The German players can’t blog during the World Cup in Germany next summer, according to Aftonbladet. The German Football Federation stops the players from writing blogs or contributing to media articles because their focus should be on the game.
Category: Blogging
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.
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 (no longer online, 2011) 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.
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
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.”
Here is the description:
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.