Marcom Blog
14. Marketing Begins At Home
15. A PR Guru's Musings
16. Beyond PR
17. One By One
18. On Message from Wagner Communications
19. Across the Sound
20. Morgan McLintic on PR
21. Phenix Rising
22. Media Orchard, by the Idea Grove
23. Shotgun Marketing BLOG
24. Kinetic Ideas: A Marketing Blog
25. ZnetLady: Modern Media Modo

A similar search on blogs tagged "Advertising" gives us this top 25 list (with Åsk at Adland in an impressive 4th spot, with me on #18). One duplicate site removed.

1. Micro Persuasion
2. gapingvoid
3. Adrants
4. AdLand
5. Adverblog
6. business2blog
7. Blog Advance Advancing the Blogosphere
8. Personal Democracy Forum
9. PSFK
10. Blog Karde?li?i "beta"
11. hyku blog commentary by blog consultant Josh Hallett
12. Brainstorm #9
13. Online Advertising and Web Industry Trends
14. AdPulp: Daily Juice from the Ad Biz
15. Digital Inspiration Software Reviews
16. Thinking by Peter Davidson
17. infOpinions? : Public Relations
18. Media Culpa
19. The Language Guy
20. everyhuman
21. The Surging Waves
22. Marcom Blog
23. Influx
24. Marketing Begins At Home
25. criteriondg.info/wordpress

Bosses block blogs

Wired today has a story about how companies are starting to use security filters in order to block employees' access to blogs, for example by blocking any site with the word "blog" in the URL (which affects all blogs hosted on blogspot.com or blogsome.com). Corporates worry about productivity and security issues. But of course, all blogs are not bad for business. One must not forget all the positive aspects of blogs in terms of gaining and sharing knowledge, building relations, marketing etc. But then again, Resumé points to an article on adage.com (reg. required) that says employees in the US will waste 551,000 years reading blogs in 2005.

"About 35 million workers -- one in four people in the labor force -- visit blogs and on average spend 3.5 hours, or 9%, of the work week engaged with them, according to Advertising Age’s analysis. Time spent in the office on non-work blogs this year will take up the equivalent of 2.3 million jobs."

Procrastination has never been more ubiquitous.

Pascalidou-gate reaches L.A.

The story about Alexandra Pascalidou's "inspiration" of an L.A. Times article has now become an international embarrassment, as one of the major local blogs, L.A. Observed, today posted a comment.

It's interesting that Pascalidou's response hasn't resulted in further questioning. She hasn't admitted that she used or even read Hernandez' article, when it is obvious to anyone who compares them that she must have. She is a regular columnist in Metro, the paper that recently launched a new concept with a daily correction column. Question is, will Metro do a follow-up, or was this initiative of transparency just lip service?

In contrast, when Resumé today revealed that Dagens Industri's stock reporter Ingemar Carlsson was an active day trayder while he was giving stock advice in Dagens Industri, Carlsson published a sincere mea culpa and apologized. And he published it before Resumé managed to publish their scoop online.

My guess is that Carlsson will be back at DI after a short time-out, while Pascalidou's "columnist brand" has been severely damaged. Especially since she has another crisis still waiting to explode once more, namely that she has been accused of using a ghost writer but denies it. Freelance journalist Isobel Hadley-Kamptz comments on her blog "since I know who the ghost writer is, I know she is lying".

Dagens Nyheter agrees with me

Dagens Nyheter, 19 Oct, 2005, about how even their own journalists promote the iPod and forget that other brands (like Creative) pioneered mp3-players with hard drives.

"iPod är den första tekniska apparat som gör det möjligt att bära med sig en del av sitt kulturarv. Ett extra minne till hjärnan som kan fyllas med det som präglat och format ens identitet", hette det till exempel i DN i augusti i år. Skribenten tycks glömt till exempel de Nomadmodeller som Creative tillverkade före iPodens födelse.

Exactly my point, on 3 Oct, 2005.

Bonus link: Slate on the iPod press cult.

Oslo follow-up

Raymond M. Kristiansen has some comments and photos from my presentation in Oslo this week.

The journalist who exposed Pascalidou also copied an article

Swedish journalist Alexandra Pascalidou, who recently was accused of using a ghost writer, is now being accused of plagiarism by marketing weekly Resumé. A column she wrote in Metro on 29 Dec, 2003 is strikingly similar to an article by Daniel Hernandez, which was published in LA Times and the Boston Globe two days prior (Dates according to Resumé. I have not been able to verify the date in LA Times). The two articles are indeed very similar to each other.

Metro

But is it just Pascalidou who cuts corners among journalists or is this a behaviour that is a common and "justified" means of getting things done in journalism? Let's check an article by Magnus Helander, the journalist at Resumé who exposed Pascalidou.

Helander wrote an article on 4 Oct this year about a successful blog ad campaign from Audi, citing Online Media Daily as source. But 8 hours before Helander's article appears online, an almost identical article was published by Urban Lindstedt at Internetworld. Phrases in bold are from Internetworld, phrases below are from Resumé [exact order may not entirely match the full articles].

Audi la en halv procent av annonsbudgeten i en kampanj för att köpa annonser hos större bloggar.
Audi lade en halv procent av sin annonsbudget på att köpa annonsplatser på bloggar.

Denna halva procent generade 29 procent av trafiken.
Resultatet blev en succé.
Bloggannonseringen genererade 29 procent av trafiken till biltillverkarens kampanjsajt.

Audi spenderade en halv procent av sin annonsbudget på bloggannonser på stora amerikanska bloggar när kampanjen "The Art of Heist" skulle lanseras.
Audi ville driva trafik till sin nya hemsida för kampanjen "The Art of Heist".

I slutändan genererade bloggannonserna 29 procent av trafiken till kampanjsajten, enligt Brian Clark, vd på GMD Studios.
Enligt Brian Clark, vd på GMD Studios, drev bloggannonserna 29 procent av trafiken till kampanjsajten, uppger Online Media Daily.

Men många annonsörer är tveksamma till att annonsera på bloggar på grund av risken att de får negativa kommentarer på bloggarna.
Många potentiella bloggannonsörer uppges vara rädda för att utsättas för negativa kommenterer på bloggarna.

Men Clarke menar att annonsörer inte har råd att ignorera bloggannonser.
Men enligt Brian Clark har annonsörer inte råd att ignorera bloggannonsering.

- Om du är rädd vad användare ska säga finns det två strategier: Bli involverad i diskussionen, eller stoppa fingrarna i öronen och låtsas att den inte existerar, säger Brian Clarke till Online Media Daily. Folk pratar om dig vare sig du lyssnar eller inte.
- Om du är rädd vad användarna ska säga finns det två strategier: bli involverad i diskussionen, eller stoppa fingrarna i öronen och låtsas att den inte existerar. Folk pratar om dig vare sig du lyssnar eller inte, säger Clark till Online Media Daily.

It is quite unlikely that both Helander and Lindstedt, independent of each other, on the same day came up with the same idea to write about this story that was originally published 29 September. And decided to quote the exact same paragraphs from the article. From the looks of it, this is a poor re-write of a re-write.

Not that it matters a lot in this incident, but I strongly suspect they (read Lindstedt) got the idea from this post on my blog, the day before their articles appeared online. In my short post I linked to Davenetics where I found the story. And if you look carefully you see that I managed to nick a sentence from Davenetics, so we are all plagiarists to some extent, are we not? To my defence, at least I (and most bloggers) link to the original.

Either way, plagiarism can't be tolerated in journalism. It is lazy and it is cheating.

State of the blogosphere

David Sifry of Technorati has a new report out about the state of the blogosphere.

30,000 Norwegian blogs

Olav Anders Øvrebø who runs the Undercurrent blog has researched the Norwegian blogosphere and estimates there are about 30,000 blogs in Norway.

RSS usage: News more popular than blogs

Yahoo! have published a white paper called "RSS—Crossing into the Mainstream" (pdf). Among other things it shows that only 4% of internet users knowlingly have used RSS feeds but that "27% of Internet users consume RSS syndicated content on personalized start pages (e.g., My Yahoo!, My MSN) without knowing that RSS is the enabling technology".

Other interesting conclusions:

- On average, "Aware RSS Users" subscribe to 6.6 feeds and claim to spend an average of 4.1 hours per week reading the feeds that they receive.

- Mainstream media rather than niche content accounts for the majority of RSS use.

10 media trends to watch

PR Week offers lazy PR pros a heads-up on what ten media trends to watch in the near future.

1. Portability of video content
2. Blogs
3. The rise of celebrity weeklies
4. Media transparency
5. The growth of Hispanic media
6. Business woes for newspapers
7. Digitalization of print media
8. Media consolidation
9. Source agnostic/disintermediation
10. Refining media measurement

Full explanation here.

New book about blogs

A new blog book is out, written by two prominent bloggers and a journalism teacher. "Bloggtider" by Lars Våge, Erik Stattin and Gunnar Nygren is released today and it seems to be interesting reading. But why does a book by three men have a pretty young woman on the cover? She's nothing but an eye-catcher, obviously.

A comparison between the Swedish and Canadian blogospheres

Aaron Braaten has compiled his Great Canadian Blog Survey in a 56-page report and it is some quite interesting reading. Since his survey was inspired by my BlogSweden (pdf) report from earlier this year, some of the findings are comparable between Canada and Sweden. For example:

- Swedish blog readers are more likely to have a blog of their own. 55% of Canadian blog readers also have their own blogs whereas 60.4% of Swedish blog readers also had blogs of their own.
- Canadian blog readers are slightly older than Swedish. Swedish blog readers are more likely to be between ages 26-30, while Canadians are more clustered around 31-35. A total of 63.4% of Swedes were between 21 and 35 while 50.3% of Canadians were between 18 and 35.
- 71.5% of Canadian blog readers were male, whereas in Sweden the percentage of male blog readers were 63.5%.
- 57.8% of Canadian blog readers read 6 blogs or more per day. In my study, 59.1% of Swedes indicated that they read 6 or more blogs per day.
- Swedes are more likely to use RSS readers to read blogs. 47.2% of Swedish blog readers always or sometimes use an RSS reader whereas the same figure in Canada is 31.3%.
- The majority (58.1%) of bloggers and blog readers in Canada spend one hour or less each day reading blogs. In comparison, 72.9% of Swedish blog readers spend 5 hours or less per week reading blogs.
- Number one reason to read blogs is the same in both Canada and Sweden: "More perspectives on news".
- Number one reason to blog is the same for Canadians and Swedes: "To write".
- Number one way to find other blogs to read is the same in both countries: "Links on other blogs".

Yahoo News puts US blogs in the spotlight

Fellow PR blogger Andy Lark writes that "Yahoo! News is now delivering blogs as a component of a news search result". Check out Andy's blog for a screen shot or try yourself here. The feature is still in beta, and a search for Swedish terms delivers about 90 per cent (a rough estimate) non-blogs among blog results. Almost all of the Swedish "blogs" are traditional media with RSS feeds so the service needs some adjustments to be of any real value outside the US.

The blog is dead - not

I was going to post a comment to a column (not online, how typical) in yesterday's Resumé where Janne Sundling thinks the blog is dead because Per Svensson at Expressen ditched his blog. But Fredrik Wackå says it all so I have nothing to add. Henrik Torstensson and Jonas Morian also comment (all in Swedish).

Quote of the day

Paris Hilton recently dropped her publicist Rob Shuter because she was not pleased with his performance.

"She felt that the press wasn’t respectful enough," says a pal, "I mean, Rob’s a publicist, not a magician."

More confusion about who represents Hilton can be found at Radar (via Defamer).

A suggestion for Bloglines

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.

Edit subscription

Media Culpa goes west

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.

Dagens Industri launches 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

Local dailies bring in citizen voices in reporting

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."

PR Week offers RSS feeds

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 produces junk science

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".

SVT's guide to the blogosphere

SVT, Swedish public service television, today launched a blog initiative called Bloggat ("Blogged"), where bloggers are invited to debate about political topics. The articles are published at svt.se/opinion in a "chain letter" format. Dick Erixon will today start with an article about national identity and on Friday, Maryam Yazdanfar, president of SSU (youth organisation of the Social Democratic Party) will reply.

The purpose of the initiative is that Bloggat shall be a guide to the blogosphere and not a traditional blog, according to an article in Resumé.

- Blogs are a part of the public debate and it is only natural for us at SVT Opinion to cover this area. And we believe that it will drive traffic to the SVT website, Jessica Lindroth, editor of svt.se/opinion tells Resumé.

Visitors to the website are able to discuss and comment in an online forum. Another feature that would have been nice to see is some sort of trackback feature so that visitors could see what other bloggers say about the articles, pretty much like the way Washington Post collaborates with Technorati. That way SVT would be able to show a deeper version of the blogosphere than just the A-listers who get invited. It is the long tail of the blogosphere that makes it really interesting.

Ogilvy checks out blogs

I'm glad to see that my blog is one of seven blogs about branding that the good people at Ogilvy PR are reading. "The Ogilvy PR BlogFeeds are our feeds from some of the most influential blogs out there. The ones we're reading every day."

Mea Culpa: Two Swedish Eyes on Media and Public Relations
This Swedish blog from two public relations professionals offer good reports of what's out there and a valuable international perspective, including posts on topics like Chinese brands you should know and PR Blogging in Iran.

Two tiny corrections about the presentation though. The title of this blog is Media Culpa, nothing else. And it's written by me. Two eyes, one guy.

Blog ads drive online traffic

For those of us who still pay to blog, this story give us some hope of future riches. Audi recently ran an online campaign and spent 0.5 percent of their budget on blog ads. Those ads accounted for 29% of the traffic sent to the Audi's web page. Highly effective, in other words.

MP3 player with a hard drive - that's so 1999

Laura Ries writes about the Apple brand:

"Then Apple introduced the iPod, the first MP3 player with a hard drive."

It's not the first time I've read this misconception. In August, Jan Gradvall wrote an article in Dagens Nyheter about the iPod:

"iPod is the first technical gadget that makes it possible for someone to carry around a piece of his cultural heritage."

Although he doesn't say it explicitly, I interpret him as saying that the iPod was the first mp3 player that could store thousands of songs (he goes on to talk about that later in the article). Either way, the iPod was launched in October 2001 and is not the first hard disk based mp3 player. Instead, a product called the Personal Jukebox was introduced in November 1999, two years prior to the birth of the iPod. Other brands launched similar products in 2000 and 2001, like Creative's Nomad Jukebox that was introduced in November 2000 (I bought one myself). The iPod is undoubtedly the most successful mp3 player ever, but it was not the first to sport a hard drive.

The Haier, the better

How many Chinese brands do you know? Well, chances are you've heard about Lenovo's acquisition of IBM's PC division, but apart from that there are few other known examples in our part of the globe. Considering that China is expected to become the world's largest exporter in 2010, maybe it's time you learn some of China's top brands, according to Financial Times (via the Globalist).

1. Haier (electronics)
2. Lenovo (computers)
3. China Mobile (cell phones)
4. Tsingtao Brewery (brewing)
5. Ping An (financial)
6. Bank of China (banking)
7. CCTV (television)
8. Air China (airlines)
9. Huawei (telecommunications)
10. Sohu.com (internet)