Two Swedish Eyes on Media and Public Relations
News aggregator Bloglines yesterday launched a new internationalized site in six new languages.
* English
* Spanish
* Japanese
* Chinese (Traditional)
* French
* German
* Portuguese
They also reached the milestone of 200 million articles indexed. The first 100 million took one year, and less than 4 months to reach the double amount.
The discussion on Swedish Television this morning about blogs is a perfect example of why we need blogs to increase the diversity of voices. In today’s society, media has almost a monopoly on filtering and interpreting information, deciding on what stories will be passed on to us citizens. Incidents that don’t fit in that framework will be left out. What media often does, take a look for example on the news on TV4 and SVT, is that they let journalists interview other journalists about a certain topic. Why bother bringing in an outside expert when you can grab one of your colleagues to do the job? So when SVT want to discuss blogs they let Fredrik Belfrage (journalist) interview PJ Anders Linder (journalist) and Nicklas Mattsson (former journalist) about blogs. There are hundred of bloggers out there, why choose Nicklas Mattsson who to my knowledge doesn’t even have a blog? It is because it is easy to make a (former) journalist into an expert. It is not that I have a problem with anything that PJ and Nicklas said this morning, rather it is just very typical of how media work. In the light of that discussion, it was a relief to view the exact opposite last night when Chadie and Malte were interviewed on K2 on SVT24. Oh wait, I remember that Malte said he was a freelance writer for Expressen. See what I mean?
UPDATE: Another thing, on K2 they claimed that the first mention of blogs in Swedish press was in Svenska Dagbladet on 29 July 2002, which is incorrect. The first mention was in this article in Ny Teknik on 2 May 2002.
In his grandiose farewell on his blog, Per Gudmundson wrote about David Bowie/Ziggy Stardust and the last ever concert on Hammersmith Odeon. In a freakish coincidence there is a documentary about that concert tonight at Cinemateket/Rival in Stockholm at 7 PM.
Journalist Per Gudmundson who was asked to stop blogging if he wished to keep his job at Swedish Television, was interviewed today on Kulturnyheterna on SVT. Somehow I sense that Per hasn’t entirely given up on his blog. Although I find it hard to believe, maybe a constructive debate can convince his boss to reconsider. The show can be viewed online here.
Blogs are everywhere at the moment. Tonight there will be a discussion about blogs at 21.35 on Swedish tv channel SVT24. The show is called K2 and Chadie will be participating.
Tomorrow morning another leading blogger will be on tv, namely Svenska Dagbladet’s PJ Anders Linder who will be evangelizing (?) blogs in SVT1 Gomorron Sverige at 8.20. Don’t miss it.
Yesterday evening the first ever Swedish PR awards was given out at a gala dinner in Stockholm. The PR consultancies’ organisation Precis estimated that a third of its members were present at Spinn 2004. For someone like me who spent a number of years at different agencies it was almost like coming home, I met so many people I haven’t seen in years and it was great fun. I think that will be the greatest benefit of this event, that people get an excuse to meet and mingle. And of course it is an incentive for the agencies and clients that win the awards. One award was given to Stena Line who had not used an agency.
Winners:
Category: IT/Telecom
Andréasson Public Relations for Jens of Sweden
Category: Pharma/Health
GCI Malmö for Boehringer Ingelheim, “dog arthrosis”
Category: Food
Prime for Svensk Mjölk (milk)
Category: Fashion
Rita Platzer PR for Gudrun Sjödén
Category: Travel/Tourism
Stena Line (no agency)
Category: Entertainment/Media
Prime for Vi i Villa
Category: Open class
Citigategramma for Robur
Category: Best use of channel/tool
JMW Kommunikation for Ajax-report