Two Swedish Eyes on Media and Public Relations
Mediaweek reports “that the Wall Street Journal will expand its coverage of the legal world through the launch of a law-dedicated Web page on WSJ.com along with a new law-centric blog”.
Peter Lattman, a former reporter at Forbes magazine, will run the blog.
A fake press release stating that the land of Narnia had walked out of WTO negotiations got picked up by financial news agency AFX and was published on several papers’ web sites. And you say that bloggers are bad at fact checking 😉
“HONG KONG (AFX) – The independent state of Narnia has walked out of trade negotiations here, citing pressure from the European Union and the US to enforce liberalization of its garment-related sector.
Narnian spokeswoman Susan Aslan said in a statement that delegates “were tired of bullying by EU and US delegations and would be returning immediately to their state capital at Cair Parvel.”
“If this brings the Hong Kong talks to the knees we will be delighted. Many other delegates told us they are sick of the eternal Lamy winter and are longing for a new trade spring,” Aslan said.
The walkout was a first in this round of talks, and follows a similar move by some developing country delegates at the Cancun summit two years ago, the statement said.”
Via Johan Norberg.
Many thanks to all my readers and a Happy New Year to all of you. Here are a few curiosities from the year that passed.
Headline of the year:
“Bottom falls out of thong market” – The Sunday Times, UK
Headline of the year #2:
“Headline here that reflects a story about Chirac, de Villepin and that man Sarkozy” – Financial Times prints dummy page.
Letter of the year:
Tony Blair to Göran Persson – “And thank you for Sven”
“Those were the days” of the year:
Internetworld presents Sweden’s 50 most popular blogs, and not a single tabloid journalist is on the list.
Racist of the year:
The ice cream Nogger Black (irony intended)
Ignorant media quote of the year:
“I can’t name one single non-journalist with a blog” – Belinda Olsson, Aftonbladet
Most “no comments” in one interview:
Klas Ã…hlund of Teddybears STHLM in Aftonbladet
Most “gagged” blogger:
Journalist Per Gudmundson was stopped from blogging for the second time in July.
Overall quote of the year:
“I know that I have said what they say I’ve said” – Oisin Cantwell, Aftonbladet
“Mikael Persbrandt might disagree”-quote of the year:
“It is not a punishment to be seen in Expressen” – Niclas Rislund, Expressen
Photo gallery of the year:
Lothar and love – Lothar Matthäus’ website
PR quote of the year:
“She felt that the press wasn’t respectful enough,” says a pal, “I mean, Rob’s a publicist, not a magician.” – Paris Hilton dropped her publicist Rob Shuter because she was not pleased with his performance.
Top blog referers (2004-2005) to my blog:
1. Bilfeber
2. Adland
3. Mymarkup
4. Reklamfeber
5. Johan Norberg
6. Newsdesigner
7. LA Observed
8. We Make Money Not Art
9. Nya Ordlekar
10. Dick Erixon
Most clicked post:
“Reporters Without Borders announce blog award”
Highest number of visitors per month:
10,953 – January 2005
Weirdest month:
November 2005 – my blog was under an attack from bandwidth stealing referal spammers and suddenly got thousands of page views per day (topping at 4,553 page visits on Nov 17).
Award of the year:
I got an honorable mention in MarketingSherpa’s 2005 Best Blog Awards
My 10 most played songs in 2005 according to Audioscrobbler (my profile here):
1 Doves – Black And White Town
2 Tegan and Sara – Walking With A Ghost
3 Kent – Palace & Main
3 Kent РDen D̦da Vinkeln
5 Raphael Saadiq – Detroit Girl
5 The House of Love – Gotta Be That Way
5 Death Cab for Cutie – Your Heart Is An Empty Room
8 John Legend – Live It Up
8 Kent – Max 500
10 Teddybears STHLM – Cobrastyle
10 U2 – All Because of You
10 Annie – My Heartbeat
10 John Legend – Let’s Get Lifted
10 R. Kelly – Weatherman
10 Raphael Saadiq – Chic Like You featuring Allie Baba
Top 10 played artists in 2005:
1 Coldplay
2 Kent
2 Raphael Saadiq
4 Doves
5 John Mayer
6 U2
6 John Legend
8 Cocteau Twins
9 Anna Ternheim
10 Death Cab for Cutie
Concert of the year:
Raphael Saadiq at Berns, Stockholm.
Reunion of the year:The House of Love
“Can being mentioned on the net turn an ordinary citizen into a public figure with severely limited abilities to fight libel and defamation lawsuits? According to a Florida judge’s ruling — perhaps the first of its kind in the United States — the answer is yes.”
The story is about a woman, Eliza Thomas, who claimed that two TV stations defamed her.
“Judges often will look at media coverage to see if someone fits the criteria to be a public figure. But in the Thomas case, there hadn’t been any traditional media coverage; only internet denizens had been involved.”
But according to a law professor and media law specialist it was a bad decision “because Thomas didn’t act to inject herself into a public controversy — one of the criteria for determining a public figure”.
Question is how this applies to bloggers who actively participate in the online debate.
Sydsvenskan today writes about the media year 2005 and the balkanization of media. Apparently as many as 145 publications were launched in Sweden in 2005, among them five (!) sudoku publications. Since 2002, almost 400 new publications have been introduced in the Swedish market.
“Sanningen enligt mig” (The truth according to me) is a new blog by IT guru Johan Staël von Holstein who has been the entrepreneur behind for example Icon Medialab and Letsbuyit.com. Glad to see that I’m almost two years ahead of him this time 😉