Author: kullin

Happy 100 posts to me

Media Culpa has just passed 100 posts, and maybe it is appropriate to look back at the first few months of blogging. I started out in February and once I figured out about this RSS stuff (thanks Constantin), things developed pretty rapidly and I got several good contacts from around the globe. I started measuring the traffic in April and the site has since then had about 5700 visitors, approximately 20 a day.

Top referrers are:

  1. PR Opinions

  2. Technorati
  3. Blogger (that’s me, previewing the site etc)
  4. Micro Persuasion
  5. Media Guerilla
  6. Adland
  7. Bloglines
  8. Weblogs.se
  9. Sweblogs
  10. Online PR

The revolution will not be blogged – in Sweden

A number of bloggers got credentials to cover the Democratic National Convention in Boston and pushed the boundaries of this new medium, sitting side by side (or at least in the same room) with representatives of established media outlets. CNN teamed up with Technorati to create a convention blog and the blogosphere is bubbling with analyses of why this could be a landmark in the development of blogs and how it affects journalism (also see InternetWeek and New York Times, free reg. required). To perform a bit of Google journalism: a search for the term “convention blog” gives us 13,000 hits, so obviously this topic is the talk of the town at the moment.

Some Swedish bloggers have mentioned it briefly, but it baffles me that no Swedish media has written about it. Why? Not a single article has to my knowledge even touched on the topic. Are Swedish journalists in general not interested in writing about the development of their own profession, or shall we just blame the holiday season?

If there are any Swedish journalists reading this, here is a tip. Start by reading the excellent white paper by Daniel W. Drezner and Henry Farrell called “The Power of Politics and Blogs” (pdf), then read through the free (!) new book We the media by Dan Gillmor.

65% rise in ad spending among Swedish telecoms

If you think the advertising market is in a slump, maybe this will cheer you up.

  • The commercial tv channel TV3 increased its sales with 15 per cent (reg. required) during the first six months 2004.
  • The four Swedish telecom operators Telia, Tele 2, Vodaphone and “3” spent roughly 65 million euro on advertising the first half of 2004 (in gross spending), an increase with 65 per cent, reports Svenska Dagbladet. Competition is fierce and “3” tripled their spending compared to the same period last year, due to the launch of its 3G service.

More plagiarism in Scandinavian media

I recently wrote about accusations of plagiarism at Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter. And now new accusations are made, this time in Norway. Blogger and media critic Lars Ruben Hirsch accuses (in Norwegian) Aftenposten of copying an article from Newsweek without properly crediting the source. Hirsch lays out 12 arguments for his case and sent an email to Aftenposten’s editor Per Kristian Haugen asking for a response, but he didn’t get any. Not until Dagbladet.no looked into the story. Still, Aftenposten does not want to admit to plagiarism.

Presently there is a debate going on in traditional media (here and in Dagens Naeringliv) and in blogs (here and here in English) in Norway about plagiarism and whether this is a common practice among journalists. The same debate would have been healthy to see here in Sweden regarding the Dagens Nyheter case, but instead silence prevails.

“Sweden in the news” last week

It’s quite interesting to see what stories gets picked up abroad about your own country. A few weeks back, some of the most covered topics about Sweden was about an elk that stole a bike and about the Swedish king wanting a photo of princess Madeleine’s chest removed from a website. Not exactly the most important incidents, but apparently this is what gets people going.

During the last week, these topics regarding Sweden were among the most frequently covered by blogs and international media: